Making a Woman: on the Construction of Female Sexuality in Victorian Pornography
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Making a woman: On the construction of female sexuality in Victorian pornography Master's Thesis in Comparative Literature Department of Arts and Cultural Studies University of Copenhagen By Maj Fonseca Supervisor: Anne Fastrup April 1. 2014 Resumé Pornografi defineres gerne som eksplicit seksuelt materiale, hvis hovedformål er at ophidse læseren. Pornografiske værker fra den victorianske periode viser sig ganske rigtigt dybt investerede i grafiske beskrivelser af nøgne kroppe og sexakter. Teksterne tilnærmer sig i nogen grad en pornografisk utopi (en ‘pornotopi’), hvor de seksuelle muligheder eksisterer til overflod og hvor alle altid er villige, lystige og generøse med deres kroppe. Her vrimler det med ideale begærsobjekter i form af unge, smukke og uskyldsrene jomfruer. Ved nærmere eftersyn viser der sig dog en besynderlig uhygge mellem fibrene på pornografiens begærskabende bagtæppe. Kvinden i den victorianske pornografiske roman er lige så ofte kilde til begær som til frygt og afsky for manden. Jomfru-figuren står overfor afskyvækkende kvindeskikkelser som nymfomanen, moderen, gammeljomfruen og forførersken, som pornografien af alt magt forsøger at gøre det af med. Spørgsmålet er derfor nærliggende, hvorfor pornografien overhovedet har inkluderet den afskyelige kvinde til at begynde med. Overfor den pornotopiske tendens tilfredsstiller pornografien tillige et begær efter at straffe og fornedre: Voldtægt og fysisk afstraffelse af uvillige kvindelige ofre er den victorianske pornografis seksuelle yndlingstemaer, og det lystfulde maskuline blik er lige så fascineret af jomfruens skønne krop som af smerten og ydmygelsen, som tegner sig på hendes tårevædede ansigt. Den sadistiske vold har en funktion i teksterne, som ikke kan reduceres til at skabe ophidselse. Ambivalens, frygt og afsky kendetegner pornografiens attitude overfor kvindelig seksualitet, i sidste ende også overfor det jomfruelige ideal. Volden kan ses som pornografiens frustrerede forsøg på at håndtere angsten for kvinden: Den udsætter hendes krop for et kontrollerende, undersøgende blik; den forsøger at betvinge og tæmme hende for at forpurre hendes forsøg på overtage mandens magt, og den kan tilmed ses som et forsøg på at ødelægge og dræbe hende. Konklusionen må være, at der er komplicerede, modsatrettede, og nogle gange endda paradoksale indsigter at finde om mandens forhold til kvinden i denne ellers så trivielle litteratur. Table of contents Introduction.............................................................................................................................2 1. Pornography: historical, theoretical, and methodological reflections...................................4 The Victorian prudes.........................................................................................................7 Let’s talk aBout sex........................................................................................................... 9 The curious case of the sadistic pornotopia ................................................................. 11 2. Rape pornography............................................................................................................ 17 The Lustful Turk.............................................................................................................. 19 Raped on the Railway.....................................................................................................26 The Way of a Man with a Maid....................................................................................... 31 3. Flagellation pornography.................................................................................................. 37 Experimental Lecture...................................................................................................... 39 The Mysteries of VerBena House....................................................................................44 The Memoirs of Dolly Morton.......................................................................................... 48 4. Sadistic violence: the gaze, destruction, castration...........................................................53 Unveiling the female mystery..........................................................................................54 The pleasure of destructing something precious.............................................................61 The vulneraBle penis of pornography............................................................................. 65 Conclusion............................................................................................................................ 71 BiBliography.......................................................................................................................... 73 Literary sources.............................................................................................................. 73 Secondary sources......................................................................................................... 74 1 Introduction Pornography is the trash genre par excellence, a genre whose main fault is identical with its main function: that is titillates the reader. In contrast to ‘serious’ art that demands detached contemplation, pornography engrosses the reader in involuntary Bodily sensations and moves him to action1 - a most illicit way of appreciating cultural products. Pornography is By no means high art; in fact, the genre is generally characterized By a lack of artistic merit. Only in the 1960’s did the serious academic study of pornography take off, But still, to this day, the serious study of trash genres is frowned upon and the intellectual interest in such studies questioned. The history of pornography is still not well-researched, and the practical difficulties arising from the prosecution of pornography throughout history has only made the enquiry harder to accomplish. Even though pornography has Become a steadily more popular oBject of research, there exist very few in-depth literary readings of individual pornographic works. This is proBlematic since the field likes to jump to conclusions regarding the genre in general while ignoring aspects, which, when suBjected to more scrutinous literary inquiry, can draw such conclusions into question. One such proBlematic conclusion was afforded By Steven Marcus in his 1966 pornographic study, The Other Victorians, where he coins the term ‘pornotopia’ to denominate the tendency towards the carefree sexual wonderland which he sees as a common denominator in pornography in general. In this thesis, I focus on the perception of female sexuality in Victorian pornography, and my findings make me arrive at a less comforting conclusion. Through the literary reading of six Victorian novels of pornography, the fact emerges that the pornotopian descriptions of the young and Beautiful women who populate these Books as idealized oBjects of male desire are accompanied By, often not so suBtle, descriptions of despicaBle women - women who are despised, punished, or discarded on account of their sexualities which in various ways deviate from the ideal. I come to the disconcerting conclusion that in the final instance all women are despicaBle in the eyes of Victorian pornography. The six pornographic novels I present in this thesis were first puBlished in England Between 1828 and 1908, a period which encompass the ‘Victorian era’ (1837-1901). These six works are The Lustful Turk (1828), Experimental Lecture (1878), The Mysteries of Verbena House (1882), Raped on the Railway (1894), The Memoirs of Dolly Morton (1899), and The Way of a Man with a Maid (1908). Compared to other literary productions of the Victorian era, these novels are neither famous nor can they Boast of literary merit. The first chapter of this thesis titled “Pornography: historical, theoretical, and methodological reflections” will introduce central aspects of the pornographic genre and its history as well as 1 Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”, p. 4. 2 the theorists which will Be used to cast light on the amBivalence towards women in the six pornographic texts. Victorian pornography is characterized By an overaBundance of stories of rape and flagellation. Both of these sexual phenomena appear in all six texts, But in The Lustful Turk, Raped on the Railway, and The Way of a Man with a Maid, rape is the primary attraction, and these three texts will therefore Be treated as rape-pornography in chapter 2, “Rape pornography”, while Experimental Lecture, The Mysteries of Verbena House, and The Memoirs of Dolly Morton most prominently feature flagellation, and they will therefore Be treated as flagellation pornography in chapter 3, “Flagellation pornography”. Next, in chapter 4 “Sadistic violence: the gaze, destruction, castration”, I will seek explanations for the sadistic tendency apparent in these works, and in doing so I make use of three different theories that can cast light on the sadistic violence and the specific way in which it appears in the pornographic works at hand. The first theoretical position focuses on the sadism expressed in the desire to gain knowledge aBout the female Other, the second sees sadism as the desire to destruct something precious, and the third interprets sadism as originating in the fear of castration. To summarize, what this thesis seeks to demonstrate is that the attitude towards women - displayed in Victorian pornography through sadistic violence and the construction of ‘the despicaBle woman’ - Betrays