One of the many accomplishments of The Last Duel is its direct, uncompromising look at some of the ways women have been and even still are treated as almost subhuman when it comes to rape. The medieval context of the story also puts certain severe distortions of Christianity at the center of the worldviews of multiple characters. In my review of this excellent film [1], I already addressed the issue of what the Bible the characters of The Last Duel pretend they submit to actually says about rape, and it is not anything compatible with the victim blaming or gender stereotypes various characters hold to when reacting to Lady Marguerite's rape charge. The many layers of such easily avoidable delusion that rapist and squire Jacques le Gris clings to also deserve to be focused on, as well as the errors of Marguerite's own husband.
The idiocy of le Gris actually begins long before he rapes Lady Marguerite, starting with his hedonism--based on how we see him behave and speak, either he thinks Christianity and hedonism are compatible or he completely feigns a commitment to Christianity and thinks his subjective conscience's approval of hedonism makes it valid. In either case, he is a fool holding to contradictory or assumed ideas. Whichever it is, this clearly feeds into his promiscuity, and because of his blind love of pleasure, he later confuses Marguerite's repeated "No" as a "customary" way to pretend she is not already interested in committing adultery. It is crucial that even from his perspective of the story, when the second chapter retells events as he thinks they occurred, he still plainly raped Marguerite and yet talks as if he sincerely believes he did not.
Leading up to the rape of which he is objectively mistaken about, Le Gris makes other major philosophical errors that reveal his stupidity long before he somehow gets confused about the nature of rape. When given a warning about coveting the married Lady Marguerite, he only says his thoughts are "No less sinful than her coveting me," yet the Biblical sin of coveting would not be applicable in her case if she was contemplating adultery (she is portrayed as if she did not), as le Gris is not married and thus cannot "belong" to another woman. He even talks as if he believes the absolutely idiotic notion that one can be deeply in love with someone of the opposite gender after only seeing or talking with them a few short times. All the same, even according to his version of the story, his supposed love for Marguerite does not stop him from making repeated adulterous advances after she has affirmed that she is married and told him to leave her estate after he barged in uninvited. "If you run, I will only chase you," he says to her. It is quite clear even in the "truth according to Jaques le Gris" that le Gris is indeed an adulterous rapist who thinks married women must put on a show of resistance. He then assumes her intentions are different than what her words suggest despite not even any evidence pointing to this as a still unverifiable possibility.
The priest he confesses what he says is merely adultery to in the following scene quotes Matthew 5:28, to which le Gris asks if love if a sin--and then the priest says that the woman, whom has not been named, must be a temptress seeking to lead him astray. After seeing this inept theologian, le Gris is told by his friend Count Pierre that he is being accused of rape. Even the Count, who has acted as an egoist and hedonist without a care for philosophical truths or moral concepts up until now, calls this a serious matter and asks his friend if the charges are true. The selfish squire's response is admission that Marguerite protested as is "customary" for a lady even when she inwardly consents. Ultimately, le Gris sees all the evidence that Marguerite did not really consent and chooses to believe it was not rape anyway, all because of an asinine stereotype that women like her have to feign resistance as if it is a game.
Another character goes so far as to, with seemingly no awareness that anyone with genitalia could be a perpetrator or victim of rape, regardless of gender or marital status, that rape is not an offense against women (overlooking marital rape and male victims, though this latter part reflects the era's more entrenched sexism against both genders), but a property offense against her male guardian. For all of his major faults, at least Marguerite's husband Jean de Carrouges says after sex on his wedding night that he hopes the experience was pleasurable for his new wife. It is only later in the film, when he is seen from her eyes in the chapter introduced by the phrase "The truth," that his lack of concern for how the rape of Marguerite affected her that his tendency to use other people to salvage his own reputation comes to light. He literally has sex with Marguerite just after she tells him of what she has gone through to make sure he is the last person to have had sex with her. Given her prior reluctance to have sex, this is also rape, though the rape perpetrated by le Gris is given more emphasis.
Jean de Carrouges does kill le Gris in the climactic duel, but even in his final moments, "There was no rape" is what he utters. While there is never an excuse for irrationality, and the hypocrisy and epistemological assumptions--assumptions that are not even logically possible but unprovable beliefs, but assumptions in favor of ideas that can be wholly disproven by reason alone with no social or introspective experiences--of le Gris are inherently irrational, the social pressures that many people bow to can be very strong influences for those with weak resolves and an unwillingness to embrace the transcendent truths of rationalism. Both Jacques le Gris and Jean de Carrouges exemplify how cultural forces can shape people too stupid to identify and reject biases, of either personal or societal origin, but too inwardly blind to realize the depths of their own self-imposed delusions.
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