Lucrece The Chaste

At the beginning of The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare, Lucrece is introduced as “Lucrece the chaste”. Furthermore, a first description of her beauty is given by her husband Collatine, saying that her face is of “clear unmatched red and white“(l. 11) and her eyes are “mortal stars as bright as heaven´s beauties”. It occurs again a few stanzas later when Lucrece welcomes Tarquin in Collatium:
Within whose face beauty and virtue strived
Which of them both should underprop her fame.
When virtue bragg’d, beauty would blush for shame; When beauty boasted blushes, in despite Virtue would stain that o’er with silver white.
Her face is therefore described as the field in which beauty and chastity struggle against each other. Whereas her beauty lets her face “blush”, which reminds one of the color red, her virtue dyes these blushes “with silver white”. One the other hand, this means that there is no victor in the struggle between chastity and beauty. These lines are actually the starting point for the next three stanzas in which this topic is taken up and continued. For instance, it is explained that “when shame assail’d, the red should fence the white” and that “This heraldry in Lucrece´ face was seen, Argued by beauty´s red and virtue´s white”. Finally, Tarquin
identifies “This silent war of lilies and of roses”. Later, when Tarquin soliloquizes about whether or not to rape her, he also describes the colors of her cheeks the moment she asked about the well-being of her husband: “First red as roses that on lawn we lay, / Then white as lawn, the roses took away”. In general, Tarquin uses the metaphor of red and white as an argument for his plan to rape Lucrece.
He even tells it to her before the rape:
Thus he replies: “The color in thy face,
That even for anger makes the lily pale,
And the red rose blush at her own disgrace,
Shall plead for me and tell my loving tale.
Under that color I am come to scale Thy never-conquered fort; the fault is thine, For those thine eyes betray thee unto mine.
As described above, chastity and virtue belong to every part of Lucrece´s character. It is therefore necessary to examine the impacts of the rape on both Lucrece and Tarquin in order to state the development of both characters. In the stanza directly after, one is able to learn direction sequences of the deed on both of them:
But she hath lost a dearer thing than life,
And he hath won what he would lose again.
This forced league doth force a further strife,
This momentary joy breathes months of pain;
This hot desire converts to cold disdain.
Pure chastity is rifled in the store,
And lust, the thief, far poorer than before.
On the one hand, it is described that Lucrece has lost something that goes beyond her life – her honor. This can already be seen as an omen of her oncoming suicide for her pure chastity is now broken by force. On the other hand, Tarquin has won something he will soon lose, namely a “momentary joy” which will result in “months of pain”. By destroying both his and her honor, he is finally “far poorer than before”. After that, Lucrece “bears the load of lust he left behind” and Tarquin “the burden of a guilty mind”. It is now clear that Lucrece´s chastity is replaced by his lust, whereas Tarquin becomes fully aware of his deed and its consequences and “like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence”. Afterwards the focus turns on the consequences for Lucrece as she herself uses a metaphor: “´Were Tarquin Night, as he is but Night´s child, / The silver-shining queen he would distain”. Here, the “silver-shining queen” represents the moon, which can be seen as a symbol of chastity because of its colour. Tarquin, black as night and therefore opposed to the virtuous white of both the moon and Lucrece, stains the moon in the same way as he stains Lucrece´s chastity.

In the part of the poem in which the rape has not yet happened, the “ideal chastity” of Lucrece is constructed firstly by the duality between her virtue and her beauty.
Here, the colors red and white each represent one of these. This metaphor can be found quite often to strengthen the harmony between the chastity and the beauty of Lucrece; but nevertheless Tarquin misinterprets both attributes and uses them in his argumentation to commit the rape, culminating in blaming Lucrece for this evil act. According to Quay, this means that Lucrece is not raped because she is a woman, but because she is constructed as a woman who is able to be raped. The reason for that is that Tarquin's desire is
“false”.

The essay at hand examined the symbols of chastity and rape and their impact on the characters of Lucrece and Tarquin. In the part of the poem in which the rape has not yet taken place, Lucrece´s chastity is constructed as ideal and pure. So, here beauty is in perfect harmony with her virtue, represented especially by the dominant metaphor of the colors red and white. Furthermore, her chastity is beyond her mere faithfulness in her marriage. Her character and behavior is so pure and innocent that she does not suspect any evil in her structured and organized world. Nevertheless, although her chastity even influences her surroundings, Tarquin is even encouraged to possess and abuse her by that. After the rape, Tarquin becomes aware of the fact that he destroyed both his and her honor. Lucrece instead is so desperate that she considers her chastity and virtue as a treasure that has been stolen. Her honor and her virtue are gone, represented by the fading color white and the absence of the color red. In order to restore her honor, she sees no other way than killing herself. Considering these results, one can state that the symbols of chastity are indeed a dominant and crucial part of the poem. They help to understand the actions and ideals of both Lucrece and Tarquin and are essential for the construction of the entire poem. It remains for further study to examine whether chastity respectively virtue in general is of similar importance in other works by Shakespeare that deal with the social system of ancient Rome.