"Desde entonces soy mujer": Enduring Rape Myths and Guillén de Castro's La fuerza de la costumbre

Abstract: Guillén de Castro stages myths about rape in his comedia La fuerza de la costumbre . A pair of siblings has been raised separately, the sister cross-dressed and the brother accustomed to feminine domestic pursuits. The father reunites the family, intending to teach his offspring gender-appropriate conduct. The daughter Hipólita resists his efforts before a violent sexual encounter, afterwards becoming meek and compliant. Over the course of the play, Castro absolves the attacker and discredits the daughter, consistent with time-honored falsehoods about rape whose remnants endure today. The seventeenth-century playwright endorses such blame-shifting myths elsewhere, notably in the Comedia de Progne, y Filomena , and in his version of Cervantes's Novela ejemplar, La fuerza de la sangre . Since the 1970s, as conceptions of sexual assault and consent have been evolving, scholarship on La fuerza de la costumbre shows significant confusion over whether seduction or assault has occurred. Some of the anxious, romanticizing assessments retain traces of RMA, or Rape Myth Acceptance. Nevertheless, in our current climate of introspection around matters of force and consent, interpretations of the attack and its aftermath can accommodate more sensitive nuance.