She Was Only a Farmer's Daughter ... Notes on the Case of Miriam Leivers

Heather Sears as Miriam Leivers in 

Sons and Lovers (dir. Jack Cardiff, 1960)

 

I.

 

The farmer's daughter is a stock character and comic stereotype drawn from the pornographic imagination. A fresh-faced country girl, often barefoot and with straw or ribbons in her hair, she likes to wear a short sundress or a halter top and is usually portrayed as both faux-naïf and sexually curious.

 

Bawdy jokes and stories about the farmer's daughter and her willingness to be seduced by any passing stranger - much to the fury of her father [a] - can be traced back to the medieval period, if not earlier; there are, for example, numerous ballads about valiant knights falling in love with comely farm girls and even the Vikings enjoyed hearing quasi-pornographic tales of love among the haystacks [b]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Interestingly, however, the farmer's daughter is often portrayed quite differently in works of literature; take the case of Miriam, for example, in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers (1913) ...

 

Sixteen-year-old Miriam is depicted as an intelligent girl keen to escape her dreary life on the family farm. A voracious reader, she dreams of belonging to the world of culture and higher education and is resentful of the expectation that she will eventually marry and settle down, accepting her fate as a farmer's wife, tending the pigs [c]. 

 

Lawrence describes her as a romantic soul, inclined to religious mysticism, who imagines herself as a princess trapped in the body of a farm girl. Not only does Miriam consider her brothers brutes, but she doesn't hold her father in particularly high esteem for desiring a simple life in which his meals are served on time. 

"She hated her position as swine-girl [...] She could not be princess by wealth or standing. So, she was mad to have learning whereon to pride herself [...] Learning was the only distinction to which she thought to aspire." [d]

Whilst not sexy in the stereotypical manner, dark-eyed Miriam nevertheless had a quiveringly sensitive kind of beauty that combined elements of shyness with wildness. The protagonist of the novel - Paul Morel - is (unsurprisingly) keen to fuck her. He watches her closely as she moves around the farmhouse kitchen in a strange, dreamy almost rhapsodic (but acutely self-conscious) manner, wearing an old blue frock.

Unfortunately, Miriam is one of those spiritual women who thinks sex as something low and beastly - more a dutiful vicar's daughter, than a farmer's daughter, alas, or like "one of the women who went with Mary when Jesus was dead" [184], as Lawrence puts it.  

 

She's happy for Paul to teach her algebra and help improve her French, and she might even exchange a few kisses, but she isn't interested in taking him as a lover: 

 

"The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish [...] perhaps because of the continual business of birth and begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such intercourse." [198] 

 

Eventually, after years of frustration and increasing bitterness, it all becomes too much for Paul and he sends Miriam a rather cruel letter on her twenty-first birthday, in which he calls her a nun; i.e., one incapable of accepting love in the physical sense (and rendering him incapable of giving such). 

 

Naturally, Paul's words wound her deeply and, perhaps, puzzle her also; after all, she was only a farmer's daughter ... [e]     

 

 

Notes

 

[a] I suppose I first became aware of the angry farmer and his daughter trope via Carry On Camping (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1969), where the latter is played by Patricia Franklin (and the former by Derek Francis). 

 

[b] See the essay entitled 'Male Bedpartners and the "Intimacies of a Wife"', by David Ashurst in Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. Gareth Lloyd Evans and Jessica Clare Hancock, (D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 183-202. Ashurst discusses a tale involving an erotic encounter between two foster-brothers and a farmer's daughter on p. 191.

  

[c] For a discussion of female dissatisfaction with the world of the farm, see the post entitled 'Desperate Farmwives' (22 July 2023): click here. 

 

[d] D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, ed. Helen Baron and Carl Baron, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 174. Future references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.

[e] Readers will probably be aware that Sons and Lovers has an autobiographical aspect; that the platonic relationship beween Paul and Miriam is (to some extent) based on Lawrence's own sexless relationship with the farmer's daughter Jessie Chambers. 

      In the winter of 1909, having been romatically fixated with her for eight years, Lawrence finally made a move, informing Jessie that, because he loved her, it was inevitable they would eventualy fuck - which they did, in the spring of the following year, consummating their relationship on several occasions (usually outdoors among the flowers and dead leaves). Unfortunately, it was, writes John Worthen, "an awful experience for them both", resulting in shame and regret all round.

      For full details of the relationship between Lawrence and the farmer's daughter, see Worthen's D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005). The line quoted is on p. 79.  

Grand Austrian Perverts 2: Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

Photo by Anton Josef Trčka (1914)

 

Ich bestreite nicht, Bilder erotischer Natur gemacht zu haben. 

Aber sie sind immer Kunstwerke und den Künstler einzuschränken ist ein Verbrechen.[1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Whilst I have previously expressed my dislike of Egon Schiele's treatment of his devoted muse and lover Wally Neuzil - click here - it would be amiss to write a series of posts on the grand perverts [2] of Austria and not include this brilliant young artist. 

For he may have been a bit of a shit and his concern with marrying advantageously so he could climb the social ladder may make me despise him, but there's no denying that this protégé of Gustav Klimt - another grand pervert in his own right [3] - was a hugely talented figurative painter, whose work is noted (and notorious) for its twisted body shapes and explicit sexual nature.

 

 

II.

 

Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was born in Tulln, Lower Austria, in 1890. 

 

As a child, he was fascinated by trains and would obsessively spend his time drawing them. I imagine that this was due more to the fact that his father was in charge of the local railway station, rather than an immature form of siderodromophila, but, who knows, maybe these early sketches did have a fetishistic or erotic component to them, which might help explain why his father one day became so enraged that he destroyed them. 

 

It might also explain why even his schoolfriends found him queer - that and the fact that this shy, reserved young man also had an incestuous desire for his younger sister, Gerti; something else that met with paternal disapproval [4]. 

 

By the time he turned sixteen, it was obvious that Egon had a tremendous talent for drawing and so he was enrolled first at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna (where Klimt had once studied) and then at the more traditional Academy of Fine Arts (also in Vienna). 

 

Although he stayed at the latter institution for three years, Schiele despised the ultra-conservative style of painting being taught [5] and so, in 1907, he decided to contact Klimt, who was known to mentor talented young artists. Klimt was so impressed by Schiele, that he not only helped find models and potential clients, but bought some of the young artist's drawings himself.  

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, Schiele's earliest work shows the strong influence of Klimt, although there are also similarities with his slightly older contemporary - and rival - Oskar Kokoschka. However, he soon developed his own distinctive style and, free from the conventions that had been imposed upon him at the Academy, he began to explore (and distort) the human form, particularly in its sexual aspect. 

 

This included some shockingly honest nude self-portraits, including one from 1910 in which  he is seen grimacing, and another, from 1911, in which he is masturbating. Other nude portraits were equally provocative; not least those which featured very young (and very thin) models in sexualised poses, such as Girl with Black Hair (1910), or Nude with Red Garters (1911): see figures 1 and 2 below.

 

Many critics thought the works grotesque and pornographic and soon the authorities would be coming for Schiele, who, perhaps sensing that trouble was brewing, decided to leave Vienna and start afresh elsewhere ...

 

 

III.

 

Schiele and his mistress Wally first moved to the small town of Český Krumlov (German: Krumau), in southern Bohemia. Unfortunately, they quickly upset the locals with their lifestyle and the fact that Schiele tried to employ their young daughters as models. 

 

Obliged to move on, they travelled to Neulengbach, about 25 miles west of Vienna. However, as in Krumau, Schiele's studio became a meeting place for delinquent adolescents and unsavoury artist-types and soon the town's residents were up in arms, the Bürgermeister agreeing that something had to be done. 

 

And so, in April 1912, Schiele's studio was raided by the police who seized more than a hundred works they considered degenerate [6] and arrested him on a charge of seducing a girl below the age of consent (which was then - as now - fourteen in Austria) [7]. Schiele was imprisoned for three weeks while awaiting his trial, during which time he produced a series of twelve paintings depicting life behind bars. 

 

When his case was finally heard, the charge of seduction was dropped. But he was found guilty of exhibiting obscene drawings in a place accessible to children and the judge seemed to take a strange delight in burning one of these offending works over a candle flame in the courtroom itself.   

 

Deciding he really needed to settle down - and tone down the pervy-paedo content of his work - Schiele married in 1915 into a solidly middle-class family, breaking Wally's heart in the process. Despite being conscripted during the War, he continued to work and to exhibit. By 1917, he was back in Vienna and able to focus more fully on his artistic career. 

 

This was, in fact, his most productive period and at the Secession's 1918 exhibition, Schiele had fifty works on display in the main hall. He also designed a poster for the event; a version of the Last Supper, with himself in the role of Christ. The show was a huge success and not only did he receive many new portrait commissions, but prices for his older works dramatically increased.

 

Unfortunately, in the autumn of that same year, the Spanish flu [8] arrived in Vienna: it first killed his wife (who was six months pregnant at the time) and, three days later, on Halloween, it claimed Schiele's life too. Allegedly, his last words were: Der Krieg ist aus, und ich muss gehen ... 

 

Which is a nice line with which to close either a life or a post. 

 

 

Fig. 1: Schwarzhaariger Mädchenakt (1910)

Fig. 2: Akt mit roten Strumpfbändern  (1911)

 

 

Notes

 

[1] For those who don't read German and can't be bothered to have it translated, the lines in English read:  'I do not deny that I have made pictures of an erotic nature. But they are always works of art and to restrict the artist is a crime.'

 

[2] I am borrowing this phrase from D. H. Lawrence, who, in a letter to Aldous Huxley, once described St. Francis, Michelangelo, Goethe, Kant, Rousseau, Byron, Baudelaire, Wilde and Marcel Proust as grand perverts. Click here for my post on this subject.

 

[3] Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), was an Austrian symbolist and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His primary subject was the female body and his works are marked by what is often rather coyly phrased as a frank eroticism. As he began to develop a more pervy style, his work was increasingly the subject of controversy; this culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic.

 

[4] When Egon was sixteen he took his twelve-year-old sister Gerti - by train - to Trieste and spent the night in a hotel room with her. By this time his father had died, of syphilis, and he was technically in the care of his maternal uncle (another railway official).   

 

[5] Schiele's main teacher at the Academy was the German painter Christian Griepenkerl, who specilised in allegorical works based on themes drawn from classical mythology. As well as frustrating Schiele, Griepenkerl was also the man who twice rejected Adolf Hitler's application to study at the Academy in 1907-08. 

 

[6] As Cody Delistraty reminds us in his essay 'Rethinking Schiele' in The Paris Review (3 Dec 2018):

      

"Working at precisely the time that fin-de-siècle decadence and excess was giving way to prewar conservatism, Schiele found that degeneracy would become a key term in his damnation. Degeneracy, of course, was also the term that the Nazis would use to describe so much of modern art, from works by Vincent van Gogh to Paul Klee to Edvard Munch." 

 

This interesting essay, which discusses Schiele's art in relation to questions of pornography and sexual exploitation, can be read online by clicking here. 

[7] Thirteen-year-old Tatjana Georgette Anna von Mossig. Frl. Mossig, from Neulengbach, was the daughter of an esteemed naval officer. I am grateful once more to Cody Delistraty for this information. 

 

[8] Unlike the coronavirus pandemic which caused global hysteria, the Spanish flu pandemic (1918-20) was exceptionally deadly and no one really knows how many people it killed, although estimates vary from 17 million to 50 million (and possibly as high as 100 million). Unusually, whereas the flu usually kills the very young and very old, this strain also had a high mortality rate amongst young adults, such as 28-year-old Schiele. 

 

 

To read the first post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Arthur Schnitzler - click here.   

 

To read the third post in this series on grand Austrian perverts - on Freud - click here. 

 

 

French Maid

F. H. Clough: The French Maid (1950s)

Grammatically speaking, I'm not sure if the word French, as used within English, is a modifier, qualifier, or both. Either way, it often also serves as an erotic intensifier, as illustrated by the term French maid, for example ...

I.

Maids - including comely barmaids - have a long-established position within the pornographic imagination for complex reasons involving power and pleasure on the one hand, fantasy and fetish on the other. Indeed, I've written on the psychosexual aspects of this topic in an earlier post and readers who are interested can click here.

In this post, however, I'm specifically interested in the figure of the French maid as trope, stereotype, and soubrette; i.e., as an attractive young woman wearing a skimpy stylised outfit based on the typical uniforms worn in 19th century France. 

This costume - which is instantly recognisable - usually consists of a black dress with white trim and a full skirt cut well above the knee; a frilly white half-apron; a white lace headpiece; sheer black or fishnet stockings (preferably seamed); and high-heeled shoes. Optional accessories include a garter, a choker necklace, and a feather duster.   

Of course, maids - even in France - have never attempted to keep house dressed like this, but that's so beside the point that anyone who stops to raise this as an issue is an idiot. The pornographic imagination is not overly concerned with historical accuracy and the coquettish French maid ooh-la-la-ing her way through life belongs more to the world of burlesque and Benny Hill than domestic service. 

II.

Having said that, the French maid is not simply found in comedy and can sometimes move from sauciness to sadomasochism - as in Jean Genet's play Les Bonnes (1947), loosely based on the shocking story of sisters Christine and Léa Papin, who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, in 1933.*

In the play, the two French maids - Solange et Claire - construct elaborate sadomasochistic rituals when their mistress (Madame) is away. Their dark role-playing games always involve the murder of the latter. However, their concern with process rather than goal, means they always fail to ceremoniously kill Madame, thereby forever postponing the climax of their fantasy and delaying their own ultimate pleasure. 

The play was performed in London at the Greenwich Theatre in 1973, with Vivien Merchant as Madame, Glenda Jackson as Solange and Susannah York as Claire. This production was filmed in 1974, directed by Christopher Miles, who implemented many of Genet's theatrical devices for the movie.**

Promo photo of Susannah York and 

Glenda Jackson in The Maids (1975)

Notes

* This murder exerted a strange fascination over French intellectuals - including Genet, Sartre and Lacan - many of whom sought to analyse it as a symbolic form of class struggle. The case has since inspired many artworks and further critical studies. 

** The film, made for the American Film Theatre, was released in the US in April 1975, and shown at Cannes the following month (although not entered in the main competition). To watch the trailer, click here.

For a sister post to this one on French kissing, click here. 

For a sister post on French knickers, click here. 

Two Blue Birds: D. H. Lawrence's Take on the Phenomenon of the Office Wife

A secretary offers the only kind of polygamy we 
recognize in this country. - Helen Gurley Brown

I.

Lawrence's short story of 1927 entitled 'Two Blue Birds' belongs to both a sociological history and a literary sub-genre all of its own. Certainly the idea of a love triangle between a man, his wife and his secretary wouldn't have been new or at all shocking. Indeed, what's most surprising here is that Lawrence desexualises the relationship.

From the day that women entered into employment alongside men, the idea that this would lead to extramarital affairs was present and the jokes, stories, and saucy postcards began to immediately circulate. The secretary quickly assumed her place within the pornographic imagination alongside other stereotypical female figures, such as the waitress and librarian, for example.   

The phrase office wife dates to the 1920s, so there's a good chance Lawrence would have known of it - particularly as he spent a good deal of time in the United States. What he could not have known, however, was the popular novel of this title by Faith Baldwin published in the year of his death; or the Warner Bros. movie, directed by Lloyd Bacon, based on Baldwin's novel and also released in 1930.

In brief, an office wife refers to a secretary with whom a man shares a very special relationship. As we shall see, Miss Wrexall becomes a second wife to her boss, Cameron Gee. Not only does she spend many long hours working closely with him, bur she intuitively understand his personal needs and the pressures he was under, genuinely caring for his health and happiness.

I think we might legitimately speak of the propinquity effect in this case. And of sublimated desire, that is channeled into their queer-platonic collaboration, much to the wife's disgust (like many women in her position, she could accept her husband having a sexual affair, but not the strange intimacy of his relationship with Miss Wrexall).      


II.

The handsome writer Cameron Gee asked his adoring secretary to do things "in that good-natured, confident voice of a man who knows that his request will be only too gladly fulfilled". Not that he ever asked her to do anything inappropriate. For whilst Miss Wrexall was quite young and quite good-looking - and whilst he absolutely depended on her - he didn't desire her in that way:

"They were just the young master and his secretary. He dictated to her, she slaved for him and adored him, and the whole thing went on wheels."

Nevertheless, his estranged wife despises Miss Wrexall, whom she regards as competent, but common. Naturally, this rather complicated matters. And like many secretaries before her, Miss Wrexall found herself at times having to manage not only her boss, but placate and reassure her boss's wife.

Ultimately, the two women are locked into a battle and the question is: Who does more for this clever, enigmatic and whimsical man? Perhaps the wife already knew the answer to this in her heart. She may technically have the husband, "but a husband is the mere shred of a man, compared to a boss, a chief, a man who dictates" and whose every word a secretary will faithfully take down.   

The wife grows increasingly resentful. All the lovers and long winter vacations in the world don't help her forget her husband dictating to Miss Wrexall for ten hours a day "with nothing but a pencil between them: and a flow of words".

Worse! The secretary had brought her mother and sister into the household: the former as a sort of cook and housekeeper; the latter as a sort of maid and valet-de-chambre. Both provided an excellent service and soon all three women knew their master's affairs and personal tastes. Best of all, they hardly accepted any wages.   

For the wife, of course, had helped push the man into debt. And it was up to Miss Wrexall, his secretary, to smooth things over whenever a creditor became dangerous and threatened to trigger a financial crisis. But the secretarial family still received the wife when she came home "with most elaborate attentions and deference", though this only made her feel ridiculous.

"Could anything be more impossible! They had the house spotless and running like a dream: how could an incompetent and extravagant wife dare to interfere, when she saw their amazing and almost inspired economy!"

The man, if not perfectly happy, was nevertheless perfectly comfortable. Only his wife suspects that such comfort is not good for him. Or his work. It wasn't so much the home-cooked food and a soft bed that were the issue; his comfort, rather, consisted of having "nobody, absolutely nobody and nothing, to contradict him". His secretary prided herself on the fact that she spared him any aggravation.

At night, the wife could hear her husband dictate and she "imagined the little figure of the secretary busily scribbling shorthand". Then, in the sunny hours of the following morning, "from another distance came that sharp insect-noise of the typewriter, like some immense grasshopper chirping and rattling".

The wife thinks to herself:

"That girl - she was only twenty-eight - really slaved herself to skin and bone. She was small and neat, but she was acually worn out. She did far more work than he did, for she had to not only take down all those words he uttered, she had to type them out, make three copies, while he was still resting."

And for what? A very poor salary - and she doesn't even receive his kisses (though whether his never kissing her made things better or worse for the secretary, the wife could not decide). But she and her family adored him and were devoted to him. Only such uncritical adoration and devotion was subtly undermining the quality of his writing: "His whole tone was going down, becoming commoner."

The wife felt she ought to do something to save him and his reputation as an author. She wanted to destroy the perfectly devoted secretarial family and "sweep them into oblivion". But what, really, could she do? There was nothing to be done. But still she had to do something ... things could not go on as they were.

The wife, with her long and shapely she-wolf legs, was determined to defeat the dark-haired little secretary with "the pretty but rather common little feet". The latter is rightly terrified by the "queer, powerful, elegant, wolf-like figure of the wife".

One day, in the garden, the wife challenges the secretary; she wants to know why she's so self-effacing and never considers her own needs - why it is she doesn't have the man pay her more heed. This is said in front of the husband, leaving him looking "pained and somewhat remote".

As for the secretary, she hung her head and felt indignant that the purity of her relationship with him had been insulted: "But soon she was veering downstream on the flow of his words, too busy to have any feelings, except one of elation at being so busy." 

Later, at teatime, the wife reappears in the garden and insists that Miss Wrexall join her and her husband for tea. Both women are wearing chicory-blue dresses. The wife again rather cruelly puts the secretary on the spot with her irony and her questions. Miss Wrexall knows very well that the wife is trying to embarrass her and make her feel foolish, despite the latter's insistence that this isn't the case and that nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.

Mrs. Gee teasingly suggests that her husband's books read as if they were not merely typed but actually written in large part by Miss Wrexall. This annoys him and Miss Wrexall finally finds the courage to speak up, accusing the wife of wanting to ruin the relationship between herself and the man:

"'You want to spoil what there is between me and him, I can see that,' she said bitterly.
       'My dear, but what is there between you and him?' asked the wife.
'I was happy working with him, working for him! I was happy working for him!' cried Miss Wrexall, tears of indignant anger and chagrin in her eyes.'"

Of course, the wife protests (with simulated excitement) that she wants Miss Wrexall to go on being happy and to continue working for her husband. That the only issue she has is with him, for being an exploitative employer. But Miss Wrexall, being the perfect secretary - fiercely loyal and protective of her boss and full of what the Marxists call false consciousness - replies: "'But he gives me everything, everything!'"   

Naturally, the wife wants to know what this everything means and just how all-inclusive it is: "'I mean nothing that you need begrudge me,' said the little secretary rather haughtily. 'I've never made myself cheap.'"

This provokes the wife to explode with contempt: "'My God! [...] You don't call that being cheap? Why, I should say you got nothing out of him at all, you only give! And if you don't call that making yourself cheap - my God! -'"

However, Mrs. Gee has finally realised that the game is up and her sham marriage over; that it was time she left for good: "'I'm afraid no man can expect two blue birds of happiness to flutter round his feet: tearing out their little feathers!'"

And with that she walked away ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Two Blue Birds', The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 5-18. All lines quoted are from this edition of the text. An ebook version of the tale can be found online (thanks to the University of Adelaide) by clicking here.

For a secretarial sister post to this one, click here.

On Philosophy and Prostitution (Reflections on An Illicit Lover's Discourse)

Everything I know I learned in the School of Vice!

I.

Reading a fragment by Cioran in which he advises the philosopher who is "disappointed with systems and superstitions" to imitate the street savvy scepticism of that "least dogmatic of creatures: the prostitute", reminded me of my own musings from long ago on this topic, collected as An Illicit Lover's Discourse ...    

II.

The aim of this short work, written many years ago and privately published (with a revised title) by Blind Cupid Press in 2010, was not to describe in detail the world of the Prostitute, but to examine the nature of the love affair that exists between her and her clients; for in this relation we discover much of the violence, obscenity, and poignancy of modern life.

The necessity for the book lay in the following consideration: the discourse of the Prostitute and her Illicit Lover was at that time openly displayed in every other central London phone box. This discourse, spoken and shared by thousands of amorous subjects, had received very little attention, scorned as it is by the languages of authority which, nevertheless, often share in its image-repertoire and sustain its stereotypes.

Essentially, I was hoping to indicate the manner in which some of the more frequently occurring myths upon which the pornographic imagination is founded are circulated by and within wider culture and reveal how legitimate discourses - of literature, fashion, and advertising, for example - frequently feed off and into the writings and images of the Prostitute.

The short fragments were written in relation to a large number of cards collected casually over a two-year period from phone boxes mostly in the Paddington and Soho areas of London, where they'd been conveniently placed by the Prostitute. To my mind, these cards constituted a populist and promiscuous medium and could be thought of as an obscene form of folk-art. Mushrooming in the fetid, urine-soaked environment of the phone box, they represented the public face of prostitution and were an affirmation of the Prostitute’s right to self-expression and self-promotion.

I made no attempt to establish any unity or development between the fragments. In fact, the only link between them was one of insistence and repetition; qualities which are of course inherent to pornography as a genre. Thus, as in the cards upon which they were based, the same words would appear over and over in the text, constructing the Prostitute not as a woman like any other, but as a symptomal subject of the pornographic imagination.

Some fragments broke off short; others contradicted something that had already been said elsewhere in the text. Ultimately, however, this was unimportant: the fragments were not meant to be taken too seriously and the success or otherwise of each depended on whether the reader was able to relate it to some aspect of their own experience and in this way be able to declare its truth.

If there was anything central to my assemblage of fragments, then, I suppose, it was the body of the Prostitute - although whether we can actually locate and reveal such is debatable. For the body of the Prostitute must not be thought of as a natural object just waiting to be discovered, but rather as a cultural construction in which is encoded a whole set of values: the shape, size, colour, age and all the ornamental attributes of the Prostitute’s body signify what we imagine illicit sexual desire and femininity to be. Thus the body of the Prostitute exposes our own fantasies.

Wishing neither to celebrate nor condemn the Prostitute, my affection for the figure as a woman who denies nothing and no one and lives beyond judgement, was fairly obvious throughout the text. Found in all places, all cultures, and all ages, the Prostitute is, paradoxically, someone who is forever at the margins of society and has abolished all history in her person. She is, in this manner, untimely.

And if this makes her philosophically interesting, then the manner in which she silently accepts the abuse of those who speak against her and call for her punishment makes her lovable in my eyes.

Notes

E. Cioran, A Short History of Decay, trans. Richard Howard, (Penguin Books, 2018). See the section 'Philosophy and Prostitution' in chapter 1: 'Directions for Decomposition', pp. 81-82.

If I'd known of this text at the time of writing, I almost certainly would have referred to it. For what Cioran writes here is very close to my own position. I agree, for example, that the prostitute offers us a mode of behaviour which philosophers would do well to consider; detached and yet open to everything; lacking moral convictions and prejudices; quick to change position, etc. And, crucially, whores don't fuck between the bed-sheets ...   

Stephen Alexander, Whores Don't Fuck between the Bed-Sheets: Fragments from an Illicit Lover's Discourse, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010). 

In Memory of Liz Fraser

Liz Fraser in Carry On Cruising (1962)

I was very sorry to hear of the passing two days ago of busty British beauty and much-loved Carry On star Liz Fraser, aged 88.

As I wrote in an earlier post, any film in which she appeared is instantly improved, even if, sadly, not always worth watching, and seeing Liz in her black underwear always makes happy and nostalgic. She had the serious erotic charisma that Barbara Windsor, for all her infectious giggling, completely lacks and was undoubtedly one of the great comedic actresses of her generation and one of the smartest of all dumb blondes. 

For anyone like me who loves TV of the sixties and seventies, it's impossible not to think fondly of Miss Fraser, who had roles in many classic shows, including: Hancock's Half  Hour, Dad's Army, The Avengers, and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).    

And anyone like me who loves the Sex Pistols, will also recall that, like Irene Handl and Mary Millington, she also pops up in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980).

Thus, with her place in the popular cultural (and pornographic) imagination happily secure, she can, I hope and trust, rest in peace. 


Note: the earlier post I refer to above is 'Why I Love Carry On Cruising' (2 Jan 2017): click here.    

Cruella De Vil: If She Doesn't Scare You, No Evil Thing Will

Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil in Disney's
101 Dalmations (dir. Stephen Herek, 1996)

Cruella De Vil is a character originally created by Dodie Smith in her 1956 children's book The Hundred and One Dalmations. But probably most of us know her via Walt Disney's animated film adaptation or later live-action version, starring Glenn Close (1961 and '96 respectively).   

As the (less than subtle) name suggests, the puppy-stealing London heiress wrapped in mink is one of fiction's great villains. She has become an icon of stylish (and stylised) evil within popular culture, both in the English-speaking world and beyond. The Polish, for example, are very fond of the woman they know as Cruella De Mon, whilst the French are equally attracted to Cruella D'Enfer. 

What very few people realise, however, is that her surname is also a literary allusion to Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In the novel, the Count sometimes goes under the name of De Ville; he purchases a house in London under this alias, for example. Thus, Roger Radcliffe's description of her as a vampire bat and an inhuman beast, whilst intended to be humorous, is perhaps more apt than he realises.    

The animated Disney version of Cruella - voiced by Betty Lou Gerson - differed from the character described by Smith in several respects. For example, in the novel she is said to be cooly indifferent and detached. But in the film she's a manic character, only just managing to keep things together. Gerson is believed to have based her version of Cruella on the actress Tallulah Bankhead, known for her outrageous personality and many mannerisms.  

In the live-action 1996 film, meanwhile, Cruella was re-imagined as the glamorous head of a haute couture fashion house specialising in the use of exotic skins and fur. At the start of the film it's revealed that she had even had a rare white Siberian tiger slaughtered for its pelt.       

Although the movie wasn't particularly well-received, Close's performance in the role as the cigarette smoking doraphile and zoosadistic sociopath won critical acclaim and secured her a place within the pornographic imagination; as did her distinctive costumes, make-up, and jewellery (the latter made from teeth to emphasise her fetishistic penchant for wearing dead animal parts).

Ah, Cruella! Cruella! This evil Venus in Furs! This mad embodiment of coldness and cruelty!

The curl of her lips
The ice in her stare
All innocent children
Had better beware ...


Notes

The song Cruella De Vil was written by Mel Leven and sung in 101 Dalmations (1961) by Bill Lee. Lyrics © Walt Disney Music Company / Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. Click here to watch on YouTube (and don't forget to sing along).

The animator for Cruella in all her scenes in the above film was Marc Davis. 

The costumes worn by Glenn Close as Cruella in the '96 movie were designed by Anthony Powell and Rosemary Burrows.

Capnolagnia (Fragment from an Illicit Lover's Discourse)

Jennifer Lawrence in an ad for Dior Addict Lipstick (2015)

Prior to the 20th century, smoking cigarettes was not something that respectable women did. And, even now, there's still an association within the pornographic imagination between women smoking and vice. For whilst there's nothing sexy about lung cancer, there is something erotic and aesthetically pleasing about a beautiful woman holding a cigarette and blowing smoke in your face (and I say that as a non-smoker).

I'm not sure this is due to advertising by the tobacco companies, who preferred female smokers to be perceived as modern independent women, rather than prone to immoral behaviour; a cigarette was meant to be a sign of freedom and equality, not deviance and depravity. 

Probably Hollywood is more responsible for advancing the idea that sex and smoking belong in dangerous combination and for creating the seductive figure of a femme fatale who is always looking for some poor sap to provide her with a light.

Of course, the golden age of smoking in movies belongs to the distant past. In the puritanical 21st century, studios have surrendered to pressure from anti-smoking groups and the health lobby. In 2015, for example, Disney - the studio that gave us one of the silver screen's great female smokers, Cruella De Vil - issued a total ban on smoking imagery in all its films.

Nevertheless, despite censorship and campaigns to stub out smoking once and for all - campaigns based upon overwhelming medical evidence showing a clear link between tobacco and a whole host of horrible diseases - the mythology of cigarettes and their sexiness refuses to die. 

Thus it is that, in the same year as the Disney ban, Dior launched a campaign for its new range of Addict lipstick (available in 35 shades), featuring the American actress Jennifer Lawrence as seen above. Smoking in public may no longer be socially sanctioned behaviour, but I have to admit that even the suggestion of a woman holding a cigarette is still enough to excite my fetishistic interest.       

Kitchen Sink Kink

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In Praise of the Stiletto Heel

The Dioressence stiletto

Photo: Marton Perlaki for Dior

According to Camille Paglia, the stiletto heel is "modern woman's most lethal social weapon". Nevertheless, she concedes that wearing a pair incurs a cost - and we're not just talking money here. 

For no other form of footwear illustrates the fact so perfectly that culture, style and sexual elegance are refined forms of cruelty. Self-mutilation, it seems, is the price of high-heeled beauty. Still, no pain, no gain - as Jewish elders, sadomasochists, fashionistas and fitness coaches like to say. And wise women everywhere know the magic that an exquisite pair of stilettos can work on the body:

"The high heel creates the illusion of a lengthened leg by shortening the calf muscle, arching the foot, and crushing the toes, forcing breasts and buttocks out in a classic hominid posture of sexual invitation."

They don't call them fuck me shoes for nothing ...

And there's a good reason also why they are so loved by fetishsists; for a woman in stilettos is paradoxically vulnerable and threatening at one and the same time - she can't run, but she can grind her weaponised heel into your foot (or your face, or your genitals) à la Elizabeth Taylor as the most desirable woman in town, Gloria Wandrous, in BUtterfield 8 (dir. Daniel Mann, 1960).

As Paglia notes, the stiletto is thus far from simply a shoe; it's an iconic cultural artefact of disturbing complexity and the woman who wears it becomes both a seductress with an "aura of sadistic glamour" and  a pure object of male desire; she can be fucked, but she can also "lance and castrate".

Whilst true that women have worn high-heeled shoes for hundred of years, the uniquely tall and narrow stiletto - named after the thin Italian dagger much favoured by Renaissance assassins - is very much a piece of mid-twentieth design; born when post-war technology finally made it possible to create a convex heel using metal rather than traditional wood that narrowed to a dramatic, dangerous, and potentially deadly point.

Doctors warned against wearing them on medical grounds and many places banned the heels fearing they would damage the flooring or tear holes in their precious fucking carpets. And this is why one has to love them; their impracticality defies all utilitarian logic and their hazardous nature contravenes every bit of heath and safety legislation. As well as saying fuck me, stilettos scream fuck you and fuck off.   

Despite all the voices raised against them, the heels remained popular throughout the late-fifties and early-sixties with all the most stylish women of the time and they have continued to function as one of fashion's most powerful symbols of ultra-femininity, never quite disappearing from either the highstreet or the pornographic imagination.

Indeed, in his final collection as creative director at Dior (S/S 16), designer Raf Simons gave us his take on Roger Vivier's classic heel - the so-called Dioressence stiletto (pictured above). Offered in a lovely array of colours - including ochre, bronze, and Trafalgar red - as well as the traditional black, the shoes are available in lamb or calfskin and come with either a 7cm or 10cm heel - and a provocative price tag that dares you to buy them.

Whilst rather surprisingly (and disappointingly) deploring "their horrifying cost at a time of urgent social needs", Paglia nevertheless admits to wandering round the luxury shoe hall of her local department store and being ravished by their beauty:

"Despite my detestation of its decadence, this theatrical shoe array has for years provided me with far more intense aesthetic surprise and pleasure than any gallery of contemporary art, with its derivative gestures, rote ironies, and exhausted ideology."

She concludes:

"Designer shoes represent the slow but steady triumph of the crafts over the fine arts during the past century. They are streamlined works of modern sculpture, wasteful and frivolous yet elegantly expressive of pure form, a geometric reshaping of soft and yielding nature."         


See: Camille Paglia, 'The Stiletto Heel', in Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism (Pantheon Books, 2017), pp. 187-90.

Hot Gypsy Girls 1: On the Racial and Sexual Stereotyping of Romani Women

I feel her, I see her, the sun caught in her raven hair 

is blazing in me out of all control!

It would not be unreasonable to argue that the pornographic imagination is founded upon, circulates, and sustains a wide range of racial and sexual stereotypes, including that of the Hot Gypsy Girl ...

With her dusky complexion, fiery dark eyes and loose black hair, wearing a low-waisted long skirt split to the thigh that she hitches up flamenco style to dance barefoot in public pieced with a low-cut, midriff-baring blouse that invites more than just navel-gazing, she is not only exotic in her sultry good looks and colourful appearance, but animal-like in her wild and overt sexuality.

Many men desire her, but most would be too scared to approach her. For like the true temptress, she spells trouble and threatens danger as well as offering the promise of unbridled passion; the Hot Gypsy Girl knows how to use a knife - and I don't mean in table-mannered conjunction with a fork.

This porno-romantic construction of free-spirited and strong-willed femininity that is found in much of the art, music, and literature of the 19th century, stands in direct opposition to the Victorian ideal of buttoned-up womanhood that held sway across Europe at the time; white-skinned, fair-haired, mild-mannered, kind-hearted, chaste and - above all - submissive to the male authority of their husbands and fathers.

Puritanical commentators who dislike stereotypes, will point out that there's very little empirical evidence to support this fantasy of the Hot Gypsy Girl. But, even if not based in actual fact, she's a real figure nonetheless with her own alluring truth and there are numerous examples to be found within modern popular culture.

Two names, however, immediately present themselves: Esmeralda and Carmen ... 


Notes

The image used above is of the Gypsy assassin Mejai, from the Franco-Belgian comic book series Le Scorpion, written by Stephen Desberg and illustrated by Enrico Marini. It's taken from the main page of the Hot Gypsy Woman entry on TV Tropes: click here. 

Those interested in reading further on this subject should see Ian Hancock, 'The "Gypsy" Stereotype and the Sexualization of Romani women', in Gypsies in Literature and Culture, ed. V. Glajar and D. Radulescu, (Palgrove-Macmillan, 2007), pp. 181-91. This essay can also be found on the RADOC site: click here.

To read part two of this post - Esmeralda: Trope Codifier and Fraud - click here. 

To read part three of this post - On Carmen and Her Seduction of a Famous German Philosopher - click here.  

On the Art of the Kiss 1: Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin: The Kiss (1901-04) 

Tate Collection (1953, Reference: NO6228) 

Pretty much everyone is familiar with Rodin's sculpture known in English as The Kiss. If they haven't seen the 1882 marble original in Paris at the Musée Rodin, they'll have seen the full-size version displayed at the Tate here in London. But what everyone mightn't know is that it commemorates Francesca da Rimini, the 13th-century Italian noblewoman and adulteress immortalised in Dante's Inferno, who copped off with her crippled husband's younger (and able-bodied) brother, Paolo. 

Observant viewers will note that Rodin doesn't actually allow the lovers' lips to touch, suggesting perhaps that they never consummated their affair (and that Le Baiser - a title supplied by the critics - is something of a misnomer). But this romantic idea isn't true. In fact, they carried on their illicit relationship for a full ten years before they were discovered (in flagrante delicto) and met their tragic fate at the hands of the cuckolded figure of Giovanni Malatesta.         

The sculpture's provocative combination of down and dirty eroticism - the male figure is clearly aroused in the original life-sized work - with high aesthetic idealism, secures it a permanent (if controversial) place within the history of Western art as well as the pornographic imagination. Rodin prided himself on depicting women, their bodies and their sexuality, in an active manner and Francesca is seen here as a willing partner in crime.

However, despite being a celebrated work, Rodin himself amusingly considered it as far from being a masterpiece; he described it privately as very traditional in style; little more than a large sculpted knick-knack that follows the usual formula.

And this remark - a kind of kiss this to popular opinion and conventional taste - makes me love him all the more.

Lady Chatterley's Daughter

Cover of Lady Chatterley's Daughter, ed. Lawrence Lariar, 

(Popular Library, 1960)

At the end of Lady Chatterley's Lover, Connie is carrying a child of unknown sex. But, of course, within the pornographic imagination, it has to be a girl; a daughter who will inherit her mother's desire for unlicensed pleasure and sexual freedom; a Lawrentian nymphet who would make Nabokov smile.

For the pornographic imagination unfolds within a universe in which, as Susan Sontag points out, everything is conceived as an opportunity to fuck and everyone is allowed (and encouraged) to screw everyone else. This is what makes it a total universe; one with "the power to ingest and metamorphose and translate all concerns that are fed into it, reducing everything into the one negotiable currency of the erotic imperative".

The dream, ultimately, is of a pornotopia in which there are no fixed distinctions between the sexes and no inhibitions can be allowed to endure. Gender, for example, is fluid; something to be performed and perverted. And taboos surrounding things such as incest are simply another means to intensify pleasure and multiply the possibilities of sexual exchange.

Whether the incestuous fantasy of the hot milf and her even hotter daughter was one of Lawrence's, I don't know. Probably not: for Lawrence relates incest to idealism and he is keen to reject and overcome the latter. For Lawrence, incest is just another example of what he terms sex-in-the-head. He writes:

"Finding himself in a sort of emotional cul-de-sac, man proceeds to deduce from his given emotional and passional premises conclusions which are not emotional or passional at all, but just logical, abstract, ideal."

Thus, incest is a logical deduction of human reason, filtered through the pornographic imagination. If at first it rouses deep instinctive opposition, this can soon be eroded or persuaded away. But this motivizing of the passional sphere by idealism is, for Lawrence, the great danger facing us today; "the death of all spontaneous, creative life, and the substituting of the mechanical principle".

However, Lawrence also says that we have no choice but to fulfil these ideals in their extremity. In other words, the pornographic nihilism of our culture cannot be ignored, reversed, or transcended; it can only be consummated.

But note, this doesn't mean spending all day surfing internet porn; it means, rather, rediscovering something of the pristine unconscious - and for this we still need our really great artists and poets.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

D. H. Lawrence, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 2, 'The Incest Motive and Idealism'. 

Susan Sontag, 'The Pornographic Imagination', essay in Styles of Radical Will, (Penguin Books, 2009).
 

Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Pornographic Imagination

Poster for the English language version of  
L'Amant de lady Chatterley 
(dir. Marc Allégret, 1955)

Although Lawrence often writes about pornography in pathological terms - as the grey disease of sex-hatred coupled with the yellow disease of dirt lust - he also reluctantly admits that what is obscene to one person is the laughter of genius to another. 

Lawrence thus problematizes and pluralizes the concept in a manner that anticipates Susan Sontag who, forty years later, will argue that any discussion of the subject must begin by acknowledging that there are at least three pornographies; the socio-historical, the psycho-sexual, and, lastly, a minor but interesting modality or convention within the arts.

It's the latter, particularly as it operates within the field of literature, which Sontag examines with her customary intelligence and sophistication, but it's not what I want to discuss here. For I'm not really concerned with showing what it is that makes Lady Chatterley's Lover a legitimate work of art. Rather, I'm interested in how the novel evolved within the contemporary cultural imagination, which is not only pornographic but popular and postmodern in character.

In other words, what fascinates is not the novel's reception or status amongst a handful of scholars, critics, and readers still genuinely interested in Lawrence's uniquely powerful attempt to explore extreme forms of human consciousness and erotic obsession, but the manner in which the book and its famous pair of lovers have become, for the majority of people, ludicrous; two stock characters defined by their organs, rutting in the woods for all eternity.     

Lawrence may have wanted men and women to be able to think sex fully, completely, honestly, and cleanly, but, after the orgy, most people simply can't take sex, art, or porn seriously. They smile at the idea that there might lie within these things either some great truth or mortal danger. Indeed, even in Lawrence's own time he was aware that the younger generation would, lacking what he terms real feeling, find Lady Chatterley's Lover old-fashioned, its phallic language, laughable.

And so one suspects that Lawrence anticipated what would befall him and his work and that, in a sense, he offered the figures of Connie and Mellors to fate and circumstance; knowing they'd secure immortality within the pornographic imagination, even as they were repeatedly and sometimes grotesquely transformed within it.  


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Pornography and Obscenity' and 'À Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover', in À Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover and Other Essays, (Penguin Books, 1961). 

Susan Sontag, 'The Pornographic Imagination', in Styles of Radical Will, (Penguin Books, 2009). 

Her Rich Attire Creeps Rustling to Her Knees

Image from phantomseduction.tumblr.com

Manufacturers of extremely beautiful and limited edition handmade silk knickers Strumpet and Pink make use of an intriguing tagline or company slogan in their advertising: Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees. 

For those who don't know, this is taken from a famous verse by Keats entitled The Eve of St. Agnes, written in 1819 and published the following year. Considered by many to be amongst his finest poems, it gripped the literary and pornographic imagination of the 19th century telling the tale as it does of a pair of illicit lovers, Madeline and Porphyro.

Keats based his poem on the popular belief that a young girl could summon a future husband to her if she performed certain magical rites on the eve of the feast day of Christian martyr Agnes of Rome, patron saint of virgins. These rites include going to bed without supper, stripping naked and then lying flat on the bed with eyes wide shut facing the heavens, hands kept firmly under the pillow at all times. 

No matter what she experiences, Madeline is instructed by a wise woman to remain silent and supine; only then is the man she yearns for guaranteed to appear - in dream form if not actually in the flesh - and he would come with kindness, kisses and good things to eat for his bride-to-be. 

Originally, Keats played up the erotic aspect of this tale, but his publishers obliged him to tone it down fearing they would be at the centre of a public scandal. Even so, there remain plenty of controversial and kinky aspects: for having secretly stolen into Madeline's bedroom on this very night, Porphyro hides in the closet from where he spies on the girl as she says her prayers, lets down her hair, takes off her jewellery, and then removes her clothes: 

"Anon his heart revives: her vespers done, / Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees; / Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; / Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees / Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees."

Porphyro continues to play the peeping tom and to perv on Madeline as she lays on the bed in a semi-conscious state, gently trembling with the cold and anticipation. She has never looked more beautiful to him than at this moment, naked in the moonlight; he is entranced by her and the sound of her breathing. He also continues to be fetishistically fascinated by her discarded clothes and gazes long upon her empty dress. 

Finally, believing Madeline to be fast asleep at last, Porphyro creeps out from his hiding place and approaches the bed. His plan is for them to enjoy a midnight feast together of rare exotic delicacies that he has brought along with him, including candied fruit, quince jelly, and spiced syrup. Unfortunately however, he has trouble waking her and when Madeline does rouse she mistakenly thinks him to be part of a dream and pulls Porphyro onto the bed with her - the poem thus taking a sudden diversion into the problematic area of sexsomnia. 

Only after they have consummated their relationship does Madeline fully wake-up and, although feeling vulnerable and violated, she tells Porphyro that she cannot hate him for his actions, as her heart belongs to him. Concerned, however, that, having fucked her, he might now simply abandon her, Madeline seeks some reassurance: she tells him that if he leaves her now she'll be damaged goods; like a forlorn bird with a broken wing. Happily, Porphyro declares his love for her and the two of them elope into the night - like two phantoms.

I'm not sure really what to say about the poem; at 42 stanzas it's certainly lengthy and, at times, slow in pace and dull to read. Nevertheless, its combination of supernatural elements and illicit sexual activity qualify it as an interesting example of queer gothic verse. And although it might seem as if Madeline is both object and victim, it could be of course that the whole thing is just her spectro-masturbatory fantasy; that she simply imagines a fair knight who comes to carry her off to a far-away land and make her his wife against the wishes of her parents - doesn't every girl?