{"title":"女性性欲:被谴责的快乐、医学探索和维多利亚晚期的色情","authors":"S. Rossi","doi":"10.3366/VIC.2021.0420","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.","PeriodicalId":40670,"journal":{"name":"Victoriographies-A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing 1790-1914","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Female Onanism: Condemned Pleasures, Medical Probes, and Late-Victorian Pornography\",\"authors\":\"S. Rossi\",\"doi\":\"10.3366/VIC.2021.0420\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.\",\"PeriodicalId\":40670,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Victoriographies-A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing 1790-1914\",\"volume\":\" \",\"pages\":\"\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.1000,\"publicationDate\":\"2021-06-24\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Victoriographies-A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing 1790-1914\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.3366/VIC.2021.0420\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Victoriographies-A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing 1790-1914","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/VIC.2021.0420","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
Female Onanism: Condemned Pleasures, Medical Probes, and Late-Victorian Pornography
The more Victorian physicians deepened their research into female sexuality, the more a culture of lust infected the hypocritical façade of a nation strictly attached to social norms of order, formality, and bigotry. Lascivious sexual desire and carnal appetite – here embodied in female masturbation – were taboos that had to be forcibly silenced. Yet, late-Victorian pornography mocked medical discourses on female onanism, as well as fears related to female sexuality, and revealed ‘unspeakable’ secret domestic settings marred by ‘dangerous’ practices, scandalous carnality and deviant desires. Furthermore, contemptuous of literary censorship and strict morality, the plenteous erotic literature, represented here by William Lazenby's pornographic magazine The Pearl, not only dared to taunt physicians’ concerns about female ‘self-pollution’ circulating at that time, but also found a great inspiration in the huge domestic success of some innovative medical tools – specifically patented to assuage women's nerves – being produced in those years: electric vibrators. Those ‘engines’ rapidly invaded pornographic literature of the late nineteenth century and became central to a great number of erotic stories, titillating fables and poems, as clearly demonstrated by the contents of The Pearl.