Wartime Rape in Boudica by Tristan Bernays

Framed within Susan Brownmiller’s commentary on rape as a weapon of war and related sociological scholarship, this article examines Tristan Bernays’s Boudica (2017) to interrogate the implications of women who fight in wars. The play focuses on the warrior-queen Boudica, who stands out as a rare instance of female military command, leading the Iceni revolt alongside her daughters. However, this exceptional leader position does not prevent Boudica and her daughters from assault and gang rape by Roman soldiers, demonstrating that martial agency offers no immunity from gendered violence. Moreover, their dependence on male-led tribal armies reveals the structural constraints of female authority within patriarchal warrior cultures. Boudica thus complicates narratives of warrior heroism and illuminates the contradictory experiences of women in wartime.