The Rape of Lucrece - The Raped Woman

The Raped Woman

Lucrece is described as if she were a work of art, objectified in as if she were a material possession. Tarquin's rape of her is described as if she were a fortress under attack—conquering her various physical attributes. Although Lucrece is raped, the poem offers an apology to absolve her of guilt (lines 1240–46). Like Shakespeare's other raped women, Lucrece gains symbolic value: through her suicide, her body metamorphoses into a political symbol. Shakespeare turns rape into a form of wound or mutilation of Lucrece's flesh. The loss of chastity as a symbolic wound is closely associated to the self-inflicted stab wound which puts an end to Lucrece's life. Tarquin's phallus is indeed recurrently compared to a dagger or sword piercing through Lucrece's flesh. When Tarquin starts contemplating the rape, his sexual impulses are equated with the spirit of a soldier marching on his foe: « By reprobate desire so madly led / The Roman lord marcheth to Lucrece' bed »(300–301). The verb 'to march', describing Tarquin's progression towards Lucrece's bedroom, evokes military movements and the violence of armed combat. The association between the phallus and the blade later becomes quite clear when Tarquin enters Lucrece's chamber and threatens the young woman with his sword.