SOURCE: "'The Swallowing Womb': Consumed and Consuming Women in Titus Andronicus," in The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Valerie Wayne, Cornell, 1991, pp. 129-51.

In the following excerpt, Wynne-Davies examines the roles of Lavinia and Tamora in light of late sixteenth-century concepts of women's identity.

I

Christine de Pisan, one of the first female authors to write in defence of women, devoted three chapters of The Book of the City of Ladies (1404) to rape:

Then I, Christine, spoke as follows, 'My lady [Rectitude], I truly believe what you are saying, and I am certain that there are plenty of beautiful women who are virtuous and chaste and who know how to protect themselves well from the entrapments of deceitful men. I am therefore troubled and grieved when men argue that many women want to be raped and that it does not bother them at...