"Imbued with the science of Venus": Female Fallenness, Sexual Pedagogy, and Victorian Pornography

Abstract

As a decidedly heterogeneous genre, Victorian pornography offers a wide range of sexual narratives, including those that directly challenge both real and fictional narrative constructions of female fallenness by foregrounding female sexual education and contraception practice. However, Victorian pornography is far too often reduced to an analysis of male-driven, fetish-driven, or fantasy-driven narratives. Fastening pornography to the fantasy realm of the imaginary removes the ability to critically read variation within the genre for the real-life cultural work the explicitly tangible directives do, especially regarding the "problems of sex" as they connect to protective female sexual pedagogy as a route to avoid a sexual and social fall. As a reader, critic, and scholar of Victorian pornography, I contend that within the expansive narrative boundaries of the genre there exists a direct challenge to female fallenness, an active, purposeful "writing back" to a restrictive, sadistic narrative of scandalous pregnancy and public shame.