Chastity in The Rape of Lucretia and a Woman Killed with Kindness Renaissance England has been labeled a culture of shame, a society in which An individual's identity was primarily constructed by how his or her "reputation" or "honor" was perceived by others. A woman's public reputation was always based on her virginity or chastity. Just as women were considered the property of their fathers or husbands, a woman's chastity was a commodity owned and exchanged between the men who possessed it. (Gutierrez, 272) A man's public reputation was therefore determined not only by his qualities, but also by his wife's reputation for chastity. On the contrary, a woman's unchastity was an obstacle to her husband. Rape and adultery were considered equally compromising the chastity of the female body and equally damaging to the husband's reputation. The fact that a man's identity - his socially constructed honor - depended so much on his wife's chastity was a source of anxiety because he could not control his wife's sexuality, protect her, or even detect her transgressions. (Breitenberg, ch.4) Several works of Renaissance literature address this male anxiety and attempt to assuage it by proposing the (often self-inflicted) death of the unchaste woman as a means of restoring male honor. In the Rape of Lucrece, although Lucrece's mind remains chaste, her unchaste body must die as a testament to the purity of her mind. In A Woman Killed Kindly, the adulteress is immodest in both body and mind. After her husband spares her life, Anne is able to restore the chastity of her mind through repentance. However, she still has to die to publicly restore her husband's honor. The commodification of Lucrece's character...... middle of paper ......w that, regardless of a woman's degree of innocence or complicity, once her body loses chastity, she must kill herself to restore her her honor and her husband's reputation. Works Cited1. Breitenberg, Marco. Anxious masculinity in early modern England. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996.2. Gutierrez, Nancy A. “The Irresoluteness of Melodrama: The Meaning of Adultery in a Woman Killed with Kindness.” Exemplaria, Vol.1, No. 2. Autumn, 1989. Pg.265-285.3. Heywood, Thomas. "A woman killed with kindness." Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1961.4. Panek, Jennifer. "Punishing adultery in a woman killed with kindness." Studies in English Literature, Vol. 34, n.2. Spring, 1994. Pages 357-375.5. Shakespeare, William. "The Rape of Lucrezia." The bank of the Shakespeare River. Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1974.