Virgin: The Untouched History (38 page)

BOOK: Virgin: The Untouched History
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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 Big 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 As
pegren,
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 worthwhile 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.)

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