Enemas in literature

A few novels books come to mind in which enemas are given.

They are mentioned in the novels of the late Canadian author Robertson Davies, in particula an experience with what is generally referred to as the JBL Cascade bag - you sit on it.

I am told that there is an enema episode in the "Peyton Place" novel, but I have never looked for it.

In Exit A by Anthony Swofford a character's girl friend uses an enema as relaxing sexual foreplay.

One of J. P. Donleavy's lesser know novels has a character who regularly gets enemas from his maid.

Any others?

----Michael, Boston

The novel "That Girl from Boston" by Robert Rimmer contans an enema scene in the final chapter and the novel "Touchfeather Two" also contains an enema scene.

Hemingway's "A farewell to Arms". His girlfriend gives him one. Been a while since I read it, but it excited me.

And you will find enemas in several of Moliere's plays

enjoy

The Baron of Denmark

Hello, Michael from Boston.

I had forgotten all about Peyton Place. Norman Page's character is given enemas by his mother. (In the original book, Norman and Rodney Harrington were NOT brothers, they were totally separate characters who I don't even think spoke to one another). Norman is a wimpy little mamma's boy, and his mother regularly gave him enemas when he was tired or not feeling well. I'll have to look through my old copy.

I used to read a lot of "trashy" novels about the Old South, and I recall a scene in one where a slave girl is given a "punishment" enema outside in front of a large group of slaves. Have no idea of her transgression but I recall it was done to humiliate her, and the other slaves were laughing.

Thanks for bringing up this subject! Interesting to read the answers.

Finding references to enemas in mainstream literature is as rare as 'hens teeth'.

One of the best examples has already been mentioned...'Peyton Place' by Metalious. The enema is mentioned on pages 62, 137 and 256 of the original hard copy in which sissy Norman is regularly syringed by his overbearing mother, Evelyn. Sadly, the bulk of the literature has been relegated to cheap and badly written adult novels.

In the early 70's there appeared a German book, 'Kallipygos und Aeskulap', which attempted to do a history of the enema. The first half of the book is devoted to text and the last half to pictures. It's difficult to find, but occassionally it shows up on abebooks. Another history attempt of the enema appeared in the medical 'Ciba Symposia' series of the 40's.

There exists a reprint of a 19th century novel by an anonymous author entitled,

'Gynecocracy'. It's about a lad who is totally feminized by his charges and subjected to countless humiliations. An entire chapter,'Mamma' is devoted to his

subjugation via a 'Higginson style' syringe. It's adult in content, but lacks the crude language. It is extremely well written.

To all who contributed so far...thanks for the leads.

Yes, it seemed well known that Evelyn, a widow, gave Norman too many enemas, which he considered a bittersweet experience.

Dr. Swain said a young boy he didn't identify had the worst case of dyhydration he'd ever seen by being given too many unneeded enemas. And he said sex doesn't only mean intercourse.

The book came out in 1956 and was set in the early 1940s, so enema use and abuse were well known, but it caused quite a stir and didn;t make it into the movie version.

If I remember correctly, the hard copy version of Sybil had a chapture on her punishment enemas.

Hi Bostonh2e/Michael,

In J.K. Huysmans' A Rebours (1884) (translation Against Nature), the main character, a social outcast DucJean Des Esseintes, aspired to exist on a higher intellectual and spiritual plane to the point where he became unable to digest food and obtained nutrients from enemas. He becomes obsessed with these "feeding" enemas. It's a strange story.

Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans. He was part of the French "decadent movement". I read this book and others in college when were were studying this period in literature. I think a lot of these authors were into enemas. Rimbaud certainly was.

Arianna

Enemas is literature heh?

Ok...

Voltiere's Candide had many references to the clyster including a references that pirates will put thier penis where the enema nozzle should go. A few Mark Twain stories make reference to enemas, and Twain once said, "if you want to be moved, don't read my book, take an enema." Other French philosophes mention enemas and clysters frequently because they did their work during the age of the clyster in france. EB white also mentions enemas. Anne Rice wrote some sleeping beauty porn trilogy where the princess gets all these enemas and punishments. This is a quick and sloppy list that I will add to as I wake up more.

I'm glad I started this thread......this is a very literate group.

A French professor friend of mine told me that Emile Zola's novels have several enema references. In "La Bete Humaine", Aunt Phasie is murdered by somoene who puts rat poison in her enema water. (That's pretty inventive!)

Glad to jog your memory, Sandra, lol. Many here had bittersweet experiences I think. Einlauf below has page references for the hard cover version.

Fort all, another book is Torch Song by Anne Roiphe, with a little Jewish girl getting an enema in detail from her stern German nanny in late 1930s or early '40s. Pretty symbolic!

In Shakespeare's Othello, Act 2, Scene 1, Cassio is blowing kisses and Iago says about him "Yet again your fingers to your lips? Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!" Clyster-pipes, of course, are enema nozzles and Iago is saying that Cassio is so full of it he needs an enema.

I guess that I am the only one who remembers a book called "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" by Quentin Reynolds (about 1950). The Story is about a resistance fighter and spy for the allies who is captured by the Nazis in France. The Gestapo beats and tortures him. They have a nurse described as a pretty young woman give him an enma containing acid and administered by a horse syringe. They place him face down on a table and tie him down. She gets a scissors and cuts a hole in the seat of his pants. She introduces the nozzle into his rectum and proceeds to empty the contents into him. He screams in pain and thrashes about on the table. She leaves the room with a smile of satisfaction on her face. 😶

There is at least one enema scene in "Gullliver's Travels" (Jonathan Swift, early 18th century.) It appears in one of Hogarth's illustrations of the book as well.

In one of Stephen King's short stories, I believe it was "The Long Walk", one of the characters is a young boy whose mother promises "you can have an enema when we get home if you behave...". I would personally like to get my hands on a copy of "The Enema As An Erotic Art And It's History" by David Barton-Jay.

Holding Sybil's legs up with rope was an especially disturbing scene in a disturbing book and movie. The movie gave a pretty clear depiction.

Redbaglover, all: I haven't read them but understand Stephen King has enema references in many of his books?

I have read all of Stephen King's books, and the one I mentioned was the only one that I can remember having a reference to enemas....but I could be wrong.

It always surprises me when I encounter a reference to enemas in an unexpected place such as a novel or poem. For instance, one of the sub-plots in the wonderful, quirky Tom Robbins novel "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" is about the search for a mysterious jade enema nozzle that supposedly cures cancer--if I'm remembering the story right. Has anyone else come across any interesting enema references in your reading that you'd care to share?

Rather than go to page 17, I'll just respond right here because of the reference to a Tom Robbins novel. Another of his books, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," describes the protagonist as having experienced her first orgasm at age 15 while receiving an enema from her aunt.

There is a line in "To Kill a Mockingbird" about looking at the enema bags in the drugstore window. Can't remember where exactly. The literary patron saint is of course James Joyce, who in one of his letters to his wife fantasizes about watching her in "the closet" (meaning water closet, or toilet). He ended by saying she probably wouldn't let him, so he was going to masturbate instead. In fact quoting Joyce could be a literary way to introduce a partner to our ways: "I have worshipped at that altar where the back changes names."

Hoseman - Joyce can be even more direct; remember 'The Holy Office', said to be a satire on The Church:

The Holy Office

Myself unto myself will give

This name Katharsis-Purgative....

But all these men of whom I speak

Make me the sewer of their clique.

That they may dream their dreamy dreams

I carry off their filthy streams....

And for each maiden, shy and nervous,

I do a similar kind service....

At night when close in bed she lies

And feels my hand between her thighs

My little love in light attire

Knows the soft flame that is desire.

There's endless literary criticism on this. For example, a book Questia (www.questia.com) has in its online library 'Powers of Ordure: James Joyce and the Excremental Vision' by Kelly Anspaugh. The free excerpt begins:

"Why shit now? Or, to put my question somewhat less ambiguously (and so somewhat less scandalously): why this recent upsurge of interest in excrement and visions thereof?

"Perhaps the interest has to do with Sigmund Freud, in that doctor's exemplary clinical attention to the body and its products. When participating in the French-led 'return to Freud,' we may find ourselves necessarily turning back to shit, inspecting this low matter with high seriousness. Another contributing factor may be the rise of cultural studies. One way of distinguishing between cultures is to consider their differing attitudes towards excrement. Is shit, to a given culture, a good thing? An evil thing? A sacred--both good and evil--thing? ..."

Well, if you have the time and patience to read a whole book on such speculations!

-jillie

James Patterson wrote about an enema in his book Kiss the Girls, which is a really creepy novel about a man who "collects" women and keeps them for his own amusement. The man gives of the girls a milk enema, which at the time, was somewhat intriguing to me, because how often do you read something like that in a mainstream novel. But after giving her the enema, he introduces a milk snake into her colon and lets it loose inside her. I hate snakes, so I was quite freaked out. I have to wonder, though, how the author came up with the idea...

In high school English class we had to read 'A Separate Peace' by John Knowles and I seem to remember there was references to coffee enemas that had to be given regularly to one of the characters as a cure. The time setting of the book was just before W.W.II

Though not about giving enemas, I belive there was a reference to people looking at enema bags in the book "To Kill a Mockingbird"

I think I just posted this, perhaps on another thread with a similar topic heading. Anyhow, in Tom Robbins's "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," very early on as we are being introduced to the protagonist we are told that she achieved her first orgasm at age fifteen while being given an enema by her aunt.

I vividly recall reading over and over, at age thirteen, the passage in Peyton Place--"she might even give him an enema, and while he always took a bittersweet pleasure from the enema..." I used to wonder how Grace Metalious understood that pleasure.

One of the Steinbeck novels includes more than we (or at least I) want to know about a man in a hobo camp being given an enema.

How about The Island by Peter Benchley (Jaws. Captured by pirates, the hero gets the clyster with fish oil in it to prevent the fevers.

Jens Bjørnebo, Norway.

A very famus norwgian author. He is writing about a terapist giving enema to his patient for sexual pleasure.

Book: Uten en tråd ( Without a thread)

I had that Bjorneboe novel back in the 70's--the English title was "Without a Stitch." There were, as I recall, two enema scenes, and they were highly arousing. I loaned it to my lovely, shapely upstairs neighbor, and at one point she was sitting reading it in my presence and she blurted out (with a smile) "Now he's giving her an enema!"