“Death is the fairest cover for her shame” Framing Honor Killings

Abstract

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) defines honor killings as crimes committed against women who are rape victims, suspected or accused of having premarital sex, or women thought to have committed adultery. The women are typically killed by male relatives in order to restore the family’s violated honor. Radhika Coomaraswamy² (2005), in her nine-year tenure as U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women (1994–2003), addressed “honor crimes” as an indisputable infringement of human rights and a form of unjust violence perpetrated against women. She explains that in many societies the cultural concept of maleness is defined by the principle of “honor,” which is deeply connected to the control of female sexual behavior in the family and community.

The title of this essay has been adapted from William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (4.1.113). The play is set in Messina, a coastal city on the island of Sicily. Shakespeare tackles the themes of male social status and honor, sexual jealousy and anxiety over women’s sexuality, and female honesty and chastity in the comedy Much Ado, in the tragedy Othello, and in the romance The Winter’s Tale. He sets all three stories in Italy, and two of them, the comedy and the romance, in Sicily.