Life and Death

The story of the rape of Lucrece is often used as an example of the heights to which female virtue can aspire. From its origins in the sixth century BCE, it has been told and retold. It appears in Le Ménagier de Paris to illustrate how important it is for a woman to preserve her reputation at all costs, even at the expense of her life, because a damaged reputation is almost always irreparable (as is death). Suffragist Cicely Hamilton, writing centuries later, has a different opinion about the story. In her autobiography, Life Errant (1935), she explains that she and a school friend were puzzled when they first encountered a vague account of the episode that did not quite say what had happened to Lucrece. Hamilton and her companion were convinced that what had been done to Lucrece didn't really matter, since she was clearly a victim and not a perpetrator. They could not understand why her suicide was worthy of admiration; they found it “silly.”

Later, when Hamilton learned the complete details— that Lucrece killed herself because she was raped and thus dishonored— she was angry.

The paradox Hamilton identifies is striking. Women are told repeatedly through the centuries to be virtuous and guard their modesty, but Lucrece illustrates that such efforts are pointless and that women have no control over their own morality.

Early conduct manuals recognized this to a degree, as they repeatedly emphasized the importance of being seen to be virtuous, knowing that the onlookers who judged whether or not a woman was behaving appropriately could call her virtue into question for the slightest slip, or for none at all.