The Corporeal Female Body in Literary Rape–Revenge: Shame, Violence, and Scriptotherapy

Abstract

This article evaluates rape–revenge narratives in literature, asking how written scenes of rape and revenge depict female bodies without relying on visual representations that replicate evidence-based investigations of the crime. It then examines how authors and readers may seek scriptotherapy through rape–revenge literature, both fiction and memoir. It takes up Elizabeth Grosz's theories of corporeal feminism, feminist criticism on rape–revenge by scholars such as Tara Roeder and criticism on scriptotherapy. Primary texts discussed include novels and memoirs by Barbara Wilson, Y. A. Erskine, Tara Moss, and Alice Sebold. The article positions the rape–revenge narrative through the prism of therapeutic reading and writing, and compares it to the current public responses to sexual assault in Australia. The article determines that rape–revenge narratives in literature are more nuanced than their filmic counterparts. Furthermore, it concludes that memoir can only act therapeutically in a one-on-one sense and has no greater public service to the treatment of rape victims, and is, therefore, no more therapeutic than rape–revenge fantasies.