Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies" is an interesting account of how rape is perceived in out society and how women themselves make light of such a serious topic, perhaps to hide their true feelings about the issue when they themselves have been the victims of rape. Rape takes on two different meanings in this story: one being a light and humorous topic of conversation about fantasies in a lunch room filled with only women, the other a more serious and aggressive act by a man toward a woman, where the woman herself is a victim of aggression. Atwood clearly blurs the line between actual rape, and the fantasy of rape in this story. In this essay I plan to focus on how patriarchal attitudes and beliefs are engendered in "Rape Fantasies" and to what extent the fantasy of rape itself functions in the story to challenge or perpetuate patriarchal definitions of femininity and masculinity. I will attempt to prove in this essay how a feminist analysis of "Rape Fantasies" suggests that the narrator both complies to and resists traditional gender roles when faced with the issue of male dominance and aggression.
"Rape Fantasies" is the story of a conversation among several women during their lunch hour. A woman named Chrissy, poses a question she finds in a magazine and asks, "How about it girls, do you have rape fantasies?" The story unfolds with each woman's response to that question. Each woman's perspective on the subject is re-told by Estelle, the narrator, who claims to be as honest as she can be at all possible times. The conversation these women are having appears to be light and humorous, because each of their fantasies never actually includes a "rape". However, looking a little deeper, one begins to notice that issue of a "fantasy rape" is actually a tool used by the narrator to hide a deeper issue, the fact that she herself quite possibly was raped. I hadn't realized this fact until I noticed the repetition being used about shoes in the story.
