#i have alternate assignments at the ready! venus and adonis is also perfect for if any students would rather not engage with the themes of

[serenesirene]

On Lucrece's Honor

It is on nights like these when I think about how humans have always looked to media as comfort, escapism, and the lens through which to process one's own trauma. There are the obvious examples- Dante writing of his journey to purge himself of sin and re-contextualizing hell with allusions to the pagan poets, Marcus Aurelius populating his Meditations with references to his contemporaries- but none feels as modern to me as The Rape of Lucrece.

To be certain, it is a difficult read. Unlike Shakespeare's plays, his long-form poetry tends to be rather grueling and tedious to make one's way through, even if you look for elegant turns of phrase here or there. The subject matter, likewise, is not for the faint of heart.

What I find modern, however, is how while the deed itself gets comparatively little time on the page, the majority of the narrative focuses on Lucrece and how she deals with her rape. She is never blamed for it (and her rapist very much is and thoroughly made out to be a damned villain) and when she does speak out, the other characters make sure to tell her that she's still pure, still worthy. And in Lucrece's monologue leading up to her accusation, she worries over what she should do.

In trying to decide whether to speak out against her rapist, she looks to the stories of women in similar positions- weeps for Philomel, left to fend with her tongue cut from her mouth, mourns alongside Hecuba as the fair Trojan queen is rendered silent in painted agony, never to move for the loss of her city's autonomy, wonders if Helen was ever given voice when she was made to fall in love with Paris. It is only after attempting to give voice to those stories that Lucrece herself promises to use her voice, where her sisters may not have been able.

Perhaps that's why it always blindsides me thatshe decides to ultimately take her life at the end. It has been said by other scholars that this was a necessary point- that, for a Roman woman, it would have been the more honorable thing to do than live.

I tend to prefer a different interpretation. That being, in a metatextual way, Lucrece's story is itself meant to serve the role that the stories of Philomel, Hecuba, and Helen do to her- that she is meant to encourage girls down the line to speak out, in whatever way they can for their time.

Though, perhaps that is my own bias speaking. I am a transgender man, and the spectre of womanhood still lingers. I still don't feel comfortable walking alone at night. I find a strange comfort in this story.

Perhaps there is just something comforting in the fact that for as long as girls worried about whether they would be heard in all of history, there were always people who would hear them.