Stolen women in medieval England
Subtitle: rape, abduction and adultery, 1100-1500
By: Caroline Dunn
Series: Cambridge studies in medieval life and thought, Fourth series
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
ISBN-13: 9781107017009
Subjects: Women; Adultery; Abduction; HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain; Sexual behavior; Rape; History
Description: "This study of illicit sexuality in medieval England explores links between marriage and sex, law and disorder, and property and power. Some medieval Englishwomen endured rape or were kidnapped for forced marriages, yet most ravished women were married and many 'wife-thefts' were not forced kidnappings but cases of adultery fictitiously framed as abduction by abandoned husbands. In pursuing the themes of illicit sexuality and non-normative marital practices, this work analyses the nuances of the key Latin term raptus and the three overlapping offences that it could denote: rape, abduction and adultery. This investigation broadens our understanding of the role of women in the legal system; provides a means for analysing male control over female bodies, sexuality and access to the courts; and reveals ways in which female agency could, on occasion, manoeuvre around such controls"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction; 1. Laws and legal definitions; 2. Rape; 3. Abduction and forced marriage; 4. Elopement abductions; 5. Adultery; 6. Retaliatory abductions and malicious legal proceedings; Conclusion; Appendix I: ravishment legislation; Appendix II: sources of ravishment cases; Bibliography.