Rape

The Victorian period was notorious for its oblique representations of sexual violence. This article argues that rape is a necessary word and concept studies and, we contend, keyword growing subfield literary cultural scholarship, humanistic studies. Without as stable signifier specific acts, find ourselves transported back to the nineteenth century, fumbling like Tess Durbeyfield language adequately describes what happened. Rape remains an indispensable domain nineteenth-century precisely because it thoroughly historically contingent phenomenon. It part power rape, current structural pervasiveness, capable shaping people's expectations such extent suggests itself timeless, eternally recurring fact life, when actually amounts intensely situated set behaviors, many which crystallized into their forms in eighteenth centuries, propelled by changing labor conditions, European imperialism, shifting family romantic configurations. Literary especially eighteenth- studies, has traditionally attempted tether gender-based violence “objective,” transhistorical frameworks “the law” psychology, move wish counter here.