Victims and survivors of rape in late medieval France and Burgundy

Thesis

This thesis examines victim/survivor experiences of rape and other sexual violations in late medieval France and Burgundy. Though scholars have studied rape in medieval France, few have considered what it was like for the women who endured rape, and none have explored how victims/survivors thought about their own consent. This thesis addresses that gap in the scholarship, proposes new methods for how we might examine victim/survivor experience in medieval documents, and argues that the only ethical study of rape is one that foregrounds such experiences. When rape was violent, women often resisted violently, and understood their ability to consent as something worth physically defending. The discourse of consent had great rhetorical power, and it was used to justify the victim’s/survivor’s violent actions in the face of rape, reinscribing them with personhood. But other, non-violent sex acts could also be harmful, such as marital promises used to coerce women into sex. Women in medieval France understood that their husbands might perpetrate sexual abuse against them, and that these acts were violative, even if they were not termed rapes. Victim/survivor experience was shaped by the community they lived in, and how others responded to the rape. Dijon was a community with a culture of rape and a culture of resistance. Its rape culture was characterized by physical violence, gang rapes, and the victimization of marginalized and/or vulnerable women. The culture of resistance was characterized by the anger and fear that victims/survivors felt and the defence they mounted against the rapists, but also by the community support they received in the form of testimony and direct intervention. Sex workers were extremely vulnerable to rape due to the nature of their employment, their social status, and the manner in which men tended to treat them. But despite this vulnerability they too had community ties and access to the courts.

Authors: Akard, L

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: medieval consent; medieval; medieval france; sexual assault; middle ages; sexual violence; medieval women; consent; medieval gender; medieval rape; rape
• Subjects: French; History; Social history