The essays in this collection explore representations of and responses to sexual violence over the course of the long eighteenth century. Contributors examine the underlying ideologies that spawned these representations, confronting the social, political, legal and aesthetic conditions of the day.

The essays in this collection explore representations of and responses to sexual violence over the course of the long eighteenth century. Contributors examine the underlying ideologies that spawned these representations, confronting the social, political, legal and aesthetic conditions of the day.

This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family. This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.

This open access book examines the ways that consent operates in contemporary culture, suggesting it is a useful starting point to respectful relationships. This work, however, seeks to delve deeper, into the more complicated aspects of sexual consent. It examines the ways meaningful consent is difficult, if not impossible, in relationships that involve intimate partner violence or family violence. It considers the way vulnerable communities need access to information on consent. It highlights the difficulties of consent and reproductive rights, including the use (and abuse) of contraception and abortion. Finally, it considers the ways that young women are reshaping narratives of sexual assault and consent, as active agents both online and offline. Though this work considers victimisation, it also pays careful attention to the ways vulnerable groups take up their rights and understand and practice consent in meaningful ways.

Scotland has often been regarded throughout history as "the violent north", but how true is this statement? Does Scotland deserve to be defined thus, and upon what foundations is this definition based? This book examines the history of crime in Scotland, questioning the labelling of Scotland as home to a violent culture and examining changes in violent behaviour over time, the role of religion on violence, how gender impacted on violence and how the level of Scottish violence fares when compared to incidents of violence throughout the rest of the UK. This book offers a ground-breaking contribution to the historiography of Scottish crime. Not only does the piece illuminate for the first time, the nature and incidence of Scottish criminality over the course of some three hundred years, but it also employs a more integrated analysis of gender than has hitherto been evident. This book sheds light on whether the stereotypical label given to Scotland as 'the violent north' is appropriate or in any way accurate, and it further contributes to our understanding of not only Scottish society, but of the history of crime and punishment in the British Isles and beyond.

Sex in an Old Regime City is a major reframing of the long history of young people's intimacy. It shows how long- running problems like out-of-wedlock pregnancy were handled very differently in Old Regime France than in more recent centuries. Abortion, infanticide, broken hearts, and conflict with parents and neighbors were key challenges of young people's lives then as now but young couples' efforts to deal with these challenges were supported in pragmatic, often sympathetic, ways by their communities and institutions like local courts, clergy, legal officials, and social welfare managers.

This book argues that rape as we know it was invented in the eighteenth century, examining texts as diverse as medical treatises, socio-political essays, and popular novels to demonstrate how cultural assumptions of gendered sexual desire erased rape by making a woman’s non-consent a logical impossibility. The Enlightenment promotion of human sexuality as natural and desirable required a secularized narrative for how sexual violence against women functioned. Novel biomedical and historical theories about the "natural" sex act worked to erase the concept of heterosexual rape. McAlpin intervenes in a far-ranging assortment of scholarly disciplines to survey and demonstrate how rape was rationalized: the history of medicine, the history of sexuality, the development of the modern self, the social contractarian tradition, the global eighteenth century, and the libertine tradition in the eighteenth-century novel. This intervention will be essential reading to students and scholars in gender studies, literature, cultural studies, visual studies, and the history of sexuality.

Using case records of prosecutions at the Scottish High Court of Justiciary between 1918 and 1930, this book takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to understand sexual violence in Scotland at this time. Analysing legal records alongside victim and witness testimonies, Louise Heren analyses who committed sexual violence against whom, where and how and, to an extent, looks to uncover the victims' voice. Assessing how the courts responded, Sex and Violence in 1920s Scotland reveals that, despite pejorative views of working-class female behaviour, the successful conversion of prosecutions to convictions was greater than what is seen in modern sexual assault cases. In a society adjusting to post-conflict stresses, there were fears expressed in middle-class circles that those most affected by the First World War might react with violence. However, the High Court archives suggest otherwise. Cases of incest, rape and sexual assault appears to have been endemic, an opportunistic crime against older victims yet often pre-meditated against the youngest; selfish crimes that suggest toxic masculinity among some working-class men. The book concludes with the ultimate question: why did these men perpetrate sexual violence?

This is the first-ever book to explore illegitimacy in Wales during the eighteenth century. Drawing on previously overlooked archival sources, it examines the scope and context of Welsh illegitimacy, and the link between illegitimacy, courtship and economic precarity. It also goes beyond courtship to consider the different identities and relationships of the mothers and fathers of illegitimate children in Wales, and the lived experience of conception, pregnancy and childbirth for unmarried mothers. This book reframes the study of illegitimacy by combining demographic, social and cultural history approaches to emphasise the diversity of experiences, contexts and consequences.

This book examines one of the most pervasive and successful dramatic tropes of the Restoration and early eighteenth century: sexual violence. During this sixty-year span, there were over fifty tragic and tragi-comedic productions that showcased rape and/or attempted rape—a remarkable number that was unprecedented in English dramatic history. Rape was not merely depicted more frequently during the Restoration, but it was also placed at the center of more plots, given more pathetic emphasis, and even staged more centrally. Restoration dramatists were the first to revolve routinely entire plots around the rapes of their innocent heroines, to give powerful voices to these heroines post-rape, and to imbue their sexually violent scenes with new and attention-getting staging techniques, such as discovery scenes. As this book argues, sexual violence emerged at this time as a highly flexible dramatic trope that could be used to illustrate terrifying political scenarios, elicit extreme pathos in audiences, and demonstrate the bearing that lost chastity had on social stability. It is precisely the rich, multi-faceted appeal of these productions—politically, sexually, visually, and culturally—that explains the popularity and significance of this dramatic trope on the English stage. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Restoration, eighteenth-century studies, and theatre and performance studies.