Talk:Elaine Dundy

Elaine Dundy website
The Elaine Dundy website is no longer there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.9.112.135 (talk) 01:46, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Flagellating?
Under the "Books" subheading, we get some story of Mrs. Dundy's marital troubles. "Around this time, Tynan started to insist on flagellating his wife, with the threat of his own suicide if she refused..." Flagellating is not exactly common English, and I thought perhaps the author meant he was beating her, either purely abusively or for a particularly violent kink, and thought to change the wording accordingly. I followed the Guardian link, which describes the same thing, only in perhaps even less clear language to contemporary readers like myself: "Tynan wanted to resume the English vice - bedtime flagellation, a pastime he had apparently enjoyed in his Oxford days - with Dundy as recipient. If she refused, he would climb melodramatically out on to the window-ledge and threaten to jump." Bedtime flagellation, the English Vice! Curious and charmingly jargony. I pursued the English Vice, to a an archive of some professor's personal website. ""The English Vice" can be confidently asserted to have been spanking the buttocks, however, 'flagellation' is another term that is sometimes used but is less specific." Evidence is apparently found in Ian Gibson's "The English Vice: Beating, Sex and Shame in Victorian England." Further, "The English 'public' school system used corporal punishment for many years and and it is claimed that many an English schoolboy acquired a taste for such treatment that carried on into his adult life. You may recall Swinburne's many references to Eton's block and 'birching', claiming that his own proclivity for that particular pasttime had been cultivated by such school practices." So, I suggest replacing "flagellating" in the article with "spanking" or something more common-English which captures something of the punitive aspect. 2601:18D:4800:C0B0:F1CD:5CDE:5F9B:DBF5 (talk) 20:15, 4 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Flagellating is not exactly common English? Perhaps not common, but have a look at Victorian pornography, etc..--Ralfdetlef (talk) 08:51, 6 August 2023 (UTC)