This article analyses literary patterns of female subordination, and focuses in particular on what the author terms "referred pain." By juxtaposing two early modern texts, William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, with two modern visual texts, John Woo's Mission Impossible 2 and Baz Lurhman's Moulin Rouge, the author discusses the recurring trope of privileging male emotional suffering over female physical suffering, and suggests that one reason for the continuing popularity of this can be sought in the kinship system and its exchange of women. The article argues for the application of a transhistorical perspective when studying literature, as a means of revealing patterns that may otherwise go unnoticed.