Foreword
"The Forbidden Moment" may be regarded as one of the "underground" classics of erotica, dating back from the great American depression of the Thirties. It first appeared about 1936 in hardcover format, showing no printer's imprimus or author's penname and as was then customary at bookstalls throughout the nation, discretely wrapped in brown paper. It had a sales vogue of about half a decade and then vanished irrevocably. To this day, it remains almost impossible for the most assiduous bibliophile to procure a copy of the original-and only-edition. Nor has it ever appeared in paperback format, possibly for the same reason.
Yet those of us who were adolescents when "Eunice" first made "her" appearance still remember it warmly and compare it with other classics that were so typical of that arduous era, "Dolly Morton," "The Way of a Man and a Maid," "Maud Cameron" and other of that ilk. However, "The Forbidden Moment" varied vastly in comparison with those masterpieces because of its unusual dual theme. Just as Nabokov's "Lolita" set the pattern for modern novels dealing with the seduction of the mature male by the post-puberty-age female, so Eunice established not only the internal conflict between the chaste female who fears sex and the voluptuary male who pursues its highest pleasures, but also stressed the sensual excitement of voyeurism to a degree hitherto not found in contemporary erotica.
The story is simplicity itself, a mark of the skilled writer. Eunice Norton is the daughter and only child of an elderly Southern banker who, for all his idealism, is an impractical man. Jack Mordaunt, the "hero" and arch-voluptuary, visiting the town, espies Eunice and desires her. But her imperious chastity prevents any extra-marital liaison and she indignantly rebuffs his advances. This affront to his male ego demands reprisal and Mordaunt obtains it by involving her father in a stock manipulation which ruins him. Then he offers to save Edward Norton at a price: the hand of Eunice in marriage. And Eunice reluctantly consents out of filial devotion and love.
Once having wed her, Mordaunt determines not only to punish her for her adamant chastity but to turn her into a consummate wanton within the boundaries of their marriage. And since his own penchant is for witnessing the fact of love as a stimulant to his own future enjoyment, he contrives to topple Eunice from her pedestal of vaunted chastity by constraining her to make love to him within the view of others, notably menials. The famous scene with the Pullman porter is a classic example of this. And finally, the arranged "kidnapping and rape" scene in Mexico, where Mordaunt contrives to have himself bound and gagged and "forced" to watch his beautiful wife's unwilling surrender to three bandits, climatically brings the chaste bride to the realization of her own furiously awakened sensuality.
At the time "Eunice" first appeared on the American scene, we were still in the throes of an ancient Puritanism which held that it is sinful for the female to share the male's libidinous passions for sexual relationship. The unfolding by the unknown author of Eunice's impeccable chastity towards a gradual awareness of her own mixed emotions until the supreme moment when she realizes that she shares Mordaunt's ardors and enjoys seeing herself being led towards his ordained goal of complete surrender to his whims has the ring of psychological truth to it. Even today, when we have achieved the freedom of rejecting puritanical censorship and believing that sexual freedom is a vital as literary freedom, "The Forbidden Moment" stands as a landmark of erotica, the more noteworthy because the reader is struck by the candor and honesty of Eunice Norton's gradual realization that her peerless chastity is, after all, a subterfuge and defense mechanism against her truest latent feelings.
The Editor