“The Headmaster’s Wife”. In which the gentleman in question falls for an eighteen-year old pupil, leading to so many memorable lines. They head, early on in the book, to Boston, for an alumni event:
She dresses for the occasion, more than the usual school requirements of safe preppiness… There is something different about her and it takes me a moment to realise what it is. It is makeup. She wears lipstick and eyeshadow. There is something cheap about it, and for an instant after she is in the car, I am disappointed in her.
Back at school, the day after staying overnight together:
“It is an unquestionably warm day for October, and she wears a skirt that flirts with the dresscode for length… In the classroom she is the last one in. I flash to the moment before we came into this building, her staring up at baseball star Russell, and I suddenly have the urge to punish her.”
And then the book takes an unexpected turn, and ends up being rather remarkable.
Via Tristram Hunt’s history of the empire, told through the story of ten cities. Nothing to corrupt. But noted in passing, as the final chapter – on the rise and fall of Liverpool, my beloved home city, is one of the most remarkably insightful pieces of non-fictional writing I’ve ever come across.
On, then, to “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932.”
“[T]he Convent of St Bridget seemed like a fairy-tale castle populated by princesses dressed in brown robes, as British nuns… Life at school was better than it had been at home. Lou knew how little to ask for and more or less what to expect. Miss Frost had told her that the convent girls slept naked on the stone floor, and that at night nuns wore one shoe to make it sound as it they were approaching half as fast as they were…
The crisp, impersonal sting of Sister Luke’s cane said, You are real. You exist.”
Such fun! And all in perfectly innocent mainstream fiction. Who would have known?!
There are frequently many gems to be found in mainstream fiction – mostly, I have to say, featuring children, because in RL historically it was children who were subject to corporal punishment, but sometimes gems like this appear out of nowhere
And you are very good at discovering them Abel 
Oh, adding “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932” to my reading list.
You’re right, Domino. I can barely pick up a mainstream book these days without the author including in some mention of spanking. Most recently, What She Left Behind (Ellen Marie Wiseman)…this one was as you said a child at the earlier part of the 20th century. Combining early corset training and spanking:
“That night, her mother laced her into heavily boned stays, insisting they come off only in times of illness, and to bathe. A week later, Clara undid the straps in the middle of the night so she could sleep. The next morning, Ruth found the corset lying on the floor next to Clara’s bed and yanked Clara out of a sound sleep to properly spank her. After that, every night for the next two weeks, she tied Clara’s wrists together with a silk handkerchief to keep her hands out of mischief.”
Thinking this could be a highly entertaining role-play for the grownups! 😀 Definitely adding it to my list of *somedays*.
Oh how I wish I could get hands on “The headmaster’s wife”! It’s things like this that make me hate living in this country! Almost all books are in my language, it’s hard to find in English!