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

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 i ctitiously 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 of ences 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.