This section contains 8,503 words (approx. 29 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: "'The Swallowing Womb': Consumed and Consuming Women in Titus Andronicus," in The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Valerie Wayne, Cornell, 1991, pp. 129-51.
In the following excerpt, Wynne-Davies examines the roles of Lavinia and Tamora in light of late sixteenth-century concepts of women's identity.
I
Christine de Pisan, one of the first female authors to write in defence of women, devoted three chapters of The Book of the City of Ladies (1404) to rape:
Then I, Christine, spoke as follows, 'My lady [Rectitude], I truly believe what you are saying, and I am certain that there are plenty of beautiful women who are virtuous and chaste and who know how to protect themselves well from the entrapments of deceitful men. I am therefore troubled and grieved when men argue that many women want to be raped and that it does not bother them at...
This section contains 8,503 words (approx. 29 pages at 300 words per page) |
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