This morning I got a dose of pure kinky pleasure out of reading an entry by Indy about the Cowboy and the Schoolmaster – the two models of dominant character that find their way into spanking stories in the US and the UK respectively.
This part in particular made me squeal with glee:
…the Schoolmaster story isn’t inherently gendered. The Schoolmistress can surely wield a cane with sufficient skill to bring an unruly student to order, and girls can find themselves on the receiving end, too. Indeed, even though the vast majority of school corporal punishment was inflicted upon male students in real life, that fact has been purposely and gleefully ignored by many of the finest practitioners of the Schoolmaster story.
Cowboy stories, on the other hand, are gendered by definition. I suppose it would be possible to write macho gay M/m cowboy stories, too, and no doubt there are a few of them somewhere on the internet. In general, though, Cowboys handle other men with fist fights, but they deal with their women by turning them over their knees like children. They may want a partner in life, but she is clearly in a subservient role. In short, the Cowboy is the quintessential Alpha Male.
My own experience with both types of story began with mainstream literature: I met the Schoolmaster in “David Copperfield” and the Cowboy in “Firestorm” (a romance novel I read at school looking for the sex bits).
Dickens was a classic, but he convinced me that the only people who got spanked were boys. In Firestorm, I liked neither the heroine, nor the ridiculous macho hero, but she got spanked – and so, I began to believe, could I be. So it’s the gender-stereotype-enhancing romances that helped me reconsile with the fact that I was a spanking-crazy girl. Yet, if I were to choose between the two, the Schoolmaster gets my vote and my devotion.
Now somebody needs to write an essay about the Daddy. And it won’t be me, so any volunteers?
Thanks, Haron.
My spanking as romance awakening was definitely I Will Fear No Evil by Heinlein. Particularly amusing, as I haven’t read science fiction or fantasy, apart from spanking stories, for years.
I’ve also just realized that I’ve never read David Copperfield, even if I have clear memories of Pip being raised by hand in Great Expectations.
Odd that you should bring up Daddy, because I wouldn’t have said (at ALL) that the archetypal American spanking story was the cowboy/princess scenario. Of course that’s a common theme in romantic literature, but I think that if I had thought about it (which I hadn’t), that I would have said the fundamental American spanking story is the Daddy/daughter spanking. And I would have further claimed that the cowboy story is the sexual version (or the grown-up version) of the Daddy/daughter (or Mother/daughter) scene, in which the cowboy is the Daddy who takes the place of the absent/spoiling father from a girl’s childhood.
More of a comment on Indy’s blog, as I think with my fingers.
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I think I agree about Daddy/daughter being more prevalent in the US. In fact, I blame my lack of hard-wired Daddy-daughter playmates on the fact that I don’t play with any American guys. Too far away, the lot of them *sigh*
What a delicious post for a bookworm like myself! I can say as an American that I’ve always associated the school archetype, but then, I’m also a Southerner, where corporal punishment is still used in schools.
@ Elizabeth– I was raised in the South, too, and I’m absolutely sure that’s part of the reason I have such an affinity for British school stories. Hmm, maybe I’ll have to write a post about that, too.
@Haron & Serenity: I’m enjoying this discussion. Will respond to you both on my blog when I’m feeling a bit better.