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The Penguin Book of Erotic Stories by Women PDF

420 Pages·2013·38.56 MB·English
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THE PENGUIN BOOK OF EROTIC STORIES WOMEN BY '"* w- 31TED BY RICHARD GLYN JONES AND A. SUS. PENGUIN BOOKS THE PENGUIN BOOK OF EROTIC STORIES BY WOMEN RichardGlynJones trainedandworkedasapsychologistbeforeentering theworldofpublishing. Inthelate1960shewasaneditorofthecontro- versial magazine New Worlds, which at one pointwas banned by W. H. SmithandcausedquestionstobeaskedintheHouseofCommons.Heran his own small press for tenyears,wherehepublished Christine Keeler's bestsellingScandal!, aswell asJorgeLuis Borges's TheBook ofFantasy. He currentlyworksasawriterandeditor,andhascompiledmorethantwenty anthologies,includingKillerCouples,astudyoifolieadeuxinmurderers,and, withA. SusanWilliams, ThePenguinBook, ofModernFantasyby Women. His mostrecentanthologyis Cybersex. A. Susan Williams is a senior researcher at the Institute ofEducation, University of London. She has published extensively on literature and history,withaparticularfocusonwomen'slivesandwork Currentpub- licationsinclude ThePenguinBook ofClassicFantasyby Women,and shehas recentlyfinishedwritingabookonthetopicofWomenandChildbirthinthe TwentiethCentury. THE PENGUIN BOOK OF EROTIC STORIES WOMEN BY EDITED BY RICHARD GLYN JONES AND A. SUSAN WILLIAMS PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS PublishedbythePenguinGroup PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW8 5TZ,England PenguinBooksUSAInc.,375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork10014,USA PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,Australia PenguinBooksCanadaLtd,10AlcornAvenue,Toronto,Ontario,CanadaM4V 3B2 PenguinBooks(NZ)Ltd,182-190WairauRoad,Auckland10,NewZealand PenguinBooksLtd,RegisteredOffices:Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England FirstpublishedbyViking1995 PublishedinPenguinBooks1996 13579108642 Thisselectioncopyright©RichardGlynnJonesandA.SusanWilliams,1995 Introductioncopyright©A.SusanWilliams,1995 Introductiontothestoriescopyright©RichardGlynnJones,1995 Allrightsreserved Theacknowledgementsonpp.398-400constituteanextensionofthiscopyrightpage Themoralrightoftheeditorshasbeenasserted PrintedinEnglandbyClaysLtd,StIvespic ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,thisbookissoldsubject totheconditionthatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,belent, re-sold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculatedwithoutthepublisher's priorconsentinanyformofbindingorcoverotherthanthatin whichitispublishedandwithoutasimilarconditionincludingthis conditionbeingimposedonthesubsequentpurchaser CONTENTS IntroductionbyA. SusanWilliams vii LaMarquisedeMannouryd'Ectot, Violette(France, 1882) 1 KateChopin, TheStorm(USA, 1900) 19 KatherineMansfield, LevesAmores(New Zealand, 1907) 24 Anna-ElisabethWeirauch, Forbidden'Love(Germany, 1919) 26 Colette, Mitsou(France, 1919) 41 Gertrude Stein, Didn'tNellyandLillyLove You(USA, 1922) 46 May Sinclair, The VillaDesiree (UK, 1926) 76 Radclyffe Hall, MissOgilvyFindsHerself(UK, 1926) 87 EdithWharton, MyLittle Girl(USA, 1935) 104 SimonedeBeauvoir, Marcelle(France, 1942) 107 ClaireRabe, SicilyEnough (USA, 1963) 142 A LailaBaalabaki, SpaceshipofTendernesstotheMoon (Lebanon, c. 1964) 182 SivHolm, I,a Woman(Denmark, 1965) 188 CarolEmshwiller, Sexand/orMrMorrison(USA, 1967) 199 AlifaRifaat, My Worldofthe Unknown(Egypt, r. 1971) 207 Angela Carter, FleshandtheMirror(UK, c. 1972) 221 A Joanna Russ, nOld-fashionedGirl(USA, 1974) 229 Verena Stefan, StateofEmergency (Switzerland, 1975) 234 BessieHead, The CollectorofTreasures(Botswana, 1977) 261 NicoleWard Jouve, BlackandWhite(France, 1977) 280 Contents KathyAcker, New York Cityin 1979(USA, 1981) 291 A Yuan Ch'iung Ch'iung, hover'sEar(Taiwan, 1985) 307 Amy Yamada, KneelDownandLickMy Feet(Japan, 1988) 309 Isabel Allende, OurSecret(Peru, 1989) 323 ElizabethCook, BilletsDoux(UK, 1989) 327 Iva Pekarkova, TruckStop (Czechoslovakia, 1989) 333 Evelyn Lau, FetishNight(Canada, 1993) 343 SvetlanaBoym, Romancesofthe EraofStagnation(Russia, 1993) 347 L. A. Hall, HarmonisingPolarities(UK, 1995) 362 Candas JaneDorsey, Wishes(Canada, 1995) 378 Ann Oakley, WheretheBeeSucks(UK, 1995) 384 Acknowledgements 398 Theintroductionsto theindividualstoriesareby RichardGlynJones. INTRODUCTION This anthology contains stories with an erotic theme that have been written by women from all over the world — from countries as far apart as Japan, France, Botswana, Peru and Russia. Since the time span covers more than a hundred years, from the 1880s to the present day, it is a rich and diverse collection, reflecting very different historical moments and cultural frameworks. Iva Pekarkova, a Czech woman who is making her name as an author following the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, has drawn on a different set of experiences from Anna-Elisabeth Weirauch, who lived and wrote in Weimar Germany. Equally, Alifa Rifaat, living in late twentieth-century Egypt,1 is engaging with moral and sexual values that are quite unlike those facing Kathy Acker, living intheverysecular USA ofthe sameperiod. Within this broad range, we have imposed our own constraints. All the stories are self-contained and complete in themselves, even when they have been extracted from longer works. Many are by authors who are well known in their own countries and abroad, like Gertrude Stein ofthe USA and Simone de Beauvoir ofFrance; other stories are the work ofexciting new writers, like Evelyn Lau of Canada. The material has been arranged in chronological order, so as to illustrate the unfolding story ofwomen's erotic fiction over thelasthundredyears. An introduction to a collection of erotic fiction is bound to consider the meaning of 'erotic'. The word derives from ipconKos, which was used in ancient Greece to mean 'of or caused by love; given to love, fond'; it was closely connected to 'Eros', the name of the Greek god oflove and desire.2 All these meanings are contained todaywithin the Englishword 'erotic': The OxfordEnglish Dictionary defines it as an adjective 'pertaining to the sexual passion; treating oflove; amatory'. So far, sogood. A closer look at 'erotic', however, reveals that its meaning is not so straightforward. We do not knowto whatextent the Greekword Introduction was used to describe sexual passion felt by women. Athens in the fifth century bc has been praised as the cradle ofdemo-cracy (ruled by the people), but it would be more accurate to describe it as an andro-cracy (ruled by men, at least those in the more powerful strata of society). The majority of the population - women and slaves - were excluded from civic life. They produced virtually none of the ancient Greek literature that we read today,3 so it is impossible to know what they thought about anything, let alone erotic desire. In any case, love and sex involving women was regarded by Athenian society as much inferior to male homosexual relations. 'FortheGreek man,' explainsthehistorianEvaCanterella, 'the homosexual relationship was a privileged outlet for exchange of experience, and he found in it an answer to his greatest needs. To relegate women to a purely biological role was perfectly natural.'4 Some feminist scholars have objected to the term 'erotic': Sarah Hoagland argues that it belongs too much to 'homopatriarchal greco-Christian tradition'.5 However, there are few words in the English language that do not reflect in some way the centuries of violence and exploitation that have marked the history of the English-speaking world. It would be an impossible task to abandon all these words; it seems more reasonable to use them in a way that is understood by most people and conveys the intended meaning. Accordingly, all the stories in this anthology are underpinned by the sexual passion and love identified in The OxfordEnglish Diction- ary's, definition of'erotic'—butfromawoman'spointofview. Until very recently, writing by women and for women has been markedly absent from collections and books oferotic fiction. In the whole of Terence J. Deakin's Catalogi Eibrorum Eroticorum (1964),6 which purports to list all the major bibliographies oferotica and a large number of secondary materials, only one woman's name appears.7 This does notmean thatmosterotic arthas been produced by men; it simply means that the erotica that is available and writtenabouthasbeenproducedbymen. Somewomenauthorshave concealed the erotic elements of their fiction by embedding them deeplywithinthetext. GertrudeStein'sstory, 'Didn'tNellyandLilly Love You', is representative of her 'explicit treatment of lesbian subject-matter disguised by stylistic devices'.8 Other writers have managed to disclaim responsibility for their erotic art through a

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