Rape Fantasies

“Rape Fantasies” is a short story by Margaret Atwood, published in 1977. One of Atwood’s most famous stories, it uses pitch-black humor and incisive social commentary to highlight the way women feel threatened on an almost constant basis in the modern world.

The story begins with the narrator, Estelle, commenting on the wide number of references to rape she’s seen in the popular culture recently, noting many magazine articles that seem to take a light and flippant tone towards the subject. She then describes a conversation she had at her lunch hour with four co-workers, Chrissy, Greta, Sondra, and Darlene.

Estelle says that the four women were playing a game of bridge when Chrissy, inspired by one of the aforementioned magazine articles, suddenly interrupted to ask if any of them had ever fantasized about rape. Estelle attempts to change the subject and get back to the game, uncomfortable with the topic. Sondra is eager to tell her stories on the subject, as is Chrissy. Darlene, an older divorced woman, is initially disgusted by the topic and stands up to go linger by the coffee machine with her back to the others when the conversation persists despite her protests.



Greta admits that she has fantasized about rape: In her fantasy, a handsome young man dressed all in black breaks into her apartment through the open balcony. Her fantasy is very romantic, and Estelle believes it to be very influenced by movies and television shows. After he rapes her, the man tells her about his experiences assaulting women, then exits through the balcony.

Chrissy tells her own fantasy: She is sitting in the bathtub when a man suddenly enters. She doesn’t scream or attempt to run away because he is blocking the exit and she knows it would be futile. She thus allows him to rape her.

Estelle interrupts at this point to complain that these fantasies are not truly rape fantasies, because in their fantasies, they are enjoying the experience, just with a stranger. She insists that rape is when you are forced into the act by a threat, like a knife at your throat. The others do not seem to agree, and find her humor on the subject to be of poor taste. Chrissy demands that Estelle confess her own rape fantasy, and Estelle eventually complies: In the first one, a man assaults her, but she produces a plastic lemon from her purse. After he obligingly opens the lemon for her, she squirts him in the eye. Chrissy is underwhelmed, and Darlene sarcastically remarks on Estelle’s sense of humor.



Estelle ponders another of her fantasies: She is walking down a dark street when a short, unattractive man covered in pimples rushes her and pins her to a wall. As he attempts to rape her, however, his zipper won’t open and he begins to weep in frustration. Estelle feels sorry for him.

Estelle suddenly changes the subject by speaking of her disappointment in her move to Toronto, which she assumed would be a grand adventure, and speculates that it’s easier for men to meet new people. Estelle is clearly addressing someone outside of her memory of the conversation.

She returns to that memory, beginning a second rape fantasy in which she is sick in bed and a man similarly ill climbs in through the window; speaking with a stuffed-nose lisp, he informs her he’s going to ‛rabe’ her. Instead, they take medicine and watch television. Estelle then offers a third fantasy, sensing that her lighthearted stories aren’t popular. In this fantasy, she is in her mother’s basement when a man wielding an axe bursts in. He hears Angel’s voices in his head telling him he has to kill her. She tells the man that she can hear the voices driving him to rape, and he becomes confused, and leaves. She also has a fantasy in which a man grabs her, but she is an expert in martial arts and fights him off, and a fantasy where a man starts to rape her but she informs him that she has leukemia and only a few weeks to live, and he admits he is also terminally ill, and they walk along speaking quietly and go for coffee and wind up living together in their final months.



Estelle is not happy to share this fantasy, and realizes that her own fantasies aren’t much better than the ones she’d complained about. She notes that, in her fantasies, the man attempting to rape her is always a stranger, but statistics show that rape is usually committed by someone the woman knows.

Estelle begins to ramble on about herself. She doesn’t drink, but likes to go to nice bars alone, although she is aware of the risks. At this point it is clear that Estelle is in a bar telling this story to another patron, presumably male. She says she doesn’t know why she is telling him all of this, although she believes that the best defense against a violent attack from a stranger is to have a conversation with the man. Estelle believes that no one could assault a woman they’d just had a long conversation with.