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Narrative strategies of erotic fictional autobiography

Hendrickson, Ruth Ann, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University,1988

Copyright ©1988 by Hendrickson, Ruth Ann. A H rights reserved.

UMI 300 N. Zecb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 NARRATIVE STRATEGIES OF EROTIC FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Ruth Ann Hendrickson, B.A. , M. A,

*****

The Ohio State University

1988

Dissertation Committee p r o v

John B. Gabel

David O. Frantz Adviser

Debra A. Moddelmog Department of English copyright by Ruth Ann Hendrickson 1988 Far my parents, Edmund and Jeanette Hendrickson ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Professors Daniel R. Barnes (OSU), Michael J.

Preston

English Culture and Tradition) believed in this project's potential; I am grateful for their inspiration and instruction. Professor Emeritus John

M. Muste believed in this writer's potential; I cherish his guidance and friendship.

Professor Juhn B. Gabel willingly took on an unruly student with an unruly project; I appreciate his candor, compassion, and direction throughout my scholarly adventure. Professor David 0. Frantz showed me that the subject merits serious attention; I appreciate his judicious comments and smiling encouragement. Professor Debra A. Moddelmog gave an extraordinary amount of thought, energy, and time to this endeavor; her keen critical ability and unselfish concern sustained me.

Ediiiund and Jeanette Hendrickson have my heartfelt gratitude: they believed in me, loved me, and encouraged roe— even after they found out what I was doing.

i i i VITA

December 6, 1957 , Born— Glendale, Vest Virginia

1980 B.A., Marshall University, Huntington, Vest Virginia

1980— 1981 Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of English, Marshall University, Huntington, Vest Virginia

1981-1982 Residence Hall Director, Marshall University, Huntington, Vest Virginia

1982 M, A., Marshall University, Huntington, Vest Virginia

1962-1964 Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohi o

1984-1987 Editorial Assistant, Proverb!um: Yearbook of. International Proverb Scholarship. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1985 Graduate Administrative Associate, Graduate School, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

i v 1986 .... Graduate Research Associate Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohi o

1986-1987 .... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1987 .... Instructor, Ohio Vesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio

1987-1988 ...... Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State Uni versi ty

PUBLICATIONS

Rev. of Review of_ Pornography: A Feminist Survey, by Margaret Smith and Barbara Vaisberg. Vomen's Studies Review 8.4 (August/September, 1986>: 14.

Rev. of Pleasures: Vomen Vrite Erotica, by Lonnie Barbach. Vomen1 s Studies Review 8.2 (March/April , 1986).- 2-4.

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field; Twentieth-Century British and American Literature Adviser, Professor John M. Muste

Minor Fields: Nineteenth-Century British Literature Adviser, Professor Leslie Tannenbaum

American Literature to 1900 Adviser, Professor Daniel R. Barnes

Folklore Adviser, Patrick B. Mullen

V TAELE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii

VITA ...... iv

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A SURVEY OF RECENT PORNOGRAPHY STUDIES . . 23

II. THE NARRATIVE S K E L E T O N ...... 47

III. THE NARRATOR'S S T A N C E ...... 91

IV. THE NARRATOR'S VOICE ...... 122

V. READING EROTICA ...... 163

WORKS CONSULTED ...... 198

vi INTRODUCTION

. pornography is the orphan little

sister of the arts ....

— Angela Carter, The, Sadeian tfnuwn

Addressing what makes her work so popular in an age that does not set a high premium on virginity, romance writer Barbara Cartland says, "It's the pornography, dear. My readers are sick of it. I never specifically describe the sex act because it's such a bore laid bare.

My readers begin to wonder if they're normal if they don't have sex upside-down, swinging from a chandelier."1 Cartland is apparently saying that her readers prefer the veiled descriptions of romance fiction's sexual interludes to the more graphically detailed encounters of pornography. In so doing she is relying on a standard stereotype of pornography to make her point. That stereotype defines pornography as sexually explicit material which cashes in on the bizarre, the absurd, and the perverse sexual appetites of the strange individuals who read such stuff.

1 2

Pornography has an image problem, a problem that results from misinformation and misinterpretation. Not al1 pornography deals with upside-down chandeliei— swinging sex. In fact, I know of only one work that even comes close to describing such a scene, and it's a non—pornographic contemporary novel by a feminist with a grand sense of humor. - Whatever the reasons for the popularity of Cartland's work, it is not all the fault of pornography.1' Cartland's response to erotic writing really should not surprise anyone, however, for as

Benoite Groult clearly indicates in her discussion of

Lilianna Cavanni's The Night Porter. "Pornography has always existed and has never undermined anything. It has always given pleasure to the same men and the same women and shocked the same others" C73) . A Those who enjoy pornography read pornography; those who do not, those who are shacked by it, rarely read it. But those who rarely read pornography seem the most inclined to criticize it. Although their criticisms vary about specifics of style and taste, most see little value in forthright, sexually arousing literature.

Sexually explicit writing does appeal to the prurient interests of its readers; it is, after all, trying to.

For readers of the romance, the sex act is more 3

appealing and more palatable when It Is artfully-

concealed behind chenille curtains and heavy oak doors

or teasingly promised by means of a ripped bodice or a

slow ascent up a staircase. That the sex act laid bare

would be a bore to these readers Is probably true; such a rendering would undercut the desired romance. But

most readers of pornography want something beyond laid- bare sex acts as well. Pornography may Include more graphic sex scenes than other literature, but such

incluslon does not exclude good taste or good writing.

Not every page of pornography features a scene of sexual gymnastics. No question, bad writers write bad pornography. Bad poets write bad poetry. But not all of it— pornography or poetry— should be banished because some of it is without merit. To dismiss pornography as degenerative, degrading, demoralizing, and just plain indecent imparts an unfair Judgment about a very large quantity of material. Pornography’s sexual emphasis does-not necessarily preclude quality of style or content.

Although my concern here will be literary pornography, the word "pornography" usually brings to mind photographs, centerfolds, postcards, and, most recently, films. "Pornography" sometimes conjures up 4

scenes of mumbling men haunting downtown black-windowed

porn shops or young boys passing around well-worn

magazines. Free association with the word "pornography"

rarely elicits any positive responses; the connotations

cluster around secrecy, illicitness, and abnormality.

Seldom do the words "normal" and "pornography" appear

together. After all, why would anyone with normal

psychosexual development need any kind of pornography?

As a reader of pornography— a female reader— I have this

question tossed at me regularly, and each time it

strikes me as odd. People read about the things that

interest them, but it does not mean that everyone who

reads westerns wants to ride a horse.

The decision to read pornography may be a private

matter, but unjust criticisms and blatant censorship

make it a public issue. Vere my task to solve once and

for all the question of pornography's status in a free

society, I would be a fool to accept the assignment;

such concerns will always be with us. If I were to try

to differentiate between pornography and obscenity as

legalists have attempted, I would be outside my domain.

If I could settle the debates that threaten to divide even the sympathizers, I would do what no one has done before. Since I cannot do all of this, I have chosen to 5 do what I can do: I can give pornography the chance to prove Itself as an entertaining and enlightening form of writing that deserves more serious consideration than it usually receives. I cannot, however, take on all of pornography; that approach, that desire to establish that pornography has a history and therefore exists, has weakened critical arguments that would be stronger with more focus on actual texts. Vhat I have chosen to examine is an identifiable, manageable part of the whole, several representatives of a type of pornographic writing known as erotic fictional autobiography.&

To tell one's own story, to recall the event© of one’s life in autobiography, seems a natural Impulse.

The impetus toward personal narrative may follow a significant event or it may develop from old age's reflections on a long life. Whatever the inspiration, autobiography provides the opportunity to describe one's life as a particular event; the writer may choose to trace the the journey of an artist or perhaps a spiritual odyssey. Fictional autobiography follows the life-writing tradition as the author presents a single individual telling his or her story; but the individual is a construction of the author's imagination. 6

The- distinguishing feature of erotic fictional

autobiography is that the character tells this life-

story from the perspective of sexual activity; that is,

the autobiography emphasizes not the Journey of an artist toward the discovery of purpose or the trials of a pilgrim on the way to spiritual awakening, but the adventures of a sexually aware individual on the way through a world of pleasure. Relating a life story as a sexual adventure is not the most common form of autobiography, but it is not completely unusual, as evidenced in the writings of Henry Miller, Frank Harris, and Xaviera Hollander, to name a few. Recounting one's sexual adventures for the edification and entertainment of others is erotic autobiography; creating a story that seems to be an individual's true account of sexual adventures is erotic fictional autobiography, a common format in pornographic writing.

The particular texts I have chosen for this study are erotic fictional autobiographies with female narrators.

The female voice appeals to pornography writers, as is evident in the more than fifty texts that I have read.

The paradigmatic erotic fictional autobiography is John

Cleland's Memoirs of. a. Vo man of Pleasure. Also known as Fanny Hill. Cleland's 1748 account of Frances Hill's 7

life provided the model for most of the first-person

pornography which followed. This once-underground novel

has achieved a new status, demonstrated by its place in

the Oxford World Classics series, by the numerous

scholarly articles written about it, and by a recently

published concordance. Scholars have studied Fanny Hill

thoroughly, so I shall give it less attention than some

other texts which have not achieved such literary

status.

Scholars may have overlooked post-Cleland erotic

fictional autobiography, but the large number of

currently published texts indicate that it is one of the

most popular forms of erotic writing.'' The Adventures

Qf_ Lady- Hacpur (1894 ) , Ide. Libertine Enchantress (1863),

Confessions llL an English Maid (c. 1937), Confessions oil

Nemesis Hunt (c. 1902-1906), Memoirs at. d Girl Student

Josephine Hutzenbacher <1906; trans. 1931), The History of. Fanny Seymour, (n. d. ), The History q !_ Fanny Greeley

Buford

Memoirs af_ Madame Madeleine (c. 1928)--in all of these histories, memoirs, stories, and confessions, the authors consistently concern themselves with individual 6 lives. Usually the central characters, always female, narrate the stories of their lives in their own voices,

Just as Fanny Hill does.

In the following paragraphs I sketch the content and history of the four of these works that I shall most often refer to in this dissertation. Aristocratic

Eveline's adventures begin at the age of seventeen in

Victorian England and include, in addition to several liaisons with men outside of her class, incestuous encounters with her father and her brother. Eveline's sexual appetite does not interrupt her aristocratic life, and her marriage of convenience does not interfere with her dalliances. The anonymous author of this two- volume, 1904 adventure gives Eveline the autobiographical voice of a sexual philosopher while at the same time engaging her in numerous sexual activities before the story ends with an almost Dickensian charactei— recognition scene.

Another popular volume with a format similar to that of Eveline is Confessions of. OH English Kol_d, an enjoyable erotic text with a frustrating bibliographic history. This text has appeared in numerous guises.

The most recent reprint is a 1964 Carroll and Graf publication, in which the publishers state on the verso of the title page that the "Original Title" was A. Night

In. a. Moorish Harem. It happens that A Night Jjx a.

Moorish Harem is an entirely different book containing

several narratives from different women in a Morrocan

harem. Some editions give "Gilbert San Martin" as the

author, but most often the author remains anonymous in

this 1930 erotic fictional autobiography. A. Modern

EOJPfiO and Naughty Jessie are crudely illustrated reprints of Goaf ess l.ons Of. a n English Maid excerpts.

The author presents Jessie as a sexually curious child

whose sexual activities while still a young woman land her in reform school. At the school she meets another young woman who introduces her to a brothel director, and from that point on Jessie follows a life of prostitution. The fictional autobiography recounts

Jessie's rise and fall as a professional.

Carroll and Graf also publishes an edition of The

Memoirs of Josephlne. the original title according to the 1931 Kinsey Library volume being The Memoirs of

JQS&phl.oa. Mutzenbacher: The Story a£. a. Viennese

Prostitute. The first edition of this German work was published in 1906; a curious unprovable bit of folklore gives children's fiction writer Felix Salten (Bambl> as the author of this volume (The Pr1vate Case 54). The 10 text presents Josephine as an aging prostitute looking back over her life, from her sexually precocious childhood in the slums of Vienna to her present situation as a wealthy woman.

Madeleine, the narrator of the Memoirs of M a d e l e i n e . is one of the few American-born characters in early twentieth-century erotic fictional autobiography. Her two-volume tale begins with Madeleine's youth in

Plattsburg, New York, and takes readers through her adventures as the madame of an exclusive Parisian brothel. Born "Louise*' and raised by strict parents,

Madeleine gets her first taste of the outside world when she secretly reads Frank Norris's MacTeague in high school.

A three-volume account of one woman's experiences as an actress in turn-of-the-century London can be found in the Kinsey Library's Confessions g.ei0fi,sis Hunt.

Gershon Legman considers this rare work to be an authentic autobiography, an opinion apparently based on the amount of erotic folklore it contains.7 Nemesis

Hunt (who claims her father's name was Mike) attributes her naturally amorous nature to the fact that she is half French. That she grew up quickly, she claims, led to her quick discovery of sex. The narrator of this 11

particular text dictates her life story to her devoted

secretary Gladys! who adds much of her own life story to

the narrative.

Autobiography provides the means for organizing the

fictional experience of these novels. Although they are

fictive works, these first-person accounts of women's

lives, told in sexual terms, give readers an Intimate

view of female sexuality. M o s t of the works in the

class to which they belong, however, have been shelved

away as pulp fiction and dismissed under the general

heading of pornography. When they are studied, very few critics focus on how particular pornographic texts

figure into the novel tradition; most analysis attempts to establish the "differentness" of pornography. No one has yet explored the Inner workings of these erotic

fictional autobiographies yet they display a technical complexity which demands critical reading and deserves further study.

One might suppose that popular literature such as erotic fiction would have simple narrative techniques; after all, mass appeal fiction only occasionally experiments with artistry and innovation. Norman N.

Holland and Leona F. Sherman discuss the response elicited by another popular genre, the gothic novel; 12

“Now how simple it would be if we could say that the

combination of castle, maiden-in-distress, family

secrets, and seductive rakes dictates response and so

guarantees the gothic effect!" (215). Describing any

genre through its recognizable machinery indicates what

might distinguish one type from another, but it does not

explain what makes a text effective.

Pornography can be seen simply as a type which has a

protagonist, usually female, losing her virginity and

participating in a variety of sexual activities with a

variety of people in a variety of places. This plot

simplicity satisfies readers' basic expectations. The

gothic novel has a castle and a rake, the mystery a

central riddle and solution, the pornographic novel

sexual encounters. But Holland and Sherman continue

their discussion with an emphasis on the readers' role:

“Fiction is not the cause but the means by which writers

create and readers re-create an experience. Novels do

not have emotions— people do" (.216). In other words, it

takes something beyond the writer-created formulaic nymphomaniac to make the text pornographic. The writer must draw the reader into the text with more than the mention of a few body parts and must keep the reader there with more than chandelier-swinging. The writer 13

must create a world that will seduce the reader. The

machinery distinguishes the text, but it does not cause

the reader's response to the text. Pornography asks

readers to do what no other literature asks: to respond

to writing sexually as well as emotionally and

intellectually. The physical response to erotic writing

goes beyond laughter or tears to sexual excitement, from

feelings of arousal to masturbation. The rhetorical

strategies necessary for those effects are in no way

slmple.

This study challenges the supposition that

pornography needs no explication. By examining specific aspects of specific texts, I will demonstrate that effective erotic writing requires more than sexual

language and a few gymnastics. Furthermore, I will show through an examination of Eveline. Confessions q £_ on.

English Halil. Memoirs clL Josephine. Memoirs ol_ Madame

Madeleine, and the Confessions q£_ Nemesis HuHlL that post-Cleland erotic fictional autobiography merits serious scholarly attention. And I will challenge also the traditional idea that pornography is for male readers only.

Chapter 1 provides a preliminary gloss for the study, describing the previous work which has explained and evaluated pornographic writing. I do not Judge the quality of these works; generally, I have chosen to describe those studies which discuss pornography in a serious, positive way whether or not I agree with the particulars of the writer's approach to the subject matter. I do not discuss those materials which dismiss pornography as immoral, indecent, or obscene on sociological, psychological, or legal grounds. To devote much energy to such critiques would limit my discussion to an a priori defense of pornography and essentially defeat my objective of closely examining the writing. I have also restricted the scope of this review to those works which address pornography on a literary basis in order to establish the pattern of the scholarship.

The textual analysis begins with a discussion of the narrative's structural framework, the skeleton of the text. The narrator in erotic fictional autobiography speaks directly to readers, guiding them through her sexual narrative with the voice of experience. But the very nature of the intimate voice restricts the narrator's movement and knowledge, forcing the writer to introduce different means to deal with those limitations. Chapter 2 discusses how these writers limitations. Chapter 2 discusses how these writers overcame the restrictions of a first-person viewpoint with framed narratives, embedded personal narratives and anecdotes, reported dialogues, and the narrator's personal asides. These metafictinnal devices are often reflexive, allowing writers to comment on the discourse i tself .

Because of its emphasis on women, the erotic fictional autobiography will allow me to explore the female character in literature primarily written and read by men. Since this particular kind of fiction relies on the female narrator's own voice to tell the story, I will be able to examine closely the whole phenomenon of a male writer using a female voice to tell

(mostly) other men about female sexual experiences.

Chapter 3 focuses on the narrator in autobiographical fiction. After discussing the first-person point of view I explore why this particular narrative technique, while engaging and compelling, cannot alone establish the text's realism. Writers of erotic fictional autobiography use several devices— particularly in the prefatory sections of their books— to reinforce the realism and to draw readers into the texts. The first- person point of view thus gives the narrative an 16 authoritative voice, establishing the narrator as a woman who speaks from personal experience, and the prefatory materials reinforce that authority.

Chapter 4 emphasizes the intimate, guiding voice of the woman who tells about her sexual experiences. This chapter explores the psychological strategy needed to draw readers into the textual world. The techniques which writers of erotic fictional autobiography use to accomplish this seduction include a purposeful paucity of physical detail to describe the narrator, illustrative examples to establish the narrator's character, and extended analogies and metaphors to replace or underscore descriptions of genitalia.

Finally, after considering narrators specifically and readers generally, I will focus, in chapter 5, on the readers of works of erotic fiction. The crafting of these works seems to reveal the writers' deliberate designs about audience. The choice of a first-person narrator, a concern with "realism," and a predictably female voice suggest that the writers have a particular reader in mind. The narrator speaking from personal experience invites us to believe as "authentic" what she has seen and done. Such authenticity inspires trust so that what is actual in the narrator's world becomes 17

potential In ours; sexual fantasy requires possibility.

The fact that these books are "memoirs," "confessions," and "histories" reinforces the "reality" of what the

narrators tell us. And any concern with belief

necessarily directs our attention to audience.

What do these texts suggest about readers? Is this fiction strictly a male phenomenon— written by men for men? If that is the case, are women excluded from ever enjoying this sort of pornography? Is the sense that women have no place in the reading audience of pornography based on anything in the texts or on the view of pornography as a male-oriented fiction? In other words, have we come to accept that pornography is for men only in much the same way that we have been told for years that enjoyment of sex is for men only? The result of this particular view is that a great deal of sexual writing does focus on "male" fantasies such as fetishism.

The particular kind of sexual writing that I will examine in this study no doubt has been read by more men than women primarily because men have access to the material and more freedom to read it. Women generally do not buy pornography since it requires visiting bookshops that do not welcome female visitors 16 graciously. Reading pornography has traditionally been a "masculine" activity. That a woman would not want to read about a female character's bondage or rape is understandable. But not all pornography is about abuse.

The kind of sexual writing I examine here focuses on female characters who actively engage in various sexual escapades but never against their will (and usually at their initiation).

My guiding purpose in this work is twofold; to demonstrate the technical complexity of this material with the goal of showing that pornography should not be dismissed as artless writing; and to bring to the attention of readers, particularly female readers, a type of pornographic writing which promotes women not as victims but as beings who desire and achieve sexual satisfaction. Erotic fictional autobiography is entertaining sexual fiction, and I think that men and women can enjoy its subtlety, honesty, humor, and sex. 19

Notes

'‘Cartland's comment appears In an article about the

popularity of the romance novel and Cartland’s reign as

queen of the genre. Pornography is not the central

Issue in this discussion, but Cartland certainly has

definite convictions about her role as a romance writer

in a world of pornography and feminism. Arturo

Gonzalez, "Barbara Cartland's factory of fantasy,"

Inquirer: The. Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. 31 May

1987: 25.

-“The scene is in Lisa Alther* s Ki nf 1 icks (New York:

Knopf, 1975). Ginny, the protagonist, has married Ira

Bliss after the death of her female lover, Eddie. Ira

is frustrated because he cannot satisfy Ginny sexually.

At his suggestion they try several "different" approaches to sexual intercourse; one in particular

Involves hanging handcuffed, while nude, over an oak beam in their living room. Ginny*s arm cannot take the weight, they both kick over their chairs, and Ira drops the handcuff key: the scene is far from pornographic, but they certainly are in the air <376-383). -'Several critics have discussed the relationship between, romance and pornography. Ann Barr Snitow, for instance, argu^es that "the sexually charged atmosphere that bathes the Harlequin heroine is essentially pornographic" ("Mass Market Romance: Pornography for

Women is Different," Powers q £ Desire, eds. Ann Snitow,

Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson [New York:

Monthly Review, 19833: 255>. Kay Mussell— in Fantasy and. ReconclIllation (Westport: Greenwood, 1964)— says that sexual explicitness in romance novels began in the seventies with writers such as Rosemary Rogers, Lolah

Burford, and Kathleen Voodiwiss. But while language may be freer in some of these novels than in standard romance novels, the assumptions remain the same: a protagonist may not be damned for sexual experience, but she certainly will suffer. The sexuality in these novels, according to Mussell, must be examined metaphorically and contextually, for as she sees it, the sex scenes show more than Just sex; there is a dramatization of male dominance and female repression at work as wel1 .

‘r"' Night porters" refers to The Ni ght Porter, a film starring Charlotte Rampling, who portrays a character 21

Involved In a sexually ambiguous sadomasochistic ire 1 at i onship.

f,In The Horn Book (New Hyde Park: University Books,

1964), Gershon Legman discusses the bibliographic problems associated with identifying the "erotic autobiographies and private poetic ejaculations of amateurs" <24). Legman writes that because reputations tend to suffer in the Anglo-American literary tradition when an author is associated with any pornographic writing, "the principal erotic autobiographies and autobiographical fantasies in English have been published only in the most restricted editions" <26). I think f1ctlonal autobiography is more descriptive than fantasy and for that reason the kind of first-person erotic fictions I discuss will be referred to as erotic fictional autobiography.

^Grove Press and Carroll and Graf currently publish some 50 traditional erotic fic lonal autobiographies such as those under consideration. Dell distributes an anonymously-authored series called "Dreams and

Fantasies" published by Richard Gallen's Emerald Books.

Dell promotes the series as autobiographies of beautiful heroines; they are modern women who live fast-paced, sexually active lives. These books have initial prints 22 between 50,000 and 100,000 copies. The "Dreams and

Fantasies" series borrows its format from the erotic fictional autobiographies I am discussing; these modern narrators follow, essentially, in the footsteps of Fanny

Hill. (Publication figures taken from George Blooston,

"Soft Porn in Soft Covers," Publishers Veekly 10 Sept.

1982: 60-63.>

'-'Legman writes in The Horn Book that the three volumes of The Confesslons of. Nemesis Hunt were

"apparently written by an Englishwoman connected with the theatre" (26). He also refers to the text as a

"particularly rare erotic autobiography written by a woman," calling attention to the "Jokes unexpectedly interspersed" throughout (485). CHAPTER I

A SURVEY OF RECENT PORNOGRAPHY STUDIES

There Is no such thing as a moral or an

immoral book. Books are well written, or

badly written. That is all.

— Oscar Vilde, Preface to

Xke. Picture q£ Dorian Gray

"For as long as man has had literature," David Loth claims, "he had pornography but most of the time didn't know it" <42). Greek, Roman, Renaissance Italian and early English writers— all, Loth claims, wrote freely about sexual love in such classics as Lvslstrata. The

Art of Love. the Decameron. and the Canterbury Tales.

And it seems, also, that for as long as we have had pornography we have had critics of it. Criticism of pornography is not a Judeo-Christian phenomenon. The

Republic includes Plato’s fourth-century B.C. discussion of the need for careful regulation of all communication. Socrates threw the poets out, mostly because of the "lies" told to young people about the

23 24

sexual dalliances of the gods— particularly the

"immoral" stories of Hesiod and Homer.

Critics have judged pornography on morals and style, sometimes championing, sometimes rejecting the literature for the same reasons. In the following brief review of pornography studies, I shall cover how critics deal with pornography as literature. Many scholarly materials deal with sex in literature, hut I concentrate on those which focus specifically on the

Anglo-American tradition and which offer new perspectives or substantial arguments about pornography, Most of the studies I discuss assume that pornography is a legitimate area of investigation.

However, before looking at the research on pornography, we must recognize several problems with the primary texts which all studies of pornography must face.

As Gershon Legman points out in The Horn Book, good bibliographies of erotica exist in every language except English, making the study of Anglo-American erotica particularly difficult (46). General bibliographies, such as Ralph Ginzburg's 1958 An

Unhurried View ofL Erotica. list in limited space

"choice" examples of erotic writing. This often results in simple outlines of one person's favorite 25

books (or those that happen to have come to his or her

attention), although, in Ginzburg's case, he claims

that he will be examining some ”2000 titles of

classical erotica in the English language" (20). One

weakness of bibliography is that compilers who are not

very conscientious about what they record perpetuate

misconceptions about pornography collections.

Ginzburg's study, for example, reinforces the folklore

that has developed about the Vatican's extensive

pornography collection and the legends about armed

guards protecting the erotica in the Library of

Congress.1

Frank Hoffmann's Analytleal Survey of Angln-

Amerlcan Tradltlonal Erotica provides a good motif

index of Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph's field

collections of erotica, but does not have any real

scholarly value. Hoffmann's index was designed to

supplement a standard folklore research tool, Stith

Thompson's Motif- Index oX. Folk: Literature. an

impressive five—volume resource which includes

bibliographic citations. Thompson explains why he

included only nine entries in the section titled "Humor concerning sex": "Thousands of obscene motifs in which there is no point except the obscenity itself might 26

logically come at this point, but they are entirely

beyond the scope of the present work" <514). Perhaps

Thompson was not comfortable with the subject, or it

may not have interested him, or, perhaps, he recognized the enormousness of the task, but he had the foresight to leave space (sections X700 through X799) for another to complete the task.

Of value is Hoffmann's selected descriptive bibliography of formal literature (100-125). The list provides a good sampling of erotica but cites few of the works in the motif index, choosing to concentrate instead on the traditional materials found in

Randolph's collections and Krvptadia. a curious turn- of-the-century erotica collection. Admittedly,

Hoffmann is working as a folklorist, but the index would be more useful to the erotica scholar if it included examples of the use of traditional material in formal literature.

The 1981 publication of Patrick Kearney's bibliography of the British Library's private case collection provides a careful list of every title and includes title-page descriptions of multiple copies.

Gershon Legman's intelligent preface adds the finishing touch to one of the best bibliographies of erotic 27

literature. A similar canprehenslve bibliography of

the holdings of the Kinsey Library would make that

invaluable collection more accessible, but currently scholars must rely on an in—house card catalog (and a superb librarian-') if they wish to draw on this

American resource.

The British Library collection indexed by Kearney's bibliography was made possible in part by the life-long collecting and annotating career of Henry Spencer

Ashbee. Ashbee's nineteenth-century bibliographies, published under the pseudonym Pisanus Fraxi, are excellent resources. Ashbee describes in three volumes— Index ULJsrar.UJa Prohibltorum. Centuria Librorum

Absconditorua, and Catena Librorum Tacendorum— those books which he has seen. He does not claim to make a record of everything written and he does not simply select the books he likes. Ashbee annotates his entries for works which have passed through his hands, and, he being a book dealer, that proved to be an extensive number.

Although a professional bookman like Ashbee was able to find a great many texts, the single most frustrating problem in erotica research is locating texts, either because copies no longer exist or because 28

the bibliographic information on them is inexact or

contradictory and cannot be relied upon in identifying

individual titles. The problem exists primarily in

pre-twentieth-century pornography, but rare editions of

pornographic works from the 1920's and 1930's are also

quite difficult to locate. Organized censors or guilt-

ridden readers are among the chief destroyers of

pornographic texts. An entry from Samuel Pepys' diary

illustrates the fate of one such book:

We sang till almost night, and drank my good

store of wine; and then they parted and I to my

chamber where I did read through L* escholle des

Filles Ca pornographic French novel]; a lewd

book, but what doth me no wrong to read for

information sake Cbut it did hazer my prick para

stand all the while, and una vez to decharger);

and after I had it, I burned it. . . . C59>

Although read and enjoyed by this seventeenth-century eclectic chronicler, that particular volume was never read by another.

Many works of pornography were (and are) published either anonymously or pseudonymously, for obvious reasons. The Memoirs of. Madge Buford.. according to the title page, was written by "D’Arcy St John, esq." 29

Often included on the title page of The Meirml rs of a.

Russian Frlncess is the information that Katoumbab

Pasha compiled and arranged the text. Confessions of

an English Maid. depending on the copy, may be

attributed to "Jessie" or to "Gilbert San Martin," or

it may be anonymous. The point is this: without

benefit of substantial listings in the National Uni on

Catalog, the Short-Title Catalogue. or the Dictionary

Qi- Anonymous ami Pseudonymous English Literature, the scholar who wishes to locate pornographic texts to collate for analysis must rely on the few insufficient, specialized bibliographies.

Scholars and critics have, over the years, tried to define, defend, denigrate, and delineate sexual writing. There exists little agreement about pornography among the scholarly and critical camps, since political, sociological, psychological, and literary perspectives do not always overlap in purpose or conclusion. Such studies have, however, created a history of pornography, a history that at times seems mainly a record of points of disagreement. Many may bemoan the existence of this form of writing, but those who study it have fixed it firmly in our literary tradition, even if that position is only on the 30

margins. Most, but certainly not all, examinations of

pornography seem to emphasize the historical, literary,

or feminist perspective. However, new critical methods

have offered revisions to these traditional ways of

viewing pornography.

Scholars devote much energy to defining categories

of sexual literature. This drive to define and

categorize such an ambiguous genre arises from what I

believe is the scholars* defensive need to justify

studying a subject that falls outside of the canonical

mainstream. By establishing a reason for calling the

material “erotic" instead of "pornographic" or by

demonstrating that a certain subset of writing somehow

exhibits more literariness than the rest, scholars seem

to be indicating that they do Indeed know the

difference between good and bad writing. And, having

appeased that nagging guilt, they can set aside their

insecurities about working outside of the canon and get

on with their task.

David Loth's study, The Erotic in Literaturef demonstrates how one scholar deals with a controversial subject; he treats it both academically and casually, as the subtitle of his work indicates: A. Historical

Survey of. Pornography as. Delightful as fi_ is 31

Indiscreet - Loth takes the historical perspective most common to examinations of pornography in the Anglo-

American tradition; it does not focus specifically on definition but rather argues that while we have always had pornography, attitudes about such writing have changed. Loth sets out "to explore the manners and customs which permitted our ancestors to enjoy writings about sex which had both grace and truth" and concludes with an exploration of "how it came to pass that Joy and beauty were driven from such writings" (10).

Loth's approach is standard; he draws from a wide range of sources— representative texts from classical western literature, the Italian and English Renaissance, eighteenth-century and Victorian English literature, and modern American and English literature.

Comprehensive historical surveys such as Loth's and

John Atkins's Sex in Literature allow the writers to explore a variety of literature across the centuries, but such studies also tend to be idiosyncratic. Where

Loth chooses to emphasize the legal consequences of repressed prurience, Atkins examines attitudes about sexual behaviors; he is more interested in sexual activity than in sexual effect or purpose in writing.

Atkins dismisses the dilemma of definition as a 32

hopeless entanglement in narrow-mindedness, choosing

Instead to divide up eroticism thematically. He

considers, for example, how literature renders the male

"body, the female body, intercourse, kissing, and

masturbation. Examining various manifestations of the

erotic impulse in literature gives Atkins the

opportunity to cite copious examples from cu1tura11y

diverse folklore (he uses the word "primitives") and

1iterature.

Vayland Young bases his study Eros Denied on the

premise that understanding exclusion is the key to

understanding sexual literature. Young examines words,

images, actions, and people in order to comprehend why

our culture often excludes sex from what is considered

normal in society. Young explores sex in western

culture historically; the study culminates with his

suggestion that sexual love must be made an acceptable

part of our society, not something outside of a

prescribed, closed circle of morality.

In Young's scheme, five categories organize western sexual writing. The first is comic sexual literature such as Voltaire's erotic satires. Next is what Young calls perverse, that sort of writing which deals with sexual "oddity," such as the work of the Marquis de 33

Sade. The third category is "haptic-convulsive"

writing, which emphasizes genitals and the mechanics of

sex. This category differs from the next category, the

all-out pornographic, what Young also calls

masturbatory literature. Finally, there is celebratory

sexual writing which emphasizes "normal" sexual context

authorial intention, a method of analysis John Atkins

objects to strongly, for as he sees it, "Who is to look

into the mind of the author? Everyone sees what his

prejudices dictate" CSex in Literature. 10). Although

his arbitrary categories overlap and are subjective,

Young still claims the necessity of ordering the

material for study. Young's categories do carry some

implied judgments about the material as well, but at

least he avoids making blatant statements about certain

types being "better" than others.

Rather than attempting to distinguish the familiar

terms of erotica and pornography or to create new terms

for invented categories, Michael Perkins in The Secret

Record automatically assumes that there Is a genre

called erotic fiction, and he sets out to order that

genre according to qualitative distinctions based on how closely the authors adhere to the standard formula 34

of the genre. Perkins does not hesitate to Judge his material. The highest quality erotica is that which makes more use of imagination than of formula; an example of a work at this level is Nabokov's Lolita.

Of course, there has to be a "formula"— something from which to depart— in order to judge the imagination of the author and such imaginative writers depend on their readers knowing that formula. The lowest quality is found in the purely formulaic works, which rely on standard sexual portrayals with little creativity in the presentation. Perkins's estimation of erotica relies on classics, those works which are considered part of a literary tradition. (These texts are esteemed by the academy: studied seriously, edited seriously, housed in n u m libraries. > Perkins seems to want his readers to know that he is a critic of good taste who happens to be studying pornography.

Susan Sontag also relies on literary evaluation to make a qualitative assessment of pornography. In "The

Pornographic Imagination," an essay which addresses the question of artistic pornography, she argues for works which seem to her to differ from "trash" pornography.

Among the works she considers are Pierre Louys's Trols

Pi lies dfi. leur Mere. Georges Bataille's Hlstolre 35

1'Qe11 and Madame Edwarda. Pauline R6age's The Story of

Q, and the anonymous The T mage. Sontag argues that from an artistic standpoint these works "occupy a much higher rank as literature than Candy or Oscar Vilde's

Teleny or the Earl of Rochester's Sodom or

Apollinaire's The Debauched Hospodar or Cleland's Fanny

Hill" (205). She wants to examine some pornographic books as "interesting and important works of art," escaping the restrictive analysis that treats pornography "as only a social and psychological phenomenon" (207).

Sontag's argument about pornographic works as art rather than trash derives from her perception that "art is a form of consciousness" (212). A pornographic work must be judged according to the originality, thoroughness, authenticity, and power incarnated in that work, not on the basis of a superimposed consciousness, one more comfortable with a different reality than the one created by the artist; this is why

Sontag calls for a critical awareness of a specifically designated pornographic imagination.

Steven Marcus, on the other hand, argues— in what has become a standard text in the study of sexual literature, The QtJaer Victorians— that "pornography is 36

not literature" (278>. Marcus examines a particular

historical period, mid-nineteenth—century England.

Combining Freudian psychology with literary analysis,

Marcus explores the language and worldview of a few

texts to conclude that Victorians devoted considerable

thought to sex but that the writing about sex does not

have much real-world merit. Marcus studies the work of

Villiam Acton and Henry Spencer Ashbee as well as the

anonymous classic My Secret Life to arrive at the

concept of "pornotopia," his term for the male utopian

fantasy presented in pornographic writing. Marcus sees

pornography as anti-literature, as writing with the

single intention of arousing male lust.

According to Roger Thompson's definition in Unf it

for Modest Ears, a three-part study of the sexual

material written or published in England between 1650

and 1700, pornographic writing is "intended to arouse

lust, create sexual fantasies or feed auto-erotic

desires." Obscene writing intends "to shock or disgust" (ix>, bawdy works "provide amusement about sex" (x), and erotic literature places "sex within the context of love" . These divisions matter because

Thompson's study of seventeenth-century sexual writing

focuses on cultural and social issues. Authorial 37

intentions and reader responses figure significantly in

Thompson's examination.

Recent studies of pornography and sexuality, such

as those by Michel Foucault, Murray Davis, Alan Sable,

and Valter Kendrick, re-examine sexual writing from

less traditional viewpoints influenced primarily by

post—structuralist criticism. In volume 1 of The

History of Sexuality. Foucault explores the

relationship between sex and power, specifically why we have repressed sexual discourse. Foucault discusses sexuality as discourse, examining the effects of speaking about a subject that is forbidden. Such an open transgression upsets established law. To transgress anticipates the release of repressed sexuality, the release of repressed discourse which has governed western attitudes about sexuality.

Murray Davis, in Smut. looks at sex from a specifically non-Freudian perspective, choosing to see sex not as instinctual but experiential. In his phenomenological view, sexual arousal changes how we see and experience the world. Using pornography as his source material, Davis explores the differing concepts of "everyday reality" and "erotic reality" as individual experience and social interpretation. He 38

concludes that; "no sexual activity is obscene in

itself, but only in relation to a particular ideology"

(238). Filename no logi ca 1 ly, sexual experience becomes

obscene when erotic reality differs considerably from everyday reality; furthermore, as Davis points out,

ideologically, "sexual experience can actually be obscene only when erotic reality disrupts a particular

interpretive grid, one that reifies everyday reality

into rigid and brittle elements and relations" (238-

239). Pornography upsets many people, according to

Davis's study, because it portrays sex as something that has potential power, something that can get out of control and disrupt the world.

The Secret Museum. Walter Kendrick's 1987 study of pornography in modern culture, is a revisionist historical examination of pornography's place in society. Kendrick's particular focus is on the historical prevalence of regulation, "the urge to regulate the behavior of those who seem to threaten the social order" (235). According to Kendrick, all cultures distinguish the public from the private, the proper from the improper, but nineteenth—century

England really invented the concept of pornography.

Kendrick considers classical works (pornography's most 39

plentiful source until the nineteenth century),

classical ruins (also often blatantly sexual), and the

political intricasies of feminist anti—pornography

measures. The possibility of blanket censorship must

be examined carefully, for, as Kendrick demonstrates,

such extreme measures are not new phenomena and often

have had signicant ramifications. Kendrick believes

that contemporary western society is in a post-

pornographic era and we must review the history of

regulation if we are to avoid fighting the same battles

again.

In Pornography. Alan Soble is also concerned with

contemporary feminist arguments. As Soble points out,

what some feminists seem to be opposed to is violent

pornography, but they tend to condemn all of it because

it fails to depict sex with intimacy. Feminists, as

Soble points out, have had to condemn pornography

"almost against their better judgment" <152). Soble

outlines the feminist arguments against pornography,

citing the four main objections as sexist content,

questionable effects, exploitative production, and

manipulated consumption, Soble then responds from a

Marxist perspective. In a communist society, he says, eliminating economic exploitation would remove 40

degrading production methods, and abrogating sexual division of labor would eliminate sexist content in pornography. As a result of this equality, producers

would not manipulate male consumers with their

products. The problem is not pornography per se, then,

but pornography in a society that commodifies sex.

Pointing out inequalities and exploitation is one thing; calling for the complete elimination of a particular kind of literature is quite another. Anti­ pornography campaigns have aligned such disparate groups as radical lesbian separatists and religious fundamentalists, each group arguing on different grounds for the same effect: banishment of sexually explicit and/or exploitative writing. Some feminist critics argue that pornography exploits women because it portrays women as passive, inarticulate victims in a male-oriented sexual world.

In 11 Histoi re d ' O: The Construction of a Female

Subject," Kaja Silverman considers the subjective presentation of women in pornography and "the exclusion of the female subject from the discourses which produce her" <327). Silverman argues that the discourse of pornography "dramatizes with unusual clarity the disjunction between the speaking (male) subject and the 41

spoken (female) subject" (327). Men hold the speaking

position of power and knowledge, women, the spoken

position, the one "brought into existence through the

existence of powei— knowledge" <326). This discourse

defines and establishes women according to genital

configurations; and women, the sub1ects. have nothing

to do with the production. But since female subjectivity is a construction, Silverman argues, it

can change. To accomplish this, the female must alter

her relation to the discourse.

Susan Kappeler also challenges pornography's female

images in The Pornography of Representation. This work establishes pornography as a feminist issue based on the fact that "women are the object of pornographic representation" <18). Kappeler challenges studies of pornography which stress sexual discourse as practice and not as representation in words or images. Kappeler and Silverman call attention to the objectified presentation of women in sexual prose fiction; this

image of woman as the fantasy-created object of male desire is one of feminism's central anti-pornography issues.

A different feminist argument appears in "Uncoding

Mama: The Female Body as Text," Robert Scholes*s 42

discussion of Cleland's Fanny HI11, Freud’s Three

Essays OS. Sexuality, and Lawrence's Ladv Chatterley's

Lover. Scholes indicates his primary interest is as a

semiotician, not as a feminist, but his argument

significantly considers the image of the female body in

male-authored writing. Scholes* serai otic reading of

three male-authored texts reveals a particular re­

writing of the female body to satisfy the author's own

particular fantasies. A central part of Scholes'

discussion is the revision of female physiology:

Cleland relocated the clitoris, essentially making it

invisible; Freud ordered the clitoris to cease to

exist; Lawrence tried to erase its importance from

female sexuality by emphasizing the phallus.

Scholes also discusses the erotic code of Fanny

Hi11, emphasizing the phallo-centric utopia that

Cleland created, a world where a woman can be satisfied

sexually only by a powerfully built man. Scholes*s

argument is not anti-pornography; although he analyzes

sexual writing and finds discrepancies between female physiology and male authors' codings of that physiology, he does not dismiss the writing or the genre. He analyzes and evaluates, but does not condemn or call for silence. Without recommending the complete 43

annihilation of pornography, Scholes manages to call particular aspects of it into question.

In a strong feminist challenge to the anti­ pornography campaign, "Feminism, Moral ism, and

Pornography," Ellen Willis underscores the danger of some current feminist thinking: "By playing games with the English language, anti—porn activists are managing to rationalize as feminism a single-issue movement divorced from any larger political context and rooted in conservative moral assumptions that are all the more dangerous for being unacknowledged" <462>. Defining pornography as the enemy, Willis warns, may "make a lot of women ashamed of their sexual feelings and afraid to be honest about them" (462). Willis further challenges feminists who try to code their arguments in rhetoric, essentially associating pornography with male lust and erotica with romantic love—filled relationships. This distinction, Willis cogently argues, really comes down to distinctions between "masculine" and "feminine," between emphasizing organs or relationships. The anti- pornography campaign may have a serious backlash if it leads to anti-sex, which, as Willis points out, seems to be the direction it is taking. 44

Agreement among Marxists, feminists, seraioticlans,

phenomenologists, historians, and Freudians is not

easily accomplished, regardless of the subject matter

under consideration. In pornography criticism,

approaches and evaluations often differ tremendously,

but critics share a common ground as they dare to treat

an ostracized literature seriously. Anti-pornography

campaigns endanger more than just access to sexual

literature for critics, and those who seriously examine

this material realize that pornography has a legitimate

right to exist if writers wish to write it and readers

wish to read it.

In addition to sharing this point of view, I

approach this study with a few assumptions: that

pornographic literature is writing which contains

sexually explicit language and/or descriptions, is read

mostly by men but also by women, and is not in itself a

destructive force in society. I cannot place myself

completely i n any one cri t i cal camp, and I borrow

elements from all of them in order to approach

pornography from a reader response point of view.

Pornography does not work as pornography unless it affects its readers. To examine how the text shapes the reader's response seems to me to be the most 45

promising method of analysis if we are to consider seriously the power of this writing. 46

Notes

‘According to Ralph Ginzburg in An Unhurried View

Of- Erotica. "The world's foremost collection I of

erotica] reposes in "the Library of Vatican in Rome. It

includes 25,000 volumes and some 100,000 prints . .

(103); and, "In this respect, the collection of erotica

in tne Vatican Library is probably most accessible to

the non-professional bibliophile . . . The Library of

Congress in Washington, commendably, is America’s most

liberal library in this respect. It will issue an

erotic work to anyone over sixteen years of age, though an armed guard will be assigned to stand over the

reader's shoulder, ready to shoot if the book is

mutilated" (107—108), Gershon Legman In The Horn Book contends that the Vatican has no truly erotic books and no erotic pictures (94).

-When I studied at the Kinsey Institute in 1986,

Gwendolyn Pershing provided valuable assistance.

EReader—response criticism has its origins in anti-

New Criticism debates. By this view, understanding literature requires an examination of the results, the 47

effects, of literature. Meaning conies from the

reader* s perception. Theoretically, one may be a

structuralist or a deconstructionlst and still focus on

the reader and on interpretation. I emphasize in this

study the importance of the reader’s response to

pornographic writing, and I examine the texts for the techniques which shape that response. CHAPTER II

THE NARRATIVE SKELETON

Erotic literature exists because it serves an

important need. This need is twofold: the

education of the inexperienced young, and the

excitation of the impotent or old.

— Gershon Legman, The Horn Book

How much enlightenment does not the world owe to

private Journals and how many of them were ever

Intended to see the light?

- - M e m o i r s q £_ a. Russian

No matter how compelling the voice of a narrator may be in an erotic fictional autobiography, maintaining narrative consistency presents a difficult problem for writers. Keeping the central action erotic throughout the narrative is not easy when the point of view is restricted to a single character. However skillfully the sexually active women of erotic fictional autobiography may describe the many events of

48 49

their own lives, they can know and do only so much and

still maintain credibility. An inexperienced young

girl, for instance, cannot participate in a sexual

encounter in the same way as a mature woman. Or a

narrator, for example, may be unable to appear in every

sexual episode.

To overcome the spatial and experiential

limitations which first-person narrative imposes,

writers of erotic fictional autobiography use

techniques such as framed narratives, embedded

narratives and anecdotes, reported dialogues, and

personal asides. These structural devices, while

allowing the writer to interrupt the protagonist's

story without drawing too much attention to the break

in the narration, also increase the narrative's depth

and texture by introducing, occasionally, other

narrative voices without detracting from the primary speaker's presence. In brief, these devices allow the writers to keep the action consistently erotic and entertaining without requiring the narrator to be in every scene or to tell every story.

These devices also add a reflexive dimension to the narrative by commenting about the text withi n the text, adding a "meta" dimension to the fiction. Meta- 50

erotica, as I have chosen to call this particular

phenomenon, is related to contemporary " roetaf ict ion" 1

hut resembles more closely "metafolklore," what Alan

Dundes calls "folkloristic statements about folklore"

(409>.^ While many of the Jokes and stories found in

erotic texts stand alone as entertainment or

information, they add another dimension to the text

when they are embedded in the first—person narrative.

They are not only part of the narrative; they go beyond

it to comment on the nature of erotica.

For example, a writer may embed a narrative in the main narrative by having someone tell a story to the narrator. The narrator, as she "writes" about her

life, includes the story. The narrator can also relate jokes or anecdotes that she has heard from other characters. When writers set up framed narratives, they have the narrator describe what she observes; she stands removed from the scene and reports what she sees. Narrators can also report directly rather than describe dialogues in which they participated, and they can, in the course of telling about the events of their lives, take time out for personal asides, reflections about particular matters that interest them and their audiences. 51

These devices perform several important roles as

meta-narration. On one level, they can be used

functionally to educate the protagonist and

roetaerotleal1y to educate the reader about what is

erotic; or a narratorial use of embedded traditional

material (i.e., a joke) may serve as a mechanical means

of releasing tension in a scene while at the same time

netaerotically giving the reader a sense of bawdy

humor' s role. Embedded and framed narratives permit

boundary crossing by giving writers the freedom to

include descriptions of activities that could alienate

the readers' sympathies for the protagonist (i.e., the

narrator might describe a lesbian scene or report a

friend's story about incest, but the writer may not

wish to involve the narrator sexually in a "taboo” area). As Susan Stewart points out, "Framing implies metacommunication, for the organization of signification depends upon the use of signifying systems as well as communication about the nature of the signifying systems" (21-22). A framed narrative not only entertains readers but also communicates to readers something about the subject (i.e., the narrator) of the narrative. Because readers trust the narrator, they will be guided by her reaction to a 52

story and thus learn about erotica in addition to

experiencing erotica.

In "The Story in the Story: Metanarration in Folk

Narrative," Barbara Babcock defines metacommunication as "any element of communication which calls attention to the speech event as a performance and to the relationship which obtains between the narrator and his audience vis-a-vis the narrative message" <66).

Babcock uses the term "metanarration" to refer specifically to "narrative performance and discourse and to those devices which comment upon the narrator, the narrating, and the narrative both as message and as code" <66>. Vhen writers use framed and embedded narratives in fiction, those narratives call attention to themselves as communication events. The events provide commentary about the primary narrative, and in the case of fictional autobiographies, the commentary concerns erotica. Framed and embedded narratives in first-person erotic discourse function metaerotically; that is, they provide commentary about the erotic text as message and as cade. In these narratives the writers address readers directly about erotica.

The structure of the narrative enables the writer to use these devices without excessive artifice. The 53

formulaic patt.ern of erotic fictional autobiography resembles that of the B1ldungsrnman. the novel of apprenticeship in which a young protagonist undergoes an education and prepares to become a part of society.

The typical novel of the sort I am considering usually begins with the protagonist's account of her youth and her first awareness of sex. The protagonist relies on some external source to learn about sex. This education must occur fairly early in the narrative to maintain readers' interest. The standard means for the precocious innocent to be educated involves her accidental (and sometimes calculated? observation of a couple engaging in sexual intercourse. She watches, safely out of view, and learns the basic rules of sex.

The writer accomplishes this with the use of a framed narrative. The frame allows the writer to create an erotic scene without involving the still sexually inexperienced narrator. The frame around the scene keeps the narrator "innocent" but permits her exposure to sexual activity. She can watch and feel safe while she gains knowledge in much the same comfortable position as that of the reader of the text, and we can also feel comfortable in that no "taboos" have been 54

violated too seriously, as they would if the young girl were to be forced into sex.-'

In Xh£L Confessions Ql_ Nemesis Hunt. for Instance, the initiation scene takes place near the servants' quarters of the youthful narrator's home. By peering through an alcove window, young Nemesis spies on a maid and one of her father's male students ("the only pretty maid the house boasted, and one of the biggest of the senior boys" [7]>. At the time Nemesis does not even have the "proper" words to describe the scene (she likens the boy's penis to a "great nail-less thumb"

C8]>. She does, however, copiously specify what she thinks she sees. More important, Nemesis describes the

"extraordinary sensation" that swept over her as she watched the couple. This scene's significance lies not only in the protagonist's necessary education but in her reaction to the voyeuristic experience; watching the couple stimulates her sexually. The scene educates readers as well, and, along with the narrator, readers experience stimulation: they are doubly stimulated, by the actions of the couple and by the response of the narrator.

Young Eveline spies on the hunchbacked concierge and a young girl before she herself becomes involved 55

with him: "I remained still and looked on. They were

only some ten feet from me. They had no idea of my

presence. He breathed hard and fast" (Eveline 10>.

Madame Madeleine watches her sister Mary and her lover

Bill in a barn, and the scene arouses her (Madeleine

43-46). Stimulated by the voyeurism, Madeleine later

that evening discovers the fine art of masturbation,

the "subtle touches that seemed to come instinctively"

to her (48). Fourteen-yeai— old Pauline watches her

parents make love and gains much from the episode;

. . it was to be my lot to learn so much in one

lesson that I did not require another" (Pau11ne 18),

Lucinda Hartley at age twelve watches her aunt and a

young man make love from a standard voyeuristic spot— a

keyhole (The libertine Enchantress 19—21). From a less

common but nevertheless sufficient perspective, Madge

Buford learns about sex by watching her uncle John and

Meg the servant through a ventilator over a closed door

(Madge Buford 14-15). In "The Voluptuous Confessions

of a French Lady of Fashion," a story from The Boudoir.

the young protagonist spies on her aunt and a young man; from observing the scene and overhearing the conversation, the young woman learns about the sex act, 56

sees mole genitals for the first time, experiences stimulation, and learns about masturbation <117-123).

Perhaps one of the best known voyeuristic scenes in erotic fiction occurs in the classic Maim-H of a. Vnman of Pleasure. Inexperienced Fanny Hill and her clever friend Phoebe enjoy a fine performance between a prostitute named Polly and an Italian gentleman; they witness the event from a calculated vantage point:

At five in the evening, next day, Phoebe,

punctual to her promise, came to me as I sat

alone in my room, and beckon'd me to follow

her.

We went down the back-stairs very softly,

and opening the door of a dark closet, where

there was some old furniture kept, and some

cases of liquor, she drew me in after her, and

fastening the door upon us, we had no light

but what came through a long crevice in the

partition between ours and the light closet,

where the scene of action lay; so sitting on

these low cases, we could, with the greatest

ease as well as clearness, see all objects

(ourselves unseen), only by applying our eyes

close to the crevice .... C28—29) 57

The lengthy description of Fanny's and Phoebe's

observation area gives readers the full picture of the

two as observers; no doubt about their roles as voyeurs

arises. They will not get directly involved In the

scene, but what Fanny tells about what she sees will be

accurate, because she can see "with the greatest ease

as well as clearness." Cleland devotes quite a few

pages to Fanny's first observation of heterosexual sex.

(Phoebe already has introduced Fanny to lesbian sex.)

She describes Polly, the gentleman, and their

lovemaking. Fanny's physical response to the voyeurism

indicates that watching the scene has relieved her

anxiety about men and sex:

adieu all fears of what man could do unto me;

they were now changed into such ardent

desires, such ungovernable longings, that I

could have pull'd the first of that sex that

should present himself, by the sleeve, and

offered him the bauble, which I now imagined

the loss of would be a gain I could not too

soon procure myself. (31-32)

The scene has stimulated her sexual desire, and she turns eagerly to Phoebe for satisfaction. 58

If only by virtue of its adding more scenes to the essentially plotless erotic novels, the framing technique would be worth consideration, but its importance does not end there. The framing does offer the author a way to overcome the limiting first-person narrative. Employing an omniscient narrator who can wander from room to room and from bed to bed and report in detail what she sees would be simpler, but the first-person voice adds a note of realism, authenticity, and immediacy that underscores the erotic text. More than just making the author's task easier, however, the framed scenes offer a reflexive dimension to the text, and that, I think, matters roast when considering this technique.

What happens here is interesting: The protagonists have had their education, so now the texts can focus on their sexual lives. They will, no doubt, lose their virginity within the narrative's next few pages; also the scenes have aroused them. For most protagonists, this is their first experience of sexual stimulation; they may have recognized sexual allure or power in their youthful precocity, but they have not usually experienced any sexual feelings prior to the educational scenes. Nemesis Hunt enjoys an 59

inexplicably extraordinary sensation while she

witnesses the young student's and the maid's

performance. Thoroughly stimulated, Fanny Hill and

Phoebe satisfy their desires immediately after watching

the scene, and Fanny, all fears about sexual

performance relieved, eagerly anticipates her first

encounter with a man. Each girl has discovered her own

sexual nature by witnessing the sexual behavior of

ot hers.

Having taken in the details of both the observed scenes and of the protagonists' arousal, readers also are aroused. Furthermore, readers learn that what they themselves found arousing the protagonist did also Cand

perhaps their arousal is also stimulated by the protagonists' excitement). The narrator's relationship to the framed event parallels the reader's relationship to the text; both are in secure voyeuristic positions.

Headers gain knowledge from the scene and so do the protagonists. The reader watches with the narrator,

listens with the narrator, learns with the narrator, and experiences arousal with the narrator. The reader discovers, along with the narrator, how to operate in the world of the text. 60

Boris Uspensky in ^ Poetics of. Composition points out that "In a work of art, whether it be a work of

literature, a painting, or a work of some other art form, there is presented to us a special world, with

its own space and time, its own ideological system, and

its own standards of behavior," The erotic text, too, invites its readers into a special world governed by its own ideology, a pornographic ideology that asks for the willing suspension of disbelief. As Uspensky points out, the reader, in "relation to that world" assumes "the position of an alien spectator, which is necessarily external." But, and this is the key to understanding how metaerotica can be instructional as well as entertaining, as we become familiar with the special world the text offers "we begin to perceive this world as if from within, rather than from without.

Ve, as readers or observers, now assume a point of view internal to the particular work" (137>.

The reader of the erotic text begins outside of the frame of the sexual-textual world. The narrator's telling of her story draws the reader irto the text as she herself is drawn into the sexual world by observing others actively engaging, participating in that world.

She learns the ideology and the system of behavior 61

first as a closed-off observer outside of the frame.

But soon she herself participates. The reader encounters sex voyeuristica11y ; and just as the narrator must disengage herself from the frame and begin her own adventures, so must the reader participate actively in the reading of the text. The reader's own "adventure" may be imaginative fantasy, masturbation, or sexual intercourse— whatever response the reader chooses to experience. The reader chooses because, just like the narrator, the reader learns about sex and chooses to express that knowledge and desire as he or she wishes. 'x

Framed narratives present scenes, particular events with spatial boundaries that restrict the narrator to the observer's role. Embedded narratives are stories within the main narrative with speakers other than the narrator. The particular kind of embedded narrative which occurs in the erotic fictional autobiography is the personal experience narrative. Folklorists such as

Sandra K. D. Stahl and Amy Shuman'1 have analyzed the personal narrative as a form of storytelling. First­ hand accounts of experiences more often than not follow a standard pattern; the form of the narrative remains constant while the content changes with tellers and 62

contexts. The relationship between text and context

matters in first-person narrative; tellers need

audiences and situations before they can tell stories.

In Language i n the. Inner City, sociolinguist

Villiam Labov explains the usual pattern of the fully

formed personal experience narrative. As the narrative

begins, the teller gives an abstract, presenting the audience with an encapsulated version of the story. If the audience receives the abstract well, the performer then begins the story with an orientation for the

listener; the orientation provides the "who, when, what, where" of the story. As the teller draws the listener into the narrative, the complicating action follows, giving the audience the basic plot of the story, the "what happened next" part of the narrative.

To finish a story, the teller must then give some sense of the event's significance by offering an evaluation

(the "so what" part of the story) and a resolution

("what finally happened">, followed by the coda

(general observations) that signals to the listener that the narrative has ended (Labov 363-369). The traditional form of this narration allows listeners to know what they are hearing so that they may respond properly as an audience. 63

Labov1s formulation helps to explain such

narratives In erotic fictional autobiography. In

Confessions a£_ ail English Maid, one particular personal

experience narrative told to the protagonist functions

metaerotleally. The context of the tale-telling

involves Jessie, the protagonist, and her three

friends, Monty, Zippy, and Carlota. Monty has taken

Jessie, a prostitute he visits regularly, out for a

night of drinking, joke-te11ing, movie-watching, and

story-telling. As the evening progresses, Zippy

suggests that each tell of his or her first sexual

encounter. Carlota agrees to go first.

The story begins with an appropriate abstract as

Carlota tells her audience what to expect in the

narrative: "Until now I have kept the secret of my

misfortune and the circumstances under which my ruin

was accomplished locked in the innermost recesses of my

heart, nor did I think ever to reveal them" <262).

Obviously this will be a sad tale, and this privileged audience will be the first to hear it. The orientation which follows describes Carlota's early life as the only child of wealthy parents; she lived a fairy-tale existence on a beautiful country estate, wandering through the forest, "listening enraptured to the 64

lilting songs of the birds which lived in its green

boughs, gathering a scented flower here and there,

watching the big black and gold bees as they skimmed

the blossoms in their eternal quest" <264>. Until

she was fifteen, Carlota continues, she was as "pure

and innocent as driven snow" <264). Her parents kept

her isolated, shielded from any knowledge of the world.

The complication that gets in the way of Carlota*s

idyllic life appears in the form of a stranger, a young

man who arrives in the woods one afternoon. Carlota*s

lack of worldly wisdom gets her into trouble, for the

young man proceeds to trample her innocence "in the

mire of lust" (265). The personal narrative ends as

Carlota offers the touching evaluation and resolution

of her story; she's not quite sure what happens to her,

but she knows when she feels the pain of penetration

that her virginity has been lost forever.

Carlota*s story, in every respect, shows a good

tale-teller at work. The lengthy narrative of birds and bees and flowers and forests and the strange young man has the usually callous Monty in tears and the

initially skeptical Zippy damning the unprincipled scoundrel. Jessie, however, turns her dry eyes to

Carlota and comments wryly, "That was a beautiful 65

story, Carlota. Now tell us the real one" (270).

Undaunted, Carlota responds: "The real one isn't nearly as beautiful as the one I told you" (271). She then proceeds to tell in much more graphic detail her dalliance with a cousin at the age of twelve; she seduced him.

Personal experience narrative requires that the audience collaborate with the teller to get the full meaning of the telling. As Erving Goffman points out in Frame Analysis. a tale "is not merely any reporting of a past event. In the fullest sense, it is such a statement couched from the personal perspective of an actual or potential participant who is located so that some temporal, dramatic development of the reported event proceeds from that starting point" (504). Simply telling the story is not enough; the speaker must say something that "listeners can empathetical1y insert themselves into, vicariously reexperiencing what took place" <504>. A good tale-teller gives the audience a story with which the audience may identify. Jessie suspends her disbelief and lets Carlota tell the pretty story, but she refuses to validate it. Here again the reflexive quality of the embedding technique becomes clear. Jessie listens as part of Carlota's audience 66

and we read as Jessie's audience. Ve trust Jessie as narrator and trust the story she tells as the true history of her life. Jessie's narrative is no romance; this becomes clear after the first few pages of her story. Carlota*s story, however, sounds like a scene from a historical romance novel. Jessie has been encouraging her audience from the beginning to believe the realities of her sexual experiences. In order to maintain that trust and to keep her reliable status as a narrator, she must question Carlota1s story.

In challenging the veracity of Carlota's telling,

Jessie educates the others in Carlota's immediate audience. Monty and Zippy have fallen for the story.

Jessie knows from her own experience that things rarely happen the way Carlota described. Jessie also educates readers, her audience, about erotic stories; erotica does not claim to be romance. The presence of a lush forest and a woman who bemoans the loss of a maidenhead does not exactly conform to erotic writing's framework.

Such images and characters do appear, but the narrator must offer additional aspects of the experience for it to succeed erotically.

Carlota's storytelling style changes as she changes the content of her narrative. She tells the first 67

sentimentally ("her voice husky with emotion" [2643), and with euphemisms ("heritage of purity," "priceless jewel" [2703), splattering the narrative with flowers and birds; the climax of the story occurs as she faints dead away when the young man penetrates her. The sexual aspect of the story ends there; the teller does not remember any more. She relates the second story in more blatantly sexual terms, ending it not with an emotion-choked account of her lost virginity, but a statement of fact: "And this, dear friends, was the simple and unromantic circumstances under which I was fucked for the first time, though in truth it should be put the other way around, for it could more properly be said that I was the one who did the fucking" <273>.

Carlota did not fall victim to any man’s raging lust; she aggressively seduced her first sexual partner.

Jessie and Carlota agree that romantic fabrication is prettier than real life, but Jessie's response to the story makes the message clear: erotic writing— as opposed to other fiction— gives the reader "real" life, not pretty pictures. Metaerotically, the presence of

Carlota's personal experience narrative as message and as code Indicates to the readers that they can trust 68

what Jessie "tells "them as "truth because Jessie knows

the difference between true stories and fiction.

Regular readers of erotic fiction know that the

"loss of virginity" story is a central part of the

genre. In Memoirs of_ a. of. Pleasure. Fanny Hill and the other women with whom she works gather together during a free moment and each woman entertains "the company with that critical period of her personal history in which she first exchanged the maiden state for womanhood" (96). After the initial pain, each woman describes her new-found sexual pleasure and the rapture of newly discovered sexuality. In The Lustfu1

Turk. numerous embedded narratives indicate that ravishment awakened passion (39, 62, 89). The virile protagonist of A. Might In a Moorish. Harem finds himself in the "seraglio of Abdallah" (who happens to be out of town) and the nine women there tell him "the most interesting and voluptuous passage from their lives"

(14— 15). The women in the harem represent quite a few nationalities, but each, whether Spanish, Greek,

Italian, or Circassian, tells the hero about the loss of her virginity, the event designated in this literature as the single-most important moment.

Carlota's first account misses the delightful aspect of 69

sex that readers of the text expect. The context of

Carlota's storytelling, however, corrects that problem as Jessie calls the narrative into question. Carlota*s narrative and Jessie's response educate those in

Carlota's immediate audience and the audience of the text about sexual experience narratives,1- These narratives may, in fact, relieve readers as well.

Carlota's first story, the one which reads like a historical romance, is about a rape. Readers made uncomfortable by this story (i.e., if the world of the text has gotten too harsh) may be relieved by the real story, which indicates that sex is fine.

In The Confessions. a L Nemesis Hunt. Nemesis's secretary Gladys tells a story about a rape. This personal narrative is neither sentimental like

Carlota's first story nor frank like the second; nor is it characterized by the formulaic repetition of the embedded accounts in Fanny Hi 11 or The Lustful Turk.

Gladys tells Nemesis that, as a young woman, she was out late one evening when a man approached her and asked that she come with him to help a woman in distress. Gladys went but upon her arrival at the house found not a woman in distress but a prostitute and several men. Two of the men raped Gladys and the 70

entire group participated in an orgy. Nemesis listens

to the story and at one point interrupts Gladys's

telling to ask, "Rather exciting, eh, Gladys?" <29).

Gladys's response to the interruption indicates that

she was not excited but filled with rage by the actions

of these "sinister people" <29).

Gladys's telling of her narrative shows that while

she did survive the event and she does find it

"storyable, 11 y she wants Nemesis (and the readers of the

text) to know that she did not find the deceit and the

violence in any way pleasurable. Nemesis's question

may seem heartless, but it is in fact the "devil's

advocate" question necessary to elicit Gladys's true

feelings and hence the impact of the personal experience narrative. The informative aspect of this narrative, not in itself a strong didactic statement about rape, rests in the young woman's attitude toward the event in her life: she did not find it thrilling, and she wants to be explicit about that. Gladys makes the point to Nemesis directly and to the readers of the confession indirectly.

In several other scenes in the fiction, Gladys interrupts Nemesis's primary narrative to tell a story of her own. Just as control of a conversation often 71

shifts from speaker to speaker, so does control of the narrative often shift with these two women. The primary narrative clearly belongs to Nemesis, but her life story inspires Gladys, who as recorder of this

"autobiography" apparently has much to add to what she hears. Gladys is her friend as well as secretary.

Nemesis Hunt often tells of an episode in her life, then Gladys, her immediate audience, adds one of her own, then Nemesis takes over the narrative again.

Personal experience narratives play off each other in this fiction Just as they do in everyday conversation.

The telling by each adds a familiar as well as an instructional dimension to the text. When another person arrives at Nemesis's house, Gladys tells him that the storytelling has aroused her; hearing about

Nemesis's sexual adventures has stimulated Gladys.

Nemesis herself comments that "the writing of this story is a thing which makes the passions require an occasional use of a safety valve" (55). Readers again learn that such storytelling should stimulate them.

Gladys and Nemesis both demonstrate the "appropriate" response to the hearing of sexual stories: stimulated by a story about Gladys's encounter with a woman <32-

34), Gladys and Nemesis's safety valve is a few hours 72

of sex together. Readers, too, usually experience

sexual stimulation after "hearing" (that is, reading)

these stories.

The personal experience narratives within the autobiography are usually extended accounts of

individual events, full-length reports of experiences.

A third roe taerot ic device, the embedded anecdote, differs from a personal experience narrative in that the teller acknowledges the anecdote as fiction, as a story told to elicit a humorous reaction, not to reveal something about the teller's life. These anecdotes, as in the case of personal experience narratives, are told to the narrator. Context matters in the telling of anecdotes, for these stories give readers some insight into the characters as well as knowledge about sexual behavior and erotic writing.

In Confessions Qjf_ a n English M slIsI, Monty tells

Jessie an amusing story Just after he has forced her to perform fellatio for the first time. Jessie does not want to do this because she knows that in prostitution

"there are social distinctions. The cocksucker is at the low end of the scale and is looked down upon with considerable scorn by those of her sisters who have not yet descended to this level" <189>, In this context, 73

the last thing Jessie wants to hear from Monty is one

of his ridiculous stories. Monty knows his behavior

has angered Jessie, so he tells her the story

("angering" her even more by going ahead with it>. The story is actually a traditional joke about a recently married young woman and her mother. The mother tells the girl that the goal of marriage is to have babies, to have a complete home, but that the girl should wait a few years rather than forfeit her youth to child- rearing. The young woman has no fears of pregnancy; she tells her mother, "I shall never have any babies because I can't force myself to swallow the horrid stuff! I always have to spit it out!" <191>.

Jessie at first refuses to acknowledge any humor in this anecdote, but Monty continues his attempts, apologizing for his roughness, and Jessie eventually gives in to Monty's mood. The story relieves some of the tension between Jessie and Monty; Jessie does like him, and they soon return to their sexual play. Jessie refers to the Joke later in the narrative when she tells Monty she will become pregnant because she swallows so much of his semen. She is learning to enjoy fellatio and was angry simply because he farced her the first time and she felt that she was losing 74

stature as a prostitute. This episode demonstrates the

effectiveness of bawdy humor in context, allowing us to

see the developing relationship between Jessie and

Monty. There is more than sexual mechanics between

these two; they share more than the typical client—

prostitute relationship. The text contains Jessie's

narrative; it gives her perspective and for that reason

can seem closed, isolated, and limited sometimes. By

including familiar Jokes in the narrative, the writer

expands the boundaries of the story to give the reader,

who may feel alien to this world anyway, a familiar

Joke to evoke a familiar world. The Joke also gives

Monty a voice and therefore allows the reader to see

the interaction between Jessie and Monty on a level

other than the sexual one which forms the basis of their relationship. And the anecdotes give the writer a way to establish a natural transition from one scene to the next; they serve as bridges from one sexual episode to the next without breaking into the narrative as sharply as a personal experience narrative would.

Gladys, Nemesis Hunt's typist, has a storehouse of anecdotes which she shares with the woman whose life story she records. Nemesis at one point begins to tell about a restaurant she was in that had a very loud band 75

playing. Gladys interrupts with a story of her own,

but first tells Nemesis that she thinks the story is

funny though perhaps "too coarse" for the book <41>.

Nemesis's comments indicate that she thought the story

funny enough to include, and she also includes Gladys's

comments about her own story:

I was dining one evening in a rather smart and

a very large restaurant .... There was a

loud band playing and one had to talk almost

at the top of one’s voice to carry a

conversation through it. Suddenly a

particularly tempestuous piece of music came

to a particularly sudden end, and in the quiet

that followed a man's voice rang distinct and

clear through the room 'And when I

pulled my foreskin back, 1 saw— '. (41)

Numerous versions of this story are still in oral circulation. The writer of this fictional autobiography takes care to indicate that the anecdotes are anecdotes; Gladys tells the stories, and, although she pretends to have been at the event, she always prefaces or ends her anecdotes with "I heard this from" or "so they say." The writer does not claim credit for the composition of obviously folkloric material. 7

Tapping the wealth of sexual folklore and bawdy

humor gives the writer the opportunity to demonstrate

that Gladys and Nemesis Cas do their counterparts in

other texts'1) participate in the mainstream of life.

These two women join in their culture*s informal

communication, the jokes and stories that circulate

orally in folk groups. Gladys and Nemesis reveal that they know what they know by way of honest experience, and they share those experiences and the knowledge that

they derive from them in the text which contains the honest confession of Nemesis Hunt. The erotic folklore

in the novel at times makes it seem that the fictional autobiography actually provides a frame for the folklore rather than that the folklore is simply being added to color the narrative. The conversational interaction between Gladys and Nemesis underscores the interplay between the autobiographical and the folkloric storytelling; the narrative establishes the close connection. Through the embedded anecdotes we learn more about the characters and occasionally see them in other than sexual situations.

Yet another way for the writers to put their narrators in context is through reported dialogues.

Reported conversations occur naturally in the 77

narrative. Unlike framed narratives and embedded

narratives, the conversations involve the protagonists

directly as participants, not as observers or

audiences. Embedded anecdotes, which may occur

naturally in conversation, usually consist of

traditional material, while conversations— dialogues—

contain statements assumed to be truthful. The

immediate audience, of course, is the other person in

the narrative, but the reader participates as a

"1istener."

In Eveline. as an instance of narrator as listener,

the protagonist's companion, whom she has named

"Dragon" because he protects her gallantly, shares his

views about their society during the course of a

conversation. Dragon tells Eveline that he sees her

sexual appetite as natural, but he considers the moral

pretenses of society unnatural: "Without being aware of

it, you have returned to that condition of primitive

life which is best represented by the topsy-turvy

account of Adam and Eve— to that primitive condition of

existence when the sons and daughters of mythical Adam and Eve— brothers and sisters— enjoyed each othei-- coupled and procreated" C120>. Dragon's view of modern

English society lets the reader know that this man has 78

a strong distaste for the pretentions of the world

around him.

However, the significance of Dragon's philosophy

rests not only in Ills adamant disapproval of society's attitudes, but also in the statement with which he ends his philosophical discourse. Dragon, although an ostensibly proper citizen, is part of the underside of polite society. This man with a raging sensuality has a strong sense of morality:

I am a sensualist at heart. I should scorn to

creep behind a husband's back and debauch his

wife, or take a young girl from the lawful

custody of her parents to satisfy my selfish

passion. When pleasure is offered I accept

it— but it must be so far as my own

perceptions go, willingly accorded. It must

be, so far as I can see, without detriment to

my companion in voluptuousness, or to anyone

e 1s e . < 123)

Dragon*s clear message to the reader of this fiction is that his sexual companion must want his company; no matter how removed readers may feel from the standards of society, if those readers consider themselves to be sensualists, they must have wl 1 ling partners. The 79

immoral are those who, under the guise of their sham propriety, participate in forced or impersonal sex.

The reader learns that while society may see the sensualist as immoral, as one devoted to personal pleasure with no regard for others, the true sensualist knows that pleasure derives from the interaction of willing partners. From this the reader learns that this text shows Eveline's life positively because she does not hurt anyone else; her pleasure comes at no one else's expense.

Another kind of reported dialogue in The

Confessions of Nemesis Hunt shows that conversation does not occur in order to allow for philosophizing, but for Gladys and Nemesis to share their ideas about men:

— ‘Talking of penises, ' I break in, 'what do

you consider a real1v large one?'

'Ten inches of course is Brobdinagian [sic3,‘

answers Gladys, 'but I must say that I have

met a good many which measured quite eight on

the foot rule.. Still, after all, the size of

the man's weapon is only a matter of

curiosity: it is a thing which pleases one to

look at, but I dont E sic] think at all that 80

the actual length or girth makes any

difference to the enjoyment of the

fornications'. <11, 44)

Gladys's observation appears quite refreshing in a

genre that usually glorifies mammoth penises. By this

point in the narrative, readers know that Gladys, as a

woman of experience, knows what she is talking about.

Readers hear the voice of experience once again

advising about sex: penis size does not matter. Gladys

and Nemesis's discussion presents male genitalia much

more realistically than Fanny Hi 11 does. Anne Robinson

Taylor in Hale Novel lsts and Their F.e.Xoa.1 e Voices

discusses how "that hearty eighteenth century writer

John Cleland ascribes fantastic sexual powers to the

male" <83>. To Fanny Hill, the first penis she sees

seems the size of her wrist and she always comments

about genital size: ". .such a length! such a

breadth of animated ivory. <72). Nancy K. Miller

in Sex oi. Recollect ion argues that it is Cleland

himself who is obsessed with the length of the phallus.

In fact, according to Masters and Johnson in Human

Sexua1 Response. "the concept that the larger the penis

the more effective the male as a partner in coital 61

connection" is simply a widely accepted "phallic

fallacy" <191).

The final metaerotic technique which merits

discussion presents itself in the protagonist's

narrative when she pauses to reflect upon a particular

idea. The narrator does not direct these reflections

to anyone in the text but to the audience of the

confession (like the editor who hears Jessie's story or

the unidentified woman to wham Fanny Hill writes). The asides constitute direct commentary; they include neither anecdotes nor personal experiences but the narrator's opinions about certain important matters.

In Josephlne the narrator philosophizes about life and prostitution, but particularly about sex. Josephine points out, for example, the premature sexual experience of working-class children. According to this narrator, who was raised In the slums of Vienna, children "of the poor proletarian class saw each other as males and females and would have been quite surprised if they had been told that blood relationships should make them see one another differently" <92). The reader should not mistake this comment as a challenge to our culture's incest taboos.

Josephine explains in her story that the poverty of 82

early life forced many of the situations that resulted

in her life as a prostitute. Sharing the same bedroom

with her parents introduced her early to sex; her

knowledge of sex came from a lack of privacy, not from

"the opportunity to listen to the conversations of

educated adults" (92),

This aside occurs at a critical point in the

narrative; the narrator has been describing her early

sexual life with the boys in her neighborhood,

including her brother. While not really excusing the

events, the writer has the narrator offer some sense

that, as a woman looking back over her life, she has

more of an understanding of what happened to her than

she had as a girl. Without detracting from the sexual

tone of what she has Just described, the narrator

educates the reader briefly about incest: given a

better awareness and better living conditions, she

probably would not have participated in the daily sex

play of her neighborhood. Readers are given commentary about society. Josephine's environment led to her

incestuous behavior in her youth. She engaged in taboo behavior not because of some inherent depravity but because of her living conditions. 83

Josephine also makes some very pointed comments

about sex and lave, According to her, a prostitute

must distinguish between sex and love if she intends to move up in the world. The narrator realized early that

"a good lay is one thing, and love something else. Too many men— and women— have suffered emotional disasters by confusing the two things" <108). Josephine, when she falls in love for the first time, realizes that sex can be something more than Just a "pleasurable pastime"

(108). She does not, however, want to become sexually dependent on a man. Furthermore, she says that while

"CwJomen are called the weaker sex . . . when I consider what I had to go through, and how I came out victoriously, I don't believe in ever having been weak"

<304).

In Confessions oJL OH English Maid. Jessie discusses

"the three Horsemen of the Prostitute's Apocalypse," syphilis, gonorrhea, and pregnancy, as well as other professional hazards: "Sexual sensibility, which is that capacity to respond easily and actively to erotic excitation, diminishes rapidly in the majority of professional prostitutes who are obliged to exercise their sexual functions with a frequency far in excess of the provisions of Nature. The sexual act becomes a 84

mere routine in which pleasure or orgasm is only

simulated to satisfy the customer's ego" (116-117).

Jessie's commentary gives the reader a little

information about the prostitute's life from a

professional point of view. But in this aside Jessie

also lets the reader know that she enjoys her work: sex

is for her not routine.

Josephine's comments about sex and love initially

seem to be the classic statements of a prostitute who

has become immune to the nuances of love. But her

narrative, however raw it may become in descriptions of

sex, always emphasizes mutual pleasure. She comments

at one point about sex in marriage, attributing

problems to the failure of men to know "the supreme

role that the clitoris plays in the sex life of women"

(176). People enter into marriages "with a lot of

romantic ideas and no knowledge of the sexual part at

all" (176); the result, as Josephine sees it, "is a

case of the blind trying to lead the blind . . . and

all the respect in the world is not sufficient to

compensate a husband, or a wife, far having to lead a

poor sex life" (176). The underlying philosophy which her life as a prostitute has taught can be found in the conclusion to her narrative: "When all that talk and 85

declaiming about love and romance ends In a physical

embrace, the motions and gestures are always the same.

Sometimes the man lies on top, sometimes the woman.

Both want to reach as many orgasms as possible. Some

call it love, some call it sexual intercourse; that's

all the difference there is" <304^. So while Josephine

claims that a prostitute must keep sex and love

separate if she is to survive, her comments point up

clearly that the two really differ very little in

actual sexual encounters.

The reader learns about this woman's sexual

attitude while reading her story. Such comments

illustrate one of the most overlooked aspects of this

kind of pornography: the first—person narrative gives the writer the opportunity to have the narrator address sexual topics. A character in a third—person novel can express similar sentiments, but a first-person narrator has been personally revealing her sexual life.

She has been offering the most intimate details of her life. When in the midst of this she tells the reader what she thinks about sex, the reader is inclined to believe what she says and to trust it as valid.

Readers may not agree with Josephine's or Jessie's attitudes, but they have before them the narrative of a 86

woman's life, a narrative -that includes her under­

standing of that life.

The reading of this fiction shares some similar—

ities with the reading of historically authentic

autobiography; readers discover not only the recorded

events of an individual's life but the particular

worldview of that individual as well. The worldview of

the narrators becomes evident in the asides. As James

Olney points out, what a reader looks for in autobiography "is not a date, a name, or a place, but a characteristic way of perceiving, of organizing, and of understanding" (Autobiography 37>. In reading fictional autobiography, readers can relate the narrator's worldview to their own lives. They choose to read first-person narratives because, to some degree, they wish to get a little more deeply into the narrator's mind, to discover what the narrator is all about.

Metanarration in erotic fictional autobiography, those passages in the fiction which call attention to the fictional code, paint to the world of the text as well. The fictional code is the erotic system of the narrative, what makes the message erotic. The metaerotic passages reassure readers about their own 87

responses to erotic stimulation by showing them the

narrator's response. Humor, for instance, can make

readers aware of the tale's natural context. By

allowing narrators to listen to as well as tell Jokes,

anecdotes, and stories, the writer is able to make the

narrator both a student and a teacher. Readers see how

the narrator learns about sex, as well as learning

about it themselves. Metaerotic devices in the fiction allow the writer to move beyond simply describing sexual mechanics to addressing significant matters such as hypocrisy, propriety, and sensuality, without

interrupting the consistent flow of the erotic narrat i ve, 08

Notes

'Metaflction Is the terra used to describe writing

which has as a primary concern fiction itself, such as

the contemporary fiction of Donald Barthelme, Robert

Coover, and John Barth. See Beth Ann Boehm, "A

Rhetoric of Metafiction," diss., The Ohio State

University, 19S7.

‘Dundee uses "metafolklore" to describe such

"folklore of folklore" as proverbs about proverbs and

jokes about joke cycles. These instances are not

restricted by genre, as there can be, for instance,

proverbs about myths. The following is a metafolk-

loristic joke which plays on the characteristic formula of the established "knock—knock" joke and a familiar proverb: "Knock! Who's there? Opportunity." See

Alan Dundes, "Metafolklore and Oral Literary Criti­ cism, " Readings i_n. American Folklore. ed. Jan Harold

Brunvand (New York: Norton, 1979>: 404-415,

■What I have in mind is something that schematically would resemble the following diagram: 89

reader reads 1

narrator

I ~ l sexual I performance |

observes

about narrator's observation

,J Another scene which Fanny Hill observes, however,

does not excite her sexually but disgusts her. At a

public house she witnesses the arrival of two young

gentlemen and, curious, follows them. She watches them

from a hidden spot: "All this, so criminal a scene, I

had the patience to see to an end, purely that I might

gather more facts, and certainty against them in my

full design to da their deserts instant justice . "

(159). Fanny Hill's extraordinary reaction to the homosexuals after she herself has enjoyed Phoebe's attentions presents an interesting contradiction. But in the world of pornography, not all sex is created 90

equal. In same texts, lesbian sex is acceptable, but male homosexual acts are not- In some texts, cunnilingus and fellatio may be the only sex described;

in others, they would be completely taboo. Incest may be accepted, but sadism ruled out. It depends on the code established within the textual world.

'■'See Sandra K. D. Stahl, "The Personal Narrative as

Folklore," Journal of. t i e . Folklore Institute 14 (1977):

9-30; "The Oral Personal Narrative in Its Generic

Context," Fabula 18 <1977): 18-39; "Style in Oral and

Vritten Narrative," Southern Folklore Quarterly 43

(1979): 39-62; "Personal Experience Stories," Handbook of. American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson

(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1983): 268-276. See also Amy

Shuman, Storytell ins Rights: Ihs. U s e s . a t Oral and

Vritten Texts by Urban Adolescents (New York:

Cambridge UP, 1986).

* A significant exception to this occurs in the

Memoirs at Dolly Morton, an erotic fictional autobiography set in the antebellum American south,

Dolly Morton is taken by the plantation master against her will. The scene is described realistically with the accompanying pain for Dolly (90). Dolly never enjoys the attention of the cruel plantation owner, but 91

when she engages in sex with the man to whom she tells her story, she enjoys It.

■'"Storyable" is a term that Katharine Galloway

Young borrows from Harvey Sacks and uses in Taleworlds and. SlgryreaJms: Phenomenology oi_ Narrative

(Boston: Martlnus Nijhoff, 1987) to describe the potential of an event or experience to be told as a story.

‘ In Confessions of an Engl1sh Ma^H Jessie records an obscene version of "London Bridge" that is part of children's folklore. She tells a story with definite urban legend characteristics about Spanish fly's aphrodisiac effects. CHAPTER III

THE NARRATOR'S STANCE:

"TO TELL THE TALE OF MY OWN LIFE"

I may therefore venture to say that the air

of reality . . . seems to me to be the supreme

virtue of a novel ....

— Henry James, "The Art of the Novel"

Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the

facts the better the fiction— so we are told.

--Virginia Woolf, A. Room q£_ One1 s Own

An author's choice of point of view is never casual; the implications of that choice matter to an understanding of the text. Using a personal point of view enables writers of erotic fictional autobiographies to encourage their readers to believe that their fictional subjects— the narrators— are real.' The reader of pornography seeks enjoyment and instruction from descriptions of sexual events. The writer of pornography satisfies the readers' expectations through the use of a first-person narrator

92 93

who allows the readers to believe what they read and to

use their own imaginations in order to satisfy their

fantasies.*

Prose fictional first-person point of view

developed from autobiographical writing, a literary

form which did not flourish until the eighteenth

century, when the narrator's solitary voice broke

through in both fiction and nonfiction. Roy Pascal

believes that the rise of autobiography can be seen "as

a significant element of the process of self-assertion

and self-realisation of the European middle class,

shaking itself free of the values and forms of an aristocratic culture, and boldly probing into its own spiritual foundations" (51). Vith the writings of

Rousseau, Goethe, Franklin, and Gibbon, the first- person narration of individual lives began to develop as an art, following in the tradition of the Christian confessional and maintaining the Individual desire for self-knowledge and understanding of reality as the reasons for writing (Pascal 180-185). Narratives of this kind, which allow writers to speak about themselves, constitute a significant literary form. In works as varied as Bunyan's Grace Abounding and De

Quincey's Confessions of. OIL English Opium Eater. 94

autobiography became the medium for close examination

of individual life.

After autobiography emerged as a literary form,3 it

began to have an impact on other kinds of literature.

The desire for realistic writing becomes evident in the prose fiction of the eighteenth century; the novel offered readers imaginative realism. As autobiography began to establish itself as a means for self-discovery and revelation, the realistic autobiographical fictions of Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson presented characters looking back over their lives and attempting to understand significant influences. Cynthia S.

Pomerleau points out in "The Emergence of Women's

Autobiography in England" that autobiography and the novel "grew up together" <37>. The development of erotic autobiography as a form of sexual fiction parallels the rise of other autobiographical fiction.

First-person narrative in pornography, like that in

John Cleland's Memoirs of. flL Woman of. Pleasure. began to replace Aretino's dialogue format. Prose writers of all kinds of fiction were creating an "I" that demanded the readers' attention.

Undoubtedly the best-known voice in pornographic fiction belongs to Frances Hill, better known as Fanny, 95

the hero of Memoirs of_ a Vqmar of Pleasure ■ Unlike

Aretino in his dialogues,A Cleland in this prose

fiction offers the single voice of Fanny Hill piling metaphor upon metaphor:

I, struggling faintly, could not help feeling

what I could not grasp, a column of the whitest

ivory, beautifully streak'd with blue veins,

and carrying, fully uncapt, a head of the

liveliest vermillion; no horn could be harder

or stiffer; yet no velvet more smooth or

delicious to the touch. <46>

Vhile many may question the realism of Fanny's experiences or how "female" her voice is, the reader nevertheless encounters a text narrated by the individual whose sexual life constitutes the story.

Memoirs of a. Voman q_£_ Pleasure established a crucial narrative paradigm for sexual fiction, i.e., it was the first "erotic fictional autobiography." Fanny Hill sat down to "recall to view those scandalous stages of my life" (29), and later narrators of erotic fiction have followed her lead. Such fiction gains strength from the tension between fantasy and reality, and the text must underscore that tension. 96

Autobiography provides the "I," the first-person

voice narrating one individual1 a life. The novel

borrows from this tradition the voice of reality, the

voice of a single speaker who from personal experience

tells a tale, a voice that speaks of a single life with

authority. Autobiography and the early navel share

several similarities in subject and structure: a

predominance of a single character's voice, the

chronological narrative of a life, and an emphasis on

character development.

Barrators are characters in these novels; they

write letters, describe their own lives, speak directly

to the reader. As in the picaresque novel, an author

elects to use the autobiographical form to encourage

the reader to identify with the narrator; we share in

the experiences of the narrator. We see the world

through the eyes of the narrator. And in the erotic

fictional autobiography, we go one step further: we experience through the body of the narrator.

With the rise of modernism, the reliability of

first-person narrators was called into question, but prior to the twentieth century readers generally trusted narrators to provide believable stories. In the picaresque novel, if the hero’s story is "to do 97 more than simply assault the reader's moral sensibilities, there must be something of the gregarious beast underneath the wolf’s clothing, something of the visible animal Inside the hard-minded schemer" (Alter 26). In the case of erotic fictional autobiography, if the narrator is to be more than an objectified figure used to deliver an endless account of various sexual postures, she must have a life worth telling about and she must tell it as if she had something to do with it. The writer must give the reader a narrator who shares a life she has en1oyed if she expects the reader to enjoy reading about it."' In

The Qnly Teller. Hetty Clews discusses the first-person narrator as a narrator of reality:

In those eighteenth-century works which are

generally regarded as the first novels to be

written in English, author and narrator were

ostensibly one and the same. This is because

in an empirical age the credibility of any tale

rested in part on the assurance of its teller

that it was indeed "true". A wealth of

circumstantial detail by Defoe, or of immediate

sensory experience by Richardson, might endorse

the reader's impression of truth, but beyond 96

this the author needed to assure the reader

that the speaker was Indeed recounting personal

experience. (19>

Knowing that the speaker is "recounting personal experience" tells the reader how to approach the narrat i ve.

While the pornographic world may be a fantasy, the best of all possible sexual worlds, the reader needs to believe in that world: the text cannot call Itself fantasy. It may be fantasy pretending not to be, but readers must trust that what they read really happened.

Readers may engage intellectually with the text, recognizing what they read as fiction, but the physical response to the text relies to a great degree on the be1ievabi1ity of the experience. In other words, can readers imagine themselves at some time engaging in a similar event? Are the circumstances real enough? Is the narrator's description believable enough for readers to trust that in their world the activity Is possible? An important paradox informs readers' experiences of this fiction: the story is not true, but the physical experience which results from the reading is. The narrative is fiction; sexual arousal and 99

masturbation are very real experiences for readers of

pornography.

Erotic fictional autobiography employs several

devices besides first—person narrative in order to

bolster the claim for realism. The prefatory apparatus

apparent in many novels in this tradition increases

verisimilitude: the title, anonymous authorship,

explanatory preface, and narratorial authority enable

the writer to create for the reader a realistic text.

In a discussion of Defoe* s tendency to assert the historic truth of his work, Percy Lubbock In The Craft of Fiction stresses that attestation of the truth matters little: the work must look true. The formulaic title of the text, for instance, underscores the realism of the narrative voice. A title such as

Kemoirs of_ a Glr_L student: Ihje_ Adventures af_ a. Modern

College Girl Lxl search clL pleasures and how sh£ found and en1oyed them allows the reader to make two assumptions about the text: it will be the narrative of one woman's life and it will be erotic. Such a title, as with Defoe's claim for historic truth, implies authorial attestation of the truth but also makes a claim on behalf of authenticity for the reader.

"Memoirs" implies that the text will be "authentic"; 100

"adventures" and "pleasures" connote something

titillating. The title provides substantial evidence

for the reader that what follows realistically recounts the life of the identified character; the reader can believe what follows in these pages. Even more, the

title reinforces the underlying principle of sexual

fiction: although this may be fantasy, when readers step into this world, they encounter a real world with real characters who demand real responses.

A classic example of what the title page can offer the reader appears In the volume with the short title

Th.e Lustful Turk, or Scenes. In. the East (sometimes The

Lustful Turk. OJL Interesting History Founded oil Facts. by Kmi1y Barlow). The full title of the volume is this:

The Lustful Turk Or Scenes in the Harem of an

Eastern Potentate Faithfully and Vividly

depicting in a series of letters from a young

and beautiful English Lady to her cousin in

England, the full particulars of her

Ravishment, of her complete abandonment to all

the salacious tastes of the Turks, described

with that zest and simplicity which always

gives guarantee for its authenticity. 101

A novel about a lustful Turk alone may have the power

to entice some readers, but the promised format of the

writing provides the lure of this particular text:

personal letters from a young lady who had to deal with

the "salacious tastes" of these men. It promises to be

stimulating and it guarantees its authenticity.

Not naming the actual author of a text also heightens the realism of the narrative. *'■ The title usually contains the specific name (Nemesis Hunt,

Josephine Mutzenbacher) of the individual whose memoirs these purportedly are, although sometimes without a surname (Jessie, Eveline, Beatrice). The actual author of the text remains either completely unidentified or identified as a privileged man who happened to record the narrative. Confessions aJk English Maid, for example, is attributed in the preface to Gilbert San

Martin, who has carefully put together the life story of a young woman at her request. The Memoirs of a.

Russian Princess indicates in its secondary title,

Gleaned from her Secret Diary. the author* s source material used to construct the narrative. Since this is fiction pretending not to be, anonymous authorship underscores the "reality" of the text. Readers have before them what is claimed to be the memoirs of a 102 woman who tells her story In explicit sexual terms.

Nothing stands between the reader and the text; no author gets in the way of what the speaker wants to tel 1.

The absence of the intermediary author allows the reader to trust the narrator of the erotic autobiography. Critics of first-person narration sometimes claim that this point of view does not convince, that readers cannot submerge their own present into the present of the fictive narrator. A.

A. Mendilow in particular argues that "another person is felt to be interposed between the 1_ of the novel and the reader's I_" (106-107). Eugene Mirabelli, in a discussion of photography, claims that the artistic rendering of a nude in either painting or photography does not carry the same erotic weight as a realistic photograph, even though many erotic photographs are presented so realistically that the nudes look unattractive <207). The artificial nudeness that comes between the viewer and the image lessens the power of the image; if the viewer can imagine that he or she shares the same world as the subject of the picture, then the picture has more power. 103

Mirabelli believes that artifice lessens the power

of the stimulus in visual art; the same holds true, one

might argue, for fiction. But Mendllow, in his

criticism of first-person narrative, overlooks the fact

that the experience of reading, like that of viewing

photographs, requires one to make adjustments: no

reader can "sink his own actual present" into that of

the fiction. Mendilow's argument does not take into account how readers adjust their perceptions of the

world to those of the text. The reader fills in the gaps and re-creates the experience of the text. In

"Ourself Behind Ourself: A Theory for Lesbian Readers,"

Jean E. Kennard writes:

Although it is true that readers understand

texts that describe their own experience

differently from the way they understand other

texts, as I have argued elsewhere, it is also

true that most reading is of texts that have a

very limited relationship to the reader's own

experience. (66-67)

Readers come to texts with assumptions and look to the text to satisfy those assumptions. When reading autobiographical fiction, readers find their place in 104

■that fiction; they do not have to sink their

personality into that of the narrator, but they may.

In addition to descriptive titles and anonymous

authorship, the erotic autobiography often uses

introductory apparatus to produce a believable text.

Commonly, an editor's or publisher's preface appears

before the actual narrative begins. Such a preface

underscores the "realism" of the text and helps to

round out the character of the narrator before she

takes over the narrative in her own voice. Even if

there is not such a full-blown preface, most volumes

have at least some prefatory explanation of how the

text came to be printed. In the Preface to the Memoirs qJL Madame Madeleine. for example, the conscientious editor explains to "brother bibliophiles and students of the esoteric" how he "came to discover the following valuable document— a social study the authenticity of which I am willing to back with my not inconsiderable reputation as an expert of personal histories and private memoirs" <9>. The editor explains that while searching for rare erotica in Paris in the summer of

1925 he found, in the possession of a street vendor, a collection that once belonged to a woman known by the vendor's daughter. It contained, among other items, a 105

presentation copy of Fanny Hill. an original Justine

with marginalia by Casanova, and the Erntetameron with

Beardsley .lustrations. Hidden among these priceless

volumes the collector found the diary of Madame

Madeleine, written in violet ink, the diary that the

bibliophile now sets forth as The Memoirs q£. Madame

Madeleine. The editor establishes himself as an

authority and Madame Madeleine as a woman of taste and

credibility even before the memoir Is read; Madame

Madeleine knows the tradition because she has read the

books.

The boundaries of the erotic fiction thus do not

begin and end with the actual history or memoir. The

titles, the title pages, and the prefaces all frame the

reader's escape into a fantasy world that continuously claims to be real. The preface to the Memoirs of a.

Russian Princess, to take another Instance, provides the reader with an account of the discovery and translation of the diary which forms the basis of the memoir. The editor claims that the slim volume was

“probably penned about the year 1796" (7), and that evidence proves that both Alexander andd Nicholas had examined the diary "in the private section of the

Palace of L------" <7>. The editor claims that the 106

original manuscript 11 was rendered valueless as a

literary production by a bashful suppression of all the most Important portions,— of those parts which alone could render the whole intelligible" <8). He steps in as editor to piece together the parts of the diary which gave only the bare facts of the princess's activities. The importance of this latter preface, however, lies not so much in its recounting of how the diary came to be found, as in its revelation of the diary's composition date; not long after the reign of the decadent Catherine II. The editor relies on the reader's awareness of the sordid stories about that ruler's sexual proclivities. (And, in case the reader has forgotten or is ill-informed, a not-so-subtle hint appears: the diary records "the depravity of manners which followed the reign of the infamous Catherine.'*)

The preface lets the reader know that the manuscript, discovered and reconstructed by the editor, contains the legitimate account of the life of the daughter of

Prince Demetri ------.

Memoirs oi a. Russian Princess, according to the editor's claims, resulted from the piecing together of a diary. The confessional format also provides a means for autobiography. The foreword to Jessie. or the 107

Concessions oX a. Fe 1 latrlx. also known as Confessions

aX an English Maid, purports to provide a thorough

textual history. The "publisher" of the work describes

at length his discovery of Jessie and how the writer

Gilbert San Martin came to record her story, "one of

the most vivid, interesting stories which has ever come under our observation" <7). The publisher stresses that Jessie, a woman, tells the story although a man records the words; and that while the story resembles

Fanny Hll1. it "surpasses [the earlier story] in every particular. "

The writer the one who ostensibly records Jessie's confessions— introduces Jessie in the foreword. He describes her as the most attractive woman in the

London brothel known as the House of Nations, a place to which he had ventured "impelled rather by the morbid curiosity of the sight-seer than by the motives to which C his] presence there might most reasonably be ascribed" (8). The writer, we learn, takes his work seriously; he is not simply looking for a prostitute.

Jessie appears as "a woman still young in years, whose piquant, almost classical features were unmarred by the ravages of vice and whose limbs and breasts yet retained the firm resiliency of youth" <9>. The 109

peculiarity of the brothel attracts the writer, for he

realizes that this gem of femininity works in a house

filled with fellatrices:

And suddenly, with all the certainty of a hound

on a fresh scent I knew that I had stumbled

upon one of those fortunate leads which are the

eternal will-o'-wisps of writers. What a

story! A woman, hardly indeed more than a girl

in years, beautiful of face and form, of

occidental birth and education, occupying a

niche in the lowest strata of vice, submitting

herself, apparently through a personal

preference, to what is generally considered the

most debasing of all sexual debauchery—

commercialized cocksucking. <10-13>

The preface lets the reader know that what follows

contains San Martin's record of Jessie's account of her

early life, her brief career as a successful

prostitute, and the events leading up to her life in

the London brothel.

The preliminary trappings seduce the reader. The

title page, with its lengthy descriptive title, asserts

that the story has a basis in reality. The prefatory pages underscore that reality through the presence of 109

the privileged male, who, through personal acquaintance with either the woman or the manuscript she wrote, attests to the authenticity of the narrative. Page after page assures readers that what lies before them can be read and believed as truth.

Yet another feature that increases the be 1ievabi1ity of the erotic fictional autobiography is the narrator's explanation of why she wanted to write her memoirs. Most of the "writers" of these fictional autobiographies clearly state their reasons for reviewing their lives. Most write 2rom the vantage point of age (or at least extensive experience). Many of the texts state the need to set the record straight on the nature of a woman's life— whether that is a life in the aristocracy or in prostitution.

Madame Madeleine, the owner of the valuable erotica collection, feels qualified to address the serious issue of eroticism. She writes that she feels

"justified in making the observation that through some unfathomably perverted sense of propriety, writers will cover their pages with the most unmitigated licentiousness and yet fear to violate the law or convention against the spread of contraceptive or abortive information." These books, most often written 110

by men, she claims, fail to address the realities of

the female life, for the men seem "narrow and puritanic

even in their pornography" (21). Even though the books

often make claims as genuine diaries, she continues,

the untruths passed along as realities of sex disturb

her:

Torrents of the male ejaculate are poured into

us, our thirsty wombs are supposed to suck it

up, and yet our heroines invariably remain

untouched by consequences. How preposterous

this is, only those of my own sex can realize

. . . Other glaring disparities that many

works delight in making continued use of are

the insertion of fabulous ten-inch members,

invariably compared to an ox's leg, into the

virginal vagina of a 14 year old girl

. . . . (Madame Madeleine 22)

So, to set the record straight, Madame Madeleine will draw upon her own life, a life she believes to be full of strangeness but nevertheless true.

Madeleine asserts that her diary contains no fiction; she sincerely presents the facts of her own life. She wishes to "record the experiences of my senses while their tingllngs are yet echoing through my Ill

veins" (17). The presentation of these facts, she

hopes, "will go a long way toward settling many of the

disputes of contemporary sexologists as to the exact

qualitative and quantitative nature of female

eroticism" <15). Madame Madeleine, then, while no

professional writer, appears to the reader as an

authority: a woman who, having read scores of erotic

texts, knows the traditions of sexual literature; and a

woman who, having lived the life and read the

literature, recognizes the disparities in the books and

therefore knows how to correct them. She also

indicates that she knows that men often write diaries

and claim that women wrote them. She vehemently asserts, of course, the legitimacy of her own writing,

thus making the implication clear: readers can read this story as the real thing; Just look at all the evidence. And, even more, look at the openness.

Madame Madeleine reveals the most private part of her

life, and her willingness to do so further guarantees her reliability as a narrator.

Nemesis Hunt begins her story, The Confess!ons of lfempsi a Hunt. with an attitude a bit more pedestrian than that of the ambitious Madame Madeleine. Her friends wanted from the actress "a history of life in 112

London and particularly stage life" <1>. The story of this woman's life, her friends recognized, would be enticing. Nemesis indicates her response to the request: "I naturally feel a certain amount of shyness

in taking up my pen— it is'nt [sic] exactly a pen, as I am dictating to my type-writer, but let the hackneyed phrase pass— to tell the tale of my own life— exact1v as it has taken place" (1). But, as in Madeleine1s case, Nemesis Hunt wants to provide a realistic account of her life, and as for the audience, they must choose what they will learn; "So you may take this story of

Nemests Hunt as either a warning or a guide; Just as you think it suits your particular state of goodness or badness!" (2 >.

The Memoirs of a. Girl Student. written several years after the publication of Nemesis Hunt. owes its inspiration to the earlier memoir. The central figure, the young girl student who remains anonymous and guarantees the truth of what she writes, took Nemesis

Hunt's writing seriously:

Not many years ago, I read the story of an

English girl who said her name was Hunt and

that her father was a preacher, his name was

Michael Hunt, and called by a few of hie 113

intimate friends Hike for short. With your

kind indulgence, dear readers, I will take for

my name that of her father's tsic], Hike Hunt,

for that in a way will serve to show the most

dense, what this story Is going to be about.

Hike Hunt. CGi r1 Student 12)^

The intertextual references indicate that this narrator knows the tradition, that not only has she lived a life worth telling about but she knows how to tell it. This knowledge of tradition, as in the case of Madame

Hadeleine's knowledge of pornographic texts, is an important condition for authenticity.

Memoirs of_ a. Girl Student does not, however, compare In literary quality to the one that inspired it. The content, while following the formulaic lines of the genre, lacks any variation or inspiration. The coarser presentation may be deliberate, for the young

"writer" does not have the worldly 1ife-experiences of the sophisticated Nemesis Hunt. She does not really have a motivation beyond the obvious commercial benefits: "My motive in writing is two-fold; first, the most essential reason is that I need money, and I have been assured that a story of the nature that this one consists of, is going to mean a lot of money to me, and 114

•the second reason, foolish as It may seem is: I have been dared to write the story of my life" <11- 12).

Here, too, as with Madeleine, the reader has another narrator who asserts the honesty of her story, and such honesty compels belief.

Lady Harpur, also complying with a request, has

"committed to writing the following memoir of [her] extraordinary and eventful life" . The Adventures

Lady Harpur— published in the United States as

Queenle and the. FI rates, and Queenie and the Governor-- contains little beyond contrived miscegenation and extremely crude language. The writer claims that her friend's request for the story included a desire to have that story told in the minutest detail and "in all

[the] descriptions to use the plainest language, and employ the commonest names by which our most secret parts, and pleasure are known and designated" <1 >.

Lady Harpur's friend told her that his specific stylistic requests were due to the fact that

the intention of all literatture [sic] of this

kind is to excite and gratifing [sic] our

amorous inclinations, therefore those

descriptions which do most surely and speedily

produce the desired effect will be the most 115

satisfactory and successful; and as the

employment of such names and expressions as are

In common use, even those which are generally

considered coarse and vulgar, is universally

found most provocative of amourous [sic]

emotion, they are best suite!d] to the purpose.

( 1- 2 )

While this volume may not be written with Madame

Madeleine's noble incentive, it does have some honest

motivations; her friend desires a pornographic text and

the writer certainly produces one.

The intention of Lady Harpur*s apparently honest

introduction becomes clear: she tells the truth of why she has written the story, so she must be telling the truth when she writes the story. In other words, this narrative records another true account of a woman's sexual adventures. The memoir writer would have the reader understand that similarities to other texts result from the narrator's awareness of the tradition; the narrator wants to elicit a particular effect from the reader, to present a story that is "provocative of amourous [sic] emotion."

Such prefatory material is not unique to erotic fictional autobiography. The device as used by Defoe and Richardson differs from that of pornography

writers. First, novels like those of Defoe and

Richardson clearly have an identified historical, artistic author. Defoe claims in the preface to

Robinson Crusoe that the story is historical; he asserts that he bases the narrative on the life of a

living man. In Moll Flanders. Defoe claims that he takes the text from Moll's own writing. Richardson appears as the editor of the letters which make up

Pamela. The prefaces, while claiming to assert the

"real" characters of the fiction, are artistic devices; the prefaces do not really contribute to the text as confession. Second, these prefaces do not indicate the narrators' desire to reveal their lives for any particular purpose beyond storytelling. Mol1 FIanders even announces from the outset that this life, while wicked, is "a wicked life repented of" (39).

Pornography writers use prefatory devices to underscore the validity of the first-person narrator's voice. That voice of a female speaking freely of sexual matters willfully challenges standard norms that make sex a silent concern. Michel Foucault writes in

Ih.e HiSiLOrjt. a L Sexuality that since sex In western society Is repressed and condemned to silence, "then 117

•the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the

appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who

holds forth in such language places himself to a

certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law . ." (6 ). The narrators of erotic writing, because they dare to transgress deliberately, assert the truth of their narration through their honest efforts to confess. In erotic fictional autobiography, the woman's wil1ingness to confess makes the difference, and the preface and often the title reinforce that willingness. Josephine writes that she details her life "not from any guilt feelings that may force me to unburden my soul, or any such nonsense"

(16), but because she wants to tell about her life honestly. Moreover, she wants to present a truthful description "of how prostitutes actually live, what they feel and think, and what they have to put up with"

(17) .

And, these speakers are women. Speaking about sex in western society may seem a willing transgression, but for a woman to do so has tremendous consequences.

Women who engage freely in sexual activities have a great deal to lose, such as the chance for a "normal" life (marriage, children, status). The ostensible female author's willingness to relate such activities distinguishes erotic fictional autobiography from other confessional literature. These women risk much; that they take the risk makes readers more inclined to believe them. Foucault writes that the veracity of confessional discourse comes not from "the lofty authority of the magistery, nor by the tradition it transmits, but by the bond, the basic intimacy in discourse, between the one who speaks and what he is speaking about" (62). In erotic fictional autobiography, the woman who voluntarily discloses the intimate details of her sexual life establishes that bond. 119

Notes

'David H. Stanley argues that there Is an essential similarity in subject, treatment, and structure between the personal narrative and the personal novel.

Obviously, novels are longer and more complex than orally narrated personal experience stories, but the personal novel is like an extended personal narrative.

Such a narrative encourages dynamic interaction between the text and the reader. Like the audience of a personal experience narrative, the reader of a personally narrated novel engages in a dialogue. See

"The Personal Narrative and the Personal Novel:

Folklore as Frame and Structure for Literature,"

Southern Folklore Quarterly 43 C1979): 107-120.

-‘Alan Soble writes about pornographic photographs in Pornography: "Sexual arousal is not accomplished by pornography mechanistically; we should not think of a causal chain beginning with the photograph, which reflects light to the eyeball and retina, which sends electrical impulses to the brain and then down to the 120

crotch and hand. The response to pornography Is not a

reflex but is mediated by consciousness, including

beliefs and expectations, a consciousness filled with

social meanings and an understanding of socially

defined cues" <57). The reader's response to written

pornography is more than a mere mechanistic reaction.

The reader's expectations and experience guide the

response. As Soble points out, part of the viewer's

response to pornographic photographs results from the subject's show!ng her body; the viewer responds to

intention. In erotic fictional autobiography, part of the pornographic power results from the intent1on of an

intimate first-person narrator who wants to tell her sexual story.

•:‘Ro y Pascal points out the advantages of reading autobiography: to learn of other individuals* circumstances, to see into the consciousness of others, and to learn about an individual's personality and a particular order of values <193).

"Aretino's Dialogues does use a personal voice, but not to narrate an individual's life in the same fashion as the personal erotic fictional autobiography. In the 121

Dialogues. two older women, Nanna and Antonia, discuss

the female occupations of courtesan, nun, and wife with

Plppa, a younger woman.

‘-'Avoiding author identification has a definite

effect, as Rachel Brownstein points out in her

discussion of Jane Austen's first novel, which was

published as the work of "A Lady" in 1811. The novel

"announces itself as a certain deliberately pleasing

kind of novel, one that will insist on distinctions of

gender and class, as ladles do by existing. Such a

guarded announcement accords perfectly with the social

conventions to which ladies subscribe. We expect a

novel so published will play with the notion of character as self-preservation and observe the

overriding of Idiosyncrasy by convention, which will be conceived of as a power that organizes" CBecomlng 4.

Heroine 89). Allowing the author of pornography to remain anonymous encourages the reader to look at the distinguishing features which do identify the "writer": a lady of quality, an English maid, a Viennese prostitute, a madame, a princess.

-''"Mike Hunt" is a classic bit of erotic folklore, especially popular among fraternity pranksters. Said quickly, "Mike Hunt" sounds like "my cunt." Fraternity members will often ask for "Mike Hunt" to be paged airports, libraries, or dormitory lobbies. C H A PTER IV

THE NARRATOR'S VOICE:

"HE SEES ME AS HIS LUST WOULD HAVE ME"

Language is for pornography a bothersome

necessity; its function is to set going a series

of nonverbal images, of fantasies— and if it

could dispense with words it would.

--Steven Marcus, XlUEL QUier Victorians

As I have indicated in the preceding chapter, when writers of pornography choose the first—person point of view, they do so with a purpose. Contrary to what

Steven Marcus argues about language in pornography, these writers choose their words with care as well.

They know when to give the reader a detailed character and when to limit that presentation to a few significant facts. The narrator in first-person pornography must maintain the readers' interest, must encourage readers to engage in the escape of sexual fantasy. One technique that writers of erotic fictional autobiography use to engage readers In active

123 124

reading is intentionally limiting the protagonist's physical description while emphasizing other characteristics. In addition, writers assign erotic quality to ordinary items, such as clothing, to heighten the sensual ambience without blatant genital description. In what follows I shall explore these two techniques,

The protagonist of the erotic fictional autobiography speaks in her own voice, giving a sharp view of how she sees the world around her, but she often must resort to telling only about her world and seldom showing what goes on in it. She may recreate dramatic moments, but she does so inevitably from her single point of view. The distancing, sweeping omnipresence of other narratorial techniques disappears when an author chooses the intimate, engaging first- person narrator, but so do the easy means of describing and characterizing. Ironically, in these particular works where physical details would seem to be the raison d 'etre of the literature, the descriptions rarely go beyond general adjectives such as pretty or beautiful. And that is so in some part because of the writers' choice of narrative stance. First-person narrators generally cannot describe themselves. 125

Character1zatIon, of course, involves more than details of the way an individual looks. We learn about characters through language and action as well, but physical description often establishes characters in fiction. Charles Dickens, creator of some of the most memorable fictional characters, relies on careful physical detail. In Great Expectations, for example,

Dickens gives us Joe Gargery through Pip's eyes: "Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow gotten mixed with their own whites" (6 ). We also see Mrs.

Joe: "My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg grater instead of soap" <6 >.

These details suggest that Joe is a gentle, unassuming man who creates no conflicts. Mrs. Joe, on the other hand, is rough, angry, abrasive.

In this novel the character that we fail to see in any physical detail is Pip, the narrator and central character. Readers remember Miss Havisham1s decaying wedding dress, Uncle Pumblechook*s portliness,

Estella's beauty, Herbert Pocket's pale presence, but 126

Pip's physical appearance remains vague; he does not describe himself beyond a few comments about clothes or manner.

Pip's psychological development and growth toward emotional maturity form the heart of Great

Expectatlons. and those elements we see dramatized; but

Pip can no more detail his physical features than he can analyze his worldview. The first-person mode does not permit the narrator to describe himself without extreme artificiality. And, more important, Pip's concern is to be with the way others look. In sum, having central characters who narrate their stories in their own voices limits what the reader can see and know, but how the narrator narrates provides a part of what the reader knows about the character. Thus what seems like a limitation— that of the narrator's restricted vision— can, in fact, be seen as a method of characterizat ion.

In erotic fictional autobiography, two primary means of characterization through first-person point of view emerge: what the narrator says about herself and what she says about the world. Josephine, the Viennese prostitute who tells her story in The Memoirs of

Jnsephine. describes herself as attractive — meaning men 127

find her appealing. Ve know little of her except that she is a pretty girl (103> with a provocative smile, inviting behavior (157), curly blonde pubic hair <170), and round, firm breasts <174>. Josephine figures in nearly every sexual episode in the novel, but in the course of her adventures she fails to mention even the color of her hair or eyes. Rather than detailing eye or hair color or skin tone or even height, the author, through the narrator's voice, only allows the reader to see how men respond to her. But this undefined woman is not simply an objectified female who has sex with any man who wants her. Josephine stresses a more subtle physical presence, one that does not require the reader to know particulars: "My whole existence became a silent challenge to every male to grab hold of me and possess me. The word 'sex appeal' had not been invented yet, but that was exactly what seemed to ooze out of my very being . - . " <29> . Josephine's ''natural sex appeal," quite evident in her youth, continues even after her "face and body have lost much of their former attractiveness" <29).

Josephine does, moreover, describe some of the men in her life and thereby manages to tell us about herself. Mr. Horak, one of the young Josephine's first 128

male partners, works as a beer-de1ivery driver in her bu ildi ng:

Mr. Horak was about thirty, tall and athletic,

with a round, red face. He had a little blond

mustache and his hair was cut so short that it

looked as If he had shaved it off. He also

wore a tiny gold earring in one ear, which

impressed me very much .... In those days

Mr. Horak appeared to me as the acme of virile

beauty and proud maleness. He always wore a

nicely pressed white blazer, or a regular

summer suit with a vest, ornamented with a

heavy silver watch chain with a pendant: a

little horse also made of silver. <64)

Josephine also describes a young, elegant boy with whom she has fallen in love. Alois was a "very handsome, blond boy" who

always wore costly clothes, mostly dark brown

or blue suits made of velvet or corduroy. He

always wore shorts, though he was already

twelve and rather tall and strong for his age.

His well-shaped calves and the strong thighs I

could see where his corduroy shorts ended, did 129

something to me. X believe I was really In

love with him, not merely sexually attracted

There was something proud and

aristocratic in his beauty, which made me feel

ashamed of my poor shabby dress .... (93)

These characterizations do not contain sexually

explicit descriptions. Very little about the description, beyond a glimpse of a well-muscled thigh, seems provocative.

The narrator emphasizes the external appearance of the men, particularly their clothing. Josephine is a lower-class woman, born in the slums of Vienna, and her values are revealed in the descriptions of her men.

She sees the men in her life as commodities, as sources of income. Even when she describes the boy she loves, she emphasizes his clothes and his bearing. The writer cannot have Josephine describe herself on every page and he cannot simply have her outline her worldview in line after line of exposition. The writer can, however, allow the reader to see the men that Josephine attracts and to whom she is attracted. We learn a great deal about her without knowing what she looks like. 130

To individualize the men, Josephine uses terms of

commodity: the earring is gold, the watch chain silver,

the suits velvet and corduroy. Through this technique,

the writer accomplishes two things: Josephine seems

like a real person who does not dwell extensively on

her own appearance, and her worldview becomes clear in

the way she describes the men in her sexual life.

Josephine lives her life as a prostitute; she describes

men. In her story she emphasizes her early life as a

lower-class proletarian impressed with material goods;

she describes men’s clothing and bearing.

While Jessie of Confessions ajl English Maid

often mentions her attractive body, as a narrator she

reveals no more about her physical appearance in this

"autobiography" than Josephine does about herself.

Jessie's "delicate physique and small hands and tiny,

pointed fingers" <35) make scullery work an

impossibility for her, while her "form and baby face"

<38) and her "very nice legs" <53) make for a strong

earning potential as a prostitute, Jessie lets readers know that she is attractive, but she offers little detail beyond emphasizing her small stature and good

legs and referring to her naturally wavy hair <56).

Unlike Josephine with her descriptions of male attire, 131

Jessie, who from the beginning of her story has discussed her life of prostitution, describes rather the fetishes of the men she encounters in the brothel.

The way a man behaves matters m o s t to Jessie. For

instance, one of her regular gentleman customers, Mr.

Castle, has "a complex for strange and unusual postures in sexual intercourse, and also an itch to experiment along lines somewhat contrary to the plans of Nature"

(96). She does not describe Mr. Castle physically, but she allows the reader to see how she views this client: she refers to his "droll impudences" (96); she calls him a "clown" (98) and a "comical buffoon" <99). But she likes him because he accepts her "refusals to gratify his unnatural whim in good spirit and unfailing pleasant humor" (101).

Another regular, Mr. Vainwright, merits discussion because his appearance belies his behavior with Jessie.

She introduces him as "a suave, dapper little man, rather handsome in an effeminate way, but very nervous and emotional" (103). This gentle, little man calls

Jessie his "princess" and occasionally refers to himself as her "slave." Mr. Vainwright does not want what Jessie considers to be orthodox sex; he prefers cunnilingus. But this calm, dapper gentleman also 132

bites Jessie— and draws blood. He is thus indirectly

characterized as an ostensibly proper gentleman with a

dark sadistic streak.

Jessie will sometimes use the graphic language

often associated with pornographic writing, but she has a storytelling style that differs from Josephine's.

When Jessie characterizes her clients and their

inclinations, she sets a mood with her language; her interest extends beyond a depiction of the action. For example, the following passage introduces readers to

Mr. Heely's desires:

On his second visit he asked permission to sit

on a cushion at my feet, a request which was of

course granted, although for the moment I was

mystified. A bit later the circumstance of the

extremely short dress flashed over me and the

suspicion which it engendered was verified when

I observed an occasional covert glance being

directed between my legs. (81)

The language strategically establishes an air of propriety. To characterize Mr. Heely from Jessie's point of view requires that the author show her treating him respectfully. She cannot alienate her audience by belittling a client's sexual desires. The 133

effect would be different— his desires would seem frivolous— if Jessie related that her suspicions were confirmed "when he sneaked a peek at my crotch,"

Erotically evocative language, such as "covert glance," allows the reader to understand how Jessie regards Mr.

Heely. She sees an elderly man with a fetish: she must pretend to be very young as he sits at her feet or has her sit on his lap. While this is not her idea of a great sexual encounter, she must all the same grant him his wishes. She offers no snide comments from a professional point of view. In addition to allowing readers to see that Jessie has a professional knowledge about pleasing customers, the author shows an understanding of erotica: what titillates is often what is left unsaid.

During an encounter with Montague Austin, Jessie and Monty talk about what makes a woman sexually attractive. Jessie says that she finds Monty's desire to see her partially clothed rather than completely naked peculiar. Monty tells Jessie that rather than being odd, the desire stems from a natural Impulse:

"Complete nudity may be as suggestive of cold chastity as obscenity, whereas nudity, supplemented by a pretty pair of silk clad legs and neat slippers is the i34

perfectly balanced picture of esthetic lewdness" (183).

Jessie counters with an obvious question: "But suppose one's legs and feet are pretty enough to look well without stockings?" <183). Monty continues his argument: "It's not a question of beauty but of eroticism .... Suppose we take two girls, each equally pretty. One of them stands before us entirely naked. The other is dressed, but she raises her dress and holds it up so we can see her pussy. Which of the two is the most inciting sexually?" <183—184). Jessie responds without hesitation: "The one holding up her dress" <184). Monty confirms Jessie's response as correct, thereby making his point that the hint of nudity provides more erotic appeal than full exposure.

Jessie may be the pupil in this carefully designed scene, but her narrative demonstrates that the author has already learned this lesson; the descriptions

Jessie gives evoke a response not because they blatantly delineate the sex act, but because they simply suggest erotic possibilities. The promise of sexual fulfillment excites in a way that a forthright, clinical description would not. The writers recognize that subtle erotic descriptions matter as much as the more obviously lascivious ones. 135

Readers must be given a gllmpse of the protagonist and her partners in order to have freedom for fantasy.

The power of suggestion gives readers the freedom to fill in the gaps. Roland Barthes argues this point in

The Pleasure of the Text :

Is not the m o s t erotic portion of a body where

the garment gapes? . . . it is intermittence

which is erotic: the intermittence of

skin flashing between two articles of clothing

(trousers and sweater!, between two edges (the

open-necked shirt, the glove and the sleeve!;

it is this flash itself which seduces, or

rather: the staging of an appearance-as-

disappearance. (9-1011

Total nudity or fully articulated sexual acts do not allow readers to imagine much; with nothing left to the imagination, readers cannot fully engage in their own imagined fantasies. The writers understand how to describe characters in ways that will seduce their readers.

The writer does not give the reader a protagonist who devotes a great amount of narrative space to describing herself. Pornography often fails because 136

writers try to describe their characters much too

fully. For example, this ovei— written passage

illustrates the problems which result from failing to

recognize that readers do not really require much

detail: "Charlene's lower glory was as titian as her

head's mane— but a shade or so lighter, with more of

the coppery fire and less of the somber brown in its

hue."- Such descriptions can become almost comical as

writers try to paint fully defined pictures of their

characters. Restricting the narrative to the first-

person limits opportunity for this kind of detail. We

learn about Jessie, for instance, as she presents her

sexual partners through the individual sexual tastes

which she can satisfy; and she gives just enough detail

to arouse the readers' interest without giving so much

that the readers have no active rale in creating

meaning or in experiencing arousal.

Jessie changes her tone to fit the client; she does

not hesitate to call K r . Castle a clown, but she does so in good humor; when she taunts Mr. Vainwright, she gives him what he wants. And when she feels particularly aroused by a client, she does not hesitate to describe her reactions in explicit sexual detail.

On client in particular, Montague Austin, frequently 137

visits Jessie; he has a powerful appeal. The way she describes her episodes with Austin differs considerably from the way she describes those with Kr. Heely. With

Austin, the scenes are always fast-paced and extremely sensual: "Hard, rigid and hot I could feel it in there, distending my flesh to the limit of endurance, inspiring me with a wild desire to work on it rapidly, violently, until it poured out the balm which the fever within me craved" <124). Austin, a virile young man, arouses Jessie's lust; other clients pale in comparison. But even when the encounters with the not— so-exciting Mr. Heely warm up, the descriptions remain reserved: "Soon I felt a hand lightly caressing my knee. It moved tenderly back and forth over the silken surface of my hose. I lay quietly with my head against his shoulder, my eyes half-closed" <88>. The different diction indicates that Jessie views each man individually; she responds to each as he wishes and her language reflects that awareness. The author deftly manipulates Jessie's voice changes to indicate that she knows her clients very well; readers can trust her as narrator. Jessie’s language also indicates a mastery of the "gaping garment" technique as well. She uses 138

minimal sexual language and describes sex sparingly, carefully encouraging readers to fill in the spaces.

The author of Josephine also gives readers someone they can trust. Josephine's storytelling allows the reader to experience not only how Josephine sees the men in her life but also how she views her entire world. The descriptive manner helps the reader to see the world of the narrator through her eyes; it gives the reader a sense of the narrator's worldview.

According to Josephine's narrative, she became a prostitute in order to escape the fate of a low-born woman from a filthy proletarian suburb <16). The author emphasizes Josephine's taste for culture; the material value she assigns men is reflected in what she ostensibly records about them. Jessie, however, believes that "water seeks its level" <2) and she feels that from the beginning of her life she was meant to be the sexually active woman she became.

Jessie does not believe that "character is made by environment or training'1; she became sexually active because she found it to be pleasant C2). Curiosity led her to her first sexual experiences; she was "seduced by no man" (2), and she continued her active sexual life because she enjoyed it. To some feminist readers 139

Jessie may seem to be no more than a plaything for the men she encounters, a victim who will do whatever a man asks. But as she Indicates on the first page of her story, women blame the man too often: "The girl is never a willing accomplice. She is always, by artifice, force or deception, and subsequent abandonment, the victim of some man's depravity" <1>.

Jessie does not "shift upon somebody else the responsibility of [her] own condition" (1> and does not suffer from an unenlightened patriarchally prescribed existence: she lives the life she wants to live; she gets what she wants.

Another free-living protagonist, one of the most intriguing narrators of nineteenth-century erotica, is

Eveline, the subject of a late-Vietorian erotic fictional autobiography. Eveline tells the story of this young aristocrat's sexual adventures. The daughter of Sir Edward L , Baronet, Eveline, "always curious and enquiring as a child" (5>, investigates with her older brother Percy— "curious also" (5>— the

"remarkable differences in [their] physiological structure" <5>. Having lost her virginity to Percy at thirteen, Eveline then embarks on a non-professional sexual career in Paris and London. 140

As a student at a continental finishing school,

Eveline has a liaison with the concierge . a hunchbacked

dwarf with a strong sexual appetite for young ladles.

The reader first becomes aware of Eveline's beauty

through her report of the flattering endearments of the

lusty concierge : "the most beautiful girl in the

pension" <13), he calls her, a "divine little beauty"

<14), a "sweet and beautiful being" <16), a "pretty

one" <17). Eveline refers to herself from a distanced

third-person view as "the girl they call so delicately

beautiful, so refined that they say your noble and ancient blood stands out in your face and figure" C15).

Only through such reporting of the responses of others does the reader learn anything of Eveline's physical appearance.

Men seem as unable to specify Eveline's beautiful traits as they are unable to avoid them. A young

London apothecary who tumbles for the narrator addresses her in terms similar to those used by the cnncierge : "You are awfully pretty, you know. I never saw such a beautiful girl. You are so beautifully dressed" <31-32). Even a clergyman falters in

Eveline's presence: *'. . too beautiful — far too superbly beautiful to altogether emerge from the cocoon 141

of childhood (37). The first few pages of

Evellpe orient the reader; this beautiful girl

possesses a sexual allure for all men. The author does

not allow the narrator to mention or to report speech

that indicates any specific physical characteristics

such as hair color, eye color, skin tone, or body size.

From the footman at her family home ("My good Lord,

Miss, how beautifully made your legs are!" [43]) to her aristocratic father ("My beautiful— my darling child"

[473), men describe Eveline "as most splendidly made"

(64) but detail little of what attracts so much attent i on.

As with Pip in Great Expectstions. we share in the

life of the protagonist but have only that protagonist's voice offering insight. We do not learn from Pip what Pip looks like except in occasional contrast to other characters. Knowing what he looks like becomes unimportant; the writer directs the reader's attention elsewhere. We see Pip's world through his eyes, and their color does not matter. He wants to be a gentleman and he searches for confirmation of his status outside of himself; he describes that world for the reader. Eveline, like Pip

(and Jessie and Josephine), narrates her story from her 142

wantage point, and consequently we see her world from

her point of view. £vellne does not want to moralize,

to be a "self-appointed censor of the times in which

Eshel lives" <4>. She wants to live her life calmly and quietly. She wants to be a woman of pleasure, and

she seeks that pleasure in her daily sexual

relationships.

Aristocratic Eveline expresses disgust with the society in which she lives:

I do not personally care a pin what becomes of

society, so long as I succeed in avoiding the

arrows of detraction, scorn, and contempt which

it launches against any luckless number who has

the misfortune to be found out. I hardly think

it will do so in my case; at any rate, I take

all possible precautions to pursue my silent

path of sensual indulgence in obscurity and

peace. <4)

Eveline's path of indulgence leads her into many sexual encounters but not with anyone from her own class except her father and her brother. There are two possible reasons for Eveline's attraction to the lower classes. First, she wants to preserve her obscurity, and anonymous encounters outside of her usual social 143

circle would seem to ensure this. Second— and this, I

think, from the direction the story takes, is the

explanation the writer intends— lower class men make

better sexual partners, an assumption shared by Aretino

and Cleland as well. Eveline's partners include a

concierge. a footman, a horse groom, an apothecary, a sailor, a bootmaker, a music master, and a policeman.

She describes two "stout and broad shouldered" young men "of the well-to-do artisan class, with healthy features, well—cleaned persons and supple limbs" as the

"sort of young men" she enjoyed (267-268).

The writer intentionally involves Eveline with the

lower classes. Eveline's dabbling in sex at this social level reveals the narrator's blatant disregard for class separation; as an aristocrat, she violates an essential societal taboo. Not only does she freely engage in sex (in itself a violation of Victorian morality), but she does so with men outside of her class. The writer also plays on another taboo— incest.

The writer knows that the forbidden often fascinates readers, and that the sexual encounters Eveline has with her father and her brother appeal to that fascination. For Eveline, crossing the boundary of 144

class structure seems to be more strictly forbidden

than Incest.

Giving the narrator the dominant voice allows the

writer to restrict the amount of detail the central

female character reveals about herself. This limited

detail encourages active reading. For example, Eveline admits her awareness of her beautiful appearance: "Do you suppose that any woman does not know the exact merit of her own attractions? I know a beautiful face when I behold one" (68). For the reader, however,

Eveline offers not a catalogue of beauty but a superficial gloss of those attractions: "I am not going to indulge you with a vulgar list of my perfections— you must take the fact from me" <68). This slyly allows readers to supply their own idea of beauty.

Eveline announces that she does not want admiration or flattery from her readers because many use mere flattery only "to gain the attention of her you flatter" <69). Men who offer Eveline flattery, as she sees it, are "talking nonsense" <78). But if the man seems consumed with lust, if he "rages in private" and

"snorts like a stallion" <79), Eveline feels for the man; she enjoys his "agony of lust.” She does not enjoy the verbal games that simply flatter hei these 145

are the games that objectify her, that remove her from

sexual engagement. Eveline prefers the honest, sensual

reaction that men have to her beauty, a reaction that

gratifies her abstractly and usually leads to sexual

satisfaction.

Instead of giving readers a flatly drawn portrait

of a beautiful woman to be admired, the writer by

design gives the readers a carefully sketched woman in

the "thin veils [of] modesty . . . [which] robes the nude form of woman" (79>. Readers can pierce the veils and gloat "secretly on all [their] fancy pictures hidden beneath" <79); they can form "ideas on the subject" of her nudity <79). This woman, known to the reader as beautiful by report and lustful by action, appears not as a weak figure limited by narrative voice or lack of authorial imagination, but as a careful1y outlined figure. Rather than painting for the reader a portrait of Eveline as a specifically blond or black­ haired woman, the author gives the reader erotic freedom: "He sees me as his lust would have me. He sees the perfect bust— the panting bosom which no fashionable corset could 'improve*— the waist and ample haunch— the buttocks which no dressmaker ever pads with wretched cotton wool" <79). 146

Similarly, Fanny Hill appeals to her reader's

imagination to supplement what she has not clearly

articulated. She writes that in the kind of narrative

she presents "there is no escaping a repetition of near

the same Images, the same figures, the same

expressions, with this further inconvenience added to

the disgust it creates, that the words avs. ardours.

transports■ extasles [sic], and the rest of those

pathetic terms . lose much of their due spirit and

energy by the frequency . . . (Cleland 91>, She asks

that her readers "give life to the colours where they

are dull, or worn with too frequent handling" with the

application of their imagination and sensibility <91>.

That imagination, however, as she indicates in a later

passage, "must be an imagination exalted by such a

flame as mine .“ <183>. In other words, readers of

these narratives must be active readers, not simply passive receptacles into which writers may pour sexual descri pt i on.

The writer of Evellne leaves the particulars of the narrator's body to the reader's imagination, but does provide a little more detailed presentation of her highly eroticized clothing. The tactile smoothness of silk, satin, and kid which Eveline describes 147

underscores the sensual quality of the text. Umberto

Eco, In a discussion of the James Bond novels,

identifies what he calls “the technique of the aimless glance" <167>. In these novels, Ian Fleming will suspend the action and dwell on descriptions that seem

inessential to the story. For the Bond novels, according to Eco, these descriptions function to evoke the familiar world for the reader. Janice Radway has

identified a similar practice in the popular romance in which the author piles detail upon detail to describe the domestic environment <194>. Descriptions function a little differently in erotica, but Eco's principle, modified, still applies. The descriptions of Eveline's clothing merit attention as more than simple lists of * Victorian garments. The narrator provides the reader with the sense of the clothing as it contacts flesh,

Eveline's and others'. The descriptions seem casual at first, but as they compound throughout the narrative, their importance increases as they attach erotic meaning to everyday items. A

The most common Images in Eveline are of shoes, stockings, and gloves, items of clothing most often connected with fetishism, the association of erotic stimulation with objects or body parts. E> Extreme 146

fetishism manifests itself in the leather-and-chain

variety of sado-masochism, but fetishes also can be

simple associations, such as the desire to wear

clothing of the opposite sex or to have a partner wear

specific clothing. The spare descriptions put the

emphasis on the action of the clothing, not just on the

clothing. The writer carefully controls the emphasis;

the simple, evocative detail— a white glove, for

instance— is more arousing than extensive description.

Eveline *s author does not make the protagonist a

fetishist; she does not require particular items for

her sexual enjoyment.

But, the author does give Eveline the voice of one

who recognizes a fetish <"Host men have idiosyncrasies

in some small matters which in sensual temperaments are

sometimes exaggerated to the extent of manias" [ 571>,

and from that ability to recognize, Eveline derives the

control over men which she desires. The erotic quality

of her clothing does not escape the narrator's

awareness. Her gauge for male behavior, her ever-ready

Charlemagne-1ike father Edward, the object of her admiration and love, has a strong fetish-inclination

for Eveline's clothes The narrator controls men by knowing what pleases them; she is aware that men find 149

particular clothing items arousing. The writer, by

design, controls readers in much the same way. Knowing

what arouses, the writer carefully weaves the smallest

details into the text, sometimes allowing the reader to

linger at a highly erotic scene, sometimes giving only a glimpse of what will come. Manipulating the "gaping garment" technique allows the writer to direct the reader's attention to the text at times or away from the text in order to achieve the desired sexual arousal.

Knowing her papa’s tastes to be excellent, Eveline dresses to please him, for she knows that "a woman dresses to please others, and in her success or failure she has her reward" (57). To see her father's lust, to see in his "sensuous eyes" the evident pleasure with which he fondled my soft gloves, or allowed his gaze to linger upon my daintily fitting little boots" <57-58) gives Eveline all the reward she desires. Her enjoyment comes not only from the sexual pleasure she experiences in fellatio and intercourse, but in watching the lust she Inspires in men. Eveline clearly defies the image of female sexuality which William

Acton's The, Functions and. Disorders. Of. the Reproductive

□rgans (1857) indicates as the prevalent Victorian 150

perception of women: "I should say that the majority of

women (happily for them) are not very troubled with

sexual feelings of any kind" (quoted by Marcus 31).

Readers do not expect such behavior from an

"aristocratic" woman. Male readers may not expect the

response— that of a highly born woman clearly enjoying

her lust and the lust of men. Female readers, however,

may find Eveline interesting for another reason: she

lives her life passionately; she enjoys the passion

that society (not only Victorian society) demands that

wo me n hi de .

Eveline’s passions obviously inspire strong

feelings in men, but her clothing also attracts

partners. Her small kid boots arouse the imaginations

of several men. The apothecary finds them "exquisite"

(32). Her father lavishes his attention: "Vhat pretty

little boots, my darling Eveline! How well they fit!

Vhat graceful outline of instep and heel! Vhat

delicate kid, and then how soft and flexible!" (124).

Often he runs his fingers "over the soft pale cream- colored leather" (210). But the bootmaker, Monsieur

Dalmalne, falls literally at Eveline's feet. His works, not those of "an ordinary bootmaker" as he was an "artist in boots" (218), were made for Eveline's 151

beautiful feet, which might have been "sculptured by

Canova himself" (219). Eveline coyly flirts with this man, teasing him with her toes as he fits her boots.

Vhen she realizes that this "artist cordonnler was a

victim to his own creations! He had fallen in love with his own work, like Pygmalion with his statue"

(220), she knows she has discovered his weakness, his fondness for her shoes and her feet. Discerning this, she can control him, so she abandons flirting and pursues this man's infatuation until "raging desire had taken possession" (224) of him, Eveline wants him sexually; she discovers the way to get to him, and she perseveres until he can no longer withstand the passion. He grasps each of her feet in his hands, and they finally complete their sexual encounter. Eveline controls this man's desires, plays him quite well, to get what she wants. The writer controls readers in much the same way. The writer can divert the action to elicit a response, but can also focus readers' attention on a particular item or action to emphasize an erotic motif.

Vhile boots are an important part of the sexually charged descriptions, Eveline's gloves command the most attention. The narrator refers to her gloves over 152

twenty times. Her father, of course, takes a

particular Interest in her clothes and Eveline tries to

please him: "I dressed with extraordinary care. I put

on exactly what I knew papa liked best. Beautiful long

white gloves fitting like my own skin, softly glowing

in the sparkling light from the huge chandelier'1 <67-

6 6 ). The gloves— soft, long, white, fitting like a

second skin— appeal to her father visually and

tactically. He likes to "sit in the brougham with

Cher] hand in his, gently stroking the soft kid" <55),

appreciating the aesthetics of the gloves. But more

than that, he enjoys the touch of Eveline’s hands, the sensation of her gloves "daintily clasped around the

impudent fellow" <66), his penis.

The significant absence of physical description of the narrator has been explained above as an intentional authorial technique for encouraging active reader participation, but what do the extensive descriptions of the non-sexual items in the texts offer? A close examination of the glove image in Eveline will illuminate the importance of detailed non-sexual and sexual descriptions.

When the narrator or another speaker mentions

"gloves," the word never appears alone. An adjective 153

always accompanies the word "gloves": soft, long, white, or kid. The meaning of these repeated words comes from the simple repetition not of a word but of a phrase or pair of words, the collocation of particular words,7 Looking at meaning by collocation involves going beyond single-word definition to the arrangement of words. In Eveline. a heavy burden of eroticism rests on the image of gloves. Descriptions of them emphasize the skin-like quality of the gloves: they fit like skin, are white like skin, are made from skin.

The pairing of "gloves" with words like "kid" or

"white" demonstrates the writer's awareness that such phrases supply effective images. The repeated Images appeal to readers' erotic sensibilities, evoking a familiar world as well as creating a rhythm in the reading. Headers can expect the pairings and thus be reassured of the familiar, but still find enough freedom for personal imagination.

While Eveline refers only once to her own skin

("Your skin is like ivory with a touch of carmine in it" [ 197] ), she repeatedly draws attention to the "soft kid gloves" she wears: she pats men with "softly gloved fingers" (64> and draws on "beautiful new gloves" (99> to go out for the evening; a man squeezes her "soft kid 154

glove" In his strong palm (103); another presses "the

pretty tight-fitt1ng kid glove to his lips" <114).

More than one man has Eveline's "softly gloved hands"

on his "sturdy weapon" <125, 213, 242, 247).

Meaning derives from the phrasing: the gloves alone

would be only part of "the aimless glance" technique, a

way to add texture to the narrative by giving a sense

of the clothes that Eveline wears. Pairing the gloves

with the evocative adjectives gives the image more

meaning: rather than a simple picture of gloves, the

image evokes a sensual response. Beyond meaning by

collocation, we can look at the contextual meaning of

the wards. The reader soon associates gloves with the

sensual quality the writer ascribes to them. The

pairings reinforce the sensual image of the soft, white glove, and the context of the image matters because the

writer always describes Eveline's gloves in the context of a sexual encounter.

The sensual quality of the woman's white-gloved hands around the man's penis cannot be overlooked.

Eveline's gloved hands fascinate her father: "I stood before him, in my stays, my long silk stockings, my gloves, which I retained to please him: long evening white kid gloves which fitted perfectly, of finest 155

perfumed kid, extending up almost to my elbow*' <142).

"The gloves fit perfectly" can mean, literally, that

the fine kid leather adheres closely to Eveline's skin.

Literally and metaphorically the Image gives us the

gloved hands, so often touching the penis, fitting

perfectly around it as the ideal sheath. Furthermore,

metaphorically the glove and the hand take on both

vaginal and phallic implications. The ideal vagina

fits perfectly as it clasps the penis, but the long

white gloves reaching to the elbow, extending away from

the body, present a phallic image as well. The gloved

hand and arm becomes both the receiving vagina and the extending phallus.

The dual image of the gloved hands as both vaginal and phallic appears most clearly in another of the encounters between Eveline and her father. In this episode, Eveline has recently undergone surgery that prevents her from having intercourse. She arranges, nevertheless, a "little divert1ssement" for him:

I gently thrust my right hand from out of the

side of the bed .... A beautiful white kid

glove covered my hand and half my arm, fitting

like ray own skin. On my wrist sparkled a

lovely diamond bracelet, his own gift. He 156

looked down. lie belie Id the snake-1 Ike advance

of the little gloved hand, the glistening sheen

of the perfumed glove Itself. <302>

The gloved hand pleases Eveline's father. The curious picture of the glistening, snake-like hand and arm gives readers another mixed image of the extending arm/phallus and the receiving hand/vagina. The descriptions of the gloves often substitute for graphic genital details. The writer directs the reader's attention in this scene to the glove, the bracelet, the hand— not to Edward's or Eveline's genitals.

Nevertheless, the scene is erotic; the masturbatory implications of this scene are undeniable.

By knowing what pleases her father and the other men she encounters, Eveline gains power over them.

Many feminist critics claim that pornography

"reinforces the myth of a passive and masochistic feminine sexuality” . But Eveline seems to enjoy the control that she exerts over men in her ability to excite them sexually. Her desire to satisfy them appears not as the passive compliance of a weak woman to the demands of a master but as the aggressive behavior of a strong-willed woman. To Eveline, seeing a man's "agony of lust" gratifies her <79>. She finds 157

no greater thrill than to be "the instrument of [a

strong man's] supreme delight" <117). To see a man out

of control— to witness his pleasure— gives pleasure to

Eveline <214>. To find a man's weakness and to exploit

it brings her Joy <220). She describes her lust many

times, but the pleasure of seeing a man "filled with a

bestial sense of desire unappeased" delights her the

most.

Eveline enjoys her power to excite men, and she

uses that power to control the men she encounters. She cannot, however, control her husband, an aristocrat more interested in his club than in his wife. The high-born Lord Endover seems unable to father a child; and to complete the picture of the virile lower classes with which she begins her story, Eveline tells how she intentionally becomes pregnant by a gatekeeper in order to retain the family estate. The novel has a clear pattern: Eveline describes the men with whom she has sex by the class to which they belong. The emphasis on class tells the reader several things about Eveline: she finds lower-class men to have more sexual prowess than do the effete men of her own class. She enjoys the control she exerts over them with her status and her sexual power (they call her "miss" as they wipe 158

their semen from her silk stockings); and she wants to

defy the age in which she lives. Breaking through

class boundaries for Eveline is a way of controlling

both her husband her lovers. And breaking those

boundaries allows her to control society to some extent

by proving that she can do as she pleases. Violating taboos— incest and class distinctions— is erotic for

Eveline and for the reader. The writer directs the reader’s attention to Eveline's "violations” not to challenge the taboo but to allow the reader to experience the eroticism of taboo violation.

Because the writer gives Eveline a generic physical description, this character emerges as an erotic

Everywoman, a woman devoted to sensual pleasure. For readers of fictional autobiography, Eveline looks however they want her to look. She shares in their fantasy by encouraging them to see, beneath the veils of clothing, an area often hinted at but never delineated. The reader creates the image, not the fiction writer. The writer has given the narrator a voice that guides the reader and allows the reader to create a fantasy from a textual world that purports to be reality. The way that Josephine, Jessie, and

Eveline describe their worlds Indicates that while the 159

first-person point of view may restrict how much, can be

described, writers can nevertheless use the narrator's

voice to provide very clear characterization.

Josephine, Jessie, and Eveline each appear as

individual characters who see the world differently.

In addition to the obvious reason for sparse detail—

namely, allowing readers their own fantasies— the

economy of description also keeps readers' attention

focused. The sustained, simple images maintain the

narrative pace, sometimes slowing, sometimes

accelerating the erotic emphasis.

The language in these texts is clearly more than

the bothersome necessity that Marcus claims.

Pornography cannot dispense with words, for words carry

the erotic weight, a point which Marcus fails to

realize. First-person narration's immediacy, engagement, and intimacy allow the author to give the

narrator a voice with which she can guide readers. The

first-person narration would be of little value if the

language did not create sympathetic characters.

Readers must focus on the narrator's action and on the possibility of that action in their own lives or at least in their fantasies, The narrator's voice describes the action and creates the mood for the 160

reader's response. The language necessary "to evoke the response goes beyond the smattering of foui— letter words usually associated with this writing. Writers of successful pornography use language to present the possibility of sexual activity by carefully guiding readers through the texts. 161

Notes

'It Is interesting to note that Rachel Brownsteln

chooses this same passage from Barthes to explain the

pleasure one gains from reading Jane Austen's novels,

novels that are often seen as rather cool. "Separation

sharpens desire," Brownstein writes of Austen

a. Heroine 85). Essentially, this is the same point:

what is not seen sometimes matters more than what is

seen.

JFran Tick, Her Sensuous Search(New York: Carlyle

Communications, 1985). This passage comes from an

"airport" novel, a kind of pornographic fiction

characterized by its strict adherence to formulaic

style and its graphic, unimaginative sexual

descriptions. These novels, most often found on the

highest shelves in airport terminal bookstores, seem to

be the kinds of books most people would think of as

"pornography. "

‘Feminism has brought to our attention that the patriarchy defines women sexually. This perception of women as objects to be used at will is a serious 162

concern. But I think It is a serious matter to

consider that we not extend the argument so far as to

forget that women are (as men are) sexual creatures.

The flat, objectified sexual female found in some

literature, the woman who passively suffers male

aggression, can be contrasted to the narrators of these

texts: these characters are not all standard

receptacles for male sperm and neither are they like

traditional novel heroines who must either die or marry. They are sexual beings who tell about having sex— not in itself a negative act.

"As part of her discussion of clothing in Clarissa.

Rachel Brownstein argues that Richardson dresses up

Clarissa Harlowe for many different reasons, one of which Is to indicate "the solidity and the material nature of the wall between men and her virginity, the world and her" (Becoming a. Heroine 59). Clothing is like armor for Clarissa; for Eveline, it is like a second skin, a reinforcement not of virginity but of sexuality, not repelling, but enticing.

'in a 1927 essay on fetishism, Freud identified

"the meaning and purpose of the fetish" of several male clients in analysis as "a penis-substitute" (215). As

Freud goes on to say, the "purpose of the fetish 163

precisely is to preserve the important childhood penis from being lost" <215). The fetish is, then, according to Freudian analysis, "a substitute for the woman's

(mother's) phallus which the little boy once believed in and does not wish to forego— and we know why" <215).

("Fetishism," Sexuality and the Psychology qJL Love. ed.

Philip Rieff [New York: Collier, 1963], 214-219).

‘According to fashion history, nineteenth-century women's gloves were often made of kid, baby-goat skin finished on the flesh side. These gloves were sometimes short, fitting to the wrist or a little above. After the 1880s, however, long gloves became the fashion, fitting to the elbow and beyond and worn in the evening usually. The gloves usually fitted snugly. See R. Turner Wilcox, The Dictionary of

Costume (New York: Scribner's, 1969); Joan Nunn,

Fashi on i n Costume (London: Herbert, 1984); and Douglas

A. Russell, Costume History and Style (Englewood

Cliffs: Prenct i ce-Ha11, 1983).

v' I take the idea of collocation from J. R.

Firth's essay "Modes of Meaning" (Papers in Linguistics

1934-1951 [London: Oxford, 19571 190-204).

'Kathryn Hume makes this point quite clear:

"Pornography and detective stories stay within the 164

realm of the empirically possible, however unrealistic the action may be. Their effectiveness depends on their events being passible: were mystery-writers allowed to reveal that the murderer had physically been in two places at once, thanks to his time-travel machine, we would feel cheated" (Fantasy and Mlmesis.

[New York: Metheun, 19S41 77). Pornography, to be successful, must seem possible— however outrageous, it must be possible if readers are to accept its potential for their own lives. CHAPTER V

READING EROTICA

Shall the abuse of a thing make the right use

od i ou s?

Sir Phillip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy

The dead weight of an intolerant tradition

prevents anyone's properly understanding the

most enlightened intentions ....

— I tal o Calvino, H r .- Falomar

So far, this discussion has concentrated on the text, on the technical complexity and rhetorical sophistication that seduce readers of erotic fictional autobiographies. I have analyzed the narrative techniques writers use to command the reader's attention and stimulate the reader's imagination. Such textual analysis is obviously crucial to our understanding of a work. But we must go one step further to consider equally the reading experience, for the results of a work matter also. Up to now in this discussion I have presumed a uniform response to the

165 166

text, presupposing a sort of perfect reader for whom

the reading experience is pleasant and arousing, a

reader envisioned by the author, one who finds the

knowledgeable narrator's intimate voice engaging and

convincing. But who is this reader? Is there a

particular target audience for whom the erotic

fictional autobiography is designed and, if so, are

other readers, those excluded from the author's

intended audience, unable to enjoy the text?

Many critics who discuss the reading experience

recognize a need to distinguish between ideal readers

and real readers, between the Individual holding the

text and the audience for whom the author writes.

Understanding these distinctions becomes important when considering both that writers must make assumptions about readers and that texts reflect those assumptions.

Wayne Booth argues that the author creates his reader

(49). The reading experience, as Booth describes it,

involves the reader subordinating him- or herself to the text. This reading self differs from the self who goes shopping and pays bills. The actual reader accepts the created role so as to understand the text fully. 167

Discussing readers, as critics have clearly

demonstrated, demands that one consider all aspects of

the reading process. As Gerald Prince indicates in his

schematic view of the reading experience, we must

consider several alternatives for the nation of reader:

the "real reader" who holds the book, the "virtual

reader" for whom the author writes, and the "ideal

reader," the one who understands the text perfectly.

Prince also introduces the "narratee," the person to

whom the narrative is directed and who differs from the

reader (7-25). Walker Gibson offers the "mock reader,"

one distinct from the real person "upon whose crossed knee rests the open volume," who assumes a role in order to discover the meaning contained in the text; the "mock reader is an artifact, controlled, simplified, abstracted out of the chaos of day-to-day sensation" <2>.

In Before Reading, Peter J. Rabinowitz distinguishes among the "actual audience," the

"authorial audience," and the narrative audience. The actual audience "consists of the flesh-and-blood people who read the book” (20); the authorial audience is the group for whom the author designs the book <21>; and the narrative audience "is a role which the text forces 168

the reader to take on" (95). Eablnowitz's system shows clearly that the reading experience is not a uniform process for all readers. Individual writers design texts for specifically imagined readers and individuals bring to the texts their own experiences as well as other factors such as beliefs, gender, and race. We must consider all aspects involved in reading if we are to understand fully the text’s meaning. The reading

' xperience becomes especially complex in regard to pornography since sexuality, ostensibly the writing's central concern, is so closely tied up not only with biology but with sexual politics and morality.

Rabinowitz's distinctions offer one way of solving the problems posed by questions of readers and pornography. My discussion in the preceding chapters explains the text from the position of the narrative audience— the sort of reader one must be to take the fiction as real. The narrative audience of Josephlne must accept the sexual activity of a seven-year-old girl; a reader who argues the biological improbability of this cannot be counted among the narrative audience.

The actual readei the individual holding the book— may, because of moral, ideological, political, or sexual views, find him- or herself in direct conflict 169

with Josephlne's pedophilia and Incest. The text

attempts to seduce a reader into a role, but the reader

can resist that seduction.

Vriters of erotic fictional autobiography seem to

have definite audiences in mind. The writers whose

works I have most closely examined in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and they

probably wrote with male readers in mind. Three areas

of concern will be addressed here to consider fully the

various responses we might find to erotic fictional

autobiography. First, the authorial audience of

Victorian or Edwardian pornography differs from today's

modern reader in one way because of our more

sophisticated understanding of physiology and

sexuality; thus what the earlier audience might have

accepted as real, a modern audience might find

completely unbelievable. Second, what the authorial

audience may have seen as taboo a modern reader may

have no trouble accepting (and vice versa). But modern readers do confront conventionally taboo matters. How one reader responds to sexual taboos can differ considerably from the response of another reader: the

individual reader may be reassured, appalled, or excited by the subject; a reader may rejoice or throw 170

the text in the trash. Third, and most importantly for

my discussion, is the question of men and women as

readers. Traditionally pornography has been seen as

men writing for men. Feminist arguments against

pornography consistently point to pornography as having

no place for female readers. But I believe that erotic

fictional autobiography denies that stereotype. Many

feminists refuse to read pornography because it is seen as an un-feminist or even anti-feminist activity. As a

feminist I think it is important to look carefully at

this view so that we may discover whether we are being

fair to women and to pornography.

The ideal reader of pornography— like the ideal

reader of any genre— finds the experience entertaining

and educational, and while not without its pressures,

the reading experience should be one in which the

reader deals with the challenges and makes adjustments.

The ideal reader can take what he or she wants and

leave the rest. Elizabeth A. Flynn describes the reading process in general as one involving a confrontation. The self, the reader, encounters the other, the text, and one of several things can happen: the reader can dominate the text, the text can dominate the reader, or the reader and the text can interact, 171

-thus allowing the reader to learn and to enjoy him- or

herself without losing critical distance <268).

Pornography presents an intriguing area for reader-

response criticism because it sometimes forces readers

to confront material which directly challenges

fundamental attitudes or knowledge about sexuality.

Physiology is one area in which that challenge

comes. In an essay about Cleland, Freud, and Lawrence,

Robert Scholes discusses how male writers describe the

female body. This semiotic analysis demonstrates quite clearly the male-centeredness of Cleland*s Fanny Hill.

Scholes argues that Cleland’s description of women's sexual functioning is not realistic but is presented

"as the men of his time wished it to be" <134). The erotic code in Fanny Hi 11 emphasizes sexual

intercourse, establishing the phallus as the only means to a woman's sexual satisfaction. As Scholes points out, the clitoris often disappears when men write about women's bodies, or, in the case of Fanny Hill, it is relocated to reinforce the phal1ocentric utopia that is presented.1

And, as if eliminating the clitoris from female sexuality were not enough, many pornographic works also encourage the notion that the sight of an erect phallus 172

enraptures women who are absolutely devoted to the

"voluptuous engine": "You, Silvia, who are yet, I believe an unexperienced maid, can have no conception of the seductive powers of this wonderful Instrument of nature— the terror of virgins, but delight of women"

"voluptuous agitation"

Some texts do attempt verisimilitude in physical descriptions, but what reader familiar with Alfred

Kinsey, Villiam Masters and Virginia Johnson, Shere

Hite, Nancy Friday, or even Ruth Vestheimer can read the following seriously: ". . . each time I perceived that tantalizing twitch ray ovaries threatened to release their own flood of pleasure tears" (Confessions 173

of an Engllsh Maid 124). This comes from one of the

more realistic texts I have been discussing. The

author no doubt intends this effusion to show how

completely aroused Jessie, the narrator, is; but modern

readers are a little more sophisticated when it comes

to female physiology. In another example, modern

readers of Eveline must decide to what extent they are

willing to accept Sir Edward's analysis of barren

English women:

The present fashionable tendency to turn girls

into tomboys; the exercises, athletic and

vigorous, which they now patronise is

undoubtedly producing that effect [barrenness],

and unfitting the Englishwoman for the softer

and more natural duties of life. She is

annually becoming taller, slimmer, more

angular, more devoid of the marked contrasts of

sex. (130>

Sir Edward also includes the unsuitable English climate as another reason for "infructuous marriages"

131 >. The writer's attempts to make the text educational or realistic may have been met with acceptance at the turn of the century, but statements like these do not often go unchallenged currently. An 174

actual audience, faced with these factual, philosophical, or logical infractions, must make adjustments and even concessions in order to accept what happens in the text as real.

Often a modern audience confronts a text which draws attention to a matter that seems insignificant.

Rabinowitz writes that "we live in a world with a history and with traditions, and it is impossible to experience what an author wanted us to because it is impossible to forget all that has happened between the time when a text was written and the time when it is read" <34>. Today's readers of Eve1lne. particularly

American readers, may wonder why so much is made of her sexual relations with men outside of her own aristocratic class. Indeed, Eveline devotes more attention to Justifying her attraction to the lower classes than she does to explaining her incestuous relationship with her father. Eveline's refusal to adhere to class distinctions (her sexual partners are working-class men) probably provoked a very strong response from the authorial audience

However, social structure in England underwent tremendous changes in the nineteenth century as the 175

working class began to demand rights. As Richard D.

Altick points out, economic changes resulted in

a sharpening of class consciousness. To the

upper class and especially the older portion of

the middle class, everything depended upon

preserving the hallowed structure . ; to the

lower class, or at least its most sensitive

part, the supreme need was for sweeping social

reconstruction in the direction of democracy.

<&5)

Regardless of class, a member of the authorial audience would have responded to the violation of such a significant restriction

-any kind of fiction— as one in which they willingly suspend their disbelief and become an active part of the narrative audience. Eveline defies a number of prohibitions, ranging from incest to class infractions; a reader’s response to those violations depends as much on the historical context as on the individual's 176

personal standards. Pornography, because of its emphasis on sexuality, should not be required to be more mimetic than other fiction simply because it arouses sexual feelings.

My discussion has lingered cautiously on what may irritate some readers who cannot brook the notions of weeping ovaries or an absentee clitoris or barren athletic women and on the historical and cultural differences that do not really offend or challenge a reader's worldview. Some readers can make such adjustments easily, assuming the role of narrative audience without much difficulty. Or they can at least appreciate some of these things as interesting or even curious within a particular context. But erotic fictional autobiography, as is the case with much pornography, often deals with activities that even in our own relaxed times are taboo and illegal such as incest and pedophilia. ~ Can a reader calmly accept

Josephine's initiation to sexual intercourse by an adult male when she is still a child? Can a reader ignore the fact that many of Eveline's grand sexual encounters and descriptions actually involve her father and her brother? 177

How readers deal with taboo subjects presents an interesting question for reader-response analysis: do readers simply accept all of the text's code or do they reject certain parts of it? Headers' morals and beliefs must certainly affect their reading Df erotic texts. There are readers for whom a given sexual expression is disgusting, and, regardless of the medium, they will not find it arousing. Headers' a priori beliefs may prohibit their erotic response to some acts which, in the code-world of the text, are absolutely acceptable. Many erotic fictional autobiographies concentrate on the forbidden at the same time that they exonerate and extol it. Fantasy may allow some readers to be excited by an act they otherwise would never consider. Readers' beliefs may prohibit certain behaviors in the readers' reality

(e.g. , homosexuality), but within the world of the text their fantasy can operate with impunity and thus they can enjoy an otherwise forbidden pleasure.

According to Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen, sex fantasies are "mental aphrodisiacs and psychological stimulants"

Sexual fantasy, as the Kronhausens discuss it,

"distinguishes human sexuality from that of the lower 17S

species," and "the more intelligent the individual, the greater the rale af fantasy in his sex life" (xlv).

The Kronhausens do believe that most individuals find graphic accounts of sexual activity Intrusive; most will be shocked by what they read. But the shock is significant. The individual who confronts fantasy— even if it is disturbing— will be "rewarded not only by a vastly enlarged vision of man's secret inner world, including his own, but by the assurance that he is not alone in what he may have considered as quite unacceptable in himself" (xvii). A reader who encounters in pornography a fantasy which he or she has nurtured may in fact be shocked, but will, in the end, be rewarded and reassured by the acknowledgment that his or her personal imaginings are not peculiar or i solated.

In Confessions of_ an English Maid, the narrator tells readers about an activity set forth as taboo in the world of the text;

In prostitution, just as in other circles of

life, there are social distinctions. The

cocksucker is at the low end of the scale and

is looked down upon with considerable scorn by 179

those of her sisters who have not yet descended

to this level. <132)

Jessie, however, after her initiation, finds fellatio

to be fascinating, and as she explains it, instinctual.

Some readers may see Jessie as an ideal, a woman who

thoroughly loves to perform an act that they themselves

love to perform or have performed for them. Some readers may dismiss the act as disgusting and Jessie's

behavior as repulsive, but in this text either reader can find a place because as Jessie's luck turns in the story, readers can experience satisfaction that her perversion has not been rewarded or they can feel compassion for a sympathetic character.

Thus, erotic texts have their own particular codes of proper and improper behavior. In Confess!ons of aii

£ n g i i Sh. Maid. fellatio is presented as an unacceptable activity not because of moral standards but because in a "high-class bordello" if "one is discovered to be guilty of accommodating patrons with her mouth she not only loses caste but stands convicted of 'unfair' practice which makes it difficult for other girls to compete with her without also resorting to the same procedure" <132). Jessie risks fellatio, resisting the standards her colleagues have established, but when her 180

friend Hester accidentally interrupts a liaison between

Jessie and her brother Rene, it becomes clear that

Jessie does not want to be suspected of violating an incest taboo:

"But . . but . your own brother!" she

whispered, in low, shocked tones.

For a moment I failed to grasp the import of

her words. Vhen comprehension dawned on me, I

burst into laughter.

"Didn't you know, ha! ha! ha! Didn't I tell

you, Rene isn't my real brother, he isn't any

blood relation to me at all, he's only a

stepbrother!" <115>

This work may describe sexual activity explicitly and it may draw upon some very different kinds of sexual activity, but boundaries do exist even within fictional worlds that seem to have no restrictions.

The authorial audience might have been uncomfortable with the oral sex in Confessions of. an

Fng 1 -f <=.h Ma 1 d (c. 1937) or the inter—racial relations in

The L i berti ne Enchantress C1863) , but many modern readers would have no problem with either.

Understanding reader response to such conventionally taboo areas requires historical and cultural 161

consideration. But readers of pornography will also

confront in pornography taboo subjects which directly

challenge their own convictions. Gayle Rubin makes the

problem of personal attitude very clear in her

discussion of contemporary sexual values:

Most people find it difficult to grasp that

whatever they like to do sexually will be

thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that

whatever repels them sexually will be the most

treasured delight of someone, somewhere. <283>

Readers have the choice to respond to texts as they

wish— to resist them, to ignore them, or to throw them

away. But most readers bring to the text the attitude

Rubin describes, and that can make a difference.

A reader assuming the role of narrative audience

suspends judgment about Eveline's passionate and

Josephine's forced incestuous relationships with their

fathers. A reader willing to be part of the narrative

audience accepts Eveline's comparison of her

relationship to that of Charlemagne with his daughters and believes Josephine's explanation of her

impoverished living conditions and her absent mother.

However, the actual reader, a reader refusing the role of narrative audience may condemn the text as 1B2

degenerate or immoral, But literature which addresses sexual fantasy will always face these Judgments because

individual readers do not all share the same perceptions of what is degenerate or immoral.

In addition to the Influence which morals have on the actual reader's response, we must also consider generational, cultural, intellectual, political, gender, regional and other differences which shape individual responses. To be part of the authorial audience is to read as the author intended, to be part of what Rabinowitz calls the social/interpretive community (22). An important consideration for my purpose here is where women readers fit in the interpretive community of pornography readers.

Arguments against the possibility of women enjoying pornography emphasize that women cannot engage wholly in the reading experience because the targeted audience is male. If the target audience is male and women are not part of the author's rhetorical design, then it follows that the gaps in the text are to be filled by a male sexual imagination, not a female.

Reading, as Volfgang Iser and other reader-response critics explain, involves the reader's imaginative engagement with the text. This dynamic process 183

produces meaning; readers fill in "the gaps In the text.

The literary text, Iser writes, "must therefore engage

the reader's Imagination in the task of working things

out for himself, for reading is only a pleasure when it

is active and creative" <50-69>.

Lonnie Barbach, a clinical psychologist at the

University of California, San Francisco, decided during her research on female sexuality that erotic material specifically oriented for women did not really exist. Barbach found that women read John Cleland,

Erica Jong, and Gael Greene, but beyond that they read very little erotica because they fail to respond to the attitudes and experiences described in what they perceive to be male-oriented pornography (vlii>.

Barbach, author of For Yourself. Vomen Discover Orgasm, and Ear Each Other. eventually tried to correct the lack of specifically female—centered erotica by publishing Pleasures: Vomen Write Erotica (1985), a collection of erotic personal experience stories by women.-1 Barbach argues in the preface to Pleasures that male-centered pornography does not address Issues significant to women's sexual experiences.

The assumed exclusion of women from the reading audience may have risen because pornography, in 184

addition to its occasionally erroneous descriptions of

female physiology, sometimes depicts women as victims.

Dominique Poggi writes in "A defense of the mastei—

slave relationship" that pornography presents women who

"supposedly love to be forced, humiliated, whipped, and above all, raped" <76>. Poggi argues that pornography

"defends the mastei— slave relationship thot controls the sexual act" <77). Pornography is, for Poggi, "a tool of propaganda which serves the patriarchy and which reinforces the myth of a passive and masochistic feminine sexuality, even while it glorifies Images of male predators and sadists" <77). Pornography offers nothing to women, Poggi claims, but continued patriarchal prescriptions for passive sexuality.

Michael Perkins argues that women do not read pornography because it is written by men who depict

"women as fantasy figures or objects of sexual abuse, but never as people" <151). Vomen in pornography,

Benoite Groult claims, are nothing more than a few significant orifices presented for the male hero's pleasure. Vomen who choose not to accept such portrayals, choose not to read pornography— or so the many critics argue. 185

Erotic writing, the arguments seem to Indicate, Is for men. Language purposefully misrepresents the female body, the characterization objectifies women, and the action denigrates them. Such evaluations seem to signify that traditional pornography offers women no place as readers. Susan Griffin argues that pornographic first-person narratives are not different from other kinds of pornography because the voice heard is one that "believes woman ought to be mastered by man. That she desires submission. That she needs to serve him" <12). Vomen in this fiction "are never represented as active subjects with their own desires," says Dominique Poggi <77>. The much—discussed Story of

Q. becomes the straw-figure for anti-pornography campaigns because the masochistic protagonist accepts her poor treatment, accepts her faceless, nameless, powerless position. "Your hands are not your own," O is told, "nor are your breasts, nor, most especially, any of your bodily orifices . . ." <15-16).

However, the erotic fictional autobiography with which this discussion is concerned challenges the notion that all pornography presents women as passive objects simply waiting to be of use to men. The women in these narratives to a large extent control their own 186

lives. Narrators such as Eveline, Jessie, Josephine,

Nemesis, and Madeleine do not wander from scene to scene looking for abuse. The voices of the protagonists I discuss are those of women who want to be neither mastered nor denied their own satisfaction.

These characters are independent women, who, while engaging in sex with many men, do not merely serve them.

A question arises, however: Is it not just another male fantasy, that of a commanding, sexually Insatiable woman who uses men, or, even more, who makes no demands except a sexual one? I answer this question with another: Vhy must we see an aggressive woman with a healthy sexual appetite as a ™ 1 fantasy? Is it not equally sexist to assume that a woman would not be curious about sex?

Society seems to tolerate, even to encourage, men who have numerous partners, but for many reasons— cultural, political, religious— women are usually not allowed that same freedom. Alice Echols writes in "The

Taming of the Id" that "women's sexuality is assumed to be more spiritual than sexual, and considerably less central to their lives than is sexuality to men's"

(60). As Echols Indicates, our culture continues to 107

cherish the notion that women prefer affection to orgasm in sexual encounters." However, researchers such as Shere Hite and Nancy Friday have explored female sexuality, and their results indicate that women are sexual creatures who can engage very easily in sexual activities with partners to whom they are not emotionally attached. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the

Human Fema1e indicates that women who establish sexual relationships outside of marriage are orgasmic; that is, they emphasize in their responses to Kinsey's questions their sexual experience, not their emotional commitment. In Human Sexual Response. Masters and

Johnson make it quite clear that although women are definitely sexual beings, Vestern culture has no

“sexual role for the female in which she freely participates" (299). This study also indicates that articulating the differences in female and male sexuality in our culture is not possible because we have no established norms and "no unquestioned authorities or sources of reference for any area in the total of human sexuality" (300). Vhat we do have is a stereotype which says that women sublimate or lack sexual desire and that men do not. 168

The erotic fictional autobiographies discussed in this study defy that stereotype- The narrators control their own lives, and they speak as women with a sense of their own desires and a sense of how to satisfy those desires. Each narrator exists in a unique world and has her own particular way of demonstrating her power. Josephine enjoys sex from an early age and then gains control of her environment when she leaves the slums and eventually becomes a wealthy prostitute. She uses men to gain status in the world; she does not consider herself weak. Josephine knows that women

"have served as the objects of pleasure" (304) for men, but the view of this character who has spent her life pleasing herself and pleasing men is that both men and women want satisfaction from sex; she does what she does out of economic necessity and for personal satisfaction. Josephine is no one's slave.

The women who tell their sexual life histories speak as women who enjoy sex— not sex merely for the sake of satisfying men but sex for its own sake.

Eveline, for instance, draws pleasure not only from her ability to excite men but also from the position of empowerment that the ability gives her. Rather than being a slave to any man's desires, Eveline clearly has 169

the upper hand in her sexual encounters. Her own

enjoyment, she claims, is enhanced by the loss of control men experience with her: " I lave to look on a

man in this condition, filled with a bestial sense of desire unappeased, struggling in his libidinous embrace, his eyes turned up and vacuous, or burning with fierce lust at the contemplation of the object of his passion extended and at his mercy beneath him"

(228). A woman in such a position is a "woman possessed" (154), a woman who is "helpless" and

"irresponsible" (154). But this same woman finds absolute joy in discovering a man's weakness and playing upon it (220). She curiously combines willingness with extraordinary power. The point is this: Eveline is no sexual toy for men and she is not a heartless termagant either. Her sexual encounters satisfy her and her partners equally.

In this fictional world where women actively pursue sex and find sexual satisfaction in their encounters, the presence of fantasy cannot be denied; the narrators do not get pregnant, do not contract syphilis, do not get abused by men, experience startling orgasms In every encounter, with women as well as with men, and never get caught. The women are beautiful, voluptuous, 190

arousable, and indefatigable. The men are patient, persistent, often herculean in physique, mammoth in genital size, and equally inexhaustible. But I would not call this strictly male fantasy. Women, I believe, can find some reading pleasure in these texts.

That men and women experience sex differently is a given. But to assume that a woman cannot enjoy pornography because she is a woman does not allow the individual the freedom to experience the literature as she wishes. Using gestalt therapist Joseph Zlnker* s concept of polarities as her model, Jean Kennard proposes a reading theory which offers a solution for readers facing texts which raise conflicts. For example, "a lesbian reading a heterosexual male work" might follow this process: "Rather than resist the text, the reader grasps one familiar or shared aspect of the male protagonist" and "'leans into' the character, Identifies with him as fully as possible, in a sort of willing suspension of belief. She uses strategies she was probably taught so well; she reads like a man, but with a new awareness. Rather than experiencing schizophrenia, she allows the polarities to exist" C69-70). Reading is a matter of making adjustments; one rarely finds a text in which one can 191

be completely submerged. Kennard1 s -theory offers a way of reading "which permits the participation of any reader in any text and thus opens up the possibility of enjoying the widest range of literary experience"

<77) .

Vomen can enjoy pornography. Ideological prescriptions against women reading pornography are as unhealthy as the societal and religious edicts which for centuries have denied women their sexuality. I am not advocating literature which equates violence and sexuality or which in any way blatantly degrades men or women. What I am advocating is a choice for women: the possibility of exploring their own sexuality by reading literature that I believe has Images of healthy sexuality. I do not share the narrative audience's belief in the extraordinary sexual prowess of men or in the lighthearted promiscuity of women, or the occasionally limited physiological verisimilitude, but

I do believe in the assertive sexuality demonstrated.

The tedium that a woman may experience in reading some of this material probably is encountered by male readers too as they find the repetition excessive at times or the often outlandish sexual activity a little mare than any imagination could take. 192

As I have noted earlier, men who write about women

often perform physiological miracles with women's

bodies. The curious treatment of the clitoris

illustrates to what length some writers will go to make

their characters's sexual satisfaction dependent on

penetration.-". Erotic fictional autobiographies challenge the notion of the missing clitoris.

Josephine argues that men should learn about the

importance of clitoral stimulation: “Today, at the end of my career, I have come to the conclusion that only a few men are familiar with the supreme role that the clitoris plays in the sex life of women" <176>.

Eveline raves about the experiences she has when a man touches "the most sensitive part" of her body <211>.

Jessie stresses the "sexual agitation" which overtakes her when Hester gives attention to her clitoris <65>.

While heterosexual intercourse has precedence in these erotic fictional autobiographies, they do offer lesbian scenes as positive, satisfying encounters. In

Fanny Hi11. the sexual episodes between Phoebe and

Fanny seem to suggest that Fanny is being prepared for something better in the future. In Confessions of an

English Maid. Jessie's lesbian scene with Hester refutes this traditional pornographic image of women 193

being educated for men or, in some cases, aroused by other women and then satisfied by men. Jessie no doubt prefers heterosexual intercourse, but she does enjoy

Hester's attention: “My orgasim tsic] , wrought up to the final pitch of excitation and unable to withstand the infernal provocation longer, yielded, and in a second I was gasping in the throes of sexual ecstasy"

<65) .

But are these few examples of positive images enough to compel female readers to accept the role of narrative audience or to make the adjustments Kennard recommends? Reading erotica is not a passive experience, not one of simply allowing a few foui— letter words or the Images of briefly described body parts to wash over one's imagination. This activity requires engagement, interaction between texts and readers in a dynamic exchange. To achieve such an ideal interaction, however, readers must often contend with external factors. Our Freudian knowledge— whether we believe Freud or not— can color much of our sexual perception, often scaring us away from sexual fulfillment with our own misunderstandings of Oedipal complexes and penis envy. Cultural, religious, and societal pressures often keep our homosexual impulses 194

in check. An experience with rape can make any sexual

contact terrifying and can make reading about it

extraordinarily unpleasant. Incestuous episodes in

childhood still Influence us as adults, and reading about a character's sexual encounters with her father and brother can provoke very negative responses.

Movies and television still try to convince us that women can only be goddesses or whores and that men are virile and violent predators.t-

I believe that in add; tion to personal experiences and traditional cultural images which influence our perceptions and responses to sexual literature we must consider the influence of some contemporary feminist thought. Restrictive feminist criticism seems to have done a great deal to set back women's sexuality rather than to advance it by making the reading of pornography an "unfeminist" activity. Ellen Vlllis takes a sensible position on this matter:

If feminists define pornography, per se, as the

enemy, the result will be to make a lot of

women ashamed of their sexual feelings and

afraid to be honest about them. And the last

thing women need is more sexual shame, guilt, 195

and hypocrisy— this time served up as feminism.

(462)

Much erotic writing is intended for male audiences not because they are tormented by a raging libido but because psychologists and sociologists have given men the permission to read pornography. Were our society to afford women that same privilege, I believe women would be mare inclined to read and to enjoy pornography. As I have pointed out, erotic fictional autobiographies such as Eve1ine or Confessions of

Memesls Hunt demonstrate that some pornography does present women as healthy, sexual beings. To dismiss these works as unworthy of a female reader's attention simply because the narrators satisfy men sexually is restrictive and prohibitive.

In a 1986 interview, best-selling author Anne Rice, famous for Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire

Lestat. but also the author of four pornographic novels published under the pseudonyms A. N. Raquelaure and

Anne Rampling, claims that women want a pornography but that the climate for it is "repressive." Rice soundly condemns what she sees as ironic, that feminists are creating the repressive environment: 196

I regard my writing of pornography to be a real

moral cause. And I don't want a bunch of

fascist, reactionary feminists kicking In the

door of my consciousness with their Jackboots

and telling me that sadomasochism Isn't

politically correct. <214)

Feminist movements have encouraged women to recognize their sexuality, to be aware of their own needs and desires, but at the same time have discouraged certain sexual expressions such as voyeurism, bondage, group sex, interracial sex, and other behaviors marked off as different, or as Gayle Rubin terms it, outside of the

"charmed circle" <281).

The female narrators I have discussed tell sexually arousing stories; they tell of intense, sexual experiences— what they enjoyed, what they performed.

Female readers may or may not find such descriptions arousing, but women must be given the opportunity to make choices about what they read. As Paula Vebster articulates the problem, women face a confusing standard:

Could we admit that we liked to look, when we

denigrated those who liked to look at us? Vhat

kind of women would we be, if we desired to 197

break any of the taboos that domesticated our

sexuality, leaving us deprived but safe? Even

daring to speak about what we might like seemed

dangerous. Could we be thinking unfeminlst

thoughts? <386)

Included in the list of questionable unfeminlst activities is reading pornography. The fictional autobiographies I have discussed are not feminist pornography; the narrators, however, are strong, interesting, and in control. These works are at least an alternative to some pornography which often degrades women and alienates female (and male) readers.

If women continue to treat all pornography as a male bastion, then it may in fact became the very thing they fear it is. Feminists who try to prescribe politically correct sexuality may find that they are sending more women back into closets where they can peacefully read sexual writing which allows them to explore fully personal sexuality. The question of who reads pornography comes down to something beyond statistical evaluation: satisfied readers of pornography are those for whom the text provides the framework for their own imaginative interaction with fantasy. I believe that erotic fictional autobiography 196

offers the choice of a neatly crafted text and an entertaining narrator: a narrator who takes risks; a narrator who speaks honestly about her life; a narrator whose intimate voice evokes readers' responses intellectually, emotionally, and sexually; a narrator who unashamedly enjoys and controls her life as a se xu a1 be i ng . 199

Notes

'Robert Scholes discusses Cleland's relocation of the clitoris Inside the vagina— "where it ought to be in the sort of world he has constructed" <136).

^Incest is not restricted to pornography, however.

An unexpected source of an extraordinary incestuous scene is an unfinished story found in Edith Wharton's papers. In "Beatrice Palmato, " father and daughter share an erotic interlude as they discuss the daughter's recent marriage. [R. V, B. Lewis, Edith

Wharton. (New York: Harper, 1975): 544-5483.

-;;;I have discussed elsewhere the weaknesses of

Pleasures. In brief, the editing is uneven and the writing often intrusive and too self-conscious for the book to be really successful as erotica. [Review of

Lonnie Barbach's Pleasures. Women's Studies Review 8.2

(1986): 2-4.]

rtA traditional expression, first related to me by my mother, expresses this attitude: "Women give sex to get love, and men give love to get sex." Another version (from a male friend) offers this view: 200

"Marriage is the price men pay for sex; sex is the price women pay for marriage."

‘Doris Lessing writes in The Golden Motebnnk that a

"vaginal orgasm is emotion and nothing else, felt as emotion and expressed in sensations that are indistinguishable from emotion" (215).

* Television programs have changed considerably over the years, but night-time serials like "Dallas" and

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