Author: Jolene Zigarovich, Department of Languages and Literatures, University of Northern Iowa - ORCID

Abstract: »This article examines the expanded availability of opium through colonial trade and analyzes eighteenth-century rape trials with unconscious victims. Through this lens, the study identifies the rising frequency of plots featuring incapacitated victims and asserts that women's bodily autonomy declined in eighteenth-century fiction. With the most discussed drug-facilitated rape in English literature—Richardson's Clarissa—as a primary influence, the article contends that by examining the history of drugged rapes, along with the historically specific forms of silence to which they gave rise, we can better understand our current culture's violent and troubling inheritance.« (Source: Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies)

, Contents:

	Abstract (p. 163)
	1. The Ubiquity of Eighteenth-Century Opium (p. 165)
	2. Devoid of Senses and Assaulted (p. 168)
	3. Drug-Facilitated Rapes in Early Fiction (p. 172)
	4. Clarissa (p. 176)
	5. Gothic Explicitness: Lewis’s the Monk (1796) (p. 178)
	6. Conclusion: Giving Voice to the Forcibly Silenced (p. 180)
	Notes (p. 181)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of England / Georgian era | Literature: English literature / Penelope Aubin, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Samuel Richardson | Literature: Fiction about rape / The Accomplished Rake, Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry, Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady | Sex and the law: Rape / Drug-facilitated sexual assault