Lavinia’s tongue was cut off to prevent her from talking.
Susanna’s false conviction for adultery was lifted only when a young wise man intervened in the interrogation process.
This begs the question: what is the cost of a woman’s narrative through time?
Lavinia, who appeared in Shakespeare’s tragedy Titus Adronicus (originally published in 1594), was believed to have been inspired by Philomela whose story was told by Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphosis.
In the play, daughter of a Roman general Lavinia was raped by Chiron and Demetrios to avenge the capture and defeat of their mother, the Goth queen Tamora, by the Romans. Lavinia’s tongue was also sliced, and her hands cut off. Her uncle Marcus devised the idea of spreading salt on a table for Lavinia, with a stick in her teeth, to spell out the word “Stuprum” (Latin for rape) and the names of her perpetrators.
Philomela was an Athenian princess raped by Tereus, king of Thrace and her brother-in-law. Her tongue was cut off so that she could not utter a word about the incident. Still, she wove a tapestry to tell her story and sent it to her sister, Procne. In revenge Procne killed Itys, her own son with Tereus, and served him to the king in a pie. The two sisters fled together, and were turned into birds by the Gods. Procne became a swallow and Philomela, a nightingale; the female nightingale has no song.
Susanna (which was not covered in the book but will be discussed here as an extension), appeared in the Apocrypha, the Book of Daniel. Susanna was a wife accused of adultery by two elder voyeurs after refusing to engage with them in coerced intercourse. She was arrested for a crime punishable by death, only to be saved by Daniel who discovered discrepancies in the accounts given by the two men after cross-examination.
Depicted by various artists, the portrayal of Susanna and the Elders most well-known was by Italian Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who was a rape victim herself. While a teenager, she went to trial against her perpetrator but was instead tortured while he, protected by the pope, was set free. Gentileschi painted Susanna (c. 1610) with agency unlike that of Rubens or Rembrandt. The violated Susanna she depicted was unyielding and mad, anything but idle and indifferent; for there is still stick and salt to write on, a tapestry to be woven, and a canvas to be painted.
In Our Bodies Their Battlefield we meet crucial aid workers who along with Lamb, gave the nightingale her song; from Dr. Branka Antic-Stauber in Bosnia to Dr. Denis Mukwege and Christine Schuler Deschryver in the Panzi Hospital and the City of Joy, Congo.
‘I tell the women, “If you remain silent, it’s as if nothing has happened. There are no perpetrators.” I told them, “Yes, those men were declared not guilty but they were singled out in court for three years, their names are public, their families and friends have heard. Don’t you think people will wonder?”’
Dr. Branka Antic-Stauber told Christina Lamb in Srebrenica, Our Bodies Their Battlefield, p. 191.
The Studio Solara 