Rethinking Female Pleasure
Purity and desire in early twentieth-century Australia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3186755 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lisa Featherstone (0000-0002-5189-1910, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 715-731 |
| Publication date | 2012-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Women s History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09612025.2012.658181 |
| OpenAlex | W2040901071 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women unable to firmly challenge the sexual ideal. But a close reading of the work of a number of female authors, especially the poet Zora Cross, allows glimpses of how some women did explore, construct and rethink sexual pleasure within their writings, negotiating between the sometimes contradictory impulses of purity and desire
Aesthetics · Art · Pleasure · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2023 (10) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |