SOURCE: Little, Arthur L., Jr. “Picturing the Hand of White Women.” In Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice, pp. 25-67. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000.

In the following excerpt, Little concentrates on the figure of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, observing her resemblance to the classical model of Lucrece, viewing her rape as a symbolic sacrifice for Rome, and examining the racial overtones of the her attack.

Picturing Lavinia; Or, the Story of the Pit

Lavinia's rape is no more an accident to republican Rome than is Lucrece's. The official Roman world wishes to tell the story otherwise, and it is precisely this fiction—of how Lavinia's sacrifice counterbalances, corrects, or chastises her rape—that Rome (not necessarily Shakespeare's play) promotes to the status of a cultural truism. Rome demands Lavinia's rape as much as it demands her sacrifice; these are concomitant acts. Her rape...