Rape

Rape is defined as “The crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse, the act of seizing and carrying off by force; abduction, and abusive or improper treatment; violation: a rape of justice.” William Butler Yeats: Leda and the Swan, Margaret Atwood: Rape Fantasies, and Adrienne Rich: Rape all deal with an extremely sensitive theme, rape. W.B. Yeats and A. Rich somewhat share there views by poem, M. Atwood does so by short story.

In W.B. Yeats: Leda and the Swan, Yeats takes a somewhat religious approach on rape. By the poems name one can assume it will be about a young women named Leda and a swan. Also there are three versions of this poem, the first and last two aren’t completely different but different enough were one can understand the full meaning of the poem. In Yeats first version which is named “Annunciation” (The angel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary of the Incarnation.) the first line goes “Now can the swooping Godhead have his will”. This is the only version that mentions God, in most religions if not all, if a God has intercourse with a mortal he loses his right as a God and becomes a mortal himself. With this information one can assume that God in Yeats poem is disguising himself as a swan so that Leda the mortal will not recognize God which is about to have sexual intercourse with her. In the third version of this poem lines seven and eight “And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies” signifies that God already has approached Leda, she knows that whatever is raping her is not from this world, she knows it or whatever is raping her is not mortal so she lets it continue onto the point where she has an orgasm.

M. Atwood: Rape Fantasies, there is a group of women sitting around a table at lunch time discussing what the short story name implies “Rape Fantasies”. Atwood takes a more loose approach on rape, she sets her story on modern females. The women who populate this short story are not young, they are all much older women unlike Yeats poem. I say she takes a more loose approach because of the first paragraph, “Rape, TEN THINGS TO DO ABOUT IT, like it was ten new hairdos or something. I mean, what’s so new about it?” in this quotation a women is talking about a magazine which loosely describes and talks