charms, but I had a penchant for girlish tartan skirts. An independent uniform fetish, I suspect. I rarely wore anything else. When people asked, I simply shrugged and confided that it made me feel more studious. They laughed it off as a charming eccentricity. They had no idea.
But, though I fantasised about it often, I never got up the courage to go back to Ravenscroft. And as the years passed, the preoccupation lost its urgency. University kept me busy and before I knew it I was buried in my thesis: ‘The Victorian Chat Room: Covert Sadomasochism in Nineteenth-Century Family Magazines’.
Victorian England was alive with deviant undertones. The sexual repression coupled with the harsh discipline of the period created an ideal environment for fetishes to flourish . There was a wealth of flagellant literature and I was certain that if I had lived then I’d have been writing my own as well. But the obsession with corporal punishment went beyond overt pornography. The ‘English vice’, it was called.
A group of enthusiasts infiltrated mainstream periodicals like
The Family Herald
and
The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
, publishing spurious accounts of spanking and birching, rendered in obsessive fetishistic detail. There were accounts of the birching of young ladies by schoolmistresses. Floggings in monasteries and nunneries. Whippings administered by strict governesses. Discussions of whether it was decent for gentlemen to whip girls, ladies to whip boys. The disciplinary merits of such chastisement. And on and on.
But the most enticing aspect was the fact that these detailed letters were to be found sprinkled amongst the commonplace crises of etiquette. The moral implications of kissing before marriage. How to break off a tender acquaintanceship. Where one may purchase birch rods for the chastisement of unruly daughters.
Ah, the glorious hypocrisy of Victorian sexuality. The lengths to which they went to repress their urges. They staunchly refused to acknowledge that there was anything inherently erotic underlying their obsession with corporal punishment. Heavens, no – that would be perverse!
Many of the letters were obvious hoaxes, pornography masquerading as morality. Some of them purported to condemn the practice of corporal punishment. The moral outrage only lent further credence to the discourse, however.
A HATER OF THE SYSTEM (our old friend) writes to inform us that even she does not disapprove of flogging, but only indecent flogging; and she says that in the most aristocratic schools flogging is of daily occurrence. She describes the system pursued in one near Edinburgh, where the terms are 120 guineas per annum. ‘A book of offences is kept by one of the young ladies, in which every fault is regularly entered. There is a graduated scale of punishments, the highest of which is corporal. When an offence of sufficient magnitude takes place, the culprit enters it in the book herself, and carries the report to the lady superintendent, who writes under it the amount of punishment. For the first offence, the delinquent is prepared for punishment, but generally pardoned. For the second, she is whipped privately. For all subsequent delinquencies the punishment takes place in the schoolroom, on ‘the horse’; and, in addition to the pain it inflicts, it costs in money about 1s., paid in fees. The system is as follows: 1st. She proceeds to the housekeeper, to procure the rod, a leathern thong. She pays 2d. for the use of it. 2nd. She has then to be partly undressed by the maid, and this costs 2d. 3rd. The culprit has then to walk barefooted to another part of the house, to be robed for punishment, a peculiar dress being used, to add to the disgrace. It is a long linen blouse, short cotton socks, and list slippers, all of which each offender has to provide for herself. The young lady, thus costumed, now proceeds to the drawing-room, to be exhibited to the lady superintendent. Having been approved, she is then
But, though I fantasised about it often, I never got up the courage to go back to Ravenscroft. And as the years passed, the preoccupation lost its urgency. University kept me busy and before I knew it I was buried in my thesis: ‘The Victorian Chat Room: Covert Sadomasochism in Nineteenth-Century Family Magazines’.
Victorian England was alive with deviant undertones. The sexual repression coupled with the harsh discipline of the period created an ideal environment for fetishes to flourish . There was a wealth of flagellant literature and I was certain that if I had lived then I’d have been writing my own as well. But the obsession with corporal punishment went beyond overt pornography. The ‘English vice’, it was called.
A group of enthusiasts infiltrated mainstream periodicals like
The Family Herald
and
The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine
, publishing spurious accounts of spanking and birching, rendered in obsessive fetishistic detail. There were accounts of the birching of young ladies by schoolmistresses. Floggings in monasteries and nunneries. Whippings administered by strict governesses. Discussions of whether it was decent for gentlemen to whip girls, ladies to whip boys. The disciplinary merits of such chastisement. And on and on.
But the most enticing aspect was the fact that these detailed letters were to be found sprinkled amongst the commonplace crises of etiquette. The moral implications of kissing before marriage. How to break off a tender acquaintanceship. Where one may purchase birch rods for the chastisement of unruly daughters.
Ah, the glorious hypocrisy of Victorian sexuality. The lengths to which they went to repress their urges. They staunchly refused to acknowledge that there was anything inherently erotic underlying their obsession with corporal punishment. Heavens, no – that would be perverse!
Many of the letters were obvious hoaxes, pornography masquerading as morality. Some of them purported to condemn the practice of corporal punishment. The moral outrage only lent further credence to the discourse, however.
A HATER OF THE SYSTEM (our old friend) writes to inform us that even she does not disapprove of flogging, but only indecent flogging; and she says that in the most aristocratic schools flogging is of daily occurrence. She describes the system pursued in one near Edinburgh, where the terms are 120 guineas per annum. ‘A book of offences is kept by one of the young ladies, in which every fault is regularly entered. There is a graduated scale of punishments, the highest of which is corporal. When an offence of sufficient magnitude takes place, the culprit enters it in the book herself, and carries the report to the lady superintendent, who writes under it the amount of punishment. For the first offence, the delinquent is prepared for punishment, but generally pardoned. For the second, she is whipped privately. For all subsequent delinquencies the punishment takes place in the schoolroom, on ‘the horse’; and, in addition to the pain it inflicts, it costs in money about 1s., paid in fees. The system is as follows: 1st. She proceeds to the housekeeper, to procure the rod, a leathern thong. She pays 2d. for the use of it. 2nd. She has then to be partly undressed by the maid, and this costs 2d. 3rd. The culprit has then to walk barefooted to another part of the house, to be robed for punishment, a peculiar dress being used, to add to the disgrace. It is a long linen blouse, short cotton socks, and list slippers, all of which each offender has to provide for herself. The young lady, thus costumed, now proceeds to the drawing-room, to be exhibited to the lady superintendent. Having been approved, she is then