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The title of the painting, The Rape, may be misleading. It perhaps refers to a scene in Zola's novel, "Madeleine Férat," in which Madeleine says to Francis that he is tormented because he loves her and she cannot be his. However, it is probably not a literary illustration. Degas himself never accepted this title. To his way of thinking the picture was primarily a study in nocturnal light effects in an interior.
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