Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800 ed. by Anne Greenfield (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800 ed. by Anne Greenfield Marta Kvande Greenfield, Anne, ed. Interpreting Sexual Violence, 1660–1800. The Body, Gender and Culture: 14. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013. 200 pp. This ambitious collection of essays aims to survey sexual violence in an enormous range of manifestations — both in historical context and in literary and artistic depictions — over the course of the Restoration and the eighteenth century. It establishes not only the persistent recurrence of depictions of rape in literature and art but also the fact that sexual violence functioned as an ideological nexus in the period because it “reflected so many other . . . ideas, values and anxieties” (4). As such, it offers important contributions to the scholarly conversation on the history of rape as well as to the field of Restoration literature. While many of the essays in this collection center on texts published after 1700, several do consider texts and contexts from the period 1660–1700, and those essays will be the main focus of this review. Greenfield’s introduction to the volume sets the stage by sketching out the prevalence of images of rape and sexual violence across the period and discussing the many ways in which the trope was used. She points out that the “astonishing flexibility” (2) of the trope meant that it could be used for political purposes as well as to titillate audiences and to raise issues relating to “gender, the legal system, inheritance, the passions, the body, resistance to authority, the family, [and] social hierarchies” (3). After highlighting the significant differences between the Restoration and eighteenth-century definition of rape, which was quite narrow, and the twenty-first-century understandings of the term, which can be much more inclusive, the introduction then sets out the collection’s particularly useful approach to sexual violence: while maintaining strong historical awareness of how the idea was understood in the period, the collection defines sexual violence broadly and inclusively in order to consider a wide range of actions and victims. Such an approach is an excellent model for how to remain true to the historical context while bringing to bear what’s most useful in modern scholarship. Much of the rest of the collection lives up to this standard. Two of the essays offer [End Page 83] descriptive summaries that point toward more critical work that remains to be done. Julie Gammon’s essay, “Researching Sexual Violence, 1660–1800: A Critical Analysis,” opens the collection by identifying a set of recurring questions that runs through the scholarship of the last twenty years, briefly describing the debate on most of those questions, and considering a few related topics. Gammon concludes by gesturing toward topics that need further study. This essay might serve as a guide to further research by introducing new scholars to a few of the important topics in the field. Similarly, Anne Marie Byrd’s essay, “Violently Erotic: Representing Rape in Restoration Drama,” surveys depictions of rape in three genres of Restoration theatre: comedies of manners, tragicomedies of intrigue, and Restoration tragedies. As she notes, depictions in comedies tend to be more comedic while those in tragedies tend to be more tragic, and all of these depictions place the focus squarely on the body of the actress. Like Gammon’s essay, Byrd’s offers a point of access for scholars who might pursue further the issues raised by these plays. Gammon’s piece is followed by two essays that offer important and useful historical context and understanding for the study of rape. Mary R. Block’s essay, “’For the Repressing of the Most Wicked and Felonious Rapes and Ravishments of Women’: Rape Law in England, 1660–1800,” points out how important it is to study legal treatises from the period because there were so few actual statutes on the books regarding rape and because these statutes did not define what counted as rape. Block shows that these treatises “consistently described rape as a crime of violence against the body of an individual woman and not as a property crime” (26), an especially important point given that the idea of rape as a property crime crops up repeatedly in other genres (and in much modern...