Recently, because I was too busy to write, I posted some Victorian whipping porn, here and here. And I discussed the style differences between erotic writing from 100 years ago and the present here.

But there are some specific differences between the bdsm porn of 100 years ago and now, and it’s worth taking a moment to consider them.

This is where she cries Uncle.

First, incest was a very popular theme in Victorian porn, and it seems to have been especially popular in bdsm contexts. In The Yellow Room it’s all about an uncle and his two nieces, but in other novels – First Training, for example – it may be mother-son and father-daughter. Lesbian whipping and post-whipping scenes between sisters, in particular, are common.

But someone writing a scenario like The Yellow Room today would probably have the dominant male be a friend of their father’s, and not a blood relative.

Second, consent is not a serious issue in Victorian porn. The young lady isn’t asked if she’s feeling submissive. Instead, she’s stripped and punished, and then forced to obey orders to avoid further punishment.

In a modern storyline the writer would have to make it clear that the submissive enrolled in a special school, or met the friend of her father at some social function, and was intrigued by his promises of strict treatment that she went to meet him privately.

I’ve got mixed feelings about that. Mostly I think it’s an improvement. On the other hand, there are many people who enjoy the fantasy of being overwhelmed, not of their own free will. It’s not “real”, any more than the female rape fantasy is anything like real rape. But in fantasy anything goes, so long as it’s hot. So our care not to send inappropriate messages erases one quite popular fantasy.

This lighter birching, with suspension, looks more fun

I guess overall that our current care is an improvement. But I know submissives who really do want to feel they have no choice, at least sometimes. As a fantasy, it should be allowable. Anyway, those are my mixed feelings, and they’re not the hill I shall die on.

The third thing that seems noticeable to me is blood. In the section of The Yellow Room I quoted, it’s mentioned quite early in the proceedings that the lovely Alice’s bottom is bleeding, under the birch. 

I took out the bits where the blood sprays round the room, and trickles down to the floor.

Actually, Alice’s bottom spend many lines bleeding, in some volume, and felt I had to edit most of the blood-flow out, because I think for most people – certainly including me – it would be a turn-off rather than a turn-on. 

I once wrote about how hard you have to birch someone to cut their skin, because I did that, once.  To draw even a spot of blood you have to whip like a maniac, and though I can be strict, that’s a level of discipline I’m just not comfortable with. 

However, the Victorians loved it, both first-person submissive accounts, and from the flogger’s point of view.

By comparison, we moderns are a bunch of softies.  

This isn’t an ideal Valentine’s Day post, but it’s a sort of Valentine to Porn of Yore.

Porn usually loses its sexiness over the years, and becomes amusing kitsch. There are people alive today who were shocked by Debbie Does Dallas and Behind the Red Door, two very scandalous films of the 1970s.

You can leave your hat on…

That isn’t even a lifetime away: it’s just less than fifty. But I doubt if anyone could get off on either film now. Body styles have changed, and the actors in those films now seem pudgy, puffy, not toned. Their haircuts now seem quaint, and there’s no getting away from the unintentional absurdity of the dialogue. (That’s probably the part of the porn movie that’s changed the least. Porn people on film still talk tosh.)

But a similar effect also happens in prose porn. People must have gotten off on this, reading one-handed: 

Here’s an extract from Pleasure Bound:

“Mr. Silverwood blinked. Little Miss J was very, very pretty, and the ankles which had made him feverish in the twilight on deck, were now supplemented by deliciously-proportioned calves, which swelled up in graceful curves to delicately moulded knees, not quite covered by the lace frills of the pantalons garnis des rubans ecarlates. There was a little bare, pink flesh above each garter which made the Chicago multimillionaire delirious.

Miss J had a very dainty china-shepherdess skin tint, obviously her own, blue and very bright eyes, naturally her own, and a mass of bronze hair which was open to doubt-at least, so Mr. S decided as he noted the gap in the little darling’s drawers which disclosed a forest on her Mount of Venus which was quite a different tint.

She caught his eye, and, with a cheeky grin, put her two bejewelled hands between her thighs.

‘Hullo, hullo,’ she giggled, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘Well?’

‘You’re thinking, either my head, or my-what ma’s got-is dyed.”

But Mr. Silverwood didn’t care whether Miss Jepps’s hair was dyed or not. His whole body flamed with desire; he seemed to swell all over, and the buttons on his trousers strained at their cables. He sank on the floor by the side of Miss Jepps and flung one arm round her knees and the other round her waist, pulling her down on to the soft carpet.

Miss Jepps made no protest. She opened her mouth to let his tongue run in between her ivory teeth and laid her pretty bejewelled hand on the throbbing swelling between his legs. Mr. S nearly went mad.”

Somehow, the sexiness up and flew away…

So the prose style is a sort of wordy jocularity, like a lot of not very good Victorian humorous writing. As a result I defy anyone to be aroused by the saucy situation in that extract.

Though it’s nice to remember that drawers were once quite like to reveal pubic hair if the lady sat facing you.

Next week we’ll look at some of the oddities in that slice of Victorian Bdsm porn I used, from the anonymous classic, The Yellow Room.

It’s much better written, and it retains its hotness better, than Pleasure Bound. But it’s still an extremely interesting interesting source on Victorian kinks.