Thursday, July 19, 2007

Rape

Ben and Erin's references to rape in "The Manipulated" gave me pause, because I didn't give Valmont's sexual domination of Tourvel or Cecile the consideration it deserved. It made me quite uncomfortable.

I asked myself what I first thought of Cecile's submission. First, she was a "dolt," so I didn't care very much. (Did I think she was "asking for it"?) Two, she admitted she derived physical pleasure from Valmont's advances. (Did I think a body's physical response negates the intent?) No!

So didn't Valmont rape her, by using fear and intimidation to seduce her? Yes.

It puts Valmont in a different light -- his actions can't be dismissed as those of an amorous scamp.

Do you find it incongruous that Valmont and the marquise would repeatedly assert how easy it would be to seduce a silly girl like Cecile, yet Valmont had to resort to threats rather than seduction to accomplish his mission?

Now I need to think more on Valmont's ravishment of Tourvel. I saw that as more of a mutual passion, but that requires further reflection. (So I thought she was "saying no, but meaning yes?") Oh, god.
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24 comments:

kc said...

cl, the description of those scenes as "rape" gave me pause, too. So don't feel bad. I was not inclined to think of them in that light, particularly not the encounter with Madame de Tourvel.

Clearly there was coercion with Cecile. She could have screamed when he came into her room, but, as Valmont pointed out, everyone would believe she had invited him there. So I would call the first encounter an assault — of a variety that was commonplace then — history and art and literature are full of it. (when women have no power, when no one will believe them, when it's shameful to talk about things like that, they are going to be victimized ... Sexual shame has always been a successful weapon for men to use against women to keep them silent and powerless after assaults and incest).

"Seduction," as used in arts and letters, often meant coercion or outright forcible rape. (The "Abduction" of the Sabine women).

I think there was a real sense in 18th century France that if you let a man into your room or consented to be alone with him, as both Cecile and Madame de Tourvel did, that you had basically said yes to anything that happened thereafter. Consent didn't begin at the buttons on the bodice; it began at the door.

The fact that Valmont did not "ravish" (another euphemism for assault) Madame de Tourvel when he first had the chance is chalked up to his honor. The clear implication was that if he had done so, no one could have blamed him because she had basically consented to it by being in that position with him.

11:13 AM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

Wasn't Tourvel unconscious the first time?

11:19 AM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

Yes, here it is:

[Madame de Tourvel] collapsed fainting in my arms. ...when she came to, her capitulation was complete: she had already succumbed to her gratified conqueror.

11:28 AM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

Unconscious? Not in my version of the book! She struggles, they talk, she cries, she lies still, he fears her "apathy," she struggles some more, then they talk about HIS happiness, and she says she's consoled by the thought of his happiness.

11:32 AM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

Interesting! What did you leave out with the ellipsis? In my version, she is decribed as going "limp," not that she fainted but just surrendered, and Valmont takes this as "apathy" and basically fears that his conquest would not be a conquest with an unconscious woman. He wants her to yield, her heart, her mind, her body, of her own accord. He wants her to want it, or it's not really a victory. In my book, she is clearly conscious. How about yours, cl?

11:39 AM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

As she said this, she flung herself or rather collapsed fainting in my arms. Being still not quite sure of a successful outcome, I pretended to be greatly alarmed; but in the course of my alarm, I steered her or rather carried her over to the place I'd earlier selected as the field of my triumph; and in fact when she came to, her capitulation was complete: she had already succumbed to her gratified conqueror.

11:45 AM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

The words that I think show she must have been unconscious are "came to." What would it mean for her to "come to" if she weren't unconscious?

11:46 AM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

That's really interesting! In my book, the "fainting" is translated as "swooning."

And right before that he is telling her that he must leave and turns to do so. Then she begs him to say and "rushes" into his arms and "swoons." He understands this as submission, as consent. She "yields" on the ottoman, then they do it again a little later and the "ecstasy is complete and mutual." And she says she gives herself up wholly to him.

11:57 AM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

I wonder whether there is any ambiguity in the French.

A note in this edition says that she was "limply unconscious."

12:01 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

Word choice can really affect your perception of what happened there! I wonder what the original French says. Swooning with passion, losing your senses in the heat of a moment, is different from passing out cold!

In any event, she was so far compromised with him by receiving his letters and receiving him alone in her house and begging him to stay, that I don't think anyone in that time and place would describe his action as "rape," even though we might. She certainly did not berate afterward for taking advantage. When he left her house, he had her pledge of eternal love.

12:04 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

And clearly Valmont had raped other women, by any definition. It's alluded to several times in the book. He and the marquise (and society) made distinctions about it, though, that we probably wouldn't make. He seemed to take little pleasure in brute force, though it wasn't altogether beneath him, and he mentions the possibility of using brute force on his latest victims, but he doesn't want to. I think they thought of the encounters with Cecile and Madame de Tourvel as less culpable seductions than rape, as something they'd like once they tried it — they just needed a little prodding. I'm not defending that notion! But I think it's clearly a notion that they had, especially regarding Madame de Tourvel. It was plain that she loved him and desired him, and that saying no had become a mere duty. I think anyone in the 21st century would concede that having sex with an unconscious person is rape by definition, because they couldn't consent at that particular moment, but I really believe that Valmont considered her to have consented well before then, and her begging him to stay and rushing into his arms and swooning further solidified that in his mind. Again, I'm not defending that rationale, but I think it would be a little weird to hold an 18th century French nobleman to our standards of moral conduct.

12:39 PM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

But the passage does say that he wasn't completely sure yet of success. I think that's why he did it while she was unconscious -- he wasn't convinced he was going to persuade her.

12:51 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

Yeah, I could see that. I'd really like to read something that discusses discrepancies in translations of that scene.

I think you're missing my larger point, though, and that's that situations we would consider to be rape were not necessarily seen as such at the time they took place. Madame de Tourvel did not act as though she had been assaulted. I don't think she saw herself as the victim of a rape. And I don't think Valmont did either. And I don't think the society they lived in would have either.

I mean, for crap's sake, it wasn't until the 1960s or 1970s or even later that many states even recognized "marital rape" on the theory that having consented to a man once meant consent for all time.

And we're talking 1700s for this book! It was an entirely different world.

1:01 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

And it's not true of just sexual assault. Many, many things that we now understand as abuse, as terrible crimes (think of how children and servants were treated) were not understood that way at the time, in a rigidly class-based, patriarchal society. Many of these things were simply thought of as the prerogatives of a man, surtout a rich man.

1:05 PM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

Now I've got the song "Rape" from The Fantasticks running through my head.

1:08 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

OK, I'll shut up now.

1:11 PM, July 19, 2007
Ben said...

I never know what to think of morality in another place and time. I find it hard to say that "they were living in a different time."

Now if the point is what the characters, author, and audience would have thought, I understand you completely. But I have trouble seeing it through my own eyes as anything but horrific.

1:11 PM, July 19, 2007
Erin said...

I was using my own definition of rape when I used that word in an earlier comment. I agree it had a different definition back then. But since Tourvel was unconscious (I thought, based on my translation), and Cecile was threatened and coerced into complying, I felt comfortable calling it rape.

In an appendix in my translation is the "erotic essay" that the marquise read to get in the mood to meet her lover. In it, a young, pious girl is raped by her cousin after fainting when he gropes her. It was really disturbing. Did not put me in the mood for anything.

1:25 PM, July 19, 2007
cl said...

Mon dieu! I post a post, do a little pesky work, go to lunch, and there's 18 comments? Glad I brought this up.

1:30 PM, July 19, 2007
cl said...

"Consent didn't begin at the buttons on the bodice; it began at the door."

Brilliant point, kc.

I think the translation matters a great deal. Like kc, mine said she "swooned," which I also took to be sort of a deliberate surrender.

There's also this earlier passage for the same scene: "I do not know what the timid person saw or thought she saw in mine (eyes), but she rose with a terrified air and escaped from my arms, which I had thrown around her. It is true I did nothing to detain her; for I have several times noticed that scenes of despair carried out too vividly become ridiculous as soon as they become long, or leave nothing but really tragic resources which I was very far from desiring to adopt."

And that would coincide with his repeated pledges to the marquise that he wanted Tourvel to come to him willingingly; otherwise, why let matters drag on and Tourvel have the upper hand for such a long time?

1:43 PM, July 19, 2007
cl said...

OK, back to work for me ... for now.

1:43 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

Victorian (and earlier) porn is full of what we would consider rape. There was definitely a sense that a woman was not worth having unless she resisted, that women meant yes when they said no, and that their saying no was part of the "game" to make the man feel like he was getting something worth having. And getting a woman who was still "intact" was the best conquest of all (going where no man had gone before and all that sexist bullshit). Some women even "fainted" so that they could be overcome without it being their "fault." If the woman seemed eager and willing for sex, she was not considered any more desirable than a prostitute.

And that's why it's so motherfucking great that the marquise says her Joycean YES, YES, YES to pleasure and is not duped by the misogynist malarkey all around her.

1:49 PM, July 19, 2007
kc said...

And instead of being at the mercy of this no-means-yes game with men, she becomes the master of the game and turns it into yes-means-no with Valmont, which utterly infuriates him.

2:42 PM, July 19, 2007
Erin said...

Exactly! It's hard to imagine the marquise as a despairing, swooning, yes-means-no maiden. Unless she was acting, of course, and getting a little giggle out of fooling the man.

3:23 PM, July 19, 2007

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