Birch in the Boudoir

Birch In the Boudoir is supposed to be a classic example of French flagellation literature—a genre that the cheese-eating surrender monkeys apparently adored back in the day. Instead, this short novel is more like a rapist’s handbook. No wonder lesbians hate S&M (more on that later).

Written in 1905, it was distributed privately amongst certain spankophile circles before decaying into obscurity after WWI. The cover indicates that it was written anonymously, but most historians (ie. Wikipedia) attribute it to Hugues Rebell—a pagan porn writer who was also one of France’s leading purveyors of Nietzschean doctrine.

It begins with an idiotic premise: two lovers, Charles and Elizabeth, are temporarily separated and write each other letters to keep updated on each others’ exploits. Elizabeth travels to the Middle East to visit a pasha’s harem and voyeuristically enjoy its lascivious activities. Charles lands the sweetest internship ever, as a “disciplinary assistant” to the spank meister at a girl’s reformatory school.

It’s a shame that Birch turned out so creepy in the end, because it had the potential to be the most erotically appealing cliterature novel yet. The disciplinary overtones of corporeal punishment at the girl’s school are pretty hot. Scenes where Charles canes his callipygian delinquents without compunction usually end in him fucking several students simultaneously. Equally arousingly, the harem’s odalisques are “punished” for masturbating through some girl-on-girl action—the head hooker mounts them and brushes a dry powder on their pussies with a soft teasing brush. If it lathers from wetness, they get spanked.

Not to mention, the good olde Edwardian language that we’ve seen before rears its awkward head yet again. When Charles tries to shove his “quivering dart” into a pupil’s “rear portal,” the scene is described thus: “love’s hammerhead knocked for admission in earnest, yet…the knob would lodge in Noreen’s anus and then find an invincible tightness.”

Where Birch turns sour is in its frequent objectification of the victims—some of whom are virgins as young as 14. Charles pumps his “love elixir” into their asses without consent; when one girl struggles in protest, he straps her down while rationalizing, “Don’t be foolish, Noreen. I’m sure something quite as large has often passed that way.” Last time I checked, dung has a different consistency than dick.

When a student escapes to report these abuses to the authorities, the inspector arrives on the scene only to be treated to a fancy dinner hosted by the school—in which the naked girls act like platters, and asparagus comes dipped in pussy juice.

Over at the harem, the girls perform parlor tricks befitting Bangkok tramps, like shoving eggs up their asses and pulling them out of their mouths, or fucking dildos while tied up to a rotating spit.

It’s not that I have something against the eroticization of pain and powerlessness. Feminists often argue that the dominant/submissive dynamics of sadomasochism replicate “the major epistemological and behavioral structure of male-dominated societies.” But I think that stuff can be delightful in the bedroom.

What’s important, though, is that S&M be founded on consent and simulation. The 15-year-old students and Arabian prostitutes in this story aren’t given the option of safe words, and when they say “no,” their refusals are described as “a spoiled child’s petulance” and accordingly ignored.

I get off on the simulation of violence—on rape scenes and slave scenes, not actual rape or enslavement. The girls here are reduced to nothing more than doe-eyed beasts with bulging “love pockets.” The narrative promotes the lie that any woman who doesn’t want it can eventually be coaxed into a lustful nympho through a bit of smacking around and rigorous clit-rubbing. Bullshit.

Rating: 1 dildo. Don’t get my wrong. I love a good crack-smack as much as you do. “The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip.” But when a book advises its readers that “the pumping of your warm passionate gruel, which caused her to retch at first, she will learn to swallow by repeated lessons,” you know it’s gotta be full of shit.

Previously - Sins of the Cities of the Plains