Rapey mainstream novels and stories

[SoftGameHunter]

I realized not long ago we don't have a thread for written mainstream rape scenes, despite being a written fiction ravishment site. How did that happen?

I wish I were the one to bring forth loads of good examples, but I don't have that many. When I was growing up, I was drawn to these scenes like a fly to sweet sweet honey, except I couldn't smell the honey. I had to stumble on it. Enough with the tortured metaphors.

Steven King was a decent source, and still is I guess. Though not rape, the opening scene in Carrie is certainly sexually traumatic enough, as a group of girls assault another in the locker room shower as she's having her first period. Funny aside, that scene was where I learned this strange new word - menstruation. Thank you, public schooling. But actually, it was one of his novellas from Different Seasons, Apt Pupil, that had the mother-load with two scenes that hit wonderfully hard. Both were dreams or fantasies even in-story, but they're all just words on a page so it worked. In one dream the main character has, he's in Nazi Germany raping a girl in the medical wing of a concentration camp. She's naked, strapped down, and he's going at her with some wearable high-tech toys. It's a solid page and a half. Later, he fantasizes about humiliating his girlfriend by stripping her and forcing her to strut naked for all their friends while she's crying.

I don't know what he was on for that one, but it worked. There are plenty of King examples, and not all of them are titillating. At least one short story has a man-boy molestation, which does nothing for me except be memorable as strong writing. And we don't even need to go into the infamous scene from 'It', though I remember better an earlier scene, a single line really, where the main female character Beverly just has the thought pop into her head that bad boys could rape her if they tried to.

Another one I recall stumbling on was by sci-fi author Piers Anthony. His novel Cthon features a hot, muggy underground prison, mixed gender, where everyone ends up naked soon enough. The prisoners have to mine for gemstones to get their food, and when one vicious woman smashes our hero's work for the day, he immediately rapes her as retaliation. Somehow, she never anticipated that. It's only a couple sentences.

I'm not going to try to list them all here, but one more springs to mind. Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange back in the sixties, and Stanley Kubrick made it into a seventies movie. Amazingly, the movie kept the sexual violence pretty much intact instead of watering it down. A scene of street thugs breaking into a woman's home and raping her (and killing her too - it's a really violent novel about violence and violent reactions to violence) is central to the plot, but there are also some shorter scenes and allusions. The film version does age a random unnamed character up to adulthood when one gang finds another gang raping her, but that's probably for the best. The film cast a real looker in the role and she does lots of full frontal for her minute of screen time.

I know there are tons more but I'm blanking and want to start a conversation, not just a lecture. Which written works of fiction sparked the plugs for you all? Curious minds want to know.

[Shocker]

I would recommend “the death and the maiden” to general attention. The description of abuse is visceral.

[SoftGameHunter]

I would recommend “the death and the maiden” to general attention. The description of abuse is visceral.

I saw the movie version. Didn't know there was a novel too. I can see that being intense.

[Shocker]

I would recommend “the death and the maiden” to general attention. The description of abuse is visceral.

I saw the movie version. Didn't know there was a novel too. I can see that being intense.

Sorry my mistake, i was referring to the brilliant movie as well.

[SoftGameHunter]

I would recommend “the death and the maiden” to general attention. The description of abuse is visceral.

I saw the movie version. Didn't know there was a novel too. I can see that being intense.

Sorry my mistake, i was referring to the brilliant movie as well.

Ah, well there's no chance of Sigourney Weaver doing a nude scene, but it was a terrific movie.

[Vela Nanashi]

She wanted to go full nude in alien but director got scared or something

[Shocker]

Ah, well there's no chance of Sigourney Weaver doing a nude scene, but it was a terrific movie.

I think the story is all the stronger for the entire lack of nudity, so you are forced to actually listening to Weaver talking about the atrocities Paulina was subjected to.


PAULINA: It may be a teensy-weensy thing, but it’s enough for me. During all these years not an hour has passed that I haven’t heard it, that same voice, next to me, next to my ear, that voice mixed with saliva, you think I’d forget a voice like his?

(Imitating the voice of Roberto, then of a man)

“Give her a bit more. This bitch can take a bit more. Give it to her.”

“You sure, Doctor? What if the cunt dies on us?”

“She’s not even near fainting. Give it to her, up another notch.”


Lookig for this quote I found that the movie is based on a stage play, so I wasn’t entirely off topic.

[Blue]

Hubert Selby: "Walls"

A novel banned in most countries. Mostly quite disturbing, but it contains a good rape scene that inspired me to write a story.