"What you need, my girl, is a good cry or a good rape - either, I should think"

[TooImmatureGhostiesAndGhoulies]

I came across the above sentence in a book last night and was horrified. It's Margery Allingham's 'The Fashion In Shrouds', published in 1938. Is this really how people thought in the 1930s? It's said by the hero to his sister! She laughs witheringly and says: "there's a section of your generation who talks about rape as a cure for all ills...this mania for sex-to-do-you-good is idiotic".

AIBU to be totally shocked by this? In the same book there are a number of references to niggers. Does this fall into the same category of language that was au courant in those days?

Theodorakis, that's awful about your grandfather and his brother. So sorry for both of them.

at NAGS, Theo. Also for your grandfather and his brother.

OK, LRD, I stand corrected. I'm just baffled by the idea that anyone could put 'good' and 'rape' in the same sentence (whereas a good shag can, errm, be very good...)

That's shocking about the GP.

Let's hope s/he has long since stopped working.

lance - oh, me too, I am creeped out by it!

Interestingly GP was a woman.

GP was a woman? That's even worse! Wonder if she took her own advice if she ever suffered from depression.

Reminds me of the discussion about depression on the India Knight thread - lots of people giving examples of how depression made them feel. One example that stuck in my head was someone saying that she felt like driving into the barriers on the M4. Yep, bet a good shag would have sorted her out in no time.

Another trope of that era was that a woman 'needed' a good spanking...

When I was a student nurse my first surgical war placement on my first day was a 20 year old girl so brutally raped she needed hours of surgery and was with us for months. It never left me, especially when her husband and kids used to visit every night. She had been out with her mates and walked home alone. This was in a small SW England town. The attitude of all the hospital staff was so heartfelt, I was especially moved at the Muslim consultant. It was during Ramadan and he broke his fast to operate on her because it was his speciality.
I think that rape now means brutality and do find the OPs book offensive. However, isn't it important to allow words to remain in their historical context? Without resorting to Godwin's Law...well ok I will, the Holocaust remains high up in people's use of interpreting what is and is not acceptable. If it were swept away we wouldn't be able to see progress.

ward not war

ezinearticles.com/?Victorian-Doctors-Used-Vibrators-As-a-Medical-Device&id=5531632

The history of vibrators. They where first used on female patients to cure hysteria

it was only in 1992 rape in the marriage was made illegal, so a book in the 1930 it was most probably ok.

these days thankfully rape is an horrendious crime.

www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_out/urban_life_06.shtml this is an intresting article.

theo, that is just terrible.

mchappy, sorry, I don't want to sound rude, but no rape was not 'most probably ok' in 1930 (or even 1938).

It is true marital rape was criminalized in 1991, but rape has been a crime for centuries, and has always been a violation of someone's body, so no, I doubt it was 'ok'.

I do get what you are saying, completely, I just think this is so recent really, it's well within living memory, we shouldn't be brushing off the experiences of women who're only our grandmothers' ages.

I had to re-read that a few times, I thought my eyesight was going funny! That is horrific!

LRDtheFeministDragon, i worded that so wrong.

I knew what you were getting at, I just wanted to say it ... I hope that made sense/wasn't rude.

not at all :)

I like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. You can enjoy a book and recognise the context in which it was written.

Shakespeare was anti semitic, Dickens too.

Oh yes I've read this book too - I vaguely hoped it was a typo, reread the line a few times trying to make sense of it & couldn't.

I like many of Margery allinghams female characters, & rather adored campion, who said it! Was V confused actually as his character is nice & it sounded really wrong coming out of his mouth... As well as shocking.

Can't explain it, can't say it meant something else, cant blame it on the era, i think it was a gross error in well... Alot of things

The comment just sounds like it was meant to be lighthearted, a joke almost. Young people even now make 'off' jokes when among friends. Sure folk used different turns of phrase back then which obviously sounds very different and often off to our modern ears. But it acts as a good insight Into to how things really might have been then. I like reading books about the past which were actually written in that era rather than a modern writer trying to imagine what it was like.