In my stories, whenever I have a plot situation that involves a likable character doing something abhorrent by today's standards, I find a way to minimalize it before actually getting into it. I had a scene where the main hero chased down and brutally slaughtered a child. I had introduced it after a lengthy onset of shell shock and immediately preceded the attack on the child by an attack on the main character by it's father, which threatened the life of the main hero and his family. In the case of rape, I would establish it in the minds of the readers that it's a fairly normal thing for the circumstances ahead of time: have your characters discuss excitement of having some women in their life after their fight. Also keep in mind (which seems to be ignored in a lot of the posts here) that there is a big difference between a rape and a violent rape. Taking a wife as a spoil of war does not have to be terribly unpleasant for the woman, it would depend on the culture of the invaders. It could involve anything from violently being held down and violated by a gang of men, to being ritualistically serenaded and romanced by a gentleman. The word "rape" actually comes from the Latin raptio, which meant "abduction." The rape of the Sabine women by the ancient early founders of Rome was a war to simply get wives to even out the mostly male population.
Is it, ultimately, consensual or not? That'll tell you if it is rape. If it's not consensual, I don't really give two figs for the serenading &c.
There's a difference, sort of, but not enough of one. I don't think this is a subject on which any audience will be willing to be moral relativists on. If you want to tell a story that's focused around how bloody terrible all of this is then fine, absolutely, go there and gods speed. If not... Why go to such ends to convince people they should be ok with this? Not to say it's impossible but it's going an awfully long way just to win back the favor you lose by bringing it up to begin with. "I am Ruprect, heir to the count of Anjou. I am the hero of this story. Did I mention I raped a bunch of people? Not violently you understand, I'm not a monster. I just put my penis in them because they couldn't stop me." Why say this unless you are going to pay it off? Why is it worth using the words when you're just fighting up hill from the very start and half the readers are just going to check out the second you touch it? It's ok to just not talk about it if that's not what you're doing. Millions of people died in this era from dysentery; should we have all the characters shitting themselves because it's historically accurate? No. You just don't talk about it because that's not what matters.
I like puzzles and apparently my subconscious liked this puzzle so much it continued to process it, a thought popped into my head about this randomly this morning. How do you have a likable hero perform a rape and have the reader still like him both during and after? Here's how I would go about doing that: use contrast at first, then get the reader's approval for the sexual act. For contrast, describe the rape scene of some other, more deprived male character. Make it vulgar and somewhat uncomfortable to read, but don't go A Clockwork Orange on it. Then immediately afterwards, go into the hero's scene. The hero talks with his concubine (I'd avoid any victimization as much as possible.) Describe his internal thoughts and make them likable. Nervous would be a good adjective here, horny would completely defeat the purpose. Have him admire her body and what she's saying. Have him mentally relate her to all of the positive women in his life: his mother, his sister, and I would in particular have a nanny, perhaps one he fantasized about as a teenager, but as a woman who raised him, someone he has complete respect for. Someone that causes him to recognize her discomfort and attempt to resolve it. Have her ask if they could talk for a while first, to which he'd agree with legitimate concern. Give the woman a backstory of neglect and maybe make her a widow. His gentleness attracts her to him. And the fact that it's only for a night excites her. Have her initiate the sexual contact. From this point on, you should have the reader's approval for the sexual act is as much or little detail as you'd like, but make it pleasurable for both of them. This should allow you to normalize rape in your world, there will be both deprived and respectful men and your hero is the latter. This technique has worked for tellings of stories from ancient Greece and Rome. She still had no choice, while your hero could have chosen not to have sex with her, she's still a prisoner.
@newjerseyrunner I'm not sure transforming an otherwise rape into a situation where the victim wants it, just so you can try to relieve the moral burden on your male hero, is a great approach. Everything you said about building up the male hero all sounds nice, but it's pretty much undone if he actually goes through with it and the woman has no choice. In some ways it is more troubling to see an author go through contortions to try to preserve what is, by circumstance, a rape by making it consensual (if impliedly coerced), and therefore conclude the hero is still heroic.
Fair enough. I was thinking of a scene in (I think) Gladiator (maybe The Odyssey) in which a slave was treated this way.
I didn't see that. I'd have to see the execution in any given case to see how it works. I'm not saying it's impossible to pull off, but my initial reaction to it is the above. I don't like the idea of making the victim complicit or encouraging just so you can keep the male's armor nice and shiny.
Romanticising rape is far sicker, to me, than showing it in a gratuitously violent way OR acting like it's fine.
Agreed to all of the above. I'm not sure how/why this disturbing thread has continued for so long. The choice is so simple and is predicated on the unchangable fact that you do not get to tell the reader how they will or won't react to a thing you include in your book. The answer is in the question that was posed by the OP six pages ago. "If I include this for sake of accuracy, people will react badly to it. If I don't include it, then I feel like I'm whitewashing the past with the brush of anachronism." Yes. Correct. Make a choice. Pick the one that is more important to you in the telling of the story. Simple as that. No one gets to jut their arm out and sweep all the people in Opinion Camp A over to Opinion Camp B or vice versa. You have to pick.
What if your hero is disgusted by the behavior of another male in the group. An internal thought "when I take a woman, I treat her with all the respect she deserves..." You quickly establish that it's normal, get a quick cringe from the reader, but then it's over, you don't need him to actually rape someone.
I think this debate hinges on a faulty premise to begin with. I don't believe the argument that every single soldier throughout the pertinent time period, without exception, was a rapist. If you want to say it was the norm or it was predominant, then for the sake of argument I'll go along with that. Unanimous, without exception? I don't believe it. And once you open the door to exceptions, then you have a rationale for the hero of the story not to be a rapist. The idea that you have to make him a rapist to be historically accurate is a cop out. You're making a decision as an author. You can make the hero a rapist or not. If you make him one, then I'm not going to be sympathetic to cries of "I'm being historically accurate" when the modern reader doesn't like your character. If you don't have the skill to bring a character back from something like that and redeem him (assuming you want him redeemed) then don't go down that path. If you do pick that path, don't tell me you didn't have a choice.
Yeah, add another voice to those saying this is not a winning proposition. I think maybe you're thinking of Troy, where Brad Pitt's Achilles ends up in love with Briseis. In the original Iliad, she's a war prize and there really isn't any mention of whether she's raped or not - I guess the assumption in the day would have been that she was property, so probably rape wasn't even a possibility to the ancient mind. And as I recall the Iliad, Achilles was presented as a pretty unsympathetic character throughout. He was powerful, but not kind or likeable in any way. So if he'd been a rapist, it would have been just one more sin to add to to his long list. But when the story was updated for Hollywood, it got modernized and softened. I'd say there are still some serious issues with the depiction of the relationship (Stockholm Syndrome comes to mind) but as Achilles is humanized for a modern audience, the filmmakers kept him from being an actual rapist. The "consent" in the scenes I recall is pretty weak to me (because of the Stockholm Syndrome thing), but the filmmakers clearly went out of their way to include it.
This is important. In fact, I'd probably find a story which had numerous soldier character and made them all rapists to be just as if not more unrealistic than one where the possibility of war rapes isn't raised. An off hand, casual mention of such a thing can do as much to destroy audience sympathy as outright showing it. Personally, I'm not rooting for that character anymore if they don't show any remorse, and I think a redemption arc for a rapist could only be achieved by an extremely skilled writer. Even then, it would probably be difficult to keep the audience around that long.
Interestingly enough, the filmmakers may not have modernized it as much as I once thought. From the Wikipedia page on Briseis: In the Iliad, Achilles likens their relationship to that of man and wife (he often refers to her as his bride or wife) and compares it explicitly to the relationship between Menelaus and Helen, which was, after all, what the war is about. If the war was being fought because Helen had been separated from Menelaus, then what should the repercussions be for separating Briseis from him, is the question often agitated in his discourse. Briseis was said to have regarded Achilles as her husband as well.[4] There's still the Stockholm Syndrome angle, and it's not as heavily laid on as it is in Troy, but it actually is there.
So the OP stopped commenting on this post on March 30th. Shame, I'd like to know if any decision was made in the actual writing. I keep telling myself to stop watching this thread. Everything that could be said has been. And yet, for some reason, I still read it. Must be a compelling topic.
I think it's interesting to remember that rape as a spoil of war is still going on in the world today. Certainly in many African countries like South Sudan, Nigeria, with Boko Haram, and of course wherever Daesh gets hold. I wonder how these 'soldiers' feel about raping women whom they've conquered, often after killing off their menfolk and children. How do they rationalise it? Do they risk punishment if they don't play along? It might be worthwhile to look up documentation on the subject.
It depends on the conflict of course but in many of these places the violence has been so protracted that a lot of the people presently raping saw their own families devastated in the same way and probably see it as some kind of justice. As real people they aren't compelled to be redeemed or to be vaguely sympathetic. I imagine most of them have never thought about how their life or actions would appear to other people and are content (if such a word is appropriate here - perhaps satisfied would be better) simply to hate the whole world outside of their militia and to hurt anything else they encounter. I'm sure many have nightmares about what they've done but can come to terms with it simply as 'It's what they did to me'. An eye for an eye is often the best you can hope for in those circumstances.
