Notes from the Past: Seduction & Rape in the Eighteenth Century

The Rape of the Lock (1712) by
Alexander Pope is a satire whose

focus is the capture (cutting)

of a woman's lock of hair,

which represents an ambush

of the woman's virtue.

Rape was a crime in the eighteenth century, if not commonly pursued.* Even within marriage, a woman could argue "barbarous cruelty"--though the case would often be brought by her father or other male relative.

In addition, there were multiple social practices aimed at protecting women, specifically young, unmarried women, from the possibility of rape. In Pride & Prejudice, Darcy shows a remarkable lack of responsibility when he fails to inform his neighbors of Wickham's true character. From a modern point of view, Darcy simply seems to be exercising his privacy. From an eighteenth/nineteenth century point-of-view, word-of-mouth warnings were the best defense parents had against untrustworthy/dangerous men. In general, young women were warned to stay away from cads and bounders, and some social pressure was exerted to prevent compromised young women from being abandoned.

Ostensibly, these defenses were to prevent young women being seduced (and once seduced, from further social stigma). However, the correlation of seduction with rape was much closer in Richardson's world than in contemporary culture;  "seduction" had a far more rapacious, negative connotation for Richardson's contemporaries. And the word "rape" carried far less political baggage. (When I was an undergrad, our English Department put on a spoof of the spoof The Rape of the Lock. An on-campus women's group complained about the use of the word "rape" in our posters. Hey, it's Alexander Pope--take it up with him!)

Consequently, the correlation in Samuel Richardson's books between a rakish seducer and resistance--followed by triumph (Pamela) or debasement followed by death (Clarissa) of the heroine. 

Pamela Fainting by Joseph Highmore, 1743

Clarissa's death, oddly enough, is far closer to Ancient Roman attitudes about rape--and some modern ones--than to attitudes in the eighteenth century. Despite the century's literary tropes, a raped woman was not consider beyond hope or repair. Whatever the loss of reputation, a subsequent death was not assumed as a given. Clarissa truly is an outlier. 

*London saw six rape trials in 1730 (one guilty verdict). This is in a city whose population had reached 630,000 with a high-risk female population (poor women and prostitutes unprotected by family and social standing) in the area of 50,000 (see Dan Cruickshank's London's Sinful Secret: The Bawdy Histoy and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age).