Foreword

Thanks to the candor of our contemporary sexual revolution, most of us are now able to understand the connotations of what has become known as "voluptuous chastisement." For the greater part of this century, however, many American families were regimented in their sexual outlook by the narrow, hypocritical and bigoted mid-Victorianism which began to flourish-appropriately enough-in England beginning with the reign of Queen Victoria, herself a circumspect and prudish woman who believed that demonstrations of erotic behavior were the certain sign of a depraved mentality.

We then passed through the era of Comstockianism, which is derived from the name of Anthony Comstock, a New York postal inspector who believed that it was his mission in life to censor our reading as well as our mail for the greater good of moral virtue, and that any expression or mention of sex per se was necessarily suspect and evil.

As a result of these two simultaneous doctrines, many an adolescent-and particularly one brought up in a home where religion played a vital role-was imbued with a kind of guilty dread of sex in itself. Even with the permissive legality of marriage, that adolescent, when mature, could not escape the trauma and stigma of "original sign." Consequently, it was not unusual for the average married man to seek out a brothel, just as it was in England, where he could give vent to those practices which "no decent woman would allow a man in the marriage bed," to quote a noted writer of the time. As a consequence, it was believed that any display of the female towards enthusiasm for or acceptance of sexual relationship even in marriage was the sign of wantonness and even "nymphomania".

The aftereffects of such apprehensive thinking still linger with us, and perhaps are responsible for the occasional "witchcraft hunts" in major cities by "reformers" and "moralists" who believe, like Comstock, that it is their duty to condemn that which most people enjoy within the sanctity and privacy of their own apartments or houses, even to the reading of so-called erotic literature which is suspected of inflaming us to commit "depraved acts."

But with the emancipation of the female through Woman's Lib, with the greater dissemination of soundly documented books on every sexual topic, and with our awareness that life is ephemeral at most and that enjoyment rather than fear should be the watchword, we have at last begun to cast aside those repressive shackles which made many of us regard any foreplay or afterplay in the sexual act as a sign of "pathological perversion." To be sure, if any one phase of sexual wooing is pursued to the point of excluding the inevitable and harmonious conjunction of union, then it may well become perversion. But certainly, as observed today as a kind of preface to love-making, there is really nothing deviate in the act of what we call "voluptuous chastisement."

Hitherto, spanking was looked upon as a disciplinary punishment reserved for the very young. With the advent of Dr. Spock and his school of child psychologists who believed that such a practice might lead to the control of a child out of fear rather than love or respect, that method of discipline was more or less abandoned-and of course the result has been a tremendous increase in the statistics of crimes by juveniles. But meanwhile, again thanks to our broader education in the field of sexual behavior, we now see that playful spanking, acting out a drama which arouses both participants, equally passive and equally active, can imply a stimulation away from the inevitable monotony of sexual union when neither partner shows the least inclination towards imagination or inventiveness.

There is still another connotation of spanking: the subconscious need for punishment and forgiveness. In this book, we observe the varied manifestations of "voluptuous chastisement" as it is understood today. For example, Astrid Fullhan, attractive, poised, certainly mature as she nears her thirties, is herself repressed out of prior educational and family background and has brought almost a haughty frigidity to her marriage. By consequence, her husband, an intellectual, is further plunged into a psychological state of inferiority where he does not seek to assert himself.

Yet Astrid's tendencies towards voyeurism (the act of watching in secret the sexual activities of others and deriving erotic stimulation therefrom) as well as her outward insistence on circumspect conduct leads her to spy on Betty Jurgens, an attractive young girl the brink of womanhood. She sees Betty in secret trysts with her young suitor Henry Warren, and her indignation is really born out of her own frustrated and hidden envy of the exciting and provocative relationship which she guesses the two teenagers are enjoying.

Vicariously, she experiences her first actual sexual stirring when, again from her secret spying place, she watches Betty being spanked humiliatingly by the latter's widowed father. Outwardly, she takes pleasure in this because through her spying and reporting to the father, the "sinful" girl is being justly chastised. Yet Astrid cannot know, repressed as she herself is, that in reality she yearns to be so dominated and so chastised to punish her for that very spying which is her principal means of sexual enjoyment.

And so when Betty turns the tables on mature Astrid and, conspiring with Henry Warren, forces the blonde matron to accept a sorority initiation which involves spanking to save herself the disgrace of having incriminating photographs passed around the small-town neighborhood, Astrid, although horrified at the thought of submitting to so ignominious a retribution, subconsciously responds to the chastisement because the punishment actually rouses her dormant sexual instincts while at the same time punishing her for the "guilty sin" she is experiencing despite herself. Finally, when Astrid's meek-mannered husband learns through the enterprising young Betty what his wife has done and how she has been dealt with, he in turn is given the key to unlock the psychic belt with which his beautiful but frigid wife has girdled herself, and thus achieves marital harmony.

Psychologically, it must be pointed out that many a female inwardly longs to be mastered and dominated by a superior male so as to "justify" her submission. This is why the mildly sadistic overtones of spanking fulfill in Astrid Fullhan all her dreamed-of desires while at the same time manifestly chastising her for being aroused by them. It is not unlike the "rape syndrome" whereby the female, chaste yet eager to taste at least for once the pleasures of the wanton, may subconsciously wish to be raped so that she cannot make the decision of sexual participation but rather have it made for her and thus rid her of the "original sin" of such an act. It is an instinct as old as time itself, but it is only now that we have come to recognize it for what it truly is. And by the honesty and frankness with which we approach any consideration of sex today, we cast away the specters of fear and guilt and shame and come all the closer to the ideal harmony of which Dr. Theo van de Velde wrote so rhapsodically in his masterpiece, "Ideal Marriage."

-The Author