Honor
Honor is, of course, a theme that is rampant throughout tales set during the height of Roman civilization. What sets Shakespeare’s treatment of this time-honored theme, if you will, is that it a woman’s honor at the center of the narrative. Even more startling is that this woman’s honor is a thing a commodity in the possession of a man. Lucrece’s honor has been stained—at least in her eyes-and it is Lucrece who both fights valiantly to retain that honor and, when it is corrupted, it is Lucrece who goes about dealing with the consequences.
The Poisonous Effect of Patriarchy
An offshoot of the thematic implications of honor is that it is not the stain upon her own honor that drives her to suicide, but the stain that the rape of her own body has on her husband’s honor. The subservient position of women in the patriarchal social system of Roman has interpellated Lucruce fully into its deviant and abominable ideology. So fully has she accepted the domination position of all men over every woman that she actually grieves over the thought of how her rather loutish husband will ever be able to deal with her defilement by another man!
Compulsive Psychology
The rapist in this poem is actually one of the most interesting villains in all of Shakespeare and, in fact, foreshadows such complex figures in later dramas from Macbeth to Othello. What elevates Tarquin above the generally low character of most who commit the same crime is that he reveals significant signs of obsessive compulsive behavior. Tarquin is not just some mere psychopath unable to distinguish between right and wrong, nor is here merely the logical extreme produced by the demented sexuality of a hardcore patriarchy. He is fully aware that raping Lucrece will be every bit as devastating to his own honor and reputation as to anyone else involved. He is so conflicted about actually going through with it that Lucrece honestly believes for awhile that he can be talked out of it. And yet, he can’t. And he won’t.
