The Female Eunuch (47 page)

CURVES

1. Broby-Johansen’s
   Body and Clothes
   (London, 1969) is the fullest account to date of the interaction between body, self-image and clothing, including the shifting of the erogenous zones and the siting of fat.
   

2. Sophie Lazarsfeld,
   The Rhythm of Life
   (London, 1934), p. 158.
   

3. Pauline Reage,
   The Story of O
   (Traveller’s Companion, Paris, 1965),
   

   p. 18 and
   passim
   . Thorstein Veblen offers a sociological explanation of curves as signifying luxury and debility in
   The Theory of the Leisure Class
   (London, 1899), pp. 141-6.
   

4. Kenneth Tynan, ‘The Girl who turned her Back’,
   Mayfair
   , Vol. 4, No. 3, March 1969.
   

5. This eulogy of fat from Ploss and Bartels (
   op. cit.
   ,
   

1. 86) reveals just how important it must have been to our grandfath- ers:
   

   There is something alien and repellent in very angular and flat sur- faces in women, such as appear among certain primitive races owing to overwork and poor living at an age when European women are still in the prime of life.
   

   The adipose layer may be considered a most important secondary sexual character in women. It produces the tapering roundness of the limbs, the curves of the throat, nape and shoulders, the swelling of bosom and curving roundness of buttocks; all the characteristic signs of womanhood. This adipose layer also produces the smooth cushioned shape of the knee which differs so from the masculine form. And the massive roundness (which sometimes appears dispro- portionate) of the upper thigh in women, tapering rapidly towards the smooth dimpled knee, is caused by the same fatty layer.
   

   HAIR
   

   1. The assumption that women grew much more hair on their heads than men was almost universal. Bichat (
      op. cit.
      , Vol. II, p. 446) even goes so far as to say ‘one might think that nature had thus com- pensated the fair sex for their deficiency in many other parts’.
      Cf. The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher
      (London, 1779), p. 374. While baldness is a sex-linked characteristic, it is not proper to maintain that women do not go bald. The intensity of the sexual prejudice has resulted in the utter concealment of female baldness, which is much commoner than is generally supposed.
      

SEX

1. E.g. Samuel Collins,
   Systema Anatomicum
   (London, 1685), p. 566, and Palfijn’s
   Surgical Anatomy
   (London, 1726), plates facing pages 226 and 227, also his
   Description Anatomique des Parties de la Femme
   (Paris, 1708, the plates are not numbered) and Spigelius,
   De humani corporis Fabrica
   (1627), Tab. XVII, Lib. VIII, and
   Les
   

   Portraits Anatomiques
   of Vesalius (1569), and the
   Tabulae Anatomicae
   

   of Eustachius (1714).
   

2. A Pleasant new Ballade Being a merry Discourse between a Country Lass and a young Taylor
   , c. 1670.
   

3. The High-prized Pin-Box. Tune of, Let every Man with Cap in’s Hand
   

   etc., c. 1665.
   

4. Samuel Collins (
   op. cit.
   ), pp. 564—5.
   

5. Theodore Faithfull answering correspondence in
   International Times
   No. 48, 17—30 January 1969.
   

6. A. H. Kegel, ‘Letter to the Editor’,
   Journal of the American Medical Association
   , Vol. 153, 1953, pp. 1303—4. His work is discussed by Daniel G. Brown in ‘Female Orgasm and Sexual Inadequacy’,
   An Analysis of Human Sexual Response
   , ed. Ruth and Edward Brecher (London, 1968), pp. 163—4.
   

7. Mette Eiljersen,
   I Accuse
   ! (London, 1969), p. 45.
   

8. Herbert Marcuse,
   Eros and Civilization
   (London, 1969), pp. 52—3.
   

9. Jackie Collins,
   The World is Full of Married Men
   (London, 1969), pp. 152—3.
   

THE WICKED WOMB

1. One such book, written by a lady doctor to introduce girls to menstruation, is Erna Wright’s
   Periods without Pain
   (London, 1966); the grim diagrams she employs do not even show the clitoris, nor is it mentioned in the text.
   

2. The ancient fear of the womb has been discussed at length by H.
   

   R. Hays in
   The Dangerous Sex: The Myth of Feminine Evil
   (London, 1966).
   

3. Cf
   . the comments by Daniel G. Brown (
   loc. cit.
   , pp. 148-9) on the necessity of women’s taking over the study of their own sexuality.
   

4. Bisshof’s
   Observations and Practices Relating to Women in Travel etc
   . (London, 1676), p. 76.
   

5. Chlorosis has been described as ‘an anaemic condition seen in young women and girls and thought to have been due to tight cor- sets, constipation, frequent
   

   pregnancies, poor hygiene and diet’. (
   The British Medical Dictionary
   , ed. Sir Arthur Salusbury McNalty, London, 1961.) It was as often thought by popular medicine to have been caused by the frustration of the virgin’s desire to couple and bear children,
   vide The Works of Aristotle in Four Parts
   (London, 1822), pp. 21-2. In fact it had been associated with iron deficiency by Baverius in the fourteenth century, but the connection with virginity obscured the issue for theorists like Johan Lange who wrote a treatise on the virgins’ illness in 1554. In 1730, Hoffmann further complicated the issue by connecting it with hysteria. Learned studies demonstrated its prevalence in boarding schools and among female students generally, and it was even connected with a heart condition at one stage. (See
   An Introduc- tion to the History of Medicine
   by Fielding H. Garrison, Philadelphia, 1929, pp. 167, 207, 271, 314, 360, 571, 647.) Nowadays it is generally agreed that no definable disease called chlorosis exists.
   

6. The bibliography of hysteria is enormous, from Hippocrates
   Liber Prior de morbis mulierum
   of which a version by Cordeus appeared in 1583, and
   In Libellum Hippocrates de Virginum Morbis
   of Tardeus (1648). The affliction was a popular and lucrative specialization. Many young doctors chose to write about it in Latin dissertations. British Museum T.559 contains thirty-odd tracts dating between 1668 and 1796 which may serve as examples of the way in which heterogeneous symptoms were lumped together under the blanket of hysteria.
   

7. Ploss and Bartels (
   op. cit.
   ), Vol. I, pp. 611—31, ‘The Seclusion of Girls at Menstruation’.
   

8. Sylvia Plath’s poetry is a monument to woman strangled in phylogenetic toils. Her imagery builds fantastic structures of female carnality obsessed with the dream of violation and death. Some of the dominant motifs and the basic tensions are illustrated by her short poem, ‘Metaphors’:
   

I am a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils, A red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new minted in this fat purse. I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I’ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

(
The Colossus
, London, 1960, p. 41)

THE STEREOTYPE

1. Thorstein Veblen (
   op. cit.,) passim
   .
   

2. E.g.
   

   I thought my mistress’ hairs were gold, And in her locks my heart I fold:
   

   Her amber tresses were the sight That wrapped me in vain delight; Her ivory front, her pretty chin, Were stales that drew me on to sin; Her starry looks, her crystal eyes Brighter than the sun’s arise.
   

3. E.g.
   

   When I admire the rose, That Nature makes repose In you the best of many, And see how curious art Hath decked every part,
   

   I think with doubtful view
   

   (Robert Greene,
   Francesco’s Fortunes
   )
   

4. E.g.
   

   Whether you be the rose or the rose be you.
   

   (Thomas Lodge,
   William Longbeard
   )
   

   Her cheeks like apples which the sun hath rudded, Her lips like cherries charming men to bite,
   

   Her breast like to a bowl of cream uncrudded…
   

   (Edmund Spenser,
   Epithalamion
   )
   

5. E.g.
   

   The outside of her garments were of lawn, The lining purple silk, with gilt stars drawn,
   

   Her wide sleeves green and bordered with many a grove… Buskins of shells all silvered used she
   

   Branched with blushing coral to the knee,
   

   Where sparrows perched, of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold;
   

   Those with sweet water oft her handmaid fills, Which as she went would chirrup through the bills.
   

   It is only proper to point out that in this passage Marlowe is setting Hero up as a foil to the natural beauty of Leander, beloved of the gods, who is presented quite naked. Hero as a stereotype might be considered one of the themes of the poem.
   

6. Corbett
   v
   Corbett (otherwise Ashley) before Mr Justice Ormerod (Law Report, 2 February 1970, Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Di- vision).
   News of the World
   , 8 February 1970,
   Sunday Mirror
   , 3, 8, 15 February 1970.
   

ENERGY

1. Carl Vogt, ‘La Question de la Femme’,
   Revue d’An-thropologie
   , 1888, Tome III, fasc. lv, pp. 510—12, quoted in Ploss and Bartels (
   op. cit.
   ), Vol. I, p. 126
   

2. Vide ‘Sublimation: its Nature and Conditions’ in J. C. Flügel,
   

   Studies in Feeling and Desire
   (London, 1955).
   

3. The traditional view is expounded by McCary in
   The Psychology of Personality
   (London, 1959), pp. 7—9.
   

4. S. Freud,
   Three Essays on Sexuality
   , The Standard Edition of The Complete Works (London, 1953), Vol. vii, p. 219.
   

BABY

1. William Blake, ‘Infant Sorrow’,
   Songs of Experience (Poetry and Prose of William Blake
   , ed. Geoffrey Keynes, London, 1967, henceforward referred to as
   Nonesuch
   , p. 76).
   

2. Sunday Mirror
   , 19 October 1969.
   

3. William Blake, ‘Infant Joy’,
   Songs of Innocence
   (
   Nonesuch
   , p. 62).
   

4. For an explanation of the principle see Paul Schilder,
   The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive Energies of the Psyche
   (London, 1935), pp. 120—22 and Norman O. Brown,
   Life Against Death
   (London, 1968), Part IV, ‘The Self and the Other; Narcissus’ (pp. 46—57).
   

5. Maria Montessori,
   The Secret of Childhood
   (London, 1936), p. 191.
   

6. Freud notes this phenomenon in
   New Introductory Lectures in Psy- choanalysis
   (Complete Works, Vol. xxii, p. 117). The expounders of feminine wiles boast of it, e.g. M. Esther Harding,
   The Way of all Women
   (London, 1932), p. 7, and Mary Hyde,
   How to Manage Men
   (London, 1955), p. 6.
   

7. Philip Roth,
   Portnoy’s Complaint
   (London, 1969), p. 125.
   

8. J. Dudley Chapman,
   The Feminine Mind and Body
   (New York, 1967), quotes Oscar Hammerstein II, ‘You can have fun with a son, but you gotta be a father to a girl’ (
   Carousel
   ), p. 19.
   

9. Vide
   Anna Anastasi,
   Differential Psychology
   (London), and Walter Wood,
   Children’s Play and its Place in Education
   (London, 1913), pp. 83-4.
   

GIRL

1. Vide
   Karen Horney,
   Feminine Psychology
   (London, 1967), pp. 40- 42, also Cap. II ‘The Flight from Womanhood’
   passim. Cf
   . Margaret Mead,
   Male and Female
   (London, 1949), p. 144.
   

2. Helene Deutsch,
   The Psychology of Women
   (London, 1946, 1947), Vol. I, pp. 7, 22. Deutsch even goes so far as to state that the greatest danger to her uncontrollable girl patients was that they should un- consciously provoke the lust of their male companions because ‘they have no sexual urge, they desire no sexual
   

gratification and because of the absence of desire they feel secure’ (p. 42).

PUBERTY

1. Deutsch (
   op. cit.
   ), pp. 136—7,
   cf
   . Horney (
   op. cit.
   ), pp. 100-101 and Lewis M. Terman,
   Genetic Studies of Genius
   (London, 1936), Vol. III, pp. 93—4.
   

2. J. Dudley Chapman (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 69.
   

3. James Hemming,
   Problems of Adolescent Girls
   (London, 1950), pp. 93-4.
   

4.
Ibid
., p. 130.

1. A. C. Kinsey, W. B. Pomeroy, C. E. Martin and P. H. Gebhard,
   

   Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female
   (Philadelphia, 1953), p. 173.
   

2. Hemming (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 15.
   

3. Horney (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 234. 8.
   Ibid
   , p. 244.
   

9. John Aubrey,
Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme
(1686—7), edited and annotated by James Britten (London, 1881), p. 153.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SELL

1. August Strindberg,
   The Father
   , Act II, Sc. vii. Although he is pat- ently ill-served by his wife’s superstition and incomprehension of his work, the Captain still imagines that there was once a good old time when ‘one married a wife’ and enjoyed ‘sensual love’ and not a business partnership.
   

2. Naomi Weisstein, ‘Kinder, Kuche, Kirche as Scientific Law: Psy- chology reconstructs the Female’,
   Motive
   , March—April 1969, pp. 78—85.
   

3.
Ibid
., p. 80.

1. Ian Suttie,
   The Origins of Love and Hate
   (London, 1935), p. 221.
   

2. Ernest Jones, ‘The Early Development of Female Sexuality’ in
   Pa- pers on Psychoanalysis
   (London, 1948), p. 438.
   

3. S. Freud,
   Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
   (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 219 (my ital.).
   

4. Norman O. Brown,
   Life Against Death
   (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 121.
   

5. S. Freud,
   Civilisation and its Discontents
   : Complete Works (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 144.
   

6. Deutsch (
   op. cit.
   ), Vol. I, p. 101.
   

7. Horney (
   op. cit.
   ), pp. 232—3.
   

8. Deutsch (
   op. cit.
   ), p. 151.
   

9. Bruno Bettelheim, ‘Women and the Scientific Professions’,
   MIT Symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering
   , 1965.
   

10. E. Erikson, ‘Inner and Outer Space: Reflections on Womanhood’,
    

    Daedalus
    , 1964, No. 93, pp. 582—606.
    

11. Joseph Rheingold,
    The Fear of Being a Woman
    (New York, 1964).
    

12. J. Krafft-Ebing,
    Psychopathia Sexualis
    (London, 1893), p. 13,
    cf
    . Margaret Mead (
    op. cit.
    ), pp. 209—10:
    

    The human female who has learned through a long childhood edu- cation to value a great variety of rewards, and fear a great variety of punishments, finds that her receptivity—although perhaps retain- ing a slight degree of periodicity—is actually subject to a great deal of modulation. Where receptivity requires so much less of her—merely a softening and relaxing of her whole body, and none of the specific readiness and sustained desire that is required of the male—she can learn to fit a simple compliancy together with a thousand other considerations of winning and keeping a lover or a husband, balancing the mood of the moment against the mood of tomorrow, and fitting her receptivity into the whole pattern of a re- lationship. There seems little doubt that the man who has learned various mechanical ways to stimulate his sexual specificity in order to copulate with a woman whom he does not this moment desire is doing far more violence to his nature than the female who needs only to receive a male to whom she gives many other assents, but possibly not active desire.
    

13. Erich Fromm,
    The Art of Loving
    (London, 1969), p. 20.