Making a woman

Making a woman:
On the construction of female sexuality in Victorian pornography
Master's Thesis in Comparative Literature
Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
University of Copenhagen
By Maj Fonseca
Supervisor: Anne Fastrup
April 1. 2014

Resumé
Pornografi defineres gerne som eksplicit seksuelt materiale, hvis hovedformål er at
ophidse læseren. Pornografiske værker fra den victorianske periode viser sig ganske rigtigt dybt
investerede i grafiske beskrivelser af nøgne kroppe og sexakter. Teksterne tilnærmer sig i nogen
grad en pornografisk utopi (en ‘pornotopi’), hvor de seksuelle muligheder eksisterer til overflod
og hvor alle altid er villige, lystige og generøse med deres kroppe. Her vrimler det med ideale
begærsobjekter i form af unge, smukke og uskyldsrene jomfruer.
Ved nærmere eftersyn viser der sig dog en besynderlig uhygge mellem fibrene på
pornografiens begærskabende bagtæppe. Kvinden i den victorianske pornografiske roman er
lige så ofte kilde til begær som til frygt og afsky for manden. Jomfru-figuren står overfor
afskyvækkende kvindeskikkelser som nymfomanen, moderen, gammeljomfruen og
forførersken, som pornografien af alt magt forsøger at gøre det af med. Spørgsmålet er derfor
nærliggende, hvorfor pornografien overhovedet har inkluderet den afskyelige kvinde til at
begynde med. Overfor den pornotopiske tendens tilfredsstiller pornografien tillige et begær efter
at straffe og fornedre: Voldtægt og fysisk afstraffelse af uvillige kvindelige ofre er den
victorianske pornografis seksuelle yndlingstemaer, og det lystfulde maskuline blik er lige så
fascineret af jomfruens skønne krop som af smerten og ydmygelsen, som tegner sig på hendes
tårevædede ansigt.
Den sadistiske vold har en funktion i teksterne, som ikke kan reduceres til at skabe
ophidselse. Ambivalens, frygt og afsky kendetegner pornografiens attitude overfor kvindelig
seksualitet, i sidste ende også overfor det jomfruelige ideal. Volden kan ses som pornografiens
frustrerede forsøg på at håndtere angsten for kvinden: Den udsætter hendes krop for et
kontrollerende, undersøgende blik; den forsøger at betvinge og tæmme hende for at forpurre
hendes forsøg på overtage mandens magt, og den kan tilmed ses som et forsøg på at
ødelægge og dræbe hende. Konklusionen må være, at der er komplicerede, modsatrettede, og
nogle gange endda paradoksale indsigter at finde om mandens forhold til kvinden i denne ellers
så trivielle litteratur.

Table of contents
Introduction.............................................................................................................................2
1. Pornography: historical, theoretical, and methodological reflections...................................4
The Victorian prudes.........................................................................................................7
Let’s talk about sex........................................................................................................... 9
The curious case of the sadistic pornotopia ................................................................. 11
2. Rape pornography............................................................................................................ 17
The Lustful Turk.............................................................................................................. 19
Raped on the Railway.....................................................................................................26
The Way of a Man with a Maid....................................................................................... 31
3. Flagellation pornography.................................................................................................. 37
Experimental Lecture...................................................................................................... 39
The Mysteries of Verbena House....................................................................................44
The Memoirs of Dolly Morton..........................................................................................48
4. Sadistic violence: the gaze, destruction, castration...........................................................53
Unveiling the female mystery..........................................................................................54
The pleasure of destructing something precious.............................................................61
The vulnerable penis of pornography............................................................................. 65
Conclusion............................................................................................................................71
Bibliography..........................................................................................................................73
Literary sources.............................................................................................................. 73
Secondary sources......................................................................................................... 74
1

Introduction
Pornography is the trash genre par excellence, a genre whose main fault is identical
with its main function: that is titillates the reader. In contrast to ‘serious’ art that demands
detached contemplation, pornography engrosses the reader in involuntary bodily sensations
and moves him to action1
- a most illicit way of appreciating cultural products. Pornography is
by no means high art; in fact, the genre is generally characterized by a lack of artistic merit.
Only in the 1960’s did the serious academic study of pornography take off, but still, to this
day, the serious study of trash genres is frowned upon and the intellectual interest in such
studies questioned. The history of pornography is still not well-researched, and the practical
difficulties arising from the prosecution of pornography throughout history has only made the
enquiry harder to accomplish.
Even though pornography has become a steadily more popular object of research,
there exist very few in-depth literary readings of individual pornographic works. This is
problematic since the field likes to jump to conclusions regarding the genre in general while
ignoring aspects, which, when subjected to more scrutinous literary inquiry, can draw such
conclusions into question. One such problematic conclusion was afforded by Steven Marcus
in his 1966 pornographic study, The Other Victorians, where he coins the term ‘pornotopia’ to
denominate the tendency towards the carefree sexual wonderland which he sees as a
common denominator in pornography in general. In this thesis, I focus on the perception of
female sexuality in Victorian pornography, and my findings make me arrive at a less
comforting conclusion. Through the literary reading of six Victorian novels of pornography,
the fact emerges that the pornotopian descriptions of the young and beautiful women who
populate these books as idealized objects of male desire are accompanied by, often not so
subtle, descriptions of despicable women - women who are despised, punished, or
discarded on account of their sexualities which in various ways deviate from the ideal. I
come to the disconcerting conclusion that in the final instance all women are despicable in
the eyes of Victorian pornography.
The six pornographic novels I present in this thesis were first published in England
between 1828 and 1908, a period which encompass the ‘Victorian era’ (1837-1901). These
six works are The Lustful Turk (1828), Experimental Lecture (1878), The Mysteries of
Verbena House (1882), Raped on the Railway (1894), The Memoirs of Dolly Morton (1899),
and The Way of a Man with a Maid (1908). Compared to other literary productions of the
Victorian era, these novels are neither famous nor can they boast of literary merit. The first
chapter of this thesis titled “Pornography: historical, theoretical, and methodological
reflections” will introduce central aspects of the pornographic genre and its history as well as
1
Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”, p. 4.
2

the theorists which will be used to cast light on the ambivalence towards women in the six
pornographic texts.
Victorian pornography is characterized by an overabundance of stories of rape and
flagellation. Both of these sexual phenomena appear in all six texts, but in The Lustful Turk,
Raped on the Railway, and The Way of a Man with a Maid, rape is the primary attraction,
and these three texts will therefore be treated as rape-pornography in chapter 2, “Rape
pornography”, while Experimental Lecture, The Mysteries of Verbena House, and The
Memoirs of Dolly Morton most prominently feature flagellation, and they will therefore be
treated as flagellation pornography in chapter 3, “Flagellation pornography”.
Next, in chapter 4 “Sadistic violence: the gaze, destruction, castration”, I will seek
explanations for the sadistic tendency apparent in these works, and in doing so I make use
of three different theories that can cast light on the sadistic violence and the specific way in
which it appears in the pornographic works at hand. The first theoretical position focuses on
the sadism expressed in the desire to gain knowledge about the female Other, the second
sees sadism as the desire to destruct something precious, and the third interprets sadism as
originating in the fear of castration.
To summarize, what this thesis seeks to demonstrate is that the attitude towards
women - displayed in Victorian pornography through sadistic violence and the construction
of ‘the despicable woman’ - betrays another tendency at work in the genre than simply
pornography's approximation to a pornotopian wonderland. Furthermore, I offer
psychological, existential, and ontological interpretations to make sense of this dark side of
sexuality.
3

1. Pornography: historical, theoretical, and methodological reflections
The etymological origin of the term pornography is the ancient Greek ‘pornographos’
which comprises ‘pornē’ (prostitute) and ‘graphō’ (I write). As such, in its original literal
sense, the term refers to writing by or about prostitutes. However, the word appears to have
been rarely used in the ancient world as it has only been found in one single source: In the
2nd century writings of Athenaeus, who covers a wide range of subjects in his
Deipnosophistai, including the subject of prostitution. From this time on the term was not
used until it reappeared in the 19th century, when the writings of Athenaeus were
rediscovered. The use of the word pornography now traveled in two directions - either it was
used to refer to ‘innocent’ scholarly works on prostitution, or to ‘obscene’ representations in
art2
. This double meaning of the term is reflected in the the various dictionary entries of the
time. For instance, in the French Littré dictionary of 1866, pornography is defined as “(1) a
treatise on prostitution, (2) a description of prostitutes in connection with public hygiene” or
(3) “obscene painting”.3
The subject of the definition of pornography has not yet been exhausted. Several
recent studies on pornography have suggested “that pornography does not demarcate a
discernibly unique set of textual features” and that “the shifting and permeable boundaries
between the pornographic and the non-pornographic make the presumption of any positivist
understanding of genre – the idea that genre categories name essential predicable
properties in the texts they categorize – especially hard to sustain”.4
Though I agree that
genre definitions are inherently problematic, I choose to ignore this valid contention, mainly
for practical reasons, but also because the body of texts with which I am concerned shows
clear common denominators, the most prominent of which is their titillatory function.
Modern definitions of pornography have emphasized the titillatory aspects of the
genre. The great authority on pornographic literature, David Foxon, in his 1965 work
Libertine Literature, distinguishes hard-core pornography as books whose principal aim is to
“arouse sexual desire and encourage erotic fantasies”.5
According to Foxon, this kind of
literature shows a clearly demarcated history starting around the year 1650. Other scholars
emphasize the pure titillatory intent in their definitions of pornography. Steven Marcus, in his
influential book on Victorian pornography, The Other Victorians (1966), insists that literature
2
Kendrick, The Secret Museum, p. 11.
3
Ibid, p. 17.
4
Frederickson, “Pornography and the Laws of Genre”, 305. Frederickson refers to among others
Sharon Marcus who in Between Women (2007) sees an affinity between pornography and the
women's magazines of the time, Colette Colligan who in The Traffic in Obscenity (2006) argues that
flagellant pornography appropriated the figure of the flogged slave woman seen in abolitionist
writings, and Gowan Dawson who in Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability (2007) shows
that the boundaries between science and pornography was hard to uphold in obscenity legislation.
5
Foxon, Libertine Literature, p. 48.
4

has several purposes while the sole intention of pornography is to titillate6
. Marcus'
understanding of pornography adheres to the well known distinction between literature, as
texts of a certain artistic quality, and pornography, which he considers trash. In a similar vein,
the historian, Iain McCalman, states that pornography denotes literary material whose sole
purpose is to arouse “as distinct from the obscene literature which possessed some
additional and conscious political dimension”7
. While erotic content in literature is as old as
literature itself, pornography following the above definition as something that arouses and
nothing more is a relatively recent invention. Bradford Mudge in The Whore’s Story writes:
“although we have numerous examples from both literature and fine art
of sexually explicit material before 1700, the function of that material is not
exclusively to arouse the audience, nor was it mass-marketed for commercial
gain by authors, printers, and publishers who understood and presupposed its
“illegitimate” pleasures. Therefore, that material should not be considered
“pornographic” in the modern sense of the word, although certain seemingly
pornographic elements may abound. Venus in the Cloister, for example, does
include scenes that a contemporary reader would identify as “pornographic,” in
so far as they are both sexually explicit and arousing, but those scenes should
not be taken to represent the sole purpose of the text.”8
Mudge identifies the point where pornography arises as a recognizable generic category at
around 1750. Before this, sexually explicit material was used for its shock effect to criticize
religious or political authorities and was often suppressed indiscriminately with books which
were considered “bad” for threatening religion, state, or good moral principles by inciting to
heresy, political subversion, and philosophical radicalism.9
Iain McCalman identifies the point
where pornography loses its political connotations and transforms instead into a commercial
enterprise in arousing content somewhat later than Mudge, namely around the 1790’s in
France and around the 1830’s in Britain10
. In either case, the two critics seem to agree that
the pornographic productions of the Victorian era must be viewed as pornography in the
modern sense - as commodities exclusively committed to arousing their audience.
The new function of pornography resulted in a change in the demographic of the
audience. In the 18th century, pornography was widely available to the masses as political
propaganda. A famous example is the flood of illegal sensationalist pamphlets depicting the
6
Marcus, The Other Victorians, p. 278.
7
McCalman, “Unrespectable Radicalism”, p. 76.
8
Mudge, The Whore’s Story, p. 27.
9
Hunt, The Invention of Pornography, pp. 10, 16, 18.
10
Ibid, pp. 41-42.
5

French queen, Marie Antoinette, engaging in promiscuous debauchery11
which tarnished her
image and added to the resentment that led to the Revolution. In England, pornography was
used in the same manner, for instance in the Queen Caroline Affair in the early 1820’s.12
In
the beginning of the Victorian period, pornography was consolidated as a pure titillatory
genre aimed at men of the middle and upper classes.
The exclusivity of Victorian literary pornography is affirmed by the Victorian
bibliographer and collector of erotic books, Henry Spencer Ashbee. In his trilogy on
pornographic publications, Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1877), Centuria Librorum
Absconditorum (1879), and Catena Librorum Tacendorum (1885), Ashbee lists all the
pornographic books known to him and offers a short presentation of the plot, an assessment
of the literary merits as well as information about the publication of the books. According to
Ashbee’s bibliography, pornographic books were typically published in limited editions up to
a few hundred copies and offered for sale at high prices. The 1828 edition of The Lustful
Turk, for instance, was sold for 2£ 2 shillings, and the 1829 edition was sold at double price -
4 guineas; Experimental Lecture was issued in 75 copies and sold for 4£ 4 shillings in 1878-
79; and The Mysteries of Verbena House was printed in 150 copies and sold for 4 guineas in
1881-188213
. These are prices that far exceeded any disposable working-class income: A
London laborer’s average wage in the last quarter of the 19th century was about 20 shillings
a week.14
Not until the 1890’s did pornography again fall into the hands of the working class
with the emergence of pornographic postcards which were cheap to produce, sell, and buy.15
Though pornography during most of the Victorian period was directed towards a
select few, the phenomenon was not entirely subterranean. The term entered official
language in the mid 19th century (the first entrance into the Oxford English Dictionary was in
185716
), and it entered the English consciousness as a problem in need of solving. The Daily
Telegraph editorial of June 17th 1857 reported that,
“There are two streets in London [Holywell-street and Wych-street] ...
in the immediate vicinity of a teeming thoroughfare [Fleet-street],
which from sunrise to midnight are almost impassable to decent men,
and wholly so to decent women, from the disgusting nature of the
prints and pictures exhibited in the shop windows, and which are,
according to the revelations of our sessions courts, only a faint and
almost mild reflex of the foul publications on sale within”.17
11
Ibid, p. 306.
12
Ibid, p. 42.
13
Ashbee, Catena Librorum Tacendorum, pp. 134-35, 246, 260.
14
Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom in the 19th Century, table p. 133.
15
Sigel, Governing Pleasures, p. 122.
16
17
The quote is cited in: Roberts, “Morals, Art, and the Law”, p. 614.
6

When modern pornography came into existence it was as the center of attention in a
panicked moral debate about censorship.
The Victorian prudes
The Victorians established for posterity an image of themselves as the champions of
morality, stuffiness, and as repressors of everything sexual. The myth that even piano legs
were considered scandalous and consequently covered with pantalettes to protect people of
an impressionable mind from being inspired with impure thoughts is still in circulation at the
present day, and though there is no evidence to support its claim18
it serves to illustrate how
firm our belief in Victorian prudishness continues to be. There are, however, other facts
which suggest that the idea of the prudish Victorians has some claim to its rumor. For
instance, Steven Marcus refers to the influential Victorian physician, William Acton, as a
representative of Victorian official culture. In his 1857 treatise on sexuality, The Functions
and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs19
, he argues that sex is a problematic practice
which, though necessary for procreation, should be carried out with strict moderation. Steven
Marcus observes that the underlying reasoning for Acton’s call to caution was the notion that
the body is a “productive system with only a limited amount of material at its disposal”.20
Acton perceives semen as a highly enriched fluid which should be “spent”, as ejaculation
was widely termed, at most every 7th to 10th day in order to preserve the vitality of the body
and avoid consumption, insanity, and ultimately death. Women were in no danger since they
were seen as frigid: “A modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself”21
,
Acton insists and speculates that females may feel no pleasure from intercourse at all: “In
the females of many animals, and especially of those down the scale of existence, we can
scarcely believe that any gratification at all attends the act (…) In some animals the act
must, we would think, be an unmitigated distress and annoyance to the female”.22
Though Acton’s representational value is uncertain, especially regarding the view of
female frigidity23
, the call to sexual moderation was not unheard of, and there was almost
universal agreement in Victorian England that male masturbation was an evil that should be
18
The myth originated in Captain Frederick Marryat’s satirical 1839 book, A Diary in America.
19
The full title of Acton’s work is The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, in
Childhood, Youth, Adult Age, and Advanced Life, Considered in their Physiological, Social, and Moral
Relations.
20
21
Ibid, p. 31.
22
Acton, Functions and Disorders p. 133.
23
In The Making of Victorian Sexuality, Michael Mason debunks Acton’s representational value: “As a
claim about a woman’s sexual response Acton’s remark [that “the majority of women … are not very
much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind”] is, as far as I know, without a parallel in the sexual
literature of the day (while it is quite common to find writers mentioning the existence of female
frigidity as a matter of some surprise)” (p. 195-196).
7

repressed.24
The Victorians also held that sexuality in children was non-existent, or at least
that it ought to be so, until Sigmund Freud began to argue otherwise. According to Acton,
normal children entertain no sexual ideas or feelings until their physical development is
complete, only outside influences can cause a child’s sexuality to awaken prematurely.25
Parents were therefore advised to keep their children occupied and under strict surveillance.
The idea that sexuality lies dormant and suddenly is awakened in the young person at the
first given sexual encounter is commonly rehearsed in Victorian pornography: The forceful
defloration of the sexually ignorant virgin sets a sexual transformation in motion and she
emerges on the other side as a sexual being.
Let me return to a point relating to the myth of the scandalous piano legs. It has often
been observed that the Victorians saw sexual meaning in the most unlikely things. Ronald
Pearsall in the introduction to his monumental fact collection about Victorian sexuality, The
Worm in the Bud, writes that “the middle-class Victorians found that the whole subject of sex
became forbidden, confused, and diffused into the most unlikely areas. The more repressed
could see sex in everything.”26
For instance, women’s shoes were sexual symbols at the
time.27
The sexualization of objects that to the present day reader is hardly sexually
suggestive is seen in Victorian pornography, too. In Raped on the Railway, the sight of an
uncovered woman’s ankle brings the Victorian gentleman into uncontrollable heat28
, and in
the pornographic novel, The Mysteries of Verbena House, the narrator confesses how easily
he is aroused by the sight of women’s undergarments: “it tickles me somewhat when I look
from the windows of a railway carriage into suburban back gardens to see the white drawers
of women hung to dry on clothes lines, and fluttering in the breeze. My imagination fills the
empty galligaskins with cosy bottoms and hirsute quims”.29
The sexual repression of the Victorian age is epitomized in the censorship of
“obscene” book publications. While censorship was far from new in the Victorian age,
prohibition for exclusively moral concerns was a new development. It was exactly moral
concerns that led to the Obscene Publication Act of 1857; a piece of legislation that markedly
improved the conditions for seizing and destroying obscene literature as well as prosecuting
those responsible30
. It is therefore no surprise that the trade in pornographic literature
became more secretive than ever: Pornographic publications were often anonymous and
bore fraudulent information,31
and the publishers often changed location to derail
prosecution.
24
Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, p. 210.
25
Acton, Functions and Disorders, p. 1-2.
26
Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, p. xi.
27
Ibid, p. 347.
28
Raped on the Railway, pp.11-13.
29
Ibid, p. 31.
30
Roberts, “Morals, Art, and the Law”, p. 619.
31
8

The idea that pornography not only holds the power to shock decency but to corrupt
minds has been shared among censorship advocates for centuries. The 1868 definition of
obscenity by Chief Justice Cockburn has had great currency in the prosecution of obscenity,
even into the 20th century. The definition states that “the tendency of the matter charged as
obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to corruption and into
whose hands a publication of this sort may fall”32
. In The Secret Museum, Walter Kendrick
convincingly shows that the moral panic surrounding obscene materials was less concerned
with the material itself than with the audience. Sexually explicit material from the excavations
of Pompeii were carefully kept behind locked doors and only made accessible to men of
means who payed the doorkeeper to enter.33
The corruptible minds, those from whom
obscene materials were carefully kept, included not only women and children, but men of the
lower classes and other ethnicities.34
As has been demonstrated above, the same was true
for literary pornography. Kendrick argues that it was only when the danger became apparent
that these corruptible minds could get their hands on pornography that the censorship
debate became urgent.
Let’s talk about sex
In The History of Sexuality, the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, denies the
popular ‘repressive hypothesis’ that sexuality during the Victorian era was reduced to its
procreative function within heterosexual, legitimate, monogamous relationships and that
everything else was “driven out, denied, and reduced to silence (…) there was nothing to
say about such things, nothing to see, nothing to know”.35
One proponent for such a view is
Steven Marcus who in The Other Victorians holds that the free expression of sexuality was
repressed by official culture and that pornography provided an outlet for the built-up sexual
energies: “The view of human sexuality as it was represented in the subculture of
pornography and the view of sexuality held by official culture were reversals, mirror images,
negative analogues of one another”, he writes.36
To Foucault, the relationship between power and sex in Victorian times cannot be
reduced to silence and repression. Far from repressing sexuality, the Victorian era saw a
veritable discursive explosion in which sexuality was ‘dissected’ and laid bare in every last
detail in a manner inspired by the Christian practice of confession.37
With great analytical
scrutiny, a multiplicity of distinct discourses such as demography, biology, medicine,
psychiatry, psychology, ethics, pedagogy and political criticism took sexuality as the object of
32
Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, p. 384.
33
34
Ibid, pp. 6, 15,
35
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 4.
36
37
9

knowledge in order to produce useful, reproductive bodies. Interestingly, these sciences of
sexuality were far more interested in describing deviant than ‘normal’ sexualities. Thus, the
Victorian era saw the pervert, the hysterical woman, and the sexual child emerge as
categories.38
Foucault insists on rejecting the dichotomized understanding of sexuality as
something which is either repressed or liberated. Sexuality is always already in the grasp of
power; as a discursive category and an object of knowledge, sexuality is shaped and policed
by far more discrete mechanisms of power (technique, normalization, and control)39
than the
more conspicuous power of suppression (law, censorship, and taboo).
In many ways, pornography is distinct from the sober, distanced, useful, scientific
discourses about sexuality that were encouraged in the Victorian period, the outcome of
which was heteronormative procreative bodies. Both in terms of vocabulary, thematics, and
function/intention, it transgresses the ‘legitimate’ way of talking about sex. Pornography
seems to be exactly the kind of discourse on sexuality that is repressed by the law. In many
ways, the confrontation with the law and the internal need of the genre to transgress sexual
taboos and ‘shock decency’ have shaped the pornographic literary expression. Victorian
pornography is obsessed with the illegitimate; the law, restricting social conventions, and
taboos function in the narrative as titillating obstructions to sexual pleasure. But pornography
must also be considered a product of the 19th century incitement to talk about sexuality in
order to know it, shape it, define it, and control it. Foucault has little to say about the
pornographic discourse specifically, but he does point out that it has inherited the decree of
telling every last detail from the Christian practice of confession.40
This, as will become clear,
is certainly recognizable in the minute description of bodies and sexual acts in Victorian
pornography.
There can be no doubt that the account of sex and sexuality that we see in
pornography “[stakes] out a "specific field of truth" about sex”41
. Its specific focus of attention
is an attestation of what the pornographic discourse considers to be of interest and of what
truths it deems worthwhile to find. In contrast to the many treatises on sexuality of the 19th
century which focus on the man, pornography shows a strong curiosity towards female
sexuality.42
And in contrast to the scientific discourses that focus only on the hysterical
woman, pornography is interested in many other kinds of deviant female sexuality. As we will
have plenty of opportunity to see, the pornographic discourse is highly constructive,
normative, and controlling. The pornographic discourse betrays a will to define female
38
Ibid, p. 104-105.
39
Ibid, p. 83.
40
41
42
William Acton, for instance, in his treatise on sexuality devotes only two short sections to female
sexuality.
10

sexuality and femininity, including “natural” female behavior, “authentic” female sexual
response, and importantly, to define what constitute desirable and undesirable female
bodies.
The curious case of the sadistic pornotopia
The Victorian pornographic discourse is a part of a wider international pornographic
tradition. Especially French pornography influenced the English trade with translations and
sources for inspiration and plagiarism. However, Victorian pornography shows specific
English traits, most notably in the sexual acts depicted. Narratives about rape and
flagellation are the two most distinguishable trends in the Victorian era43
, expressing what
can be viewed as a particularly Victorian sentiment. The initiation of virgins into the realm of
sexuality in Victorian pornography is almost always an act of force. The Lustful Turk is an
interesting instance of this preoccupation with virgin rape as it consists of a succession of no
less than six such stories. Flagellation was so common in Victorian England that is was
known internationally as ‘The English Vice’44
, and this preoccupation naturally spilled into
pornography. In general, therefore, it seems that sadistic tendencies characterize Victorian
pornography.
Though violence seems particularly widespread in Victorian pornographic literature,
Steven Marcus argues that the pornography of the time shows strong tendencies towards a
utopian state of sexual bliss. From his studies of Victorian pornography, Marcus coined the
term pornotopia which denotes a pornographic fantasy world of plenty. Here “all men in it are
always and infinitely potent; all women fecundate with lust and flow inexhaustibly with sap or
juice or both. Everyone is always ready for anything, and everyone is infinitely generous with
his substance… - no one is ever jealous, possessive, or really angry”.45
In this pornotopian
idyll, time is an infinite succession of sexual tableaus, space is a suitable place to fuck, and
social and historical context is abstracted away. If possible, the pornotopian novel would go
on forever, but restricted to the medium of the novel, the narrative unwillingly comes to an
end. No pornographic novel is pornotopian through and through. The concept of the
pornotopia is seen by Marcus as an ideal type known from sociology; he quotes Max Weber
in stating that the pornotopia is a construct “like a utopia which has been arrived at by the
analytical accentuation of certain elements of reality”, which “in its conceptual purity (...)
cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality”46
. The pornotopia is an abstract entity which
no work of pornography can wholly become, but to the student of pornography the concept
of the pornotopia can be a useful instrument of analysis and comparison.
43
Webb, “Victorian Erotica”, p. 93-94.
44
Ibid, p. 104.
45
Marcus, The Other Victorians, p. 273
46
Ibid, p. 267.
11

Another aspect of the pornotopian novel is that its sole intention is to titillate.
Everything that does not add to this goal is stripped away. Though Victorian pornography
has strong ties to the novel and the realist tradition and in many respects relies heavily on
realism to provoke titillation,47
the characters are always one-dimensional sexualized stock
characters, and the sexual acts and the energy with which they engage in them is wholly
fantastic. Realism is never an aim in itself and is generally sacrificed to exaggerated sex
scenes where the actors show unbelievable stamina and sexual prowess. Aesthetic
aspirations, too, are sacrificed and generally considered distractions in a genre whose sole
aim is to force the reader to masturbatory action. “Although a pornographic work of fiction is
by necessity written”, states Marcus, “it might be more accurate to say that language for
pornography is a prison from which it is continually trying to escape. At best, language is a
bothersome necessity, for its function in pornography is to set going a series of non-verbal
images, of fantasies, and if it could achieve this without the mediation of words it would”.48
Marcus argues that pornography today has found a more suitable medium in the moving
picture where it can finally be free of restrictions of written language.49
The inattention to the means of expression along with the lack of psychological
complexity, unrealistic scenarios, repetitiveness and lack of narrative structure, have been
the main points of criticism that have placed pornography at the very bottom of the artistic
hierarchy50
. The pornotopian novel has the structure of a catalogue of sexual acts which
become increasingly hardcore as the story progresses. The scenes amount to monotonous
descriptions of body parts grinding against each other; one could even argue, as does
Steven Marcus, that the characters are reduced to their genitals. The narration lingers on the
details of the female body, especially the vagina. In contrast, the penis is the only body part
of the man that is of interest.51
The penises of Victorian pornography are all described in the
same way with unblushingly hyperbolic language as ‘monstrous weapons’, ‘immense
machines’, ‘rammers’, ‘pillars’, or sometimes simply as ‘pricks’. The gigantic members
possess immense powers of destruction and magical powers over the women who, in the
midst of the pain, delight in floods of life-giving sperm that produces multiple orgasms. The
vaginas are similarly described in either repetitions of crudely direct nouns (‘cunts’) or
clichéed euphemisms (‘Abodes of Love’, ‘Bowers of Bliss’). Like the descriptions of the
penises, the minute description of the body of one beautiful virgin is directly interchangeable
with the other.
47
In the title or preface of a Victorian pornographic novel, for instance, it will often be insisted that the
story about to be told has really transpired. See Marcus, The Other Victorians, p. 203.
48
Marcus,The Other Victorians, p. 279.
49
Ibid, p. 208.
50
See Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess”, p. 10, and Susan Sontag, “The
Pornographic Imagination”, p. 39.
51
In the pornotopian novel, the man is the penis, writes Marcus, (The Other Victorians, p. 272).
12

As one of the first works on Victorian pornography, Marcus’ The Other Victorians and
especially the concept of the pornotopia as genre characterization has been enormously
influential. However, Marcus’ work has also been a popular object of criticism in later years.
His weakest point seems to be his strong adherence to Freudian psychoanalysis. To Marcus,
all pornographers are starving children: “Inside of every pornographer there is an infant
screaming for the breast from which he was torn. Pornography represents an endless and
infinitely repeated effort to recapture that breast, and the bliss it offered”52
. Psychoanalytical
interpretation in the study of pornography can be valuable in drawing out the many layers of
meaning in the texts, but to understand pornography solely in terms of wish-fulfillment makes
Marcus blind to the wealth of meaning that contradicts this psychoanalytical interpretation,
and he ignores the significance of social and historical context. I have already quoted
Kathleen Frederickson’s essay, “Victorian Pornography and the Laws of Genre” (2011) in
which she provides a review of the studies that object to Marcus’ idea that “pornography
strives toward self-containment”53
, meaning, it is a product of fantasy distinct from social
existence. She argues that pornography in the Victorian period was greatly influenced by
other kinds of Victorian intellectual productions and that it is therefore difficult to uphold the
view that it is a closed, distinct category.54
To criticize Steven Marcus is therefore nothing new. In this thesis, I make critical use
of the concept of the pornotopia. I find it useful, firstly, because it reflects our intuition about
the purpose of pornography, and, secondly, because its single-minded insistence on seeing
only wishful thinking in pornography highlights pornography's nightmarish qualities so much
the stronger. Steven Marcus does not dwell long on the disturbing Victorian fascination with
sadistic violence. He states that “In pornotopia conflicts do not exists; and if by chance a
conflict does occur it is instantly dispelled by the waving of a magical sexual wand”.55
The
excessive male on female violence is possible within the pornotopian idyll, for the violence
shows no physical or psychological long term effects on the victim, and has, as we shall see,
always happy consequences. In contention with Marcus, I find that the excessive and ever-
present violence is deeper and more firmly settled in the pornographic genre of the Victorian
period than an occasional random conflict. In fact, I would argue, conflict is an essential part
of the specific way in which the present works of Victorian pornography produce titillation.
Conquest, domination, degradation, and humiliation of the victim as well as the infliction of
physical pain are all important aspects of male desire as portrayed in this selection of
Victorian pornography, and scrutinous analysis will show that in every single instance the
‘magical sexual wand’ proves faulty. Marcus’ concept of the pornotopia useful in
52
53
Frederickson, “Victorian Pornography and the Laws of Genre”, p. 306.
54
Ibid, p. 305.
55
13

distinguishing these two prevalent and apparently contradictory tendencies - the desire for
pleasure and the desire for pain.
In the following chapters I will submit the six works of Victorian pornography to
literary analysis focusing on their struggling pornotopian and sadistic tendencies in relation
to the construction of female sexuality. I will relate both rape and flagellation pornography to
the historical context of the phenomenons of rape and flagellation. These contextualizations,
however, cannot stand alone in explaining why violence, pain, and humiliation are so
important in producing titillation. Some feminist theories have explained the phenomenon
simply as the way men hold women down in patriarchal societies. Andrea Dworkin, in
Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981), stands as a strong proponent for the view
that male sadistic violence as it is expressed in the male sexual fantasies of pornography is
simply a result of the historical fact that men possess power over women. Susan
Brownmiller’s famous concept of rape in Against our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975),
according to which rape is “a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all
women in a state of fear”, can be seen in a similar vein as an expression of man’s power
over women. Though there is no doubt that Victorian pornography is deeply invested in
patriarchal ideology, the explanation of rape and violence as patriarchal power is too
simplistic to explain the many, sometimes contradictory, ways in which sadism is expressed
in the texts. I will therefore make use of three different theories (focusing on the demystifying
gaze, the pleasure of destruction, and the fear of castration respectively) that each serve to
explain certain aspects of the sadistic tendencies we observe in the six works of
pornography.
First, in a fusion of insights from Foucault, psychoanalysis and various feminist
thinkers, I propose an explanation of the domination of women in the pornographic texts
seen in the subjection of the female body to an inquiring gaze. The pleasure of looking can
be seen as expressive of the desire to eradicate the fear of the female Other by creating
knowledge about her mysterious sexuality. The theoretical works on this subject include
Michel Foucault’s introduction to his History of Sexuality (1976), Simone de Beauvoir's The
Second Sex (1949), and Rosi Braidotti’s “Body-Images and the Pornography of
Representation” (1991).
Beauvoir’s existentialist magnum opus, The Second Sex, has gained canonical
status in feminist philosophy. It concerns the way in which man in patriarchal societies
throughout history has confirmed his status as an active, transcendent being by subjecting
woman and constructing her as a passive, immanent Other. The chapter entitled “Myths”
shows that ambivalence, suspicion, and fear characterize man’s relationship with woman
because casting the woman as radically different has the side effect of veiling her in mystery.
Beauvoir’s excurse on the woman myths will show us that the incomprehensible woman is
an ideal object of knowledge. Later feminists have focused on man’s desperate attempt to
14

do away with the anxiety by unveiling the female mystery. The scientific discourses on
sexuality investigated in the History of Sexuality are to Foucault involved in the operations of
power, for powers of technique, control, and normalization are exercised in making
something an object of knowledge. Rosi Braidotti in her essay, “Body-Images and the
Pornography of Representation”, takes Foucault’s insight and argues that the relentless
tendency seen in pornography (and science) to look at and zoom in on the naked female
body is an expression of man’s will to gain knowledge about the female mysteries. Giving
way to this ‘scopic drive’, moreover, she understands as sadistic in nature.
Secondly, I will propose to explain the fascination with defloration, degradation, and
excessive punishment of women in the pornographic texts as a fundamentally destructive
side to human sexuality. George Bataille in Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1957) argues
that human beings have a fundamental need at times to go beyond their productive
everyday life and be wasteful and destructive - this he calls erotism. The human sacrifice is
the summit of wasteful behavior, but non-procreative sex is another shape that erotism can
take. Bataille sees erotism at its logical conclusion in the writings of Marquis de Sade who
combined these two kinds of excess in the sacrifice of the female sex partner. However, less
extreme measures will do to transcend rational, useful life, as for instance the befoulment of
female beauty. I will compare the sadism in the writings of Marquis de Sade to the sadistic
tendencies in Victorian pornography, and, though there are important differences, it will be
clear that the Victorian texts also display destructive desires to kill the woman and to destroy
her worth.
Finally, I will make use of the psychoanalytical theory that castration anxiety is at the
root of the sadistic perversion. The ever present fear of castration can help to make sense of
Victorian pornography’s hypermasculinization of the men, and fetishization of the virgin, and
present an alternative way of understanding the excessive sadistic violence against the
women. Laura Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), has been
enormously important in feminist film theory. Mulvey argues that the movies work within an
implicit gendered division of labor where a masculinized gaze is directed towards the
spectacle of a passive, to-be-looked-at female character. However, the sight of the woman is
not purely pleasurable since the female otherness signifies the lack of a penis and brings out
castration anxiety in the man, a fear that is managed either by investigating and demystifying
the woman or by turning her into a fetish object. These two ways of handling the dread of the
woman are both encountered in Victorian pornography. According to Sigmund Freud’s essay
“Fetishism” (1927), the fetichist perversion is designed to avoid castration anxiety by
substituting a thing or body part for the woman as sexual object so that coitus, and thereby
the sight of the vagina, is avoided. Using Karen Horney’s early psychoanalytic essay, “The
Dread of Women” (1932), I will argue that the virgin vagina in Victorian pornography can
paradoxically be understood as a fetishized object. Karen Horney argues that both
15

overvaluation (fetishism) and devaluation of women are measures used by men to control
their dread of women, and both these attitudes are reflected in the representation of the
virgin in the pornographic texts.
Pathological sadism is another way in which castration anxiety is seen in Victorian
pornography. In her study of the history of film pornography, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure,
and the “Frenzy of the Visible” (1989), Linda Williams gives a definition of the psychoanalytic
conception of sadism as originating in a failed reconciliation of the Oedipus complex. The
frantic punishment of a female victim is interpreted as the superego of the sadist trying to
wipe out the feminine side of his own self to escape the fear of castration. Though this
explanation of sadism remains rather speculative, there is abundant evidence in the
pornographic texts to suggest that castration anxiety in its various forms, and measures to
appease this fear, is at the heart of Victorian pornography.
These three readings are not meant to be oppositional. Rather, they are intended to
open up the texts by casting light on different aspects of the sadistic tendencies that show
themselves in various ways - and often in opposition to the pornotopian tendencies - in these
six works of Victorian pornography.
16

2. Rape pornography
Stories of rape are numerous in Western literary tradition, and in the Victorian period
the phenomenon was widely addressed in sentimental, gothic and pornographic literature as
well as in sensationalist journalism. The word ‘rape’ derives from the Latin raptus, which
means theft, and which originally denoted “the abduction of a man’s wife or daughter,
regardless of whether the sexual act took place, and regardless of her volition”56
. However,
the modern definition of rape, which was in use in the Victorian era, has volition at its core. It
originates in a statute of Elizabeth I of 1575, which states that rape is “the carnal knowledge
of a woman forcibly and against her will”57
. As we shall see, the question of consent is of the
utmost importance to Victorian porn.
As for the legal ramifications of extra-marital rape58
, the maximum punishment was
death in the period between 1285 and 1841, “transportation for life”, meaning that the convict
was sent to a penal colony, until 1857, and hereafter “penal servitude for life”.59
From this it
appears that the Victorians took rape very seriously, but the fact of the matter is that social
status was a determining factor in how rape was perceived by the law. In her essay, “Rape
and Justice in Victorian England”, Carolyn A. Conley investigates records from Kent County
and establishes that the conviction rate of the rape trials (that is, those which were not
immediately dismissed or heard as minor offenses - only 21% of all accused stood trial) was
only 40% compared to a conviction rate of 85% for other crimes.60
In The Worm in the Bud,
Ronald Pearsall argues that for the poor, rape was a mundane occurrence hardly worse than
the brutality of their everyday lives. The general ethos of the poorest “manifested itself in
pointless brutality, extreme promiscuity, and their extensions, fortified by cheap and plentiful
drink, incest and rape”.61
Rape cases involving working-class women were rarely brought to
justice, and when they were, the perpetrator was let go or underwent minor punishments.
Though in principle everybody was equal under the law, a person’s perceived
“respectability” was decisive to the outcome of rape cases. “The very word “rape” evoked
the image of a delicate woman brutally assaulted by a sub-human beast” so “since rape was
so heinous a crime that only a monster could commit it, proof that the accused was of at
least recognizable human character meant he could not be guilty of rape, even if medical
evidence indicated he had been“.62
The rape of a lady was rare, and the outcome of a rape
56
Catty, Writing Rape, Writing Women in Early Modern England, p. 1-2.
57
Conley, “Rape and Justice in Victorian England”, p. 520.
58
Rape within marriage was a conceptual impossibility since “a wife was presumed to have granted
lifelong consent to sexual intercourse with her husband”. Bourke, “Sexual Violence, Marital Guidance,
and Victorian Bodies: An Aesthesiology”, p. 421.
59
See the entry titled “History” in the Wikipedia entry on “Rape in English Law”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law#History
60
61
Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, p. 320.
62
Conley, “Rape and Justice in Victorian England”, pp. 530, 536.
17

trial with a victim of social status was taken much more seriously than cases of rape of
working-class women.63
Similarly, men of social status were seldom convicted of rape at all.
Male sexual aggression was perceived as normal, healthy and inevitable, and thus sexual
assault was often regarded merely a regrettable instance of loss of self-control. The opinion
was common that it was the responsibility of the woman to protect her virtue from these
normal male impulses by staying under the supervision of her male guardian (an
impossibility for working women), otherwise she was considered fair game64
.
Like the Victorian court system, rape pornography also shows a well-developed
sense of class distinction. It is infatuated with rape of high-class modest women, but raping a
working-class woman seems to offer little titillation. Base working-class women are imagined
as easy and even willing prey that it would be no challenge to subdue. This is manifested in
My Secret Life, the autobiography of the pornographic bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee,
where the protagonist buys access to the body of one working-class girl after another.
Prostitution was widespread among the London working class. The Victorian historian,
Henry Mayhew, in his oft cited work, London labour and the London poor (1851-1861),
credits police authorities with knowing of 8600 London prostitutes in 1857. Mayhew’s own
estimation, however, is that more than 80,000 prostitutes were at work in London alone,65
and this at a time when the London population, according to Meyhew’s calculation,
comprised only about two million people. Though the theme of prostitution is not unseen in
the Victorian pornographic literature (My Secret Life may be considered one such work), the
genre seems to prefer stories of unwilling victims.
The value and inaccessibility of a high-class woman along with the dangers in daring
to possess her, made the conquest of such a woman very attractive. The protection offered
by her social position as well as her own obligation to resist in order to protect her chastity,
provided a titillating fantasy. In Victorian England, the loss of virginity or chastity lowered the
value of a woman no matter if she had been raped or voluntarily seduced66
. As we shall see,
Victorian pornography never outright condemns the fallen woman, but it is nevertheless
highly ambivalent in regards to female virtue. It ridicules the moral ideas that make the
women resist, but it simultaneously views virtue as desirable for the sake of overcoming it.
Of all the virtuous and resisting women being raped in Victorian pornography, the
virgin is the preferred sexual object to conquer. Several social critics and philanthropists
considered the extent to which virgins were raped a serious social evil. In the sensationalist
piece of investigative journalism, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” (1885) W. T.
Stead describes what has later been called the defloration mania of Victorian England.
According to Stead, large numbers of young working-class virgins were either sold by their
63
Ibid, p. 530.
64
Ibid, p. 353.
65
Mayhew, London labour and the London poor, p. 211-213.
66
18

poor parents or deceived into “meeting men” for money. Stead describes how they cry and
scream as they were forcefully strapped down and raped by rich gentlemen, who has paid
between £5 and £20 for a maidenhead.67
Though Stead’s method of investigating the industry in girls’ maidenheads has been
criticized for its unreliability, there seems to be little doubt that Victorian men were
extraordinarily attracted to the idea of taking a maidenhead. In his commentary to the
autobiography of Henry Spencer Ashbee, My Secret Life, Steven Marcus writes that “Like
many Englishmen of his time the author on occasion experiences a peculiarly intense desire
to deflower a young virgin, the younger the better”.68
The consummation of one such episode
is described in the following terms:
“With pride and power I clasped her, feeling sure she was virgin. There she
lay in all her beauty, submitting to my will, I enjoying my sense of power,
wriggling gently for a minute, till my prick demanded its right of entry. I
pushed, a sharp "oh!" a harder push, a louder cry, the obstacle was tight and
hard indeed, I had never had such difficulty before; my lust grew fierce, her
cry of pain gave me inexpressable pleasure, and saying I would not hurt, yet
wishing to hurt her and glorying in it, I thrust with all the violence my buttocks
could give, till my prick seemed to bleed, and pained me. "Oh ! mon Dieu! ne
faites pas ca, get away, you shan't". she cried, "oh! o-o-oh !"69
The Victorian infatuation with defloration comes across in pornography where virgins are the
undisputed preferred objects of desire. Sadistic gloating in dominating and hurting a resisting
victim is the key element in the attraction of rape, and this aspect is naturally intensified in
scenes of virgin rape, especially of young girls, where the disproportion in size between the
unrealistically huge male members and the delicate young female bodies wreaks further
havoc.
The Lustful Turk
The Lustful Turk is a pornographic epistolary novel by an anonymous author which
was first published in 1828 by J. B. Brookes70
. It features six more or less indistinguishable
stories of virgin rape. Though the novel is pre-Victorian it was very popular throughout the
Victorian period, being reprinted in 1829 by Brookes and republished in the 1860s and again
in 1893 by the infamous pornographic publisher, William Dugdale.
67
W. T. Stead, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon”, Part II: “Procuration in the West-End”.
68
69
Ashbee, My Secret Life, Vol. II, chapter 2.
70
Ashbee, Catena Librorum Tacendorum, pp. 134-135.
19

The main protagonist is the virtuous English middle class virgin, Emily Barlow, who
platonically loves her sweetheart Henry, the brother of her best friend Sylvia Carey, to whom
the letters comprising the story are mainly addressed. Emily is kidnapped during a voyage at
sea and presented to Ali, the Dey of Algiers, as a sex slave. She meets the rest of the harem
and hears their tales about the circumstances of their abductions and rapes by the Dey.
Eventually the Dey also succeeds in kidnapping and raping Sylvia as an act of revenge for
the indignation she expresses about Emily’s new way of life in the harem. The story abruptly
ends when the Dey is violently castrated by a new girl he is about to rape, and so with no
further use of the girls of his harem he sets them all free.
Upon her arrival to the harem, the Dey immediately attempts to deflower Emily, and
he is aided in the deed by the slumbering sexual ‘nature’ of the heroine which is aroused by
the Dey’s passionate embraces:
“Nature, too powerful nature, had become aroused and assisted his
lascivious proceedings, conveying his kisses, brutal as they were, to the
inmost recesses of my heart (…) an unknown fire rushed through every part
of me, hurried on - by a strange pleasure. All my loud cries dwindled into
gentle sighs, and in spite of my inward rage and grief, I could not resist” (10).
The physical fight between the man and the woman is paralleled by an inward struggle
between the modesty and shame laid down on her by society and the involuntary feelings
announcing her sexual awakening.
The six virgin rape scenes are described in much the same way; as brutal acts of
violence with no consideration for the victim:
“I quickly felt him forcing his way into me, with a fury that caused me to
scream with anguish. My petitions, supplications and tears were of no use. I
was on the altar, and, butcher-like, he was determined to complete the
sacrifice; indeed, my cries seemed only to excite him to the finishing of my
ruin, and sucking my lips and breasts with fury, he unrelentingly rooted up all
obstacles my virginity offered, tearing and cutting me to pieces, until the
complete junction of our bodies announced that the whole of his terrible shaft
was buried within me. I could bear the dreadful torment no longer: uttering a
piercing cry I sank insensible in the arms of my cruel ravisher” (16-17).
There is no pretense that the woman enjoys the intercourse, rather, her suffering is important
to the gratification of the man - Emily faints no less than three times from pain during her
20

defloration, and three times during the next rape scene as well. Nevertheless, all the rape
stories of the book (except one) comes to the same conclusion: The young innocent girls
eventually transform into happy submissive sex addicts after the initial painful removal of
their maidenheads which is accompanied by the nullification of the force of social
conventions that dictates a girl to be virtuous and modest, and the eradication of their
feelings of pride and bashfulness. Ali explains the philosophy in the following manner: “Rid
them of their virginity, enjoy them properly, and it is wonderful to observe the rapidity with
which the seed of pleasure will thrive and yield a rich harvest to the happy cultivator” (96).
The loss of maidenhead is a necessary rite, a sacrifice a girl must make, or be forced to
make, to become a woman able to take part in the delights of sex. By a sudden act of
violence - a battle imagined as the storming of a fortress - the girls must be set free from that
which restricts the expression of their sexual nature. No attempt is made to rationalize why
the initiation of the virgin into the realm of sexuality needs to be so traumatically painful or
why their suffering so excites the rapists. Though Ali has access to anesthetics, he seldom
chooses to lessen the pain of his victims. It is clear that the titillation is effected by the
detailed description of the struggle, pain, and tears of the victims that make it possible for the
reader to gloat in the suffering the girls.
The sadist element is best expressed in the rape of Eliza. Eliza is Emily’s maid who
was also kidnapped and presented to the Dey, but who the Dey chose to send to the Bey of
Tunis. The Bey has Eliza strapped down, flogged until her blood flows, and finally he brutally
rapes her. The Bey professes that “There is nothing on earth so much enhances the joy with
me as to know the object that affords me the pleasure detests me, but cannot help from
satisfying my desires - her tears and looks of anguish are sources of unutterable joy to me!”
(61). Eliza is the only virgin who remains indignant, so much so that she attempts to
assassinate the Bey. To accomplice this, she makes use of female deception: “In the midst
of my joys she clasped me in her arms, returning my kisses as ardently as they were given,
and appearing to receive as much ecstatic pleasure as she herself gave. But it was all
deceit, to lull me to my destruction” (64). As we will see repeatedly throughout this thesis, the
rapists of Victorian pornography invariably see himself as the victor in the moment that the
women experience sexual pleasure in spite of themselves. The visual evidence of the
woman’s orgasm is a sign that she has been transformed, or rather, that she has been
tamed, and that there is no longer reason to fear the indignation that was her initial reaction
to the violence. The Lustful Turk is an interesting instance because it openly acknowledges
the anxiety arising from women’s ability to fraudulently give the impression of experiencing
sexual pleasure.
In all cases other than that of Eliza, the pain and torment is forgotten and forgiven
when the girls, now free of any pretension to virtue and with their sexual organs prepared,
experience a new world of excessive bliss:
21

“Being entirely relieved of pain, I swam in the sea of thrilling delight and
enjoyment only known to the young maids just released from the pangs of
expiring virginity. With these all my pains and fears vanished, together with
the remains of my virgin bashfulness, the only thing that could throw any
obstacle in the way of this luxurious novelty which so ravishingly filled my
soul with ecstasy and astonishment” (22).
Resigned to their status as sex slaves, the girls are not only content but feel blessed
with their lot. Now begins a time of apprenticeship, where the man educates the ignorant
women in the techniques of sex (for the most part) increasing their pleasure. The sexual
pleasure is an epiphany that wholly converts them and makes them think they have found
the true meaning of their existence, and this turns them against their former beliefs in proper
female behavior:
“I could not help smiling at my ignorance when I considered the ridiculous airs
I had assumed (...) about my chastity. The Dey, indeed, had soon discovered
my folly, and like a man of sense, took the proper method to subdue me. (...)
he put to the rout all my pure modest virgin scruples, rapturously teaching me
the nature of love's sacred mysteries, and the great end for which we poor
weak females are created” (35).
In retrospect, the rape victims become rape apologists. The Dey’s sexual
assertiveness is celebrated while the girls’ former gentlemanly lovers are ridiculed. One
woman professes that “it would now be impossible for me to return to him with anything like
satisfaction to myself, so firmly has the Dey fixed himself in my affections” (36).
The main actor in this transformation of the girls is the penis, the all-powerful,
magical creator of whores. In pornography, the penis is a divine object of worship, its sperm
is the giver of vitality, and ejaculation into the womb of a woman almost surely will make her
climax. The penis of the Dey is euphemistically described as “this wonderful instrument of
nature - this terror of virgins, but delight of women” (22). In every Victorian novel, the penis is
always of enormous proportions, always erect, hard as iron, and ready to ravish a maid
again and again. It is a weapon that “rends, wounds, tears, and is capable of killing the
object it attacks”, writes Steven Marcus.71
This is especially obvious in the defloration scenes
in The Lustful Turk, which are variously describes as sacrifice, butchering, and murder: "stay
your cruel thrusts, you murder me!" (98), cries Sylvia. But the power of the penis does not
stop at its destructive qualities, it is equally a “magical instrument of infinite powers”, writes
71
22

Marcus.72
In destroying the virgin, it creates a whore, a woman who is always ready to
receive the penis. It has an almost mystical power over women: “Without knowing what it
was, every throb created in me a tremor unaccountable” (11) writes Emily while she is still in
her virgin state. The virgin feels the attraction of the penis in a mixture of horror and delight
as if she anticipates the awakening of her sexuality by means of this instrument. When she
has become intimate with the penis, the mere sight of it makes her throw herself on her back
and spread her thighs ready to be rammed (87). It is this immense overestimation of the
powers of the penis that is Marcus’ main reason for maintaining that pornography is made
for men by men.73
Another way in which the male point of view and the catering to male desire become
apparent in the novel is the struggle between what is imagined as male sexual desire in
opposition to female sexual desire. The male fantasy at work in the novel is that of conquest.
In the oriental harem, virgins are plentiful, and the man can forever repeat the ritual of
molding a proud, virtuous and stunningly beautiful girl into a submissive sexual object. In his
embrace, she is happy with her fate, but the discrepancy arises when he tires of her and lets
his attention wander toward the next beautiful virgin.
The desire of the women is imagined to be the dream of exclusivity known from
romance, a dream that is suggested in this novel but ultimately disappointed. The heroine
Emily, we are told, is especially beautiful, and, on her introduction into the Dey’s harem, she
becomes his preferred sex toy. Female rivalry is introduced: “Her transports went like
daggers to my heart” (40) and “I hated her in my heart for robbing me of that which was dear
to me” (86) are the sentiments of Emily when other courtesans assume her position as
favorite. Unlike Richardson's Pamela, Emily does not succeed in changing the Dey from his
libertine ways, she is not able to install in him a purer kind of love and secure his eternal
devotion - for this is porn, not romance.
It has often been observed that love is subject to the problem of time - erotic love is
powerful and wonderful but it will always come to an end before long.74
Sexual desire is even
more vulnerable to the passing of time. Steven Marcus points out that pornography is
repetitive to the point of becoming formulaic and ritualistic75
: “The impulse or compulsion to
repeat, to repeat endlessly, is one of pornography’s most striking qualities”, he writes.76
The
ideal pornotopian narrative would go on forever, for there is no end to sexual desire. But
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid, p. 213.
74
Erotic love is often defined as a lack in western tradition. To obtain the object of desire, in this
perspective, implies the end of desire. Accordingly, Denis de Rougemont‘s in Love in the Western
World (1939) observes that great love stories, such as Romeo and Juliet, always insert obstructions
to the happy consumption of the lovers’ love in order to keep the love alive. As far back as classical
philosophy, erotic love has been seen as fleeting. In Symposium, Socrates describes Eros as a
homeless person who is always on his way somewhere else.
75
76
Ibid, p. 279.
23

though the pornotopian novel strives for eternal repetition of sexual pleasure, this never
involves the same sexual partner for long. This is also the case in The Lustful Turk, where
male desire represented as a succession of conquests of different women triumphs over
what is perceived as female sentimentality.
Every novel must necessarily come to a close, and pornography only closes
reluctantly. The Lustful Turk clearly exhibits the desire to go on and on; after six
interchangeable stories about the defloration of six more or less interchangeable virgins, the
story ends abruptly with the violent castration of the Dey:
“The Dey had received a Greek girl from one of his captains. She
passively submitted to his embraces, and uttered no complaint until he
commenced the attack upon her second maidenhead; then did she seem
inspired with the strength of a Hercules. She suddenly seized a knife, which
she had concealed under a cushion, grasped his pinnacle of strength, and in
less than a thought drew the knife across it and severed it from his body, she
then plunged it into her own heart and expired immediately” (110).
As such, desire comes to an abrupt end. With no further use for his courtesans they are all
set free. The repetition of the sexual scenarios themselves suggested no conclusion but
projected the continuation of the story endlessly into the future. In terms of narrative logic,
the removal of the penis therefore seems like a crude fabrication included to disrupt the
suggested course of events.
The ending also brings the insistence on male sexual all-powerfulness into doubt.
The ending contradicts what has been preached in the novel to this point, that male
aggressive sexuality must subdue the woman to his desire, and that she is better off that
way. First, the male protagonist is castrated. The Dey’s penis, his divine destructive and
creative power, is literally chopped off. Next, in an act which evokes the whole Freudian
arsenal of tools of symbolic interpretation, the Dey preserves his penis and testicles in a jar
and presents them to Emily and Sylvia as a farewell gift. Now, from having been sexual
objects subjugated to the Dey’s total power, the two women become dangerous sexual
predators. Sylvia, we are told, “afterwards married a baronet, who lost his charge before he
effected his entrance, so well did she play the prude” (111). The novel lets her succeed in
duping men with female artifice. Emily forgets everything about Henry, her former gentle and
devoted lover who was on the verge of death from the sorrow of losing her. Her sexual
education has taught her to demand the same godlike sexual prowess from prospective
husbands as the Dey exhibited:
24

“I will never marry until I am assured that the chosen one possesses sufficient
charm and weight not only to erase the Dey's impression from my heart, but
also from a more sensitive part. I have a young willing maid who possesses
wiles enough to catch any man, and sufficient experience to answer my
purpose; out of ten suitors, seven have passed through her ordeal and been
found wanting. My hopes at present are centred on an Irish earl, who I have a
presentiment will be found worthy of acceptance” (110).
A pornotopian happy ending is supposed to demonstrate the beneficial effects of male
sexual domination on the lives of women. In this case, the women have obviously prospered.
Their sexual education has taught them to know what they want and how to get it. However,
it is curious that this conclusion contradicts the otherwise pervading celebration of assertive
masculinity that does not let itself be duped by female pretenses to modesty and pride.
Thus, the novel comes full circle. The difference is that the women no longer only make
presumptions to pride and power but actually gain the power to deny men the access to their
bodies. ‘Gentlemen’ are ridiculed by the novel and represented as doomed in the face of the
unbridled sexuality of these femmes fatales. With the gift from the Dey, they are now the
owners of the phallus, the symbol of power and in the context of pornography specifically
power in the shape of masculine sexual agency and aggression. They know the game too
well to submit to anyone but the most masculine of men: Inevitably, seven out of ten must fall
short.
The final conclusion to be drawn from the attitude to female sexuality in this novel
must be that all kinds of men are in danger from all kinds of women. Even the most
aggressive man in the novel, the Bey of Tunis, was all but killed by female pretenses. More
fatal still (according to the sexualized worldview of pornography) is the loss of the penis
suffered by the Dey at the hand of a deceitful virgin with a hidden knife and a hidden
resentment. The immense sexual prowess of these men could not, after all its
remonstrances to the contrary, thoroughly subdue the virgin. The anxiety is directed towards
the impenetrable mind of the female: Even in her apparent raptures of pleasure she could be
faking. More disturbing still, even the women who feel pleasure in spite of themselves, have
secrets. The Dey, already before his castration, suspects that his orgasming slaves are still
not truly content: “even in the height of our ecstasies, a cloud seems to hang on her
beauteous countenance, clearly indicating that it is nature, not love, that creates her
transport” (4). His power comes to a stop: It may be able to force pleasure in the resisting
woman, but it cannot force love. It shall be one of the main points in this thesis that the
desire to disrobe, gaze at and interpret visual evidence on the surface of the woman’s body
is an expression of the desire of the man to ease the anxiety that arises from the woman’s
Otherness. In The Lustful Turk, the anxiety arises from the suspicion that even when she
25

seems to have resigned to the embraces of the man, he still does not know her and still does
not have total power over her. Secretly, she could be brooding on a revolt. Female sexuality,
experienced or inexperienced, is dangerous, something that is ready to take away the power
of man.
Raped on the Railway
The Victorian pornographic novel, Raped On The Railway, bears the subtitle, A True
Story Of A Lady Who Was First Ravished And Then Chastised On The Scotch Express. The
author is anonymous, but it was published by the well known Victorian publisher of
pornographic books, Charles Carrington in 1894. It concerns the beautiful and elegant
soldier’s wife Mrs. Sinclair, who finds herself alone in a train compartment with a stranger,
Robert Brandon, who becomes attracted to her and rapes her. The act is discovered by the
brother-in-law of Mrs. Sinclair, who perceives her decision to keep the rape a secret to avoid
scandal as evidence that she consented. He revenges the cuckolding of his brother by
having her severely flogged. The brother-in-law is aroused by the whipping, and he therefore
later attempts but fails to rape Mrs. Sinclair in her home.
In a subplot, Brandon catches his wife, Maud, on the verge of committing adultery.
He punishes her with flagellation which reawakens her desire for him to the point where she
desires him more than he desires her. She is diagnosed as a nymphomaniac and soon dies
in child labor. Freed from commitment, Brandon enlists in the British army in Africa where he
befriends Mr. Sinclair, who soon dies in battle. The novel ends with the rejoining of the two
protagonists, Brandon and Mrs. Sinclair, and it is hinted that they will live happily together in
a sexually fulfilling relationship.
In this novel, rape is explicitly and, it seems, sincerely endorsed: “To get a strong-
bodied wench, in the prime of health, down on her back, and triumph over her virtue, in spite
of all her struggles, is to my mind the height of delightful existence, the sum of all human
ambition”, the narrator, ‘a doctor and a man of the world’, states. He uses his qualifications
as a man of science and experience to maintain what has been insisted in (almost) every
single rape narrative in Victorian pornography, that rape not only benefits the man, but the
victim of the rape alike: “To her, the friction, contact and embraces of man, flesh to flesh
close-locked and intertwined, is as much a necessity as eating and drinking, and sleeping
and breathing. Many women cannot be made to appreciate the philosophy until they have
been violently taken against their will, and made to taste of the fruit for which they afterwards
entertain such a passionate liking” (7). The moral is that there is always happy
consequences to rape, both for the man and the woman.
26

The rape of Mrs. Sinclair is framed by the narrator as a game little different from the
game of seduction, in which the woman is supposed to resist even in spite of herself and the
man has won once he gains possession over the woman’s body. To attempt the seduction
with every resource available is a matter of masculine pride. ““I should be a great fool to go
on acting like a timid school-boy. I am certain that the lady would not fail to laugh at me to-
morrow morning”” (12), Brandon muses before continuing his siege.
The opinions, the perspective, and the gaze of the novel belong to the male. The narrator,
following literary convention, claims to be a disinterested neutral observer of an action that
has really taken place (7). His claim to being an invisible witness is already contradicted by
the fact that he has access to the mental states of the characters, but more importantly he
takes unequal part in the battle between the sexes by prioritizing the point of view of
Brandon. This comes about in the objectification and eroticization of Mrs. Sinclair. “There
was at the extreme end in the far corner, with her back to the engine, a lady, wrapped up in
furs and travelling wraps, and whose face was completely hidden behind a thick veil” (9).
This initial description of Mrs. Sinclair shows that she has no interest in others, on the
contrary she sits by herself, minds her own business, and tries to fall asleep. Nevertheless,
every last thing about her is seen as an expression of her participation in the game. Brandon
is obsessed with uncovering the mystery that is Mrs. Sinclair, wanting to expose her face
and body and to know her carnally as well. The eroticization of Mrs. Sinclair is evidently a
projection of male desire: She has bright eyes with “long eyelashes which served to intensify
the sudden glances which were shot from behind them”, her clothes show off “her figure to
perfection”, her hat is coquettish, her lips “not only eminently kissable, but would return a
kiss with interest”, and her tone of voice is seductive77
. The point of view is further evidenced
in the focus on the woman’s body, the possession of which is partly attained by uncovering
it:
“He brought to view two small but beautifully round breasts, just showing
their little pink nipples above the corset which confined them … He saw
before his entranced eyes, now gleaming with lust, a forest of golden brown
curly hair which extended, in a triangular shape from the line where the thighs
join the body, all over the lower part of the belly. At the apex of this triangle,
there peered through a thicker and curlier tuft of hair the pouting red lips of a
pretty and very tempting looking abode of love” (30).
The obsession of the male gaze with the female body comes across particularly strongly
in the sections narrated by a neutral observer, but also, surprisingly, in the few sections
which are supposedly focalized through Mrs. Sinclair herself: “She took off her shoes and
stood in all the naked beauty of her glorious womanhood” (42).
77
The portrait of Mrs. Sinclair is found on p. 11.
27

The sexual pleasure associated with looking at others was already described by Sigmund
Freud as scopophilia, a phenomenon first seen in the natural inquisitive activity of children
centered on seeing other people’s genitals and bodily functions.78
Feminist scholars have
later argued that the desire to look is largely an activity employed by men on the bodies of
women. As such, Laura Mulvey reads a patriarchal episteme of looking at women into the
basic structure of the cinematic tradition, while the feminist philosopher, Andrea Braidotti,
centers her critique of the privilege given to the visual regime on the dominance and violence
involved in the activity of looking.79
In a later chapter, I will return to these theories of the
gaze in an attempt to make sense of the male desire to let the gaze linger and slowly glide
over the female body.
In Raped on the Railway we see a silencing of the female perspective and the
reduction of the woman through the male gaze to an eroticized body, an object to demystify,
possess, and in the last instance to commit violence upon. But though Mrs. Sinclair is merely
considered an object, the question of whether or not she liked it is of utmost importance. The
narrator insists that women “have been unable in the majority of cases even when taken by
force, to avoid sharing the fierce joy of the orgasm thereby produced” (29), and, against all
the evidence to the contrary, the narrator insists that she experienced “pleasure in the
ravishment even against her own will” (38). This is a surprising proclamation since the
reader has witnessed Brandon’s unreliable interpretation of Mrs. Sinclair, and since she was
evidently an unwilling victim of rape. She fought, screamed, bit, and cried all the way through
the rape, and she was badly hurt from the violent acts committed against her. Furthermore,
she never gave any indication of pleasure, and indeed, she could hardly have experienced
an orgasm from the one full thrust that Brandon managed to present her with before he
ejaculated from over-excitement. However, when the point of view is finally handed over to
Mrs. Sinclair she is painted as woman “of an ardent and amorous temperament” (32)
sexually frustrated by her husband’s low libido and inadequate size. She would therefore
have enjoyed Brandon's “huge member” (30) under other circumstances. Even though she is
incapacitated from the beating, she herself comments ““I believe that cruel beating only
made you more excited,” she went on, addressing her bower of bliss, “and that you would be
glad if that big artist were to come in again now”” (42). Though this novel manages it very
poorly, it is clear that it attempts to reconcile the use of force and violence with a paradoxical
and abrupt insistence on the pleasure of the victim which goes contrary to everything which
has previously been apparent in the text. And indeed, the sexual fantasy that relies equally
on violent force, resistance, pleasure, and loving attachment is itself fundamentally
contradictory. The pornographic text tries to resolve the problem posed by sadistic desire
78
Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, pp. 191-192.
79
Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975); and Braidotti, “Body-Images and the
Pornography of Representation” (1991).
28

with a magic sexual wand. Steven Marcus insists that conflicts do not exist in the world of
the pornotopia, and if they arise they are “instantly dispelled by the waving of the magic
sexual wand”.80
Thus, psychological realism is dispensed with in pornography, and, indeed,
Mrs. Sinclair has only fleeting physical bruises and no lingering psychological consequences
but horniness from her experiences. Psychological trauma as a result of rape is not sexy.
The novel explicitly recognizes that rape is a serious crime in the eyes of the law, it
describes the brutality of the assault, and it acknowledges the existence of sexual double
standards for men and women as there are serious social consequences of both rape and
seduction for a woman. However, in accordance with the pornotopian intent, the novel
simultaneously diminishes the seriousness of rape in every possible way and instead paints
it as an amorous game. Brandon reportedly feels regret once his passion is satisfied, most of
all because he fears the possible outcome of a rape trial, but the seriousness of his regret is
countered by the apology:
It was not my fault; but you looked so beautiful as you lay in my arms
that I could not resist the temptation. It was very wrong of me I own, but I was
carried away by my love. It was your fault too, you know,” he continued.
“What man could be alone with the prettiest and most lovable woman in the
world and not burn to possess her? It was not possible that I should not love
you”” (31)
In insisting that Mrs. Sinclair's irresistibility makes her responsible for her own
violation, Brandon rehearses the well-known patriarchal idea that the woman is responsible
for the desire she produces in the man. Mrs. Sinclair, in accordance with the findings of
Carolyn Conley regarding the Victorian attitude towards the question of responsibility in rape
cases, recognizes her fault regretting that she allowed Brandon to even speak to her.
Following the male logic of the novel, Mrs. Sinclair is an artful temptress displaying her
passionate nature in everything she is and does. With reference to The Mysteries of
Verbena House in which it is stated that “the bigger the whore — professional or otherwise
— the nicer will be the drawers she wears, while the prude, or the cantankerous old maid
will either wear the most hideous breeches imaginable, or none at all” (39), even her silk
drawers are seen as an outward sign of her promiscuity. Mrs. Sinclair forgives him, it is
professed that she rather enjoyed the rape, and the crime is finally completely revoked in the
eyes of the novel with the ending which hints that Mrs. Sinclair will live happily ever after in a
sexually fulfilling relationship with Brandon.
Mrs. Sinclair is the undisputed idealized object of desire of Raped on the Railway,
and she remains so without falling in estimation throughout the novel. Brandon often thinks
80
29

of her with longing when he is confronted with the vices of his wife. Maud Brandon is the
despicable woman of the novel. She is a classic Shakespearean shrew in need of taming.
She is beautiful, but unfaithful, ambitious, and frigid, but these deplorable features are
exorcised from her with a vigorous spanking that (magically) rekindles her love for her
husband. After Brandon’s display of masculine attributes, Maud becomes enamored to the
point that her sexual appetite surpasses that of her husband. This the novel disapproves of.
Maud is diagnosed as a nymphomaniac, a most wretched illness in the eyes of the novel:
“Such cases, unfortunately, are not very rare, and there is nothing more sad, more heart-
rending than to see woman a prey to the most hideous of maladies, carried away irresistibly,
contrary to her will, fall lower in rank than a brute, and assist powerless at her own
degradation” (50). Her hypersexuality makes her unendurable: “however amorous a man
may be, he seldom likes to find that in his wife, though he may in his mistress” (49) the
narrator comments. In the eyes of the novel, nymphomania is a pathology, a sickness unto
death, and this is visible in Maud’s appearance: “She was untidily — almost shabbily —
dressed (…) but it was in her face that he discerned the greatest change. Her eyes were
sunken, and glittered with a strange brilliancy, and her face was preternaturally pale, with a
red patch over each cheek-bone” (49). Only a short time elapses before Maud opportunely
dies in childbirth, and Brandon is free to pursue Mrs. Sinclair.
Paradoxically, while celebrating female promiscuity, as seen in the many cases
where the female is freed from her sexually suppressing sense of propriety, the promiscuous
woman is simultaneously a source of serious discomfiture in Victorian pornography. As
objects of desire, Mrs. Sinclair is superior to Maud because of her coy, feminine modesty. In
contrast to Maud, Mrs. Sinclair never becomes too sexually forthcoming. The nymphomaniac
disrupts the preconceived division of women as passive, vainly resisting, and (importantly)
initially frigid objects of desire and men as actors, holders of the gaze, and possessors of
sexual libido. The idea of forcing a woman who feels pleasure in spite of herself is essential
to titillation, but with the nymphomaniac this fantasy becomes void. It could be argued that
this is true for all sexually liberated women in pornography, and indeed they very are difficult
to distinguish from the nymphomaniac. However, the nymphomaniac is further despicable
because she, like the women of The Lustful Turk who symbolically and literally castrated the
man, poses a threat of castration by bringing into doubt man's sexual prowess: To the
nymphomaniac, the male libido will always fall short. When compared to the trajectory of the
sexual transformation of the women in The Lustful Turk and of Maud, it becomes clear that
Mrs. Sinclair can be seen as continually desirable because her sexual transformation has
not yet reached its conclusion. The effects of Mrs. Sinclair’s sexual reawakening and the end
of desire that follows is hidden behind the veil of the happy ending. In marriage, the
continuation of force and resistance is not a viable option.
30

The Way of a Man with a Maid
The Way of a Man with a Maid is a pornographic novel featuring no less than five
instances of rape. The author of the story is anonymous, and little is known about the
publication though circumstances suggest that it was first published in Liverpool by H. W.
Pickle & Co in 1908.81
The first of the two volumes features a detailed story of the
vengeance rape of the beautiful, modest virgin, Alice, who has slighted the protagonist, Jack,
by unfeelingly rejecting his marriage proposal. In the course of eleven chapters, it is
described how Jack retaliates by capturing Alice in his soundproof torture chamber where he
patiently subjects her to a wide range of humiliations including groping, undressing, tickling,
whipping, and forcing her to orgasms through cunnilingus and anal rape. Finally, he reaches
the peak of his revenge by taking her maidenhead. Each new attack constitutes a new peak
in the distress of the victim, who pleads, laments, and resists throughout all of his
endeavors. During her subjugation, Alice experiences the awakening of her sexual nature
and she finally becomes Jack’s willing lover. Together they carry out the disciplinary
correction of Alice’s disrespectful maid, Fanny, who is subjected to similar sexual assaults,
and the result is that Fanny becomes a docile servant and willing lover of the two sexual
aggressors. The next victim is Alice’s friend, Connie, who is the object of Alice’s unrequited
sexual desires. Jack, Alice, and Fanny carry out a scheme to convert Connie to lesbianism,
and she becomes a willing member of the small hedonistic society. The last victims of the
story are Lady Betty and her daughter Molly who Jack and his sexual partners despise. They
undergo the same kind of sexual subjugation and are furthermore forced to engage in
incestuous relations in front of the gloating party before they are finally sent away.
The result of the rape, as in the other rape stories discussed, is that Alice feels
pleasure in spite of herself, orgasming again and again, and her sexual nature is awakened
for good. I will not go into details since the description of her rape and sexual awakening is
very much in the vein of the previous stories. Having regained her freedom, some days pass
before Alice forgives Jack for his brutal treatment of her and becomes his regular sex
partner, and thus the violence is excused.
As we have already seen in the two preceding novels the Shakespearean “taming of
the screw” narrative is common in rape porn. On finding herself restricted in Jack’s
contraption, Alice is at first indignant at the treatment she is subjected to. “Alice stamped her
little foot in her rage: “How dare you speak to me in this way?” she demanded furiously” (I:II).
In the course of the story, however, Alice is tamed and freed of her haughty pretensions. As
seen in the other rape stories, unwillingness is a prerequisite for enjoyment. Jack’s pleasure
is less dependent on satisfying his immediate physical desire than maintaining a position of
power over an unwilling victim. He demands promises of compliance from her, but in reality
81
Scheiner, The Essential Guide to Erotic Literature, Part One: Before 1920, pp. 326-9.
31

he prefers her resistance: “I should practically be flogging a dead horse” (I:X), he complains
after having succeeded in taming her and contemplates how to make her continue to object
to his treatment of her. Since the novel caters to a sadistic sentiment centered on the
opposition of the victim, little time passes before the lovers are looking for a new woman to
torture and humiliate.
On top of the conventional rape narratives, some new ideas are presented that can
add to our understanding of the Victorian attitude towards female sexuality. The sexual
transformation occurring in the three women upon their sexual awakening is interestingly
imagined as masculinization. They prefer Jack, the ‘fortunate individual’ they can thank for
awakening their sexuality, to anyone else, and they continually seek him out for sexual
gratification. However, among themselves, they engage in lesbian sex. The bisexual
tendency is especially prevalent in Alice. In the following scene, Alice’s maid, Fanny, is tied
down and forced to be the instrument of satisfying Alice’s sexual desires:
“A hurricane of sexual rage seemed to seize Alice! Her bottom wildly
oscillated and gyrated with confused jerks, thrusts, and shoves as she
frenziedly pressed her cunt against Fanny's with a rapid jogging motion:
suddenly Alice seemed to stiffen and become almost rigid, her arms gripped
Fanny more tightly than ever, her head fell forward on Fanny's shoulder as an
indescribable spasm thrilled through her, followed by convulsive vibrations
and tremors!” (II:III).
Victorian pornography invariably imagines lesbian sex as tribadism; an imitation of
the heterosexual missionary position. Many other aspects of female sexuality are likewise
conceived as male analogues such as the ease with which women archive orgasms, and the
representation of these orgasms as always accompanied by ejaculations. This betrays both
a lack of knowledge about female anatomy and a decided male-centrism involved in the
‘utopianization’ of the sexual encounters. The male experience is always the default in
Victorian pornography. The transformation of Alice into an active, sexual agent is informed by
the masculine perspective. A central aspect of the traditional notion of gender difference, a
notion often seen in the writings of Freud and everywhere present in Victorian pornography
as well, is that initiative and the sadistic sentiment are features of masculinity whereas
femininity is equated with a passive and masochistic attitude. Alice in her lesbianism takes
what Freud would call a ‘masculine attitude’ towards her own sex; she becomes a predator
taking pleasure in seducing, subjecting, and humiliating other women: “into her eyes came
the Sadique glint” (II:V), Jack notices when they contemplate the subjugation of yet another
woman.
32

Though the novel is fascinated with the spectacle of lesbianism and the urges of the
sexually liberated, Sadian woman, the power of the man over the woman is maintained. In
the middle of these lesbian orgies, Jack remains the central character. As the narrator and
the holder of the gaze, the point of view is his, but he is furthermore placed in the center of
the action as the orchestrator of one lesbian tableau after another to the gratification of the
implied male reader as well as his own voyeuristic desire. As a benevolent despot, he
proposes the schemes and minutely directs the actions of his three devoted female pupils
who idolize him: “"Jack, you're a genius!" ejaculated Alice admiringly” (II:V). Most
importantly, the penis remains the preferred instrument of pleasure. When Fanny is first
raped by Alice and then by Jack, the question is raised which ‘fuck’ she liked best. Fanny’s
orgasms are indiscriminately described with hyperboles such as “the most exquisite bliss”
(II:III) and “quivering ecstatically under heavenly sensations” (II:III) in both the lesbian and
heterosexual scenes, but upon being questioned by Alice she admits that she prefers the
penis: “she never felt anything so delicious as her sensations when in your arms, after you
had got into her!” (II:IV), Alice discloses to Jack. The victory of heterosexual coitus over
lesbian sex is well-known theme in the pornographic tradition. In Cleland’s classic Fanny Hill,
the heroine, upon witnessing coitus for the first time, decides that she wants “more solid
food”: “[I] promis'd tacitly to myself that I would not be put off much longer with this foolery
from woman to woman”82
. A similar sentiment is seen in The Way of a Man with a Maid
where Jack has no reason for jealousy since the lesbian desire never threatens to
undermine the importance of the man. The lesbian tableaus are indisputably secondary:
They function as titillating spectacles for Jack who becomes aroused and is brought into the
action to bring the scene to its climax with his rampant, weapon-like penis. In Victorian
pornography, lesbianism is a sideshow spectacle introduced for the visual gratification of
men which, before anything else, must never threaten the perception of the penis as the
organ of primary importance.
The Way of a Man with A Maid, more than any of the two former novels, indulges the
desire to look. Jack lingers over the description of Alice’s body as he slowly undresses it to a
steady stream of cries and lamentations from the victim. In order to grasp the taboo-breaking
and humiliating potential in disrobing a woman against her will, it is important to understand
that nakedness was highly disturbing to the Victorians. In Raped on the Railway, the narrator
comments that Brandon “Like most English husbands (...) had never seen his wife naked”83
.
In the Victorian era, it was common for married couples to sleep side by side and even to
have intercourse wearing their chemises: “complete undressing for copulation appears to
82
Cleland, Fanny Hill, p. 24.
83
Raped on the Railway, p. 20.
33

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