Tag Archives: woman

The Pornographic Book by the Author of Bambi

Today is the anniversary of the film Bambi, which was released in theaters 80 years ago.
For this reason today we will talk about… child pornography.

Disney’s masterpiece is in fact an adaptation of the children’s book of the same name by Felix Salten; of this prolific (though all in all mediocre) Austrian author, it seems to me that it is my duty on these pages to recall instead another novel, that Josefine Mutzenbacher which today could probably never see the light of day.

Published anonymously in 1906, the book recounts in autobiographical form the vicissitudes of a Viennese prostitute. Nothing original about this; memoirs of courtesans, etères and harlots were already a classic strand of erotic literature; but Salten’s novel focuses exclusively on the protagonist’s childhood and adolescent experiences, concluding at the very moment when Josefine, having become 14 years old, decides to make her body a source of income.

Let us start by saying that the book is certainly not a masterpiece, but it has several interesting aspects from a literary point of view. Compared to other coeval texts, which are often steeped in sophisticated classical references, Salten places his book on a deliberately “low” level. Not only because he writes an openly pornographic book, but also because he decides to set it not in some suspended Hellenistic nostalgia, but in those working-class neighborhoods of Vienna, normally forgotten by courtly literature, coloring his dialogues with dialectal or vulgar expressions, and choosing the register of comedy.(1)Cf. Luigi Reitani, Pedagogia sexualis: The Apprenticeship Years of Josephine Mutzenbacher between Popular Comedy and the Aesthetics of Transgression, in F. salten, Josephine Mutzenbacher, CDE Edition, 1991.

But what may still shock the reader today is the joyful lightness with which this little girl’s sexual explorations are recounted, as erotic scenes take place both in the company of her peers and adults, in the working-class suburbs of the fin de siècle Austrian capital.

Before crying pedophilia, however, it is important to keep in mind the context of the publication of such a work.

Those were the years of Freud’s revolutionary studies on child sexuality, which until then had not been considered at all. But it was also the time of the ephebic sensuality of Klimt’s erotic paintings and sketches, and of a whole series of literary productions(Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Altenberg) in which first adolescence was extolled as the pinnacle of sexual fascination. (2)Cf. Scott Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, vol. 2, University of Rochester Press 2007. On the mythologizing of the age of fourteen: pp.160-163..

In this late nineteenth-century temperament, the aesthetic paradigm of the Kindweib, i.e., the woman-child, was born: a myth that quickly became ubiquitous, so much so that it even influenced women’s fashion, and symptomatic precisely of the weight that the debate on sexuality assumed at that time. (3)I recall en passant that the woman-child is found in countless novels, even in the most unsuspected: for example, the character of Weena in the The Time Machine (1985) by H.G. Wells.

The term Kindweib was popularized in 1907 by Fritz Wittels in a famous article of the same name that circulated widely in Viennese intellectual circles, which stated:

It seems as though female beauty is more attractive to man today if it renounces motherhood and decides to play the eternal child […]. Women appear just as children, with uncovered knees, bobbed hair, soft complexion, the round inviting mouth of a baby, and big astonished eyes, which are artificially made to look larger and more astonished as though one were still interested in looking at the world like a schoolgirl. They imitate a type which is rare in nature, the childwoman, who for constitutional reasons has to remain a child for life […]. The more or less pathological basis for the childwoman is the precocious appearance of sex appeal. When a child is attractive at an age when other children are still jumping rope, she ceases to be a child. From within, a precociously awakened sexuality arises, and from without, admiring eyes inflame her. To be desired is so absolutely the idea of this woman, that she does not continue her development. So we must add to our remark that she ceases to be a child, also the fact that she remains a child forever. This contrast within one and the same person produces her charm.(4)Quoted in Messing, op. cit., p.159.

The ideal of the woman-child is thus two-faced right from her name: childlike and adult, innocent and sensual, narcissistic and innocent.
In some ways, it is a figure that exalts as desirable virtues in a female candor, sweetness, and lightheartedness, thus contrasting with the women who, in those years, claim to be intellectuals, even to graduate, have a career, or… to vote.
On the other hand, however, the woman-child also possesses a powerful subversive charge. Her radical sensuality, uninhibited polyandry, and pansexuality are characteristics that make her a “force of nature” capable of sweeping away all social institutions at once: she rejects motherhood, family, fidelity, and dependence on the male. She is interested only in herself and in the game of seduction, a symbol of the instinct that emerges unstoppable, collapsing the levees built over centuries by society.

In the novel, too, Josefine lives her experiences without the shadow of real trauma, and she destroys conventions with the ease of a child who is “only” playing. For Salten, therefore, this unrestrained sexuality would not represent a threat but a liberation.

Yes, but liberation of whom? Is the woman-child a liberating ideal for women, or for men?

According to Scott Messing, the fact that in many cases (as in the novel in question) this figure is a prostitute would prove how much the myth of the Kindweib was essentially an excuse to justify the asymmetric relationships with young adolescent girls that several artists entertained at the time:

Constructing this type of female helped to produce a seductive theory for writers like Kraus and Altenberg, both of whom argued that prostitution was a liberating experience for its practitioners, even as they ignored its social consequences, and who themselves enjoyed indiscriminate liaisons with little regard for the fate of their partners. […] Wittels’ theory accommodated the lure of the female adolescent and the freedom from moral guilt in any subsequent social transaction […] (5)In Messing, id., p.160.

In my free ebook The Anatomical Woman I talked about how, at least since the Middle Ages, the destructive and threatening power of female eros had been recognized (i.e.: fabricated) and opposed; but the ideal of a “free” femininity, when shaped by male fantasy, can be equally devious.

Josefine Mutzenbacher remained, if one excludes a few novellas, Salten’s only foray into eroticism.

Just a few years later the author became a major journalistic signature,“with a permanent place in the columns of the ‘Neue Freie Presse,’ Austria’s leading daily newspaper. Salten’s conservative turn was now accomplished, parallel to his entry into cultural institutions. In the postwar period he is among the most influential men of culture in the Austrian Republic. […] By 1923 the coveted literary success had also come, with the publication of Bambi. A Tale of the Woods, which would be followed by other titles in the field of children’s literature. Forced to emigrate because of his Jewish background after Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany (1938), Salten would find asylum in Switzerland, where he died in 1945 in Zurich. Three years earlier Walt Disney had made the subject of Bambi famous with a spectacular film reduction. “(6)Luigi Reitani, op. cit..

Note

Note
↑1 Cf. Luigi Reitani, Pedagogia sexualis: The Apprenticeship Years of Josephine Mutzenbacher between Popular Comedy and the Aesthetics of Transgression, in F. salten, Josephine Mutzenbacher, CDE Edition, 1991.
↑2 Cf. Scott Messing, Schubert in the European Imagination, vol. 2, University of Rochester Press 2007. On the mythologizing of the age of fourteen: pp.160-163.
↑3 I recall en passant that the woman-child is found in countless novels, even in the most unsuspected: for example, the character of Weena in the The Time Machine (1985) by H.G. Wells.
↑4 Quoted in Messing, op. cit., p.159.
↑5 In Messing, id., p.160.
↑6 Luigi Reitani, op. cit.

The Anatomical Woman

I am publishing here, as a free ebook, a research that has engaged me for several years: it’s an essay on the iconographic and conceptual motif of the “dissected woman” — a rhetorical device which, starting at least from the Middle Ages up to these days, was intended to sabotage the female seductive power by breaking down / opening up the woman’s body.

I made a short video presentation in which I talk about the project (please turn on English subtitles):

And here are the links to dowload the PDF file for free:

The Anatomical Woman (English version) — 34 Mb

La donna anatomica (versione italiana) — 34 Mb

This book is free, but if you’d like to support my research you might consider making a donation through PayPal.

Armors and Nudity

I am sure we all remember vividly the first sex scene we saw in a movie that really struck our imagination. In my case the film in question was Excalibur (1981) by John Boorman, and more precisely the carnal congress which happens about fifteen minutes into the film. A sequence that deeply troubled me, leaving me in a mixture of attraction and repulsion, without my being able to understand why.

Here Uther Pendragon, who thanks to Merlin’s spell has assumed the appearance of Duke Gorlois, violently possesses the duke’s wife, Igraine (from this fleeting relationship extorted with deception King Arthur will be born). The montage sequence shows this intercourse obtained by deception alernated with the simultaneous death of the true duke on the battlefield: Eros and Thanatos.

Excalibur (1981) by John Boorman

The element that struck me most was a detail with a very powerful visual impact: in the scene Uther, falling prey to erotic fury, does not bother to take off his armor and rushes on the woman who, believing him to be her husband, gives in to his impetus. Leaving aside the dubious realism of the scene (would it really be possible to do certain things while wearing an armor?), it was the contrast – the contact – between the shiny steel and the white female skin that was indelibly engraved in my imagination. I doubt it is a coincidence that, many years later, my graduation thesis ended up focusing on Crash by Cronenberg, another film in which flesh and metal clash and merge, thanks to the car accident, in a perverse erotic dimension.

When I saw Excalibur for the first time I could not know, but the iconography of a knight in armor facing a naked woman is a recurring theme in the history of art – “too frequent, too varied, too insistent to be judged random”, as noted by Roger Caillois in Au cœur du fantastique (1965).

The motif is connected to the broader topos of the clothed male figure vs. an undressed female figure: many nineteenth-century paintings are based on this one-sided nudity, in particular the representations of harems or slave markets which were very fashionable among Orientalist painters, but also famous paintings like Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.
But, as we shall see, in the case of the fully-armored knight a much more interesting level of ambiguity can be identified.

Giuseppe Ferrauto states that there are “a whole kind of depictions of beautiful, naked and chained female prisoners, destined for the more or less openly morbid tastes of gentlemen of the past. […] Ariosto described Angelica chained to the rock of Ebuda, about to be the victim of a sea monster. Many took possession of this scene, from Ingres to Doré, who used it for his illustrations for Orlando furioso, up to Polish artist Chodowiecki, who also made a series of engravings, again for Orlando furioso , in 1772, to end up in the folklore scenes of Sicilian carts’ painted sides.” (Arcana, vol. II, Sugar 1969)

Gustave Doré, Ruggero and Angelica, 1879

Daniel Chodowiecki, Ruggero and Angelica, 1772

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Ruggero Freeing Angelica, 1819

Painters looking for contexts that lend themselves to this type of representation obviously found a perfect anecdote in the episode of Angelica and Ruggero (or in the similar classic myth of Andromeda freed by Perseus). One of the most famous examples is the aforementioned Ruggero Freeing Angelica by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1819), an oil painting that at the time caused a scandal for its representation of female nudity.

Matthias Gerung, Allegory of Love (Amor omnia vincit), 1535

Pieter Paul Rubens, Perseus Freeing Andromeda, 1620

Pieter Paul Rubens, Perseus and Andromeda, 1640

But there were illustrious and varied precedents. In 1530 Lucas Cranach had chosen the Judgment of Paris in order to show the three naked goddesses in front of the Trojan prince, while Tintoretto associated the theme with the liberation of Arsinoe, where the rescue set at the Lighthouse of Alexandria becomes the occasion for showing the armor in contact with bare skin; also worth noting is the sensual detail of the chain which slides sinuously over the queen’s private parts. As Mario Praz summarized well, “the contact of naked limbs with the chains and the steel of the armor seems to have the precise purpose of exciting special senses” (Erotismo in arte e letteratura, in I problemi di Ulisse, 1970).

Lucas Cranach The Elder, The Judgement of Paris, ca. 1528

Jacopo Tintoretto, The Liberation of Arsinoe, ca. 1556

Francesco Montelatici a.k.a. Cecco Bravo, Ruggero and Angelica, 1660

Michaelis Majeri, Secretioris naturae secretorum scrutinium chymicum, 1687

“All this – wrote Caillois – undoubtedly gives rise to an emotion which is in a certain sense natural, inevitable, and does not owe its effectiveness to the illustrated anecdote. André Pieyre de Mandiargues, describing Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara […], reports that licentious tournaments were held in the hall on the first floor in which naked girls contended with knights in arms. If the rumor is true, the strange game convinces me only of the fact that the power of suggestion of that image is even greater than I imagined. If it is unfounded, the fact that it was taken up by Mandiargues convinces me almost as much of the secret and persistent virulence of that fantasy.”

William Etty, Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret, ca. 1833

Arthur Hughes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, 1863

Joseph Paul Blanc, The Liberation – Ruggero and Angelica, 1876

In time the motif no longer needed much historical anecdotes to lean on. Millais’s Knight Errant does not refer to any precise mythological or literary episode – if not, perhaps, to John Keats’ ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819) – as it will happen with other variations on the theme by the Pre-Raphaelites.

John Everett Millais, The Knight Errant, 1870

Edward Burne-Jones, The Doom Fulfulled, 1885

Charles Napier Kennedy, Perseus and Andromeda, 1890

Arthur Hacker, The Temptation of Sir Percival, ca. 1894

One of the most interesting declinations is undoubtedly the one chosen by Delacroix in 1852, in which the knight-errant is actually a woman: it is Marfisa, once again a character drawn from Ariosto.
It is worth summing up the background story of this scene: the warrior-woman on her steed is giving a passage across the river to the witch Gabrina, when they meet the knight Pinabello and her beautiful but insolent lover, who laughs at the old woman. Determined to avenge this offense, Marfisa defeats the knight in a duel and forces Pinabello’s mistress to strip off her rich garments and give them to her old woman.

In stripping the knight’s cheeky lover, Marfisa seems to parody the very artistic motif we are talking about. In fact unlike all the other armored knights we’ve seen so far, who fall at the feet of the girl in déshabillé, here the intrepid warrior, being a woman, does not let herself be duped: to the pretty girl (to paint which, according to Armando Sodano, Delacroix had rediscovered “the lyricism of odalisques of his youth”) Marfisa prefers the old hag she carries on her steed. Who certainly isn’t beautiful, but intelligent.
An ironic punishment for female vanity that comes from a female in armor, one that I find amusing to read in a metanarrative sense: “if you are a woman who cannot go beyond appearances”, Marfisa seems to warn, “then you deserve to be naked , as happens to all the other maidens in this very type of paintings!”

Eugène Delacroix, Marfisa, 1852

Finally, let me go back to Excalibur. Over the years I have often found myself wondering what was special about that scene, and why did it end up being engraved so strongly in my imagination.

Uther’s passion is cruel, compelling, violent. He encompasses all the arrogance of the well-known masculinity centered on possession: a vision made of fury, of rights arrogated and obtained even by deception, a vision in which the longed-for woman must be taken by force. It could be said that the character of Uther, who even recurs to a magic spell in order to satisfy his desires, is “blinded by passion”: a phrase that is sometimes used even today as an extenuating circumstance for rapes and femicides. This is why it is a dark, disturbing sex scene; it is no coincidence that it is interpolated by Boorman with the images of the massacre on the battlefield and with the shots of the innocent child (Morgana) who witnesses this furious embrace, while the soundtrack by Trevor Jones, through pulsating strings and choirs of wavering voices, creates a surreal and deadly atmosphere.

Excalibur (1981) by John Boorman

Yet Igraine does not shy away from aggression: perhaps because she truly believes that he is her husband – or perhaps because there is a subtle complacency in causing such a fury in any lover. Which of the two is dominant, the knight who attacks, or the female who has the power to make him fall prey to passion?

The scene is therefore suspended, as its power relationship is ambiguous. This ambiguity is also intrinsic to the artistic theme we have talked about. On the one hand, the artists tend to highlight the contrast between feminine weakness and fragility, as symbolized by the tempting softness of naked flesh, and strong masculinity as signified by the hard appearance of metal. On the other hand, however, the very armor that should be a symbol of might and virility almost seems like a shell that encloses and constrains all impulses.

John William Waterhouse, La Belle Dame sans Merci, 1893

John William Waterhouse, Lamia and the Soldier, ca. 1905

Such a representation inevitably raises questions: is the knight’s “macho” allure amplified by this encounter with a beautiful lady in Evitic costume, or does he on the contrary appear to be mocked? After being victorious in countless battles, isn’t the warrior conquered by the irresistible seduction of women? Is his armor a symbol of power or rather impotence (as it prevents intercourse)? Is the naked woman, in all her soft and helpless charm, really a compliant prey or is she the one who bewitches and leads the game?

Rose O’Neill, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1905

The opposition between these two extremes (manhood enclosed in war vestments, and naked seductive femininity) is the embodiment of a dialectic between the sexes that has been handed down for a very long time as if it were an immutable truth. Yet the dynamics of the relations of power, domination and submission, are never as univocal as they might seem; the mechanism is delicate, and  the opposing components at its core are in constant tension towards overturning one another.

The strength of the image of the knight and the naked woman lies precisely in the fact that, at a deep level, its balance remains undecidable.

Vereker Monteith Hamilton (1856 – 1931), The Rescue

Myrtle The Four-Legged Girl

Mrs. Josephine M. Bicknell died only one week before her sixtieth birthday; she was buried in Cleburne, Texas, at the beginning of May, 1928.

Once the coffin was lowered into the ground,her husband James C. Bicknell stood watching as the grave was filled with a thick layer of cement; he waited for an hour, maybe two, until the cement dried completely. Eventually James and the other relatives could head back home, relieved: nobody would be able to steal Mrs. Bicknell’s body – not the doctors, nor the other collectors who had tried to obtain it.

It is strange to think that a lifeless body could be tempting for so many people.
But the lady who was resting under the cement had been famous across the United States, many years before, under her maiden name: Josephine Myrtle Corbin, the Four-Legged Girl from Texas.

Myrtle was born in 1868 in Lincoln County, Tennessee, with a rare fetal anomaly called dipygus: her body was perfectly formed from her head down to her navel, below which it divided into two pelvises, and four lower limbs.

Her two inner legs, although capable of movement, were rudimentary, and at birth they were found laying flat on the belly. They resembled those of a parasitic twin, but in reality there was no twin: during fetal development, her pervis had split along the median axis (in each pair of legs, one was atrophic).

 Medical reports of the time stated that

between each pair of legs there is a complete, distinct set of genital organs, both external and internal, each supported by a pubic arch. Each set acts independently of the other, except at the menstrual period. There are apparently two sets of bowels, and two ani; both are perfectly independent,– diarrhoea may be present on one side, constipation on the other.

Myrtle joined Barnum Circus at the age of 13. When she appeared on stage, nothing gave away her unusual condition: apart from the particularly large hips and a clubbed right foot, Myrtle was an attractive girl and had an altogether normal figure. But when she lifted her gown, the public was left breathless.

She married James Clinton Bicknell when she was 19 years old, and the following year she went to Dr. Lewis Whaley on the account of a pain in her left side coupled with other worrying symptoms. When the doctor announced that she was pregnant in her left uterus, Myrtle reacted with surprise:

“I think you are mistaken; if it had been on my right side I would come nearer believing it”; and after further questioning he found, from the patient’s observation, that her right genitals were almost invariably used for coitus.

That first pregnancy sadly ended with an abortion, but later on Myrtle, who had retired from show business, gave birth to four children, all perfectly healthy.

Given the enormous success of her show, other circuses tried to replicate the lucky formula – but charming ladies with supernumerary legs were nowhere to be found.
With typical sideshow creativity, the problem was solved by resorting to some ruse.
The two following diagrams show the trick used to simulate a three-legged and a four-legged woman, as reported in the 1902 book The New Magic (source: Weird Historian).

If you search for Myrtle Corbin’s pictures on the net, you can stumble upon some photographs of Ashley Braistle, the most recent example of a woman with four legs.
The pictures below were taken at her wedding, in July 1994, when she married a plumber from Houston named Wayne: their love had begun after Ashley appeared in a newspaper interview, declaring that she was looking for a “easygoing and sensitive guy“.

Unfortunately on May 11, 1996, Ashley’s life ended in tragedy when she made an attempt at skiing and struck a tree.

Did you guess it?
Ashley’s touching story is actually a trick, just like the ones used by circus people at the turn of the century.
This photographic hoax comes from another bizarre “sideshow”, namely the Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid known for publishing openly fake news with funny and inventive titles (“Mini-mermaid found in tuna sandwich!” “Hillary Clinton adopts a baby alien!”, “Abraham Lincoln was a woman!”, and so on).

The “news” of Ashley’s demise on the July 4, 1996 issue.

 

Another example of a Weekly World News cover story.

To end on a more serious note, here’s the good news: nowadays caudal duplications can, in some instances, be surgically corrected after birth (it happened for example in 1968, in 1973 and in 2014).

And luckily, pouring cement is no longer needed in order to prevent jackals from stealing an extraordinary body like the one of Josephine Myrtle Corbin Bicknell.

Links, curiosities & mixed wonders – 10

Here’s another plate of fresh links and random weirdness to swallow in one bite, like the above frog did with a little snake.

  • In Madagascar there is a kind of double burial called famadihana: somewhat similar to the more famous Sulawesi tradition, famadihana consists in exhuming the bodies of the departed, equipping them with a new and clean shroud, and then burying them again. But not before having enjoyed one last, happy dance with the dead relative.

  • Whining about your writer’s block? Francis van Helmont, alchemist and close friend of  famed philosopher Leibniz, was imprisoned by the Inquisition and wrote a book in between torture sessions. Besides obviously being a tough guy, he also had quite original ideas: according to his theory, ancient Hebrew letters were actually diagrams showing how lips and mouth should be positioned in order to pronounce the same letters. God, in other words, might have “printed” the Hebrew alphabet inside our very anatomy.

  • Reason #4178 to love Japan: giant rice straw sculptures.
  • At the beginning of the last century, it was legal to send babies through the mail in the US. (Do we have a picture? Of course we do.)

  • In France, on the other hand, around the year 1657 children were eager to play a nice little game called Fart-In-The-Face (“Back in my day, we had one toy, and it was our…“).

  • James Ballard was passionate for what he called “invisible literature”: sales recepits, grocery lists, autopsy reports, assembly instructions, and so on. I find a similar thrill in seeking 19th-century embalming handbooks: such technical, professional publications, if read today, always have a certain surreal je ne sais quoi. And sometimes they also come with exceptional photographs, like these taken from a 1897 book.

  • In closing, I would like to remind you of two forthcoming appointments: on October 29, at 7pm, I will be in Rome at Giufà Libreria Caffe’ to present Tabula Esmeraldina, the latest visionary work by my Chilean friend Claudio Romo.
    On November 3-5, you will find me at Lucca Comics & Games, stand NAP201, signing copies of Paris Mirabilia and chatting with readers of Bizzarro Bazar. See you there!

 

Children of the Grave

They give birth astride of a grave,
the light gleams an instant,
then it’s night once more.

(S. Beckett, Aspettando Godot)

An Italian Horror Story

Castel del Giudice, Italy.
On the 5th of August 1875, a pregnant woman, indicated in the documents with the initials F. D’A., died during labor, before being able to give birth to her child.
On the following day, without respecting the required minimum waiting time before interment, her body was lowered into the cemetery’s fossa carnaria. This was a kind of collective burial for the poorest classes, still common at the time in hundreds of Italian communes: it consisted in a sealed underground space, a room or a pit, where the corpses were stacked and left to rot (some inside coffins, others wrapped in simple shrouds).

For the body of F. D’A., things began to get ugly right from the start:

She had to be lowered in the pit, so the corpse was secured with a rope, but the rope broke and D’A.’s poor body fell from a certain height, her head bumping into a casket. Some people climbed down, they took D’A. and arranged her on her back upon a nearby coffin, where she laid down with a deathly pale face, her hands tied together and resting on her abdomen, her legs joined by stitched stockings. Thus, and not otherwise, D’A. was left by the participants who buried her.

But when, a couple of days later, the pit was opened again in order to bury another deceased girl, a terrible vision awaited the bystanders:

F. D’A.’s sister hurried to give a last goodbye to her dead relative, but as soon as she looked down to the place where her sister was laid to rest, she had to observe the miserable spectacle of her sister placed in a very different position from the one she had been left in; between her legs was the fetus she had given birth to, inside the grave, and together with whom she had miserably died. […] Officers immediately arrived, and found D’A.’s body lying on her left side, her face intensely strained; her hands, still tied by a white cotton ribbon, formed an arch with her arms and rested on her forehead, while pieces of white ribbon were found between her teeth […]. At the mother’s feet stood a male newborn child with his umbilical cord, showing well-proportioned and developed limbs.

Imagine the horror of the poor woman, waking up in the dark in the grip of labor pains; with her last remaining energy she had succeeded in giving birth to her child, only to die shortly after, “besieged by corpses, lacking air, assistance or food, and exhausted by the blood loss suffered during delivery“.
One could hardly picture a more dreadful fate.

The case had a huge resonance all across Italy; a trial took place at the Court of Isernia, and the town physician, the mayor and the undertaker were found guilty of two involuntary murders “aggravated by gross negligence“, sentenced to six months in jail and fined (51 liras) – but the punishment was later cut by half by the Court of Appeal of Naples in November 1877.
This unprecedented reduction of penalty was harshly criticized by the Times correspondant in Italy, who observed that “the circumstances of the case, if well analyzed, show the slight value which is attached to human life in this country“; the news also appeared in the New York Times as well as in other British and American newspapers.

This story, however scary – because it is so scary – should be taken with a pinch of salt.
There’s more than one reason to be careful.

Buried Alive?

First of all, the theme of a pregnant woman believed dead and giving birth in a grave was already a recurring motif in the Nineteeth Century, as taphophobia (the fear of being buried alive) reached its peak.

Folklorist Paul Barber in his Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988) argues that the number of people actually buried alive was highly exaggerated in the chronicles; a stance also shared by Jan Bondeson, who in one of the most complete books on the subject, Buried Alive, shows how the large majority of nineteenth-century premature burial accounts are not reliable.

For the most part it would seem to be a romantic, decadent literary topos, albeit inspired by a danger that was certainly real in the past centuries: interpreting the signs of death was a complex and often approximate procedure, so much so that by the 1700s some treatises (the most famous one being Winslow‘s) introduced a series of measures to verify with greater accuracy the passing of a patient.

A superficial knowledge of decomposition processes could also lead to misunderstandings.
When bodies were exhumed, it was not uncommon to find their position had changed; this was due to the cadaver’s natural tendency to move during decomposition, and to be sometimes subjected to small “explosions” caused by putrefaction gasses – explosions that are powerful enough to rotate the body’s upper limbs. Likewise, the marks left by rodents or other scavengers (loose dirt, scratches, bite marks, torn clothes, fallen hair) could be mistaken for the deceased person’s desperate attempts at getting out.

Yet, as we’ve said, there was a part of truth, and some unfortunate people surely ended up alive inside a coffin. Even with all our modern diagnostic tools, every now and then someone wakes up in a morgue. But these events are, today like yesterday, extremely rare, and these stories speak more about a cultural fear rather than a concrete risk.

Coffin Birth

If being buried alive was already an exceptional fact, then the chances of a pregnant woman actually giving birth inside a grave look even slimmer. But this idea – so charged with pathos it could only fascinate the Victorian sensibility – might as well have come from real observations. Opening a woman’s grave and finding a stillborn child must have looked like a definitive proof of her premature burial.
What wasn’t known at the time is that the fetus can, in rare circumstances, be expelled postmortem.

Anaerobic microorganisms, which start the cadaver’s putrefactive phase, release several gasses during their metabolic activity. During this emphysematous stage, internal tissues stretch and tighten; the torso, abdomen and legs swell; the internal pressure caused by the accumulation of gas can lead, within the body of a woman in the late stages of pregnancy, to a separation of amniotic membranes, a prolapse of the uterus and a subsequent total or partial extrusion of the fetus.
This event appears to be more likely if the dead woman has been pregnant before, on the account of a more elastic cervix.
This  strange phenomenon is called Sarggeburt (coffin birth) in early German forensic literature.

The first case of postmortem delivery dates back to 1551, when a woman hanged on the gallows released, four hours after her execution, the bodies of two twins, both dead. (A very similar episode happened in 2007 in India, when a woman killed herself during labor; in that instance, the baby was found alive and healthy.)
In Brussels, in 1633, a woman died of convulsions and three days later a fetus was spontaneously expelled. The same thing happened in Weißenfels, Saxony, in 1861. Other cases are mentioned in the first medical book to address this strange event, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, published in 1896, but for the most part these accidents occurred when the body of the mother had yet to be buried.
It was John Whitridge Williams who, in his fortunate Obstetrics: a text-book for the use of students and practitioners (1904), pointed to the possibility of postmortem delivery taking place after burial.

Fetal extrusion after the mother’s death has also been observed in recent times.

A 2005 case involved a woman who died in her apartment from acute heroine intoxication: upon finding her body, it was noted that the fetus head was protruding from the mother’s underwear; but later on, during the autopsy, the upper part of the baby’s torso was also visible – a sign that gasses had continued to build in the abdominal region, increasing interior pressure.
In 2008 a 38 year-old, 7 months pregnant woman was found murdered in a field in advanced state of decomposition, accelerated by tropical climate. During the autopsy a fetus was found inside the woman’s slips, the umbilical cord still attached to the placenta (here is the forensic case study – WARNING: graphic).

Life In Death

So, going back to that unfortunate lady from Castel del Giudice, what really happened to her?
Sure, the autopsy report filed at the time and quoted in the trial papers mentioned the presence of air in the baby’s lungs, a proof that the child was born alive. And it’s possible that this was the case.

But on one hand this story fits all too perfectly within a specific popular narrative of its time, whose actual statistical incidence has been doubted by scholars; on the other, the possibility of postmortem fetal extrusion is well-documented, so much so that even archeologists sometimes struggle to interpret ancient skeletal findings showing fetuses still partially enclosed within the pelvic bone.

The only certain thing is that these stories – whether they’re authentic or made up – have an almost archetypal quality; birth and death entwined in a single place and time.
Maybe they’re so enthralling because, on a symbolic level, they remind us of a peculiar truth, one expressed in a famous verse from Manilius‘ Astronomica:

Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet.

“As we are born we die, our end commences with our beginning.”

Mater incerta

In 2002 Lydia Fairchild, a 26-year-old woman living in Washington state, was already a mother of two kids, with a third one on her way, and without a steady job; she had decided to seek public assistance.
The procedure required her children to undergo DNA testing to confirm that their father was indeed Jamie Townsend, Fairchild’s former partner. It should have been a routine check, but some days later the woman received a strange call, asking her to come in the prosecutor’s office at Social Services.
And that is when her world almost fell apart.

Once she went in, the officers closed the door behind her and started drilling her: “Who are you?”, they kept asking her repeatedly, without her understanding what was going on.
The reason behind the relentless questioning was absolutely unpredictable: the DNA tests had proven that Jamie Townsend was actually the children’s father… but Lydia was not their mother.

Although the woman kept repeating that she had carried and delivered them, the results categorically excluded this possibility: the genetic profiles of her children were in fact made up for one half from their father’s chromosomes, and for the other half from the chromosomes of an unknown woman. Lydia Fairchild was facing the risk of having her kids taken away from her.
Before the woman’s despair, Social Services ordered a new test, which gave exactly the same results. Lydia showed no genetic link with her children.

During the following 16 months, things got worse. The officers launched court action to remove her custody rights, as this could turn out to be a case of abduction, and the state even had a court officer witness her third child’s delivery, so that DNA test could be run immediately after birth. Once again, the newborn baby showed no genes in common with Lydia, who then became a suspect of acting as a surrogate for payment (which in Washington state is considered gross misdemeanor).
Lydia Fairchild was living a true nightmare: “I’d sit and have dinner with my kids and just break out crying. They would just look at me like, ‘What’s wrong, Mum.’ They’d come get me a hug, and I couldn’t explain it to them, because I didn’t understand“.

Her lawyer Alan Tindell, though initially perplexed by the case, decided to investigate and one day stumbled upon a similar story that happened in Boston, as described in a paper on the New England Journal of Medicine: a 52-year-old woman, Karen Keegan, had undergone a hystological exam in view of a transplant, and the results had shown no link between her DNA and her children’s.
Quite often the solution for the most intricate mysteries turn out to be disappointing, but in this case the explanation was just as incredible.
The lawyer understood that, just like the mother the scientific paper was about, Lydia too was a chimera.

Tetragametic chimerism happens when two egg cells are fertilized by two different sperm cells and, instead of developing into two fraternal twins, they fuse together at a very early stage. The chimeric individual is equipped with two different genetic makeups, and can develop whole organs having different chromosomes from all the others. Most chimeras do not even know they are, because the existence of two cellular lines is not often noticeable; but they carry inside them for instance the liver, or some other gland, that should have been part of their unborn twin.
In Fairchild’s case, the “foreign” organs were her ovaries. Inside of them were hidden those unknown chromosomes that formed the genetic makeup of Lydias’s children, as was confirmed by the examination of the cells obtained via pap test.

Finally the court dismissed the case. In the court hearing, the judge openly wondered how reliable could DNA tests be, as they are even today held essential in forensic cases — but what if the criminal is a chimera?
Today Lydia Fairchild is back to her normal life, leaving this terrible adventure behind. And some years ago she gave birth to her fourth daughter; or, if you will, the fourth daughter of that sister she never had.

The New England Journal of Medicine paper mentioned in the post can be read here. To discover some less-known istances of chimerism, I suggest this articolo.

Veneri anatomiche: l’ossessione del femmineo

C’è un’ossessione profonda, che attraversa i secoli e non accenna a placarsi. L’ossessione maschile per il corpo della donna.

Un corpo magnetico che conduce a sé (seduce), tirando i fili del simbolo; carne duttile e plasmabile, che nell’atto sessuale ha funzione ricettiva, eppure voragine abissale nella quale ci si può perdere; corpo castrante, che eccita la violenza e l’idolatria, corpo di dea callipigia da deflorare; scrigno che racchiude il segreto della vita, sessualità ambigua il cui piacere è sconosciuto e terribile.

Così è capitato che nel corpo femminile si sia scavato, per cavarne fuori questo suo mistero, aprendolo, smembrandolo in pezzi da ricombinare, cercando le occulte e segrete analogie, le geometrie nascoste, l’algebra del desiderio, come ha fatto ad esempio Hans Bellmer in tutta la sua carriera. Nei suoi scritti e nelle sue opere pittoriche (oltre che nelle sue bambole, di cui avevo parlato qui) l’artista tedesco ha maniacalmente decostruito la figura femminile disegnando paralleli inaspettati e perturbanti fra le varie parti anatomiche, in una sorta di febbrile feticismo onnicomprensivo, in cui occhi, vulve, piedi, orecchie si fondono assieme fluidamente, fino a creare inedite configurazioni di carne e di sogno.

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L’erotismo di Bellmer è uno sguardo psicopatologico e assieme lucidissimo, freddo e visionario al tempo stesso; ed è nella sua opera Rose ouverte la nuit (1934), e nelle successive declinazioni del tema, che l’artista dà la più esatta indicazione di quale sia la sua ricerca. Nel dipinto, una ragazza solleva la pelle del suo stesso ventre per esaminare le proprie viscere.

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L’atto di alzare la pelle della donna, come si potrebbe sollevare una gonna, è una delle più potenti raffigurazioni dell’ossessione di cui parliamo. È lo strip-tease finale che lascia la femmina più nuda del nudo, che permette di scrutare all’interno della donna alla ricerca di un segreto che forse, beffardamente, non si troverà mai.
Ma l’immagine non è nuova, anzi vuole riecheggiare lo stesso turbamento che si può provare di fronte alle numerose e meravigliose veneri anatomiche a grandezza naturale scolpite in passato da abili artisti, una tradizione nata a Firenze alla fine del XVII secolo.

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Queste bellissime fanciulle adagiate in pose languide aprono l’interno del loro corpo allo sguardo dello spettatore, senza pudore, senza mostrare dolore. Anzi, dalle espressioni dei loro volti si direbbe quasi che vi sia in loro un sottile compiacimento, un piacere estatico nell’offrirsi in questa nudità assoluta.
Perché questi corpi non sono rappresentati come cadaveri, ma essenzialmente vivi e coscienti?
L’esistenza stessa di simili sculture oggi può disorientare, ma è in realtà una naturale evoluzione delle preoccupazioni artistiche, scientifiche e religiose dei secoli precedenti. Prima di parlare di queste straordinarie opere ceroplastiche, facciamo dunque un rapido excursus che ci permetta di comprenderne appieno il contesto; sottolineo che non mi interesso qui alla storia delle veneri, né esclusivamente alla loro portata scientifica, quanto piuttosto al loro particolarissimo ruolo in riguardo al femmineo.

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Il dominio dello sguardo
Quando Vesalio, con incredibile coraggio (o spavalderia), si fece immortalare sul frontespizio della sua De humani corporis fabrica (1543) nell’atto di dissezionare personalmente un cadavere, stava lanciando un messaggio rivoluzionario: la medicina galenica, indiscussa fino ad allora, era colma di errori perché nessuno si era premurato di aprire un corpo umano e guardarci dentro con i propri occhi. Uomo del Rinascimento, Vesalio era strenuo sostenitore dell’esperienza diretta – in un’epoca, questo è ancora più notevole, in cui la “scienza” come la conosciamo non era ancora nata – e fu il primo a scindere il corpo da tutte le altre preoccupazioni metafisiche. Dopo di lui, il funzionamento del corpo umano non andrà più cercato nell’astrologia, nelle relazioni simbolico-alchemiche o negli elementi, ma in esso stesso.
Da questo momento, la dissezione occuperà per i secoli a venire il centro di ogni ricerca medica. Ed è lo sguardo di Vesalio, uno sguardo di sfida, altero e duro come la pietra, a imporsi come il paradigma dell’osservazione scientifica.

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Il problema morale
Bisogna tenere a mente che nei secoli che stiamo prendendo in esame, l’anatomia non era affatto distaccata dalla visione religiosa, anzi si riteneva che studiare l’uomo – centro assoluto della Natura, immagine e somiglianza del Creatore e culmine della sua opera – significasse avvicinarsi un po’ di più anche a Dio.

Eppure, per quanto si riconoscesse come fondamentale l’esperienza diretta, era difficile liberarsi dall’idea che dissezionare una salma fosse in realtà una sorta di sacrilegio. Questa sensazione scomoda venne aggirata cercando soggetti di studio che avessero in qualche modo perso il loro statuto di “uomini”: criminali, suicidi o poveracci che il mondo non reclamava. Candidati ideali per il tavolo settorio. La violazione che si osava infliggere ai loro corpi era poi ulteriormente giustificata in quanto alle spoglie dissezionate venivano garantite, in cambio del sacrificio, una messa e una sepoltura cristiana che altrimenti non avrebbero avuto. Grazie al loro contributo alla ricerca, avendo scontato per così dire la loro pena, essi tornavano ad essere accettati dalla società.

Lo stesso senso di colpa per l’attività di dissezione spiega il successo delle tavole anatomiche che raffigurano i cosiddetti écorché, gli scorticati. Per raffigurare gli apparati interni, si decise di mostrare soggetti in pose plastiche, vivi e vegeti a dispetto delle apparenze, anzi spesso artefici o complici delle loro stesse dissezioni. Una simile visione era certamente meno fastidiosa e scioccante che vedere le parti anatomiche esposte su un tavolo come carne da macello (cfr. M. Vène, Ecorchés : L’exploration du corps, XVIème-XVIIIème siècle, 2001).

L’uomo, che si è scorticato da solo, osserva l’interno della sua stessa pelle come a carpirne i segreti. Da Valverde, Anatomia del corpo humano (1560).

Dal medesimo volume, dissezione del peritoneo in tre atti. Nella terza figura, il personaggio tiene fra i denti la propria parete addominale per mostrarne il reticolo vascolare.

Dal medesimo volume, dissezione del peritoneo in tre atti. Nella terza figura, il personaggio tiene fra i denti il proprio grembiule omentale per mostrarne il reticolo vascolare.

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Spiegel e Casseri, De humani corporis fabrica libri decem (1627).

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Spiegel e Casseri, Ibid.

Venere detronizzata
Già nelle stampe degli écorché si nota una differenza fra figure maschili e femminili. Per illustrare il sistema muscolare venivano utilizzati soggetti maschili, mentre le donne esibivano spesso e volentieri gli organi interni, e fin dalle primissime rappresentazioni erano nella quasi totalità dei casi gravide. Il feto visibile all’interno del grembo femminile sottolineava la primaria funzione della donna come generatrice di vita, mentre dall’altro canto gli écorché maschi si presentavano in pose virili che ne esaltavano la prestanza fisica.

Spiegel e Casseri, Ibid.

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Un muscoloso corpo maschile posa per una tavola che in realtà descrive una dissezione del cranio. Dal De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres di C. Estienne (1545).

Dal medesimo volume, l’anatomia degli intestini è baroccamente inserita all’interno di una corazza da guerriero romano.

Lo svelamento dell’utero, messa in scena simbolica della denudazione. Dal Carpi commentaria cum amplissimis additionibus super Anatomia Mundini (1521).

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La gravida di Pietro Berrettini (1618) si alza snella e graziosa per esibire il suo apparato riproduttivo.

Come si vede nelle stampe qui sotto, già dalla metà del ‘500 i soggetti femminili mostrano una certa sensualità, mentre si abbandonano a pose che in altri contesti risulterebbero indecenti e impudiche. L’artista qui si spinse addirittura a realizzare delle versioni anatomiche di celebri stampe erotiche clandestine, ricopiando le pose dei personaggi ma scorticandoli secondo la tradizione anatomica, “raffreddando” così ironicamente la scena.

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Donna che tiene la placenta di due gemelli. Ispirata a una stampa erotica di Perino Del Vaga. Dal De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres di C. Estienne (1545).

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Dal medesimo testo, gravida che espone l’apparato riproduttivo. Il contesto di camera da letto dona alla posa una connotazione marcatamente erotica.

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Altra illustrazione ispirata a una stampa erotica di Perino del Vaga (vedi sotto).

Ecco il modello “proibito” per la stampa anatomica precedente. (G.G. Caraglio, Giove e Antiope, da Perino del Vaga)

Non bisogna dimenticare infatti che un altro sottotesto — decisamente più misogino — di alcune stampe anatomiche femminili, è quello che intende smentire, sfatare il fascino della donna. Tutta la sua carica erotica, tutta la sua bellezza tentatrice viene disinnescata tramite l’esposizione delle interiora.
Difficile non pensare a Memento di Tarchetti:

Quando bacio il tuo labbro profumato,
cara fanciulla, non posso obbliare
che un bianco teschio vi è sotto celato.

Quando a me stringo il tuo corpo vezzoso,
obbliar non poss’io, cara fanciulla,
che vi è sotto uno scheletro nascosto.

E nell’orrenda visïone assorto,
dovunque o tocchi, o baci, o la man posi,
sento sporgere le fredda ossa di morto.

(Disjecta, 1879)

Se dobbiamo credere a Baudrillard (Della seduzione, 1979), l’uomo ha sempre avuto il controllo sul potere concreto, mentre la femmina si è appropriata nel tempo del potere sull’immaginario. E il secondo è infinitamente più importante del primo: ecco spiegata l’origine dell’ossessione maschile, quel senso di impotenza di fronte alla forza del simbolo detenuto dalla donna. Pur con tutte le sue violente guerre e le sue conquiste virili, egli ne è sedotto e soggiogato senza scampo.
Ricorre dunque all’estrema soluzione: frustrato da un mistero che non riesce a svelare, finisce per negare che esso sia mai esistito.
Ecce mulier! Questa è la tanto vagheggiata femmina, che fa perdere la testa agli uomini e induce al peccato: soltanto un ammasso di disgustosi organi e budella.

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Da Valverde, Anatomia del corpo humano (1560).

La messa in scena dell’osceno
Alcune stampe cinquecentesche erano composte di diversi fogli ritagliati, in modo che il lettore potesse sollevarli e scostare poco a poco i vari “strati” del corpo del soggetto, scoprendone l’anatomia in maniera attiva. L’immagine qui sotto, del 1570 circa e poi numerose volte ristampata, è un esempio di questi antesignani dei pop-up book; pensata ad uso dei barbieri-chirurghi (l’uomo tiene la mano in una bacinella di acqua calda per gonfiare le vene del braccio prima di un salasso), consiste di quattro risvolti incollati da sfogliare in successione per vedere gli organi interni.

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Le veneri anatomiche, decomponibili, non erano dunque che la versione tridimensionale di questo genere di stampe. Gli studenti avevano la possibilità di smontare gli organi, studiarne la morfologia e la posizione senza dover ricorrere a un cadavere.

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Se la ceroplastica si propose quindi fin dal principio come sostituto o complemento della dissezione, ottimo strumento didattico per medici e anatomisti spesso in cronica penuria di salme fresche, le statue in cera costituirono anche uno dei primi esempi di spettacolo anatomico accessibile anche alla gente comune. Le dissezioni vere e proprie erano già un educativo divertissement per la buona società, che pagava volentieri il biglietto di entrata per il teatro anatomico approntato solitamente nei pressi dell’Università. Ma la collezione fiorentina di cere anatomiche contenute all’interno del Museo della Specola, voluto dal Granduca di Toscana, era visitabile anche dai profani.

Da sovrano illuminato e da appassionato di scienza qual era, si rese conto, con molto anticipo rispetto agli altri regnanti, di quanto fosse importante la cultura scientifica e di come questa dovesse essere resa accessibile a tutti. […] C’erano orari diversi per le persone istruite e per il popolo: quest’ultimo infatti poteva visitare il Museo dalle 8 alle 10 “purché politamente vestito” lasciando poi spazio fino “alle 1 dopo mezzogiorno… alle persone intelligenti e studiose”. Anche se ora questa distinzione ci suona un po’ offensiva, si capisce quanto fosse innovativa per quell’epoca l’apertura anche al grosso pubblico.

(M. Poggesi, La collezione ceroplastica del Museo La Specola, in Encyclopaedia anatomica, 2001)

Le cere anatomiche dunque, oltre ad essere un supporto di studio, facevano anche appello ad altre, più nascoste fascinazioni che attiravano con enorme successo masse di visitatori di ogni estrazione sociale, divenendo tra l’altro tappa fissa dei Grand Tour.

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Allo stesso modo delle stampe antiche, anche nelle statue di cera si ritrova la stessa esposizione del corpo della donna – passiva, sottomessa all’anatomista che (presumibilmente) la sta aprendo, spesso gravida del feto che porta dentro di sé, il volto mai scorticato e anzi seducente; e la figura maschile è invece ancora una volta utilizzata principalmente per illustrare l’apparato muscolo-scheletrico, i vasi sanguigni e linfatici ed è priva della sensualità che contraddistingue i soggetti femminili.

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Eros, Thanatos e crudeltà
Le veneri anatomiche fiorentine non potevano non suscitare l’interesse di Sade.
Il Marchese ne parla una prima volta, col tono discreto del turista, nel suo Viaggio in Italia; le menziona ancora in Juliette, quando la sua perversa eroina scopre con giubilo cinque piccoli tableaux di Zumbo che mostrano le fasi della decomposizione di un cadavere. Ma è nelle 120 giornate di Sodoma che le cere sono utilizzate nella loro dimensione più sadiana: qui una giovane fanciulla viene accompagnata all’interno di una stanza che racchiude diverse veneri anatomiche, e dovrà decidere in quale modo preferisce essere uccisa e squartata.

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Lo sguardo lucido di Sade ha dunque colto il volto oscuro, cioè l’erotismo perturbante e crudele, di queste straordinarie opere d’arte scientifica. Sono senza dubbio i volti serafici, in alcuni casi quasi maliziosi, di queste donne a suggerire un loro malcelato piacere nell’essere lacerate e offerte al pubblico; e allo stesso tempo questi modelli tridimensionali rendono ancora più evidente la surreale contraddizione degli écorché, che restano in vita come nulla fosse, nonostante le ferite mortali.
Si può discutere se il Susini e gli altri ceroplasti suoi emuli fossero o meno perfettamente coscienti di un simile aspetto, forse non del tutto secondario, della loro opera; ma è innegabile che una parte del fascino di queste sculture provenga proprio dalla loro sensuale ambiguità.
Bataille fa notare (Le lacrime di Eros, 1961) che, nel momento in cui l’uomo ha preso coscienza della morte, seppellendo i suoi morti con rituali funebri, ha anche cominciato a raffigurare se stesso, sulle pareti delle grotte, con il sesso eretto; a dimostrazione di quanto morte e sesso siano collegati a doppio filo, quali opposti che spesso si confondono.

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Le veneri anatomiche, in questo senso, racchiudono in maniera perfetta tutta la complessità di questi temi. Splendidi e preziosi strumenti di indagine scientifica, meravigliosi oggetti d’arte, misteriosi e conturbanti simboli; con il loro misto di innocenza e crudeltà sembrano ancora oggi raccontarci le intricate peripezie del desiderio umano.

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Ecco la pagina dedicata alle cere anatomiche del Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze.

Vagina dentata

The Latin expression vagina dentata defines one of the most ancient archetypes of mankind: mythical representations of female genitalia equipped with ferocious dentition can be found in very different cultures and traditions.

In what can be read as an early warning against the dangers of the vagina, Hesiod recounts how, even before being born, Chronos castrated his understably surprised father Uranus from inside his mother Gaia’s vulva. In many other mythological tales, the hero on his quest has to pass through the gigantic vagina, armed with teeth, of a goddess: this happens in the Maori foundation myths, as well as in those of the Chaco tribes of Paraguay, or the Guyanese people. From North America populations to South East Asia, this monstrous menace was a primal fear. In Europe, particularly in Ireland and Grat Britain, cathedrals and castle fortifications sported the Sheela na Gig, gargoyles showing oversized, unsettling vulvas.

As you can guess, this myth is linked to an exquisitely masculine unconscious terror, so much so that Sigmund Freud interpreted it as a symbol of castration anxiety, that fear every male adolescent feels when first confronted with the female reproductive organ. Others see it as an allegory of the frustration of masculine vigor, which in a sexual intercourse enters “triumphantly” and always leaves “diminished”. In this sense, it is clear how the vagina dentata might be related to the ancient theme of the puella venenata (the “poisonous girl”), to other myths such as the succubus (which was perhaps meant to explain nocturnal emissions), and female spermophagus figures, who feed on men’s vital force, as for example the Mesopotamian demon Lilith.

The history of the vagina dentata, which was sometimes told to children, could have also served as a deterrent against molesters or occasional sex. Even in recent times, during the Vietnam War, a legend circulated among American troops regarding Viet Cong prostitutes who allegedly inserted razor blades or broken glass in their intimate parts, with the intent of mutilating those unwary soldiers who engaged in sex.

What few people know is that, in a purely theoretical way, a toothed vagina could be biologically possible. Dermoid cysts are masses of specialized cells; if these cells end up in the wrong part of the body, they can grow hair, bones or teeth. Inguinal dermoid cysts, however, do not localize in the vaginal area, but usually near ovaries. And even in the implausible scenario of a complete dentition being produced, the teeth would be incapsulated inside the cyst’s own tissue anyway.

Therefore, despite stories on the internet about mysterious “medical cases” of internal cysts growing teeth that pierce the uterus walls, in reality the vagina dentata remains just a fascinating myth.

As expected, this uncanny idea has been exploited in the movies: the most recent case is the comedy horror film Teeth (2007, directed by M. Lichtenstein), the story of a young girl who finds out her private parts behave rather aggressively during intercourse. Less ambitious, and more aware of the humorous potential of its subject matter, is the Japanese B-movie Sexual Parasite: Killer Pussy (2004, by T. Nakano).

In Tokyo Gore Police (2008, by Y. Nishimura) a mutant girl grows a crocodile mandible in place of her thighs:

Many great authors have written about vagina dentata, including the great Tommaso Landolfi, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, Mario Vargas Llosa and others.