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Lady Hester Pulter's The Unfortunate Florinda: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Rape*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peter C. Herman
Peter C. Herman*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Abstract

In the mid-1990s a manuscript was discovered containing the poetry and prose of a previously unknown female author, Lady Hester Pulter. The poems, likely written during the 1640s–'50s, demonstrate Pulter's wide reading and her near-fanatical Royalism. The prose romance, The Unfortunate Florinda, however, displays a very different politics. Basing her fiction on the legends surrounding the Muslim conquest of Spain, I argue that Pulter adjusts her sources to present an alternative, Augustinian view of rape, one that blames the rapist, not the victim. The monarchs in Pulter's fiction use absolutist rhetoric to justify rape, and, contra her earlier poetic denunciations of Charles I's execution, rape now justifies regicide. I suggest that the sexual corruption of Charles II's court prompted Pulter to create a romance with distinctly republican overtones in which chastity is the highest value, sexual corruption the lowest vice, and rulers who commit such crimes forfeit both their right to rule and their right to live.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , Winter 2010 , pp. 1208 - 1246
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

While I acknowledge specific debts in the notes, special thanks go to Elizabeth Clarke and Sarah Ross. Professor Clarke introduced me to Lady Hester Pulter's works, and her centrality to Hester Pulter's contemporary revival must be acknowledged. Professor Ross graciously and continuously provided counsel, information, and challenging questions. Both helped me enormously over the course of this essay's gestation, and I remain very grateful.

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