Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Carrie Hintz

Subject Categories

Literature in English, British Isles | Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Women's Studies

Keywords

Sexual Violation, Psychoanalysis, Samuel Richardson

Abstract

The importance of unveiling rape in the #MeToo era has unintentionally obscured encounters that lack the clarity of “yes” or “no.” However, desire can be ambiguous even in unambiguous cases of assault. Feminist activists and scholars have started to address ambiguity by arguing for a new epistemology of rape, what Linda Alcoff calls “grey rape.” In this thesis, I interrogate the “grey” embedded in ordinary sexual encounters by looking at ambivalence as an example of everyday desire evident across the seduction plot and the novel tradition. Rather than seeking to make consent more inclusive to oppressed groups, I read between the binary logics of “yes” or “no,” “force” or “fraud,” “seduction” or “rape,” “compulsion” or “unhindered choice,” towards alternative modes of sexual relation, of which ambivalence is one. To have ambivalent desire is to be overwhelmed by a dialectic of contradictory emotions, perpetually suspended in what Toni Bowers calls the “shadowy realm of ‘or’” in the consent binary. I bring into relation texts that share themes of sexual violation and physical suffering, yet which offer a glimpse of pleasure in catastrophe. These include Measure for Measure, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady, Dora: Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, and Monsieur Venus. I explore how a critique of consent that incorporates ambivalence can generate methodological innovations for reading scenes of everyday sexual violation.

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