Curiously Modern Sex-Ed "Flicker Book" for Women (1933)

Van de Velde, Theodor Hendrik

[STRANGE FLICKER BOOK]. Sex Efficiency Through Exercises. Special Physical Culture for Women. TOGETHER WITH: Fertility and Sterility in Marriage: Their Voluntary Promotion and Limitation

London (and New York): Ad 1: William Heinemann (Medical Books); Ad 2: Covici-Friede, 1933 and 1931. First English edition. Together 2 vols. Ad 1: 8vo. xviii, 164 pp. With 58 full-page illustrations and 480 flicker cards bound in to produce 12 "cinematographic films." Two flip cards with short tears (not affecting images or functionality). Original blue publisher's cloth (shaken, extremities worn, front endleaf with ugly creasing and with a small chip, front joint strengthened), internally excellent. NOT ex-library! Ad 2: 8vo. 441 pp. With 20 b/w plates. Original publisher's blue cloth (slightly scuffed, lacking dust-jacket). NOT ex-library! Good. Item #3841

ANTICIPATING BY SEVERAL DECADES THE SOCIAL CHANGES THAT HAVE SEEN IT ACCEPTABLE FOR WOMEN TO SEEK EROTIC SATISFACTION.

Published by the respected Medical Books imprint of William Heinemann, this work is complex on a number of levels. Whereas it purports to be a medical guidebook for women, the "cinematographic" flicker cards are unsettlingly suggestive. These were designed to illustrate specific exercises for improving a woman's sexual pleasure, fertility, and ultimately childbirth. The flicker cards are 480 in number, creating 12 individual cinematograph films in the manner of Eedweard Muybridge. We are unable to understand why certain films depict the woman without any clothing, and in others she wears a one- or two-piece bathing suit. Nonetheless, the author claims that by means of this "Sex Efficiency" book, a woman may teach herself a complete system of pelvic gymnastics that will assist them take "appropriately active participation in the act of sexual congress and appropriate voluntary muscular action which assists the act of birth." According to Van de Velde, the present work promises that the physical intimacy of marriage will be much enhanced for both partners, and the maternal functions of woman -- gestation and birth -- will be relieved of much pain and fear.

From the Preface: "These exercises are means to an end. And this end and aim is the recognition of the dignity and value of sex, its value mentally and emotionally as well as physically. Women should become gladly conscious of this, and so should all whose privilege it is to bring them healing and help. Therefore, I have written in considerable detail and offer my book not only to women themselves and to experts in physical culture, but to all who are occupied or interested in promoting human welfare in this department."

Although published in 1933, this is a surprisingly "modern" book. Van de Velde's rationale for giving women "the key to complete erotic satisfaction" is as follows: "The woman of to-day has acquired consciousness of herself as an individual. Yet she is perturbed and tormented by the need to reconcile the strange contradiction in her being, for she is, biologically and organically, first and foremost, not an isolated independent unit, but linked with other lives as the vehicle of the race. The message we bring here should help to solve her problem by harmonising the individual need for experience and culture with the instinctive life of the race; by making the child-bearer more efficient and 'fit' in motherhood and the lover more apt and happy in love; for that love is, at its best, at once the supreme triumph and the supreme surrender, the quintessence of abandonment and of achievement."

Whereas the last sentence may seem wildly inappropriate in a medical text, the language itself is undeniably beautiful.

T.H. Van de Velde (1873-1937) was the Director of the Haarlem Gynecological Clinic. His 1926 "Het volkomen huwelijk" (The Perfect Marriage) was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Another curious work by him: "Sex Hostility in Marriage: Its Origin, Prevention and Treatment."

Price: $840.00