The Library of Spanking Fiction: Wellred Weekly


Wellred Weekly
Volume 2, Number 1 : March 21, 2013
 
Articles
Items of interest regarding all things spanking

The Nun in Spanking Literature
by Garth Toyntanen


A case of Sexual Repression and Socially Conditioned Compliance?


Detail from painting by Austrian artist Adam Johan Braun (1748-1827)

From time to time a particularly incorrigible specimen would happen along, one of that intractable type typically characterized by the arrogant up-tilt to the chin, deep angry eyes charged with un-movable injustice-driven stubbornness. Perhaps there might be an aristocratic upturn to the bunny-cute nose and affected airs and graces to match. Perhaps the fine-boned face would be made-up beyond her years, her sophisticatedly coiffured waist-length crowning glory ditto. Or, to take another tack; there might be a tee-shirted, gum-chewing tomboyish fierceness barely tempered by a peppery fringe and coupled with a sturdy yet girlishly, gloriously, plump behind sheaved in tight denim.

Confronted by such a specimen (of either type or extreme of species) the Mother Superior herself might take it upon herself to take a personal interest in the girl's welfare, take her under her wing. Her personal accommodation, her chambers, had sufficient self-contained space budding off it to accommodate two such under her direct supervision at any one time. Of course it should go without saying that the gum, tee shirt, denim, fringe (peppery or otherwise) cosmetics, jewelry et al would be short-lived, going the way of that sophisticated hair-do, to be swept up from the floor by one of the novices, destined as fodder for the purifying consumption of the convent incinerator.

The Mother Superior's present charge, Amanda, was a case in point. This girl had been considered too much of a handful for the plush, pampering and pandering private boarding school she had once attended. But now things had changed; the boot was on the other foot as it were. The girl having now surpassed the age beneath which attendance at some officially recognized educational establishment was a legal obligation, something could - and would - be done about her. And it was very doubtful indeed young Amanda-Susanne St John-Andreius-Fortisque - to give her full name (minus the title it was looking increasingly unlikely she would one day inherit) - would prove too much of a 'handful' for the nuns of St Ursulain's Charity Home and Industrial School for Young Woman and Girls Deemed in Moral Peril, her of the perpetually sulking pout and petulant foot-stamping shriek.

You see Mandy - as Miss St John-Andreius-Fortisque was now known - had been committed now to the tender mercies of the Church - and of the 'Brides of Christ - all nice and legal and done and dusted. It seems the girl's legal guardian - a redoubtably stern and sour-faced woman, if ever there had been one - had taken umbrage over vivacious young Mandy's deplorable habit of going after anything in trousers attached to the various traveling fairs or carnivals that would periodically pitch up on the village playing fields around her home. Of course the girl had always denied this - well at least at first she had. But then, skilled interrogation had been part and parcel of the Mother Superior's particular flavour of psychoanalysis, before she took Holy Orders, back when she had been employed in the county psychiatric hospital. And when despite that skill it had proved difficult to trip the girl up, catch her out in the usual manner... well, then it had become necessary to cane the truth out of her. But the girl had been a tough cookie; it was only when she really could not bear the pain any longer that the truth had come spilling out of that precocious little harlot's mouth. But was it not the role of the confessional to cleanse the soul? Cane in hand; she was performing God's work, surely! Was she not?

Thus might open a typical spanking-orientated tale revolving around the figure of the nun as the flagellant; the cane, strap or tawse-wielding 'Bride of Christ', as dedicated to dutifully driving the Devil from the obligatorily youthful, attractive and decidedly pert penitent lying across her lap or bent over the whipping block or school desk as she is to the doctrines of the church and her own vows of chastity and obedience. But from whence has this enduring vision I have sought to conjure here - one so favored of tales of corporal punishment written throughout the ages - arisen? A basis in fact, a deranged artifact of fantasy; or an amalgam of some part of each?


Artwork by Louis Malteste

Actually the figure of the nun in spanking fiction has something in common with the nurse, in that she may be portrayed and perceived simultaneously as a symbol of authority and of submission. Thus the cannon of literature dealing with corporal punishment is filled to brimming with the trials and tribulations of the 'naughty' or incompetent young nurse bent over the knee of the ward sister, the white-coated (invariably bespectacled) doctor or consultant or across the desk in Matron's office. Similarly, the novice nun may find herself bent over the convent's whipping block at the whim of the Mother Superior or Abbess (an implacably dark and foreboding figure indeed), or even perhaps obliged to indulge in self-flagellation by the doctrine of the institution. But whereas the former scenario in particular - in CP fiction at least - seems restricted to the 'trainee' or 'novice' within the cloistered world of the abbey or convent, the fictional nurse may be subject to correction by corporal means at virtually any point in her career (although, statistically speaking it is undeniably the student nurse that is more likely to be punished by another female in literature).

Beyond the novice level, the nun is practically universally portrayed in the dominant role in spanking literature, whether the target of her righteous ire be male or female. The dominant nurse on the other hand is a far rarer species and largely restricted to the figure of the hospital matron or ward sister, the general nurse per se playing a far more ambiguous role as previously outlined. If there is a situation or scenario within which it seems permissible to ring the changes to the latter rule it is where the nurse plays a role more akin to the governess of old or the type of 'strict nursery nurse' that populates the genre of fiction beloved of 'adult baby' or 'rejuvenation' aficionados; and there the female, dominant, male, subservient model seems to predominate. The nurse fetches and carries and 'cares' and as often as not is seen as being at the beck and call of the patient as much as her superiors, despite the psychological advantage her superior medical knowledge should theoretically give her; especially given the present day's obsession with university degree-level based nursing education.

One exception to the latter (there has to be one, surely, to 'prove' the rule) can be found in the field of psychiatric nursing wherein the status of the patient is naturally reduced; perceived as such and accepted by both sides of the equation as a natural consequence of the patient's lack of mental competence as evidenced by their residency in a psychiatric institution in the first place. The term 'orderly' is more likely to be encountered - particularly within a so-called 'secure institution' - and more often than not is depicted as male and brutal with it. But their female counterparts do exist, both in the real world (especially historically, within all-female institutions) and within the whelm of fiction (witness my own first few volumes - The Institutionalised trilogy - for example. And 'brutality' may be psychological as much as physical, don't forget. What might be lacking in physical strength may well be made up for in sheer guile and verbal spitefulness; the veritable mistress of the cutting remark and insightful and inventive put-down. That isn't to say that there might not be a thin, whippy cane or folded leather belt to hand, just that there can be more to domination than sheer physical force. Then there are all those other accouterments of control available: there is that traditional fall-back, the straitjacket; there is the 'humane restraint' system affixed to steel-framed beds and rubber or PVC-covered mattresses; there is the padded cell, should a little solitary 'calming' be required; and lastly - and certain to be still extant within certain 'less enlightened' regimes even today, and so why not hidden away with the bowels of some small and isolated private facility someplace - the caged bed. And that is not to touch on the threat of ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy)- allegedly used as a deterrent as much as for genuine therapeutic purposes, even now - tranquilizers, sedatives (there is a difference) powerful anti-psychotics and other forms of the so-called 'chemical cosh'.


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