Feasting with Panthers: Victorian Erotica

--by Juliet

Back before I became a writer, I spent a lot of time painting. Nudes, mostly. Like this fellow -- half Greek, half Italian, all gorgeous:

Or this woman, a dancer with a certain flair for the dramatic:

But hiring models is expensive, and friends can only be prevailed upon for a certain period of time before they balk at sitting for hours on end in one position, with only the weak promise of hand-mixed mojitos at the end of it all.

What to do? I looked through artists' anatomy books for intriguing views of the human form, and even made my way through a good deal of porn...*yawn*. But then I found the mother-lode of lovely nudes -- Victorian Erotica.

Victorians, the posterboys and girls of sexual repression and angst, knew how to do sexy. The women have all kinds of body types, from skinny to beyond plump. The men are mustachioed and randy. They smile, they play, they cavort. They have personality.

And they're hot. Even today.

As an artist who loves to paint the human form, I know that what one person finds highly titillating, another skips over with no interest. But in general, a little mystery is at least as intriguing as overt nudity. A black stocking playing off a pale thigh, that muscular indentation on a man right below his waistline, a hint of a woman's breast peeking out from a lace bodice...

The Victorians had all sorts of taboos to go up against, proper behavior and social mores that their passions led them to defy -- and defile. Their numerous taboos made all those naughty bits dark and mysterious and oh, so sexy.

Or was it just the flattering sepia-toned, well-lit photography of the day?

I love living in the Bay Area in the modern age, when feeling ashamed is shameful and we're allowed --heck, even encouraged to pursue our hedonistic ways. But it plays havoc with scandal, and rather deep-sixes the obvious titillation of doing what you're not supposed to do. What do people have to get outraged over anymore? You're having pre-marital sex? Duh. You're in an interracial relationship? You'll have beautiful children. Same-sex relationship? Tried it in college. Drug addiction? More pathetic than scandalous -- try rehab.

So is this what makes Victorian erotica so hot? Is it the obvious social repression, the constant knowledge of potential consequences that spurs on the exploration of the naughty and the downright lewd? And if so, is there a raging hot underworld of erotica in fundamentalist Muslim countries where a single act of infidelity could result in being stoned to death by one's neighbors?

The Victorians, despite laws against having Too Good of a Time, gave rise to a huge, vibrant culture of pornography that remains relevant today. Photography, painting, literature, poetry...it was one big old smut-fest, all wrapped up in bloomers and lace. Even now, Victorian tales of sex and depravity remain wildly popular.

They weren't bound by any of today's political correctness when it came to different cultures -- if it was sexy, who cared how accurate it was? Hence the ever- popular salacious harem motif:

Our modern vices were old news to them: drugs, threesomes, spankings, they did it all:

Oscar Wilde was one of the most famous Victorian-era authors of erotic novels. His tale of primarily same-sex passion and sensuality, Teleny, was wildly popular but brought him to the brink of public disgrace.

Wilde wrote to a friend that pursuing such erotic interests in his life and in his fiction
"... was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement ... "

And dangerous it was; Oscar Wilde paid for his sexual adventures with several years in prison for "gross indecency", and never recovered his health.

But when it comes to Erotica...don't we all want to feast with panthers, if only for a moment, and if only in our fantasies? If you're going to write erotica, take a gander at the writings left behind by the Victorian masters of the genre. And if you want to paint nudes, get yourself a book of Victorian photographs. And if you're just looking for some terrific Victorian raunch, check out Lady Winterbourne's Most Intimate of Diaries. You feaster, you.