Rethinking Female Pleasure: purity and desire in early twentieth-century Australia
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612025.2012.658181
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Asian American and Pacific Histories
ResumoAbstract This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women unable to firmly challenge the sexual ideal. But a close reading of the work of a number of female authors, especially the poet Zora Cross, allows glimpses of how some women did explore, construct and rethink sexual pleasure within their writings, negotiating between the sometimes contradictory impulses of purity and desire. Acknowledgements My thanks to the anonymous reviewers, and especial thanks to Rebecca Jennings for all of her help. Notes Elizabeth Grosz (1994) Volatile Bodies: towards a corporal feminism (Sydney: Allen and Unwin), p. 203. Michel Foucault (1978) The History of Sexuality: volume 1, an introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin). Perhaps the most famous feminist challenge to sexual orthodoxy came from the radical feminist and socialist Agnes Nesbit Benham and her daughter, the doctor Rosamund Benham. Agnes Benham formulated a theory that physical attraction was central to life and the continuation of the race and that women's sexual desire was therefore natural, good and necessary. Rosamund was therefore raised in a home where female desire was considered not only possible, but optimal. Rosamund herself was trained as a medical doctor, and was, like her mother, determined to reform sexual mores, and identify the female body as a site for sexual desire. In 1905, she released her book Sense About Sex, which outlined a comprehensive theory of sex, reproduction and parenting. Rosamund drew on her mother's ideas that sexual pleasure was natural and good for both men and women, but that desire must be contained within purity (though not necessarily formal marriage). Benham's writing in Sense About Sex and her locally produced journal Free Speech showed female sexual desire as a powerful force, while her medical background also ensured a focus on eugenic bodily health for love, reproduction and the sound child. See Agnes Nesbit Benham (nd) Love's Way to Perfect Humanhood (Adelaide: The Office of ‘The Century’); Rosamund Benham (1905) Sense About Sex. By a Woman Doctor (Adelaide: ‘The Century’); Rosamund Benham (1905) I Was Afraid, Free Speech (October), pp. 22–23. On the Benhams, see Alison Mackinnon and Carol Bacchi (1988) Sex, Resistance and Power: sex reform in South Australia, c 1905, Australian Historical Studies, 23 (90), pp. 60–71; Frank Bongiorno (2001) ‘Every Woman a Mother’: radical intellectuals, sex reform and the ‘woman question’ in Australia, 1890–1918, Hecate, 27, pp. 48–51. For other views on female sexuality in this period, see Lisa Featherstone (2011) Let's Talk About Sex: histories of sexuality in Australia from federation to the pill (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholarly Press). Thomas Laqueur (1990) Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 3–5. William Acton (1857) The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, 8th American edn (Philadelphia, 1894), pp. 208–210. For Australian perspectives, see especially Liz Conor (2004) The Spectacular Modern Woman: feminine visibility in the 1920s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press); Jill Julius Matthews (2005) Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney's romance with modernity (Sydney: Currency Press). Susan Magarey (2001) Passions of the First Wave Feminists (Sydney: UNSW Press), Chapter 4. See for example Sue Sheridan (1993) The Woman's Voice on Sexuality, in Susan Magarey, Sue Rowley and Susan Sheridan (Eds) Debutante Nation: feminism contests the 1890s(Sydney: Allen and Unwin), pp. 114–124; Judith Allen (1988) ‘Our Deeply Degraded Sex’ and ‘The Animal in Man’: Rose Scott, feminism and sexuality 1890–1925, Australian Feminist Studies, 7–8, pp. 64–91. Sharon Marcus (2007) Between Women: friendship, desire and marriage in Victorian England (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Hera Cook (2004) The Long Sexual Revolution: English women, sex and contraception 1800–1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 111. Robert V. Storer (1929) Sex and Disease: a scientific contribution to sex education and the control of venereal disease (Sydney: Butterworth and Co), p. 5. Lisa Featherstone (2005) Sexy Mamas? Women, Sexuality and Reproduction in Australia in the 1940s, Australian Historical Studies, 37 (126), pp. 234–252. On the threats of female sexuality, see Clair Scrine (2003) Conceptions of nymphomania in British medicine 1790–1900 (Ph.D. thesis, Macquarie University). Examples abound including, M.A. Schalit (1904) A Case of Early Menopause, Australasian Medical Gazette (AMG) (20 August), p. 409; Archibald B. Brockway (1910) Physical Education, AMG (21 March), p. 126; Editorial (1913) Women's Work and Women's Duty, AMG (15 March), p. 234; H. Roger Cope (1900) Preventative Treatment in Diseases of Women, AMG (20 January), p. 32. The AMG was the pre-eminent local journal until 1914. W. Balls-Headley (1894) The Evolution of the Diseases of Women (London: Smith Elder & Co), p. 1. Schalit, A Case of Early Menopause, p. 409. Brockway, Physical Education, p. 126 (emphasis in original). Editorial, Women's Work, p. 234. Cope, Preventative Treatment, p. 32. Anon (1900) Society, The Bulletin (5 May), p. 11. The Red Page (1900) The Modern Woman, The Bulletin (4 April), p. 33. See also A Working Woman (1900) A Country That Can't Afford to be Inhabited, The Bulletin (25 April), p. 21; Beatrix Tracy (1901) Marion Edwards: a modern De Maupin, The Lone Hand (1 January), p. 306. Sisters of Mercy (1900) Proceedings of the First Australasian Catholic Congress, cited in Sophie McGrath (2003) An Analysis of the Australasian Catholic Congresses of 1900, 1904 and 1901 in Relation to Public Policy from the Perspective of Gender, Australian Religion Studies Review, 16 (1), p. 82. Mrs Francis Anderson (c.1916) The Root of the Matter, WEA Pamplet no 1, Social and Economic Aspects of the Sex Problem (Sydney: Workers Educational Association), p. 6. Bongiorno, ‘Every Woman’, p. 54. John William Springthorpe (1914) Therapeutics, Dietetics and Hygiene: An Australian text-book (Melbourne: Ford and Son), p. 89; Hon J. M. Creed (1903) NSW Crimes (Girl's Protection) Bill, Second Reading, NSW Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly (Second Series) Session, Vol. XI, p. 1250; See also W. A. T. Lind (1916) Sexual Irregularities of Childhood and Youth? in Workers' Educational Association (Ed.), Teaching of Sex Hygiene: report of a conference organized by the workers' educational association of New South Wales (Sydney: Burrows and Co), p. 81. V. Cooper-Mathieson (nd) Letter to Men Only, The Woman's White Cross Moral Reform Crusade, Pamphlet 4, p. 26. See for example, Australasian White Cross League (nd) A Medical Talk to Girls, By a Sydney Doctor (Sydney, Australasian White Cross League), p. 4; W. S. Bottomly (1912) The Red Plague. Its Effects Upon the Innocent, in Social Questions Committee (Ed.), (Melbourne: Melbourne Diocesan Synod), p. 110; Rev Right G. M. Long (1917) How the Church Could Co-operate in the Teaching of Sex Hygiene, WEA Pamphlet no 7 (Sydney: Workers Educational Association of New South Wales), p. 4. See Lisa Featherstone (2003) Breeding and Feeding: a social history of mothers and medicine in Australia, 1880–1925, PhD, Macquarie University, chapter 4. Reverend William Saumarez Smith (1904) in Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth Rate, Vol. II (Sydney: Government Printer), p. 219; Editorial (1904) The Declining Birth-Rate AMG (21 March), p. 120; Anon, Society, p. 13; Anon (1915) Compulsory Notification of Venereal Diseases, The Woman Voter (22 July), p. 2; Michael Roe (1984) Nine Australian Progressives: vitalism in bourgeois social thought 1890–1960 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press), p. 14. Creed, NSW Crimes (Girl's Protection) Bill, p. 1251. Rev Mr Nicholas McLelland Hennessy (1904) in? Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth Rate, Vol II, p. 208; Author? (1913) The Sex Problem During Adolescence, AMG (1 February), p. 108. Editorial, The Argus (29 November 1913), cited in Janette M Bomford (1993) That Dangerous and Persuasive Woman: Vida Goldstein (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press), pp. 132–133. See Zora Cross, ‘Birth Without Pangs’, undated typed manuscript, in Box 1/21, Zora Cross Papers, University of Sydney Archives. Cope, Preventive Treatment, p. 31. Benham, Sense About Sex, p. 1. ‘Jane’ (1903) Society, The Bulletin (16 May), p. 13. We might note however, that it is easier to find examples of heterosexual female desire than of lesbian desire. On lesbian passion in Australia before the 1920s, see Ruth Ford (2000) Contested Desires: narratives of passionate friends, married masqueraders and lesbian love in Australia, 1918–1945 (Ph.D. thesis, La Trobe University); Lucy Chesser (2008) Parting with my Sex: cross-dressing, inversion and sexuality in Australian cultural life (Sydney: Sydney University Press); Sylvia Martin (2001) Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton and Miles Franklin (London: Onlywomen Press). Miles Franklin (1974) My Brilliant Career (Sydney: Angus & Robertson). For a longer and more sustained analysis of gender and sexuality in this work, see Stephen Garton (2002) Contesting Enslavement: marriage, manhood and My Brilliant Career, Australian Literary Studies, 20, pp. 336–349; see also Susan Sheridan (1988) Louisa Lawson, Miles Franklin and Feminist Writing 1888–1901, Australian Feminist Studies, 7–8, pp. 29–47. It was perhaps typical of first wave feminists, who understood women's citizenship in terms of their own right to bodily autonomy. Yet as Garton has suggested, Franklin was an early bridge between the first wavers and interwar feminists, who were increasingly interested in women's embodiment. See Garton, Contesting Enslavement. Franklin's later work is outside the timeframe of this paper, but see Jill Roe (2008) Stella Miles Franklin: a biography (Sydney: Harper Collins). Susan Sheridan (1995) Along the Faultlines: sex, race and nation in Australian women's writing, 1880s–1930s (Sydney: Allen and Unwin), p. 32. On Cambridge, see Ada Cambridge (2006) Thirty Years in Australia (Sydney: Sydney University Press); Margaret Bradstock and Louise Wakeling (1991) Rattling the Orthodoxies: a life of Ada Cambridge (Melbourne: Penguin). Ada Cambridge (1887) The Shadow in her Unspoken Thoughts (London: Kegan Paul Trench), pp. 6–17. Cambridge, Vows, in Ibid., p. 34. Cambridge, Fallen and A Wife's Protest, in Ibid., pp. 56, 57–61 Rosa Praed (1916) Sister Sorrow: a story of Australian life (London: Hutchinson and Co), p. 36. Ibid., pp. 37, 128. Ibid., p. 286. Ibid., p. 373. Dulcie Deamer (1998) The Queen of Bohemia (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press), pp. 63, 199–200. Lala Fisher (1905) Beatrice, Steele Rudd's Magazine (November), pp. 932–935. Noel Aimir (1911) The Black Pearl (Melbourne: George Robertson), p. 57. Kate Helen Weston (1913) The Prelude (London: Holden and Hardington). Broda Reynolds (1907) A Black Silk Stocking (Sydney: Henry Edgar Reynolds). Michael Sharkey (1990) Zora Cross's Entry into Australian Literature, Hecate, XVI (i/ii), p. 65. As Vickery suggests, a handful of other women wrote eroticized poetry. Katherine Susannah Prichard, for example, published The Earth Love and Other Verses (1932) which explores women's passion. It was, however, later than Cross's groundbreaking work, and Prichard's poems focused on a woman's reception of pleasure, rather than constructing her as sexually active. See Vickery, too, for a sustained commentary on Cross's ‘girl poems’, which were sensual (rather than sexual) explorations of adolescence. Ann Vickery (2007) Stressing the Modern: cultural politics in Australian women's poetry (Cambridge: Salt), pp. 187–188. Zora Cross (1918) The Lilt of Life, in The Lilt of Life (Sydney: Angus and Robertson), p. 9. Ibid., p. 10. Cross, Love Sonnets: IV in Ibid., p. 2. Cross, Love Sonnets: X in Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. See Ann Vickery (2000) From ‘Girl-Gladness’ to ‘Honied Madness’: pleasure and the girl in the poetry of Zora Cross, in Philip Mead (Ed.) Australian Literary Studies in the 21st Century: proceedings of the 2000 ASAL conference, p. 223; Kate Chadwick (1994) ‘Sweet Relief’: the politics of erotic experience in the poetry of Lesbia Harford, Mary Fullerton and Zora Cross, in Susan Lever and Catherine Pratt (Eds) Association for the Study of Australian Literature, Sixteenth Annual Conference, 3–8 July 1994: proceedings, p. 75. Dorothy Green (1981) Cross, Zora Bernice May (1890–1964), Australian Dictionary of Biography, pp. 158–159; Michael Sharkey (1990) Wright, David McKee (1869–1928), Australian Dictionary of Biography, pp. 584–585. Letter from David McKee Wright to Zora Cross, 6 October 1916, in 3rd Bundle, Box 7, Zora Cross papers. Her volume The Lilt of Life is dedicated to Wright. Cross, Love Sonnets: XXIV in The Lilt of Life, p. 12. See Garton, Enslavement. Cross, Love Sonnets: V in The Lilt of Life, p. 3. Cross, Love Sonnets: XLI in Ibid., p. 21. For the idea that Cross is created through her lover, see (1917) Love Sonnets: LX in The Lilt of Life, p.30. ‘Maker-like’, cited in Cross, Love Sonnets XXXVI in Ibid., p.18l; ‘God’, cited in Cross, Love Sonnets XLVIII in Ibid., p. 24; ‘Master’ cited in Sonnets of the South I in Songs of Love and Life (Sydney: Tyrell's Limited), p. 72. Cross (1918) Man and Woman in The Lilt of Life (Sydney: Angus and Robertson), p. 16. Drusilla Modjeska (1981) Exiles at Home: Australian women writers 1925–1945 (London: Sirius Books), pp. 21–22. Historians have suggested her later work deteriorated further, after the death of her partner, when she was forced to write ‘potboilers’ to support her family. See Sharkey, Zora Cross, p. 72. In her archive, however, there is some evidence of poems, annotated (slightly unclearly though) to 1926, that continue with sexualized imagery, eg. ‘Songs of Wedded Life’ ‘I felt you plunge through me in sweet greed’ Zora Cross Papers, Box 6/21, Bundle 1, ‘Miscellaneous Correspondence’. Cross, Love Sonnets: XXVIII in The Lilt of Life, p. 14. Cross, The Triumph of Eve in Ibid., pp. 67–70. Cross, Pain in Ibid., pp. 46–49. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLisa Featherstone Lisa Featherstone is a Lecturer in Australian History at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her work focuses on sexuality and reproduction in Australia, and she has published widely on masculinity, sex education, sadism, sexual normativity and childbirth. Her first book, Let's Talk About Sex: histories of sexuality in Australia from federation to the pill, was published in 2011.
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