Attempted Rape in Literature.
By Title:
- In Across the Universe (Beth Revis), Amy goes out jogging in the middle of "the Season", which is when the population of the ship is dosed up on hormones to encourage them to reproduce. She doesn't consider how potent the hormones are, and finds herself caught by a group of guys who want to have sex with her and can't tell that she's unwilling. Also, one of the guys in the group is unaffected by the drugs and just wants to rape her. She's saved when another unaffected person knocks the guys over the head and takes her inside.
- This continues into the sequel, where the undrugged would-be rapist makes it clear he wants to have another go at Amy. She does her best to avoid him, but knows that with the Godspeed in as much turmoil as it's in, things could turn bad. So in case he does corner her, she carries a patch soaked with a powerful sedative. When he does catch her, she slaps it on him, lets his other victim kick the shit out of him, and tells him that if he tries anything else, she'll shoot him.
- Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero: Phil tries this on Myuu, adding that he will kill her after he's done. Akatsuki bursts in and kicks his ass.
- Alexis Carew is nearly raped by a drunken spacer, Alan, in Into the Dark, but she fights him off and then tells the bosun and the captain that he Cut Himself Shaving, not wanting to see a man hanged on her account. Alan stops drinking after this and becomes a model crewman, ultimately saving her life at the cost of his own. She's also threatened with it a couple times, but informs a sexist midshipman in Mutineer that if he so much as touches her, his next meal will be "nutmegs and sausage".
- The Art of Being Normal: It's implied that trans boy Leo's classmates planned on assaulting him to "remind him he's a girl" when they attacked him in the woods.
- Baccano! 1932 - Another Junk Railroad: When he was younger, Firo was kidnapped and almost sexually assaulted by a pervert who mistook him for a girl. As a result, he's developed a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality.
- A Bad Place to Be a Hero: The main plot is kicked off when one of the side characters catches the protagonist Thessa stealing from him, and feels entitled to rape her in exchange. Unbeknownst to him, Thessa is a werewolf. The outcome is exactly what you'd expect.
- In J. R. R. Tolkien's Beren and Lúthien:
- Celegorm kidnaps Lúthien with the intention of forcing her to marry him, which is considered rape in the eyes of the Elven Laws. However, she sneaks out with Huan's help before he can do so.
- When Morgoth finds Lúthien sneaking around his fortress, he makes very clear what he does intend to do to her, rambling about "a pretty toy for idle hour", "crushing a beautiful flower" and "slaking the sting of his hunger with a morsel". Before he can touch her, though, Lúthien slips from his grasp and tricks him into letting her use her magic arts by stating that kings are supposed to listen to petitioners. Lúthien then performs a magic dance which puts Morgoth and his whole court to sleep. For when Morgoth wakes up, Lúthien is long gone.
- In the Bloody Jack series this occurs every book towards the titular Jacky.
- The Bourne Identity. One of Carlos' killers is told to take Marie St Jacques to the river to be killed and disposed of. However he decides to rape her first, giving Bourne enough time to catch up and save her. Bourne's unfeigned outrage—and the very fact that he came back to save her at all—is what convinces Marie that Bourne is not a villain.
- Occurs twice with the same characters in Cerberon. After Junapur loses a challenge to rescue Thedrik, Lubek attempts to rape her, but is stopped by Cathern. Later, in a very creepy scene, he tries to rape her again while she's sleeping, and she stabs him to death.
- In Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain: In The High King, Princess Eilonwy finds herself a prisoner of the outlaw band led by the ruffian Dorath, who had menaced protagonist Taran in the preceding book. Once Dorath realizes who Eilonwy is to Taran, he says that when she's reunited with the hero, he will find that she has few charms left. It's never explicitly stated that he intends to rape her, but the implication is there; the language is vague enough for young children to realize only that she's in danger. Before he can actually lay a hand on her, however, she's rescued by a group of wolves and bears.
- A man at a party tries to rape Jelka Tolonen in David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series. Really not a smart idea, as he is beaten more than half to death.
- In Cloud of Sparrows, Emily is almost gang-raped by her three adoptive brothers; they are only stopped when their mother walks in.
- In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Red Nails", Olmec tries this on Valeria. The rescue is even worse.
- Conan himself tried this on The Frost-Giant's Daughter after killing her giant brothers, but she was saved by her father Ymir, who spirited her away. Conan was fairly young at the time, and this experience did quite a bit to put him off rape ever since.
- In The Conquerors Saga's And I Darken, Lada is surprised in the woods one day by a Jannisary who hates her. He attempts to force himself on her. She kills him instead.
- In The Courts of the Morning by John Buchan, Janet Roylance is taken hostage by the bad guys after things start turning against them. She's kept in a locked room at nights as much for her own protection as anything else, because the villain had some really nasty henchmen who are less inclined to take orders from the higher-ranking bad guys now that things are going bad. One of them gains access to her room, but doesn't manage to get his hands on her before being interrupted by the arrival of the heroes, one of whom lays him out with a single punch.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses
- During Calanmai in the first book, Feyre is cornered and nearly dragged off by three men who clearly intend to assault her, only for Rhysand to intervene.
- Feyre stumbles upon Lucien chained to a tree by Ianthe, who is undressing him against his will as he demands that she stop touching him. When they realize she's spotted them, Ianthe insists that Lucien actually wants her, and continues to try and have her way with him until Feyre subjects her to Mind Rape.
- Daughters of Darkness (1996): Although no one explicitly mentions sexual assault, it's made pretty clear that this is Todd and Vic's intention when they pick up the Redfern sisters in the dead of the night and drive them to a remote location, mentioning that they're "lonely guys" looking for fun, that no one would hear them scream out in the middle of nowhere and grabbing hold of them. When Rowan realizes their intentions, she says that her sisters are "far too young for anything like that" (Kestrel and Jade are seventeen and sixteen, respectively). Unfortunately for Todd and Vic, the girls they chose to prey on this time happen to be vampires.
- Daystar and Shadow: A few days after Robin and Shadow meet, Robin leaves her alone at the campsite and comes back to find three men trying to rape her, even though she's about ten years old at this point. Robin, who's a teenager now, kills two of the men and chases the third away. He and Shadow have to leave the area after that.
- This trope tends to end badly in Digital Devil Story. The first time, Loki's trying to use his tentacles on Yumiko but her neck is snapped by her jealous teacher before Loki can do the deed. The second time, Loki tries to rape the goddess Izanami herself, but he is defeated by Nakajima before he can do the deed.
- In The Dinosaur Lords, when Falk tries to rape MelodÃa while drunk, her handmaiden manages to stop him with implied violence alone.
- Dolphin Trilogy: In Destiny and the Dolphins, Lord James Renshaw invites Vinca onto his boat and takes her miles out to sea so she won't be able to flee when he forces himself on her. She escapes by jumping overboard. James doesn't know that Vinca was raised by dolphins and thinks nothing of swimming for miles, so when she doesn't reappear, he thinks he killed her. James returns to London to tell John what happened, and is shocked when Vinca walks into the room.
- In Dora Wilk Series, Dora invokes it to deal with a serial rapist - she glamours herself to look like his victims and strolls in his hunting grounds, then lays him down when he tries to have his way with her.
- In the Dragonlance novel Dragons of Spring Dawning, both types of foiling occur when Bakaris attempts to rape Laurana. First Cloudcuckoolander Tasslehoff Burrfoot comes to her defense, stabbing Bakaris right when he has Laurana at his mercy. Then with Bakaris distracted Laurana attacks him in a frenzy and succeeds in killing him.
- Dragonvarld: Evelina has Marcus drink absinthe, which gets him aroused enough to declare his love and want to sleep with her when otherwise he wasn't going to. However, they don't have sex with him under its influence, as he gets a severe allergic reaction to the absinthe.
- The Dresden Files: Vampires, especially those of the White Court which feed on emotions and mostly do so through sex, try to force themselves on others often and several times fail.
- Blood Rites: Harry is set up by the White Court to be fed on by Inari (who does not know about her heritage) as she is coming of age when neither of them would want to have sex with each other without the court's Hunger messing with their minds. A White Court vampire's first time is when their Hunger develops and fully turns them by killing whomever they're having sex with. Thomas takes exemption to his family's plan and bursts into the room in a panic as soon as he learns of it.
- Changes:
- Esmerelda straddles Harry and tries to take advantage of him both physically and mentally. He is not as receptive as she'd like since he has not forgotten being tortured and raped the last time he was captured by members of the Red Court.
- Thomas is sitting very still and telling Molly not to touch him after a draining fight when his Hunger is about to overwhelm him, and she makes the mistake of doing so anyway. He loses his battle of wills with his Hunger and is only prevented from feeding on her by Mouse attacking him and coming very close to killing him before he returns to himself. Him fleeing to feed since he can't control himself means he's not there to prevent Harry from getting his back broken when Esmerelda and Esteban attack again.
- In Wen Spencer's Endless Blue, Butcher tries to rape Eraphie Bailey, and Mikhail shoots him to death.
- Family Skeleton Mysteries: A man tries to molest a six-year-old Georgia during a blackout at a carnival. Sid revives and scares him off.
- Played for laughs in K. W. Jeter's Fiendish Schemes, a giant Orangutan steam-powered automaton puts protagonist George Dower into a bent-over position and then it yanks his pants down. George looks back to see a very large third appendage rise with a blast of steam coming out. Luckily he's saved when a worker with an axe disables the robot and Dower is only mildly nonplussed (British stiff upperlip and Dower's a real dullard). Previously another worker was in a similar predicament and wasn't so lucky, the result is a life term in an asylum as the doctors won't believe the man's ranting of being buggered by a steam engine in simian fur. Turns out years ago, George's genius inventor father had a commission from a jaded nobleman. The nobleman once brought over orangutans as vicious animals for a good hunt and to bugger him (he was a product of British boarding schools and "Greek" oriented schoolmasters). He was disappointed that the orangutans are placid in nature and not interested in either activity, so George Dower Sr. was hired to make a savage Orangutan Sexbot...
- In Fifty Shades Darker, Editor Jack Hyde tries, after work, to blackmail his new employee Ana Steele into having sex with him, and when that fails, he attempts to rape her. Ana escapes, thanks to a well-placed kick. The situation is treated badly, however; for one thing, the book presents Ana as too beautiful for Hyde to resist, rather than putting the blame for the attempted rape on the would-be rapist. And, despite having his bodyguard Jason Taylor administer a beating to Hyde offscreen, Christian Grey yells onscreen at Ana for almost being raped—because, as he states in the first book, he doesn't believe that a beautiful woman could possibly refrain from having sex. (And no, he doesn't distinguish between sex and rape). By Fifty Shades Freed, Ana has mentally retconned the attempted rape into "Jack Hyde made a pass at me."
- The Frost-Giant's Daughter: Conan's lust is overpowering, and it's one of the very, very few times where Conan is thinking of sex without the woman's consent. He grabs Atali, kissing her forcefully, and is clearly intending to do more. Though it should be noted that Atali is based on a Fey, a magical creature from European folklore that had the ability to literally drive men insane with lust. At the end, Conan even calls what had happened to him with her "madness", so it's indicated he was compelled by magic.
- In The Girl from the Miracles District, Nikita mentions that early in her career in the Order, one guy tried to assert his position above her in the pecking order, and so attempted to rape her under the shower. Unfortunately for him, Nikita was expecting something like this to happen sooner or later, and had a gun with her. Inevitable happened.
- In Tracy Chevalier's novel Girl with a Pearl Earring (adapted into a film in 2003) van Ruijven, a patron of Johannes Vermeer, accosts Griet one morning while she's hanging up laundry, pushes her against a wall, and tries to tear her clothes from her but is stopped when Cornelia arrives asking what he's doing. His intentions are made more apparent in the film when he tells her that she's "ripe as a plum but still unplucked".
- In The Goblin Emperor, Csevet tells the story of how a nobleman once grabbed him, clearly intending to rape him, and how he bit the guy, and then managed to flee.
- In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett is attacked by "a big ragged white man and a squat black negro" while riding through a bad part of town.
- When Honor Harrington was a Midshipwoman at the Saganami Island Naval Academy, another Midshipman, Lord Pavel Young, took great offense when Honor rebuffed his romantic overtures in public one day. To teach her a lesson, he approached her in the showers one night in an attempt to reiterate her proper station with respect to his noble birth. She took exception to his efforts. Her birth on a high-gravity world and extensive studying of martial arts, not to mention her presence on the Saganami Island unarmed combat team, allowed her to violently thwart his efforts to rape her, and were sufficient in insuring his necessary recuperation at the Island's hospital facilities. Honor never did report his actions to the Commandant, as she feared that nobody would believe that the noble son of the wealthy Earl of North Hollow would have been interested in the unattractive daughter of a Sphinx yeoman, and their bitter rivalry would stalk her throughout their years of military service.
- I Only Wanted To Help, the protagonist intervening in one of these is what kicks off the plot.
- In In Cold Blood, Dick Hickok tries to rape Nancy Clutter during the home invasion, but his accomplice Perry Smith prevents him from going any further because he hates sexual crimes.
- Lord Arlington in the Louisa May Alcott book The Inheritance tries to seduce Edith many times but each time she rejects him. The final time she rejects him he reacts very angrily and it's implied that he means to rape her but Lord Percy shows up and Arlington departs.
- In The Innocent a would-be suitor that Elinor has rejected tries to rape her. One of her serfs steps in and tosses the guy right into a table with a stone top, knocking the creep cold on the edge.
- There are two examples in Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars series.
- In A Princess of Mars, Tal Hajus declares that he will rape Dejah Thoris. John Carter intervenes. With Tal Hajus dead, they try to escape.
Dejah Thoris: If we make it, my chieftain, the debt of Helium will be a mighty one; greater than she can ever pay you; and should we not make it, the debt is no less, though Helium will never know, for you have saved the last of our line from
worse than death.
- In The Chessman of Mars, Tara is to be put of as the stakes in Gladiator Games. A noble comes to see what she is like before fighting, and she stabs him. She is still put up as the stakes — and she and another woman are to be the prizes of the winning side, not just one of them. Fortunately, the hero manages to get in the game, and fill his own side with men who will support him.
- In the Kane Series novel Bloodstone mercenary Ristkon, who holds a grudge against her family, tries to rape Teres, even against his lord's orders, mostly to humiliate her. Teres pretends to submit to him and then kills him.
- Kate Shugak is almost raped after being captured by the killers in Hunter's Moon. Even though her hands are bound behind her back, she manages to escapes when the would-be rapist cuts her legs free, thanks to a timely distraction from Jack Morgan and some applied violence on her part.
- In the Left Behind book Kingdom Come, an unbelieving under-100 "natural" attempts to assault a female "glorified" in the hopes of siring a child that may be able to live past 100 years of age without becoming a believer. God foiled the attempt by having the would-be rapist die in her arms and then incinerated. Given that in the book series the "glorifieds" are not able to sire or have children, this would have proved to be pointless.
- A Mage's Power: Tahart's job offer to Annala is a ruse for the purpose of raping her. He hides Power Nullifiers and a Slave Collar in her uniform to weaken her. He would have succeeded if not for Eric's intervention.
- The Nowhere Girls: Eric Jordan, one of Lucy's rapists, pins Erin against the lockers and roughly grabs her crotch. She wants to resist, but is unable to move or cry out. Then Eric hears a security guard's walkie-talkie and lets go of Erin for fear of being caught.
- The One Who Eats Monsters:
- Harper Pruett tries to force Ryn to give him a blowjob after leading her into a broom closet and mistaking her increasingly irritated threats for her flirting with him. When she realizes what his intent is, she furiously headbutts him through the door.
- Splat plans to rape and torture Naomi Bradford to death, though Ryn torches his van and foils his attempt on Naomi's life. Naomi is left traumatized by the encounter with Splat's mutilated Hollow and Ryn's borderline Living Shadow form, and suffers from chronic night-terrors.
- At the Nine Lives nightclub, Denise is drugged into a stupor by John Laek and his thugs and almost winds up their sex-slave — and is indicated to have at least given him a blowjob. When Naomi intervenes to save her friend, Ryn delivers a thorough Curb-Stomp Battle provoked by one of the thugs declaring his intent to rape them too, stopping just short of killing them... this time
- The One Who Waited, the main character, Alice, is nearly raped after refusing to have sex with a childhood friend after their first date.
- Patience and Sarah: While on a boat to New York, Sarah is attacked by a man. Too embarrassed to call for help, Sarah tries to fight him off but has trouble. Luckily her lover Patience appears, which scares the man into letting Sarah go.
- Happens to Erik in Susan Kay's Phantom by Javert (not that one). He escapes by murdering him, with a knife.
- The Power: Tunde is nearly raped by a woman in Delhi, but luckily three other women arrive and stop her.
- In L. Jagi Lamplight's Prospero Lost, Miranda is passionate about rapists ever since the time, in the Back Story (of this and The Tempest) when Caliban had tried to rape her.
- In Rogue Sorcerer, Aiden has to fend off a man who tries to rape Claron. This experience is what convinces him that it is time to teach Claron how to defend herself.
- In Schooled in Magic, Emily fends off one by a drunken villager, turning him into a pig. He had to be very drunk for trying this on a sorceress. This brings up bad memories about her creepy stepfather. It's stated he probably had done this many times before, and Lady Barb puts a curse on him that will turn him into a pig for good if he ever does again.
- Happens repeatedly in Seraph of the End's light novels:
- Seraph of the End: Guren Ichinose: Catastrophe at Sixteen:
- Mito is driven to a nervous breakdown when she is nearly raped by Guren who is Not Himself from being goaded on by his demon. Before Guren kills her, Goshi intervenes and escapes with Mito.
- Shigure and Sayuri are nearly raped as well and are deeply sickened by the experience and try to kill themselves by chewing on a poison capsule to avoid being raped/killed. However, Saito stops them and Guren arrives to save them.
- Yuu and Mika prevent a group of boys from assaulting a young girl in the light novel The Story of Vampire Mikaela.
- In Shards of Honor, Cordelia is about to experience this at the hands of Bothari, but saves herself by talking Bothari out of it and in fact causing him to turn on his puppet master, violently.
- A man tries to rape Snow White in Six-Gun Snow White after she breaks the fingers of a few of his friends. He fails, and the ensuing fight is pretty brutal.
- The Society of Sylphs: At the beach, Chuck roofies Pam and drags her away from her friends, up the pathway to the top of the cliff to rape her. She resists and manages to get loose and stumble away from him. Unfortunately, there's nowhere to go but off the cliff, and when he pursues her, she falls to her death.
- Both types of foiling happen in A Song of Ice and Fire: Sansa is rescued from rape twice, once from an angry mob and once from a creep with busy hands. Cue Bodyguard Crush: the first rescue is performed by the Hound, and during the second, her first thought of who's come to rescue her is immediately, and illogically, that it's the Hound once more. In the second variety, Action Girl Brienne bites the ear off a man who tries to rape her, which proves to be a sufficient turnoff. Then he throws her in a pit to fight a bear, but what can you do?
- In the The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries novel Living Dead in Dallas, Sookie is nearly raped by Gabe, a henchman of Fellowship of the Sun leader Steve Newlin. She is rescued just in time by self-hating vampire Godfrey/Godric, who accidently kills Gabe.
- Speak: Andy Evans tries to rape Melinda in her broom closet at the climax but she fights him off. The girls' lacrosse team helped. Subverted offscreen before the book started. He did rape her.
- Cygnusisans, who're half human half animal creatures in Spectral Shadows, cannot rape because of how their mating process works. However, it is possible to attempt this, as Perry tries with Christine (He fails at it though) by manipulating her body in a way for it to get wound up for intimacy, despite the fact that Christine does not want to join with him.
- In Harlan Ellison's novel Spider Kiss, sociopathic Rock & Roll singer Stag Preston does this twice. The first time, his victim is his publicist's secretary, who knocks him out. (This doesn't stop her from becoming his manager later in the story.) The second time it's a member of his fan club, who falls to her death while trying to escape him. This signals the beginning of the end of Stag's career.
- Happens in every single one of The Sword of Truth books. Some women actually fight off their attackers. Others are saved by men. And a whole mess of 'em aren't so lucky. Subverted in the first book when Richard shows up to rescue Kahlan, but later figures out that due to her magic powers she wasn't actually in any danger.
- In the Back Story of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Caliban tried to rape Miranda.
- The Teresa Knight Trilogy: Teresa stops a man who is about to rape his girlfriend at a sex club when she breaks off their encounter because of discomfort.
- The Twilight Saga:
- In Twilight (2005), two men herd Bella towards their two friends in order to do this. Luckily, Edward arrives just in time.
- In New Moon, while Bella and Jessica are going out, Bella believes she sees the would-be-rapists when she realises that she hears Edward's voice while in danger. Because of this she approaches them but Jessica convinces Bella to stop. It turns out not to be the same guys anyway, and in fact in Midnight Sun (2020) we find out Edward had gotten them arrested before that point.
- Early in Uprooted, Prince Marek casually attempts to rape Agnieszka solely to piss off her teacher. She says in her narration that his reputation as a Warrior Prince was enough that she could have been willing if asked, but instead he goes right to forcing himself on her. She uses the only spell she knows (for Gorgeous Garment Generation) to block him and then beats him half to death with a metal tray.
- In Vigilauntie Justice, Daisy fights off the Serial Rapist that attacks her.
- In Graham McNeill's Warhammer 40,000 Horus Heresy novel Fulgrim, Serena starts crying and claims this to get Lucius to help cover up her murder.
- In Sandy Mitchell's Warhammer 40,000 Dark Heresy novel Scrouge the Heretic, while Kyrlock and Elyra are waiting to get on the off-planet ship, their guide tries to rape Zusen, a telepathic girl who is also waiting. When Elyra objects, he tells her that she can join the fun. Kyrlock says that Elyra wouldn't, but he would — and thereby gets close enough to brain him. Elyra shoots him as well. Zusen, between her fragile emotional state and her ability to read in his mind what he intended, is overwhelmingly grateful at first, and rather withdrawn after.
- In Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Warhammer 40,000 Night Lords novel Soul Hunter, an attempt to deprive the Night Lord Talos of two slaves he values goes awry when the men sent to do it drag Eurydice off for this instead. Talos, having saved the other slave, charges into a stronghold of his enemies to get her back, killing the men involved. One of them would have gotten away if only he had fled; Talos had retrieved Eurydice and only thought of getting her to safety.
- In Watersong, Gemma makes her first kill as a siren defending herself when a man tries to rape her.
- Where the Crawdads Sing: Two months before Chase is murdered, he comes back to Kya's cabin to try to persuade her to become The Mistress. When she refuses, he punches her in the face and tries to rape her. She escapes with a Groin Attack. Two fishermen witness her beating him, screaming death threats, and then fleeing in her boat, and testify about it at her trial.
