SOURCE: “Shakespeare and the Soil of Rape,” in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely, University of Illinois Press, 1980, pp. 56-64.
In the following essay, Stimpson demonstrates that Shakespeare's portrayals of rape in works such as The Rape of Lucrece indicate his sympathy towards women; nevertheless, Stimpson concludes that Shakespeare uses rape as a plot device to emphasize the primacy of patriarchy and the loss that men endure when rape occurs within their own family.
