Before Onanism: Women’s Masturbation in Seventeenth-Century England

‘Monsters are they in Nature’: Female Masturbation and Constructions of Femininity in the Early Eighteenth Century England

“…Paige Donaghy's recent study provides a detailed exploration of the selfpleasuring behaviours of seventeenth-century women, demonstrating that Laqueur's claim that female masturbation went unremarked before Onania is not justified. 12 For the eighteenth century, Mary Fissell's analysis illustrates how women's bodies were portrayed in economic terms, invoking images of England's development into a mercantile power. 13 Laqueur's ambitious account flits back and forth between eighteenth-, nineteenth-and twentieth-century sources to frame masturbation as a 'democratic' vice, which became alarming chiefly because it produced nothing in a culture anxious about the emerging credit economy.…”