Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Picking Up The Pieces: Body Parts And Female Power In Shakespeare's The Rape Of Lucrece, Daphne Blum

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In The Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare anatomizes Lucrece's body-fragments the whole, splits apart the parts. He does so not only to expose the otherwise concealed act of rape-which is hidden within the mysterious and "invisible" female genitalia-but to indicate that Lucrece's parts, through analogy with Pagan and Christian figures and theories, are powerful, even combative, but always pure.

In the first section, individual body parts connect Lucrece with so-called "wild women," including the Amazons, Medusa, and Philomela. In the second section, body parts either link Lucrece, or sever Tarquin, from the Divine. In the final section, Classical Mythology and …