Forced seduction is a theme found frequently in Western literature (mainly romance novels and soap operas) wherein man-on-woman rape eventually turns into a genuine love affair. A popular example is Luke and Laura from the American soap opera General Hospital . [1] [2]
The theme is also common in Thai soap operas where it was long taken for granted, until in 2014 the rape and murder of a thirteen-year-old girl led to a national outcry. [3]
The English word "rape" derives ultimately from the Latin verb rapere, "to snatch, carry away, abduct". Raptio (in archaic or literary English rendered as rape) is the Latin term referring to the large scale abduction of women, or kidnapping either for marriage or enslavement, particularly sexual slavery, something that was rather a common practice in many ancient cultures.[ citation needed ] In Roman law, raptus (or raptio) meant primarily kidnapping or abduction; depicted often in the mythological "rape" of the Sabine women is a form of bride abduction in which sexual violation is a secondary issue. [4] [5]
In one source, forced seduction is summarized by the following:
Once upon a time there was a very pretty girl. She was raped. The boy begged for forgiveness, and they lived happily ever after. (translation from Dutch) [3]
The history of forced seduction is as old as Western literature and mythology: well known from Greek mythology is the Rape of Europa, which tells of Zeus, disguised as a beautiful white bull, seducing Europa. When she climbs on his back he swims to Crete, where he seduces her and later makes her queen of Crete. The story is retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses , with Jupiter standing in for Zeus. [6] The Greek had a specific turn of phrase to describe "a woman's rape by a god"; [7] whether one should properly speak of rape or of seduction is a matter of contention. [8]
In post-Renaissance literature of the Western world, an early portrayal of a rape victim falling in love with her rapist occurs in Aphra Behn's The Dumb Virgin (1700). [9] The theme later appeared in many works of popular literature. A well-known example of a rapist who is reformed by his victim is Lovelace in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) [10] Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) had already featured an almost-rapist whose victim falls in love with him; according to Frances Ferguson, it is Pamela herself who "rereads Mr. B's attempted rape as seduction". [11] The death of Richardson's Clarissa character was echoed in many American novels of the 18th century, in which the female victims of "seduction" frequently died in a blurring of the boundaries between seduction and rape. [12]
An early 20th-century example of forced seduction is the 1919 novel The Sheik by Edith Maude Hull, in which a Western woman is held captive by an Algerian sheik and raped repeatedly, realizing after months of being raped that she loves him; The Sheik is regarded as an "ur-romance". [11] The theme was quite common in romance novels from the 1970s and 1980s, the beginning of the modern wave of erotic romance; so-called "bodice rippers" advertised it on their very covers, which featured "half-clothed women with heaving bosoms being ravished by shirtless, overpowering men". To maintain a distance between the reality of the reader and the fiction of the romance novel, such novels were frequently given a "remote historical setting allowing women to 'enjoy' the rape fantasy from a safe distance". [13] Kathleen E. Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower (1972) is one of the earliest and best-known examples from this period. [1]
Romance novelist Jaid Black (pseudonym for Tina Engler) said that "many of my female readers enjoy rape fantasies, key word being fantasies. They certainly wouldn't want it to happen in real life, but enjoy the escapism and total lack of control provided by 'forced seduction' scenes in erotic romance novels". [1] According to one reader of romance, women readers are quite capable of separating fantasy from reality: "In real life there is no such thing as forced seduction. When a woman says no in real life, that means no, because in real life, rape is about violence and power. Rape in real life involves no pleasure for the woman". [13] Alison Kent, author of the Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance, says the theme is rare in modern romance novels; [1] Linda Lee also cites scholarship to conclude that "by the mid-1980s, the rape fantasy was rejected". [13] However, forced seduction has been used as a plot point in post-1980s romance novels. [14]
Stevi Jackson, a scholar of gender and sexuality, begins an analysis of forced seduction (in "The Social Context of Rape", first published 1978) with the "sexual scripts" that culture male and female sexuality, which for the male posit "supposedly uncontrollable sexual aggression". "Conventional sexual scripts" also dictate that "a woman's satisfaction is assumed to be dependent on male activity" and that "women need some degree of persuasion" before they will engage in sex. Once this obstacle (dictated by inhibitions and propriety) is overcome, they gladly surrender themselves: "the masterful male and yielding female form a common motif of our popular culture", lending credibility to not a female but rather a male rape fantasy. [15] Jackson's generalizing comment on seduction from this article is cited in at least two legal and ethical studies: "It may not be that rape is forced seduction but that seduction is a subtler form of rape". [16] [17]
In "Even Sociologists Fall in Love" (1993), Jackson takes scholars of "ideal romances" to task for conflating two competing ideas about love—the need for nurturing, which she says for heterosexual women is frequently not fulfilled, and "romantic desire experienced as overwhelming, insatiable". The latter desire is frequently found in romances, and "the hero often rapes the heroine in these novels"—novels in which "spectacularly masculine" heroes hurt and humiliate women characters but reveal their "softer side" when they "declare [their] love" for their victims. Such novels portray male desire as uncontrollable, thus proposing that it is actually the woman, as a motor for male desire, who is in charge of the man; "the attraction of romance for women may well lie in their material powerlessness". [18]
Angela Toscano, in a 2012 study, states that earlier studies of the theme have focused too much on sociological and psychological aspects, and rejects the notion that first, all romance novels can be treated the same way, and second, that the theme somehow "constitutes an instantiation of some fictive collective female consciousness (in which all women operate as a single affective entity, like the Borg)". Toscano claims to study rape in romance within a narrative context, distinguishing between three types. The first two types ("Rape of Mistaken Identity" and "Rape of Possession") exemplify the violence always involved in breaking down a barrier between the subject (the hero) and the Other (the heroine) whose identity and desire are as yet somehow essentially unknown to the raping subject. Toscano argues that not all rapes in romance are forced seductions; the latter is, rather, what she calls "Rape of Coercion", and comes about through the desire on the part of the hero to come to know the heroine—"the hero wants a response from the heroine because it is in her dialogue with him that her identity is revealed. But instead of waiting for her freely to speak to him the hero forces the heroine to respond to his sexual and verbal assault". In the end, according to Toscano, "the true violation is not the rape at all, but the act of falling in love". [14]
In American soap operas, a well-known example of forced seduction is the supercouple Luke and Laura from General Hospital . [1] [2] In Thai television soap opera, the theme is quite common. A Thai study from 2008 reported that among 2000 viewers aged 13 to 19, 20 percent reported that the rapes were their favorite element in soaps, and an equal number thought that "rape was a normal and acceptable element in society". Sitthiwat Tappan, a director of Thai soaps, said that the depicted and suggested rapes in these shows provide a valuable lesson: they teach women not to venture out alone or dress provocatively, and teach men not to drink too much. In 2014, the rape and murder of a thirteen-year-old girl on a train resulted in intense public discussion around the propagation of rape culture. A petition to "stop romanticizing rape on television" quickly received 30,000 signatures. [3]
Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.
A love triangle or eternal triangle is a scenario or circumstance, usually depicted as a rivalry, in which two people are pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with one person, or in which one person in a romantic relationship with someone is simultaneously pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with someone else. A love triangle typically is not conceived of as a situation in which one person loves a second person, who loves a third person, who loves the first person, or variations thereof.
A romance novel or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primary focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have contributed to the development of this genre include Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.
A sexual fantasy or erotic fantasy is an autoerotic mental image or pattern of thought that stirs a person's sexuality and can create or enhance sexual arousal. A sexual fantasy can be created by the person's imagination or memory, and may be triggered autonomously or by external stimulation such as erotic literature or pornography, a physical object, or sexual attraction to another person. Anything that may give rise to a sexual arousal may also produce a sexual fantasy, and sexual arousal may in turn give rise to fantasies.
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.
Eros is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy referring to sensual or passionate love, from which the term erotic is derived. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to "life energy". The Protestant philosopher C. S. Lewis posits it as one of the four ancient Greek words for love in Christianity, alongside storge, philia, and agape.
A rape fantasy or a ravishment is a sexual fantasy involving imagining or pretending being coerced or forcefully coercing another into sexual activity. In sexual roleplay, it involves acting out roles of coercive sex. Rape pornography is literature or images associated with rape and sometimes Stockholm syndrome as a means of sexual arousal.
Erotic horror, alternately called horror erotica or dark erotica, is a term applied to works of fiction in which sensual or sexual imagery are blended with horrific overtones or story elements for the sake of sexual titillation. Horror fiction of this type is most common in literature and film. Erotic horror films are a cornerstone of Spanish and French horror.
The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British exploitation erotic epistolary novel first published anonymously in 1828 by John Benjamin Brookes and reprinted by William Dugdale. However, it was not widely known or circulated until the 1893 edition.
The World's Desire is a fantasy novel first published in 1890 and written by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang. It was published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fortieth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in January 1972.
Homosexuality in ancient Rome often differs markedly from the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active / dominant / masculine and passive / submissive / feminine. Roman society was patriarchal, and the freeborn male citizen possessed political liberty (libertas) and the right to rule both himself and his household (familia). "Virtue" (virtus) was seen as an active quality through which a man (vir) defined himself. The conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. Acceptable male partners were slaves and former slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, so they were excluded from the normal protections accorded to a citizen even if they were technically free. Freeborn male minors were off limits at certain periods in Rome.
The concept of rape, both as an abduction and in the sexual sense, makes its appearance in early religious texts.
The Sheik is a 1919 novel by English writer E. M. Hull. It was the first of a series of novels she wrote with desert settings that set off a major revival of the "desert romance" genre of romantic fiction. It was a huge best-seller and the most popular of her books, and it served as the basis for the film of the same name starring the Italian actor Rudolph Valentino in the title role.
Violet Winspear was a British writer of 70 romance novels in Mills & Boon from 1961 to 1987.
Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century.
The Flame and the Flower is the debut work of romance novelist Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. The first modern "bodice ripper" romance novel, the book revolutionized the historical romance genre. It was also the first full-length romance novel to be published first in paperback rather than hardback.
Raptio is a Latin term for, among several other meanings for senses of "taking", the large-scale abduction of women: kidnapping for marriage, concubinage or sexual slavery. The equivalent German term is Frauenraub.
The woman's film is a film genre which includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray stereotypical women's concerns such as domestic life, family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance. These films were produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II. Although Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific stars.
Welcome to Temptation is a contemporary romance written by Jennifer Crusie and released in 2000. The novel explores the love story between Sophie Dempsey, a screenwriter making a movie in the small town of Temptation, and the mayor, Phinneas "Phin" Tucker. Over the course of the story, they solve a murder and deal with conflict around Sophie's movie, which is alternately a documentary or a porn flick. The lead characters appear in supporting roles in the sequel, Faking It, which centers on Sophie's brother, a secondary character in Welcome to Temptation.
Victorian erotica is a genre of sexual art and literature which emerged in the Victorian era of 19th-century Britain. Victorian erotica emerged as a product of a Victorian sexual culture. The Victorian era was characterized by paradox of rigid morality and anti-sensualism, but also by an obsession with sex. Sex was a main social topic, with progressive and enlightened thought pushing for sexual restriction and repression. Overpopulation was a societal concern for the Victorians, thought to be the cause of famine, disease, and war. To curb the threats of overpopulation and to solve other social issues that were arising at the time, sex was socially regulated and controlled. New sexual categories emerged as a response, defining normal and abnormal sex. Heterosexual sex between married couples became the only form of sex socially and morally permissible. Sexual pleasure and desire beyond heterosexual marriage was labelled as deviant, considered to be sinful and sinister. Such deviant forms included masturbation, homosexuality, prostitution and pornography. Procreation was the primary goal of sex, removing it from the public, and placing it in the domestic. Yet, Victorian anti-sexual attitudes were contradictory of genuine Victorian life, with sex underlying much of the cultural practice. Sex was simultaneously repressed and proliferated. Sex was featured in medical manuals such as The Sexual Impulse by Havelock Ellis and Functions and Disorders of Reproductive Organs by William Acton, and in cultural magazines like The Penny Magazine and The Rambler. Sex was popular in entertainment, with much of Victorian theatre, art and literature including and expressing sexual and sensual themes.
Er was eens een erg knap meisje. Zij werd verkracht. De jongen smeekte haar om vergeving en ze leefden nog lang en gelukkig
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