Stolen Women in Medieval England
Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100–1500

The first comprehensive exploration of women's multifaceted experiences of forced and consensual ravishment in medieval England.

Caroline Dunn (Author)

9781107017009, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 October 2012

274 pages, 1 b/w illus. 8 tables
23.1 x 15 x 2.3 cm, 0.54 kg

'Stolen Women offers exceptional thoroughness, subtlety, and precision and will be hard to replace as the new standard work on ravishment in later medieval English law.' Kim M. Phillips, Speculum

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Medieval history [HBLC1], British & Irish history [HBJD1], History [HB]