ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that in the case of female victims of sexual violence in its full spectrum visibility has historically met with strong resistance and still continues to do so, if in more sophisticated and often subliminal forms. Both Lucky and Rape: A Love Story are each in its own way instances of the risks involved in reporting sexual assault, which partly explains why sexual violence goes so underrepresented and female victimhood is so obscured. In most cases of sexual violence, trauma is related to the arduous process of proving the truth since the wound inflicted on body is later on repeated on mind; and its trace, independently of whether the event is silenced or made public, will go on haunting the victim. The chapter also focuses on two different literary products largely conniving in the erasure of female victimhood, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and the blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.
