by Hanne Blank
Dr. Abby Berenson's comments on the relative infrequency with which examiners find reliable genital evidence of sexual abuse can be found in Berenson, et al. "A Case-Control Study of Anatomic Changes Resulting from Sexual Abuse," American Journal of Obstetric Gynecology 182 (2000); Debarge, et al. "Examen medico-legal de l'hymen: Etude analytique de 384 dossiers d'expertises medico-legales pratiquees a l'occasion d'agressions sexuelles," Médecin Legale et Dommage Corporelle 6 no. 3 (1973): 298-300, provides a bit of independent (and much earlier) confirmation that the same sort of variability of findings is also true in regard to rape cases.
Additional reflections on the ability of the hymen to reflect specific sexual histories can be found in: S. J. Emans, et al., "Hymenal Findings in Adolescent Women: Impact of Tampon Use and Consensual Sexual Activity," Journal of Pediatrics 125 (1994); Felicity Goodyear Smith and Tannis Laidlaw, "Can Tampon Use Cause Hymen Changes in Girls Who Have Not Had Sexual Intercourse? A Review of the Literature," Forensic Science International94 nos. 1—2, (1998); and Edgardh and Ormstad, "The Adolescent Hymen," Journal of Reproductive Medicine 47 no. 9 (September 2002).
The British Medical Journal article dealing with practitioner education and beliefs about aspects of the hymen is in Emma Curtis and Camille San Lazaro, "Appearance of the Hymen in Adolescents Is Not Well Documented," British Medical Journal(February 27,1999), 605.
The studies directed by Jan Paradise cited in this chapter are Paradise, et al., "Assessments of girl's genital findings and the likelihood of sexual abuse: agreement among physicians self-rated as skilled," Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 151 no. 9 (1997): 883-91, and Paradise, et al. "Influence of History on Physicians' Interpretation of Girls' Genital Findings," Pediatrics 103 no. 5 part 1 (1999), 980—986.
The short story from which the title of this chapter was taken, and which is discussed at the chapter's end, is from Isak Dinesen, "The Blank Page," in Last Tales (New York: Random House, Inc., 1957): 99—106.
y: Opening Night
Among the numerous fine sources on marriage and marriage customs history are: Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Chrys Ingraham, White Weddings: Romancing Hetirosexuality in Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999); Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Wedding as Text: Communicating Cultural Identities through Ritual (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002); and George Ryley Scott, Curious Customs of Sex & Marriage (London: Senate, 1995)
The anthropological literature on the rite of passage begins properly with Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Monika Vizedom and Gabrielle Caffe, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). A useful companion volume is Louise Cams Mahdi, Nancy Geyer Christopher, and Michael Meade, eds., Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage (Chicago: Open Court, 1996).
A variety of discussions of virginity-loss narratives can be found in: Francoise Barret-Ducroq, Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality, Class, and Gender in Nineteenth-Century London, John Howe, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1992); Karen Bouris, The First Time: Women Speak Out About Losing Their Virginity (Emeryville, CA: Conari Press, 1993); Louis Crozier, Losing It: The Virginity Myth (Washington, D.C.: Avocus Publishing, Inc., 1993); Ginger Frost, Promises Broken: Courtship, Class, and Culture in Victorian England, Victorian Literature and Culture Series, Herbert Tucker and Jerome McGann, series eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995); Alice Schlegel, "The Social Criteria of Adulthood," Human Development 41 (1999): 323-25; and Sharon Thompson's Going All The Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996) and "Putting a Big Thing into a Little Hole: Teenage Girls' Accounts of Sexual Initiation," The Journal of Sex Research 27/3 (August 1990): 341—61.
Of the many statistical reviews of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing in the medical, sociological, and demographic literature, two helpful ones are Susheela Singh and Jacqueline Darroch, "Adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: levels and trends in developed countries," Family Planning Perspectives 32/1 (2000): 14—23, and Stephanie Ventura, et al., "Trends in Pregnancy Rates for the United States, 1976-97: An Update," National Vital Statistics Reports 49/4 (2001): 1-10.
The single Western scholar who has done the most research on contemporary virginity loss is Vanderbilt University sociologist Laura M. Carpenter, whose book Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences was published by New York University Press in 2005. See also: Carpenter, "Gender and the Social Construction of Virginity Loss in the Contemporary United States," Gender & Society 16/3 (2002): 345-65; "The Ambiguity of 'Having Sex': The Subjective Experience of Virginity Loss in the United States," The Journal of Sex Research 38/2 (2001): 127-39; "The First Time/Das Erstes Mai: Approaches to Sexuality in U.S. and German Teen Magazines," Youth & Society 32/3 (2001): 31—61; and "From Girls Into Women: Scripts for Sexuality and Romance in Seventeen Magazine, 1974-1994," The Journal of Sex Research 35/2 (1998): 158—68.
On the related (but not identical) subjects of bridewealth and dowry, consult: Jack Goody and Stanley J. Tambiah, eds., Bridewealth and Dowry, Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology no. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); Karen Ericksen Paige, "Virginity Rituals and Chastity Control during Puberty: Cross-Cultural Patterns," in Menarche: The Transition from Girl to Woman, Sharon Golub, ed. (Lexington, KY: D.C. Heath, 1983): 155-74; Jane Schaneider, "Of Vigilance and Virgins: Honor, Shame, and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies," Ethnology 10 (1971): 1-24; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England i5oo—i8oo (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); and Randolph Trumbach, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family (New York: Academic Press, 1978).
In the literature about the specific relationship of virginity, dowry, status, and social management, Alice Schlegel's work deserves particular notice, specifically her "Status, Property, and the Value of Virginity," American Ethnologist 18 (1991): 719-34; "The Cultural Management of Adolescent Sexuality," in Sexual Nature Sexual Culture, Paul R. Abramson and Steven D. Pinkerton, eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 177—94; and "The Chaste Adolescent" in Celibacy, Culture, and Society: The Anthropology of Sexual Abstinence, Elisa J. Sobo and Sandra Bell, eds. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2001): 87-103.
A selective roster of sources discussing reactions to virginity loss includes: Anonymous, Aristotle 's Master-Piece; or, the Secrets of Generation Displayed in All the Parts Thereof (London: For WB, 1695); Talmud, Tractate Ketubot, vol. 11, The Steinsaltz Edition (New York: Random House, 1996); Blackledge, The Story of V: Opening Pandora's Box (London: Weiden-feld & Nicolson, 2004); Ruth Bodden-Heidrich, et al., "What Does a Young Girl Experience in Her First Gynecological Examination? Study on the Relationship between Anxiety and Pain," Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology 13/3 (August, 2000): 139-42; Cowan, The Science of a New Life (New York: Cowan & Company, Publishers, 1880); Dickson, et al., "First Sexual Intercourse: Age, Coercion, and Later Regrets Reported by a Birth Cohort," British MedicalJournal 316 (January 3, 1998): 29-33; Sigmund Freud, "The Taboo on Virginity," in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, Philip Reiff, ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963); Goodyear-Smith and Laidlaw, "Can Tampon Use Cause Hymen Changes in Girls who Have Not Had Sexual Intercourse? A Review of the Literature," Forensic Science International 94 (1998): 148-53; Dannah Gresh, And The Bride Wore White: Seven Secrets to Sexual Purity (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2002); Carol Grone-man, Nymphomania: A History (New York: W W Norton, 2000); Deanna Holtzman and Nancy Kulish, "A Brief Communication on Defloration," Psychoanalytic Quarterly LXXII (2003): 477-82; Bronwen Lichtenstein, "Virginity Discourse in the AIDS Era: A Case Analysis of Sexual Initiation Aftershock," National Women's Studies Association Journal 12/2 (Summer 2000): 52-69; Marie Stopes, Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties, 19th ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931): 30; Thompson, Going All The Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy and "Putting a Bi
g Thing into a Little Hole: Teenage Girls' Accounts of Sexual Initiation"; D. L. Weis, "The Experience of Pain during Women's First Sexual Intercourse: Cultural Mythology about Female Sexual Initiation," Archives of Sexual Behavior 14/5 (1985): 421-38; and Daniel Wight, et al., "Extent of Regretted Sexual Intercourse among Young Teenagers in Scotland: A Cross Sectional Survey," British Medical Journal 320 (May 6, 2000): 1243—44.
8: In a Certain Way Unbodily, and g: Heaven and Earth
Because these two chapters are so substantially preoccupied with the subject of Christianity and share a great deal of source material, I have chosen to combine the sources in order to avoid large numbers of duplicate listings across chapters.
Among the many worthwhile sources on pre-Christian antiquity are: Mary Beard, "The Sexual Status of Vestal Virgins," Journal of Roman Studies 70.(1980): 12—27; David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Peter L. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Henri Crouzel, Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, A. S. Worrall, trans. (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989); Judith Hallett, Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Lesley Hazleton, Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004); Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece & Rome: A Source Book in Translation, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Sarah Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (New York: Schocken, 1975); Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, Felicia Pheasant, trans. (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1988); and Sissa, Greek Virginity, Arthur Goldhammer, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
Analysis and critical close-readings regarding Christian antiquity may be found in: Kerstin Aspegren, The Male Woman: A Feminine Ideal in the Early Church, Renee Kieffer, ed. (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990); Augustine, Holy Virginity in Marriage and Virginity: The Excellence of Marriage, Holy Virginity, The Excellence of Widowhood, Adulterous Marriages, Continence, David G. Hunter, ed., Ray Kearney, trans.; The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the Twenty-first Century, vol. I/9, Augustinian Heritage Institute (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1999); Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; Elizabeth Castelli, "Virginity and Its Meaning for Women's Sexuality in Early Christianity," Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2 (1986): 61—88; Kate M.Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealised Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Susanna Elm, " Virgins of God": The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London: Routledge, 1994); Joyce N. Hillgarth, The Conversion of Western Europe, j5o-y5o (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969); Stephanie Hollis, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992); Jean Laporte, The Role of Women in Early Christianity, Studies in Women and Religion 7 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982); Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroads, 1985); and Tertullian, De Virginibus Velandis, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 76, V. Bulhart, ed. (Vienna: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1957).
The history of monks and nuns is often specific and esoteric, but there also exist many approachable studies on medieval ecclesiasticism: John Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal, International Archives of the History of Ideas no. 17 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Andrew Macleish, ed., The Medieval Monastery (St. Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 1988); Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Friedrich Kempf, Hans Georg Beck, and Josef Andreas Jungmann. The Church in the Age of Feudalism (New York: Seabury Press, 1980); Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe, 10000-115o (New York: St. Martin's, 1984); Joan Morris, The Lady Was a Bishop: The History of Women with Clerical Ordination and the Jurisdiction of Bishops (New York: MacMillan, 1973); Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, ed., Medieval Women's Visionary Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, 1275—1535 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Prankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500-900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981); Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christendom, 1000-1700 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); and Ulrike Weithaus, ed., Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1993).
These chapters owe a particular debt to the exemplary work of historian of women's monasticism JoAnn McNamara. Her work includes: A New Song: Celibate Women in the First Three Christian Centuries (New York: Haworth Press, 1983) and Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
On the specifically sexual aspects of medieval religion, see: Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Bullough and Brundage, eds., Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1982); Graciela Daichman, Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986); Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex, Crime, and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
On the virgin martyrs: Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, V. M. Crawford, trans. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961); Mand Burnett Mclnerney, Eloquent Virgins: From Thecla to Joan of Arc (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Karen A. Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), and Chaste Passions: Medieval English Virgin Martyr Legends (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's "Saints' Lives and the Female Reader," Forum for Modern Language Studies 27 (1991): 314-32.
On Mary and the Protoevangelion: Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America; Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture; Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, ed., People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an Embodied Perspective, SUNY Series, The Body in Culture, History, and Religion (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992); J. K. Elliott, ed., The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); Ronald F. Hock, The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas: Introduction, Greek Text, English Translation, and Notes, Scholars Bible (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1995); Mary Foskett, A Virgin Conceived: Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Jane Scha-berg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); and Maria Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage Books, 1983).
Biographical sources dealing with the life and crimes of Countess Erzsebet Báthory are reasonably common, but worthwhi
le ones are rare. Two that are reasonably reliable and accessible are Raymond McNally's Dracula Was a Woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983) and Tony Thome's Countess Dracula: The Life and Times of the Blood Countess, Elisabeth Báthory (London: Bloomsbury, 1997).
The three major sources on me jus primae noctis and its heritage are Alain Boureau, The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage, Lydia G. Cochrane, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Eleanor Palermo Litvack, Le Droit du Seigneur in European and American Literature from the Seventeenth through the Twentieth Century (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, Inc., 1984); and Jorg Wettlaufer, Das Herrenrecht der ersten Nacht: Hochzeit, Herrschaft und Heiratsiins im Mittlealter und in der friihen Neuzeit, Campus His-torische Studien Band 27 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1999).
10: To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
The body of literature concerning Queen Elizabeth I is enormous. The sources used for this book tend to be ones that concentrate heavily or exclusively on issues regarding the role of sexuality in the queen's life and rule and include: Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Eliiabeth /(New York: Routledge, 1996); Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, eds., The Myth of Eliiabeth (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Helen Hack-ett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Eliiabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1995); Christopher Hibbert, The Virgin Queen: The Personal History of Eliiabeth /(New York: Viking, 1990); John N. King, "Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen," Renaissance Quarterly 43/1 (Spring 1990): 30-74; Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Eliiabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994); John Rogers, "The Enclosure of Virginity: The Poetics of Sexual Abstinence in the English Revolution," in Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England, Richard Burt and John Michael Archer, eds. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Kathryn Schwarz, "The Wrong Question: Thinking Through Virginity," differences 13/2 (Summer 2002); and Julia M. Walker, The Eliiabeth Icon, 1603—2003 (New York : Palgrave Macmillian, 2004.)