normal, constitutes the normal standard established by law and custom. Sexual bondage is not a perverse manifestation, however; the instinctive activities at work here are the same as those that set in motion—even though it be with less violence—the psychical vita sexualis which moves entirely within normal limits.
Fear of losing the companion and the desire to keep him always satisfied, amiable, and inclined to sexual intercourse, are here the motives of the individual in subjection. An extraordinary degree of love—which, particularly in woman, does not always indicate an unusual degree of sensuality—and a weak character are the simple elements of this extraordinary process.[1]
The motive of the dominant individual is egoism, which finds unlimited room for action.
The manifestations of sexual bondage are various in form, and the cases are very numerous.[2] At every step in life we find men that have fallen into sexual bondage. Among married men, hen-pecked husbands belong to this category, particularly elderly men who marry young wives and try to overcome the disparity of years and physical defects by unconditional submission to the wife’s every whim; and unmarried men of ripe maturity, who seek to better their last chance of love by unlimited sacrifice, are also to be enumerated here. Here belong, also, men of any age, who, seized by hot passion for a woman, meet coldness and calculation, and have to capitulate on hard conditions; men of loving natures who allow themselves to be persuaded to marriage by notorious prostitutes; men who, to run after adventuresses, leave everything and
- ↑ Perhaps the most important element is, that by the habit of submission a kind of mechanical obedience, without consciousness of its motives, which operates with automatic certainty, may be established, having no opposing motives to contend with, because it lies beyond the threshold of consciousness; and it may be used by the dominant individual like an inanimate instrument.
- ↑ Sexual bondage, of course, plays a rôle in all literatures. Indeed, for the poet, the extraordinary manifestations of the sexual life that are not perverse form a rich and open field. The most celebrated description of masculine “bondage” is that by Abbé Prévost, “Mano Lescault.” An excellent description of feminine “bondage” is that of “Leone Leoni,” by George Sand. But first of all comes Kleist’s “Käthchen von Heilbronn,” who himself called it the counterpart of (sadistic) “Penthesilea.” Halm’s “Griseldis” and many other similar poems also belong here.
