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Virgin:
The Untouched History
About The Book
Published by Bloomsbury USA, Virgin: The Untouched History is the first-ever history of virginity in Western culture from the Greeks to the present day. What do astrology, the French Revolution, leeches, Queen Victoria's wedding dress, body-snatching, Fanny Hill, gynecological speculums, Aristotle, bicycle riding, and a sex toy called the Lotus Blossum Pocket Pal all have in common? They are among the thousands of people and things--many of which you never imagined--that play a part in the history of virginity.
Read a brief overview of the book below, or visit the book's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for more information on virginity, Virgin the book, and on the author, Hanne Blank.
Overview
Virgin: The Untouched History is a survey history that looks at virginity in the West from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day. It is a broadly inclusive cultural history, and includes medical and legal history as well as political, philosophical, economic, and many other elements as it discusses the hundreds of ways that virginity has been entwined with the lives and times of men and women throughout history.
The book is divided into two halves. The first half of the book falls under the heading of "Virginology" and deals with the history and contemporary reality of what we do and do not know about virginity and virgins.
The first chapter, "Like a Virgin?" looks at the complicated question of what virginity is, the problem of definitions, and the problems associated with who gets to decide what those definitions should be.
Chapter Two is called "The Importance of Being Virgin," and attempts to answer the question of why virginity matters to us, delving as far back as the Neolithic Era to attempt to come up with some theories about why and how human beings came to be aware of virginity in the first place.
Chapters Three and Four deal with the hymen, the anatomical feature of a woman's genitals that is most commonly associated with virginity.
In Chapter Three, entitled "Hymenology," the hymen is discussed from a medical perspective, explaining what it is, where it comes from, what it looks like, what health problems can arise in regard to it, and what the medical profession can tell us about what, if anything, the hymen actually has to do with virginity.
Chapter Four, "A Desperate and Conflicted Search," details the 1200-year-long battle among doctors and anatomists over whether or not the hymen existed at all, culminating in the anatomical verification of the hymen's existence by the world-famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius in 1544.
In Chapters Five and Six, we move on to a different aspect of the medical history of virginity. "The Virgin and the Doctor," the fifth chapter, digs into some of the many ways that the medical profession has dealt with issues of virginity. From the long history of the mythical "virgin cure" for venereal disease to the present-day controversy over plastic surgeries that claim to "restore" virginity by "repairing" the hymen, the relationship between doctors and virgins has always been controversial... and, as the story of what was called "greensickness" shows, sometimes mysterious too.
Beginning with the story of Spanish Gypsies who pooh-pooh the importance of the hymen and believe in the existence of a special organ in women's bodies that contains the liquid essence of virginity, and ending with an enigmatic tale by Isak Dinesen, Chapter Six, "The Blank Page," looks at the question of testing and proving virginity. Can a woman's virginity ever truly be proven to exist? Is any test known to be medically accurate? Read Chapter Six and find out!
Then in Chapter Seven, entitled "Opening Night," we take a historical long view of the phenomenon of virginity loss, taking in everything from fashion trendsetter Queen Victoria of England to the relationship of virginity and wedding dowries, Jewish religious law to Sigmund Freud... and quite a bit more besides.
The second half of the book, "Virgin Culture," provides a sweeping tour of virginity in culture over time. Beginning with the changes in how virginity was understood and treated that accompanied the rise of Christianity in the ancient world—Chapter Eight, "In A Certain Way Unbodily," refers to a comment St. Augustine made about virgins—the book follows the constantly shifting ideology and cultural meaning of virginity all the way to the present day.
Chapter Nine, "Heaven and Earth," takes on medieval virginity, particularly within the church. Important convents run by aristocratic abbesses whose virginity let them wield power at a level rivaled only by queens, the superhero stories of the virgin martyrs, and the cult of the Virgin Mary stand cheek by jowl with piteous stories of "spare daughters" warehoused in convents against their wills. And medieval virginity existed outside of the Church, too, entangled with witchcraft, alchemy, the murderous Transylvanian "Blood Countess" Erzsébet Báthory, and the myth of the jus primae noctis.
"To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before," the tenth chapter, surveys virginity during the Renaissance and into the early Enlightenment. The virginal career of Britain's Queen Elizabeth I leads to the East India Company and the colonization of the New World—and the surprisingly wide variety of ways that virginity played a part in the European settlement of both North and South America.
In Chapter Eleven, "The Erotic Virgin," we trace the phenomenon of fetishistic sexual interest in virgins from its beginnings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the pages of Barely Legal and virginity-porn websites. Along the way we observe some of the historical roots of some modern stereotypes of virgins, and discover how the nineteenth-century erotic fixation on virginity led to modern age-of-consent laws.
Finally, in Chapter Twelve and the Epilogue, we look at the tumultuous twentieth century and the extraordinary social, sexual, and ideological changes that accompanied its ups and downs. "The Day Virginity Died?" is the last chapter, running a wide gamut from the "jazz babies" and "New Women" of the early twentieth century to the invention of the birth control pill and the Summer of Love and onward to the present, looking at movies, television, and True Love Waits rallies alongside the changing mores, politics, and economics of sex.
Finally, in the epilogue, entitled "The Once and Future Virgin," we look at virginity's continuing importance to us, the shifting ways that this importance manifests in our lives, and take some guesses as to what aspects of virginity we might expect to find reflected in the culture of the future.
Hanne Blank is also available for lectures and public talks about her work. For bookings, please contact Soapbox, Inc.
To schedule a bookstore appearance or other book publicity event, please contact the author.
Photos by Hanne. Site by Jhames