Is rape and or the abduction of girls bad? Apparently not to the great writers and myth weavers of ancient greece. And apparently not to children's book authors, and apparently not to Disney. (yeah, yeah, we shouldn't listen to Disney, but it's there! Even if we do ignore it)
One of my favorite books of all time is Peter Pan by James M. Barry, but this is nothing more than an abduction tale and could easily be renamed The Rape/Abduction of Wendy. She leaves her mother of her own free will to follow the cocky, cute, boy Peter Pan to Never Never Land where she will remain the Maiden forever. She is kidnapped and coaxed but choses the boy over her family...where have I seen that before?
I have very veheminantly disliked the "rape" stories because of the action that takes place without concent and added it to the list of reasons why the Greeks were perhaps the most perverted of all great societies (with the exception of our own, perhaps. But it is generally aknowleged that rape is a bad thing, so I think we dodged that bullet) Anyway, I recently realized that Peter Pan is simply another story of the abduction of a young woman and began to think differently of it. However, I am stubborn, and chose instead to change my opinion of the "rape" stories present in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Pheraps it is merely the angle from which the story is told that made it so horrible to me. Perhaps the woman wanted to be taken...and don't we all want to be caught and seduced by a God, even if he may leave us in Europe?
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