Ingeniousness Abounds
Okay...I know, I just know, that there are a bunch of you blog readers out there who have read lots of historically-set erotic (or otherwise very steamy) novels. Right? Riiiiiiight.
(Bertrice Small anyone?)
And I'm wondering....what was the most ingenious, interesting, and/or unique scene that sticks out in your head (I'm speaking of...shhh...sex scenes!) in which a character uses some sort of toy. Or sex tool.
I had a conversation about this very thing with Jane last year, and I was trying to figure out a way to have a vibrator in 19th century Europe. Not an easy thing to do. The best I could come up with was a wind-up one, but it seems to me that it would run down much too quickly for my heroines.
(I didn't put it in a book yet...but I probably will. Think it would work?)
Okay, so let's hear it from the peanut gallery. What did our historical heroes and heroines use for sex toys before batteries and latex?
9 comments:
My December book for Aphrodisia ONE MORE TIME has a modern-day heroine going back in time and she just happens to have her bag of sex toys. Which the hero finds *fascinating*. *grin*
Um, wasn't there some contraption with electricity that was supposed to calm a woman's "hysteria" but someone figured out she was actually getting orgasms?
Maybe that was Victorian.
Heeheeee....I think you're right about the "hysteria" and the dildo that supposedly calmed it.
I just hope the docs that were wielding these tools were cute.
It wasn't just the dildo that calmed hysteria, so many women were going in for treatment (ya think? ;-)) a Dr built a mechanical vibrator- it was a machine, too, huge, and he used to hook them up. :)
Google the history of sex toys, I think there is a museum sex toy site that has them shown. I have to skeedaddle or I'd do it and link.
Colleen, you haven't heard about the Buzzing Jenny? The steam-powered sex toy of the Industrial Revolution? Of course the coal dust wasn't too good for the bed hangings and, requiring several footmen to supply coal, it was rather labor intensive.
What can I say, Jane. I live a very sheltered life.
*bwahhh!!*
Susan Johnson's historicals had all kinds of sex toys in them. They were usually associated with exotic cultures: Chinese, Arab harem toys. There were all sizes of dildos, ben-wa balls, silk scarves etc.. I can't rememeber the specific book but one had a harem bed with secret compartments and variously places hooks and rings. Ahem!
They were great! Maybe someone else can put a book title to this.
As Anon mentioned, when it comes to sex toys in erotic historicals, you gotta talk Susan Johnson.
First of all, let me say that I dont find sex toys in sex scenes all that erotic but here is the list of things that I can recall:
1. Heroine using a finial/knob from a bed for a dildo to masturbate in front of the hero. (I think at least 2 SJ books had this scene)
2. I think it was in OUTLAW where the hero gave the heroine a large ruby pendant and the heroine liked to play with it in you-know-where. (All I kept thinking was that I hope that the pendant didnt have a prong setting, otherwise OUCH!)
3. LOVE STORM has several infamous sex scenes. One involves a plum at "the gates of paradise" and the other is probably the first instance of le coit de cheval (sex while on a horse)in a romance. Bertrice Small also did the fruit thing in THE HELLION
4. I think THE OUTLAW also has a scene involving a pearl necklace. Thea Devine in SEDUCTIVE also used a pearl necklace in practically every sex scene in that book.
I've just remembered the movie Caligula, which I found rather distressing because I was pregnant and very squeamish, although my husband was uh, inspired by it. Something weird happened to this movie which started out as an artsy production but ran out of money and was rescued by either Playboy or Penthouse, who then wielded the directorial whip. They didn't win the fight to make the women wear high heels, but I remember they did have mechanical vibrating things that the user pedaled (wheels turning wheels, so the ultimate wheel that did the business was a lightly serrated one). It seems extremely unlikely, and if the practical Romans had had such a thing, why hadn't they invented the bicycle? Imagine Caesar and his ranked legions cycling down on the barbarian hordes.
As for clockwork, I'm not sure of the mechanics, but wouldn't the device have to be huge to produce the pressure for long enough?
Er...this one Bertrice Small book (Hellion, I think it was), had this sorceror guy, and he had all kinds of 'oils and potions' and such along with a lovely bench and phalluses and the like.
My then 14 year old mind nearly died. Ah...the memories of my first forrays into sexual literature.
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