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Woman and Her Secret Passions
- Expanded
- Narrated by: Brian V. Hunt
- Length: 2 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
As a historical document, this audiobook is far more entertaining than it has a right to be. It's a wonderful, funny, sad peek into the emotional agonies of a sexual era that is happily past. Or is it?
You won't know quite whether to laugh, cry, or thank Dr. Wakely for his almost criminally Victorian little 1846 book whose original, full title is: "Woman and Her Secret Passions Containing an Exact Description of the Female Organs of Generation, Their Uses and Abuses, Together with a Detailed Account of the Causes and the Cure of the Solitary Vice".
If that doesn't have you panting breathlessly, some of the good doctor's rather indiscreet patient stories will. Masturbation is the evil he seeks to cure, and based on the original cover, you'd be forgiven for assuming it was a best seller. We don't know.
Despite stating that it was "for sale by all booksellers", one wonders who would have the nerve to make such a purchase in 1846. Men could have purchased it for the racy stories, and when you first dive in, you might think it was written for precisely that purpose.
But Doc Wakely should be given at least the credit for recognizing that the clitoris exists, that it was the "seat of female pleasure" (if parenthetically he felt it was only that when coupled in blissful matrimony), and that he does not condemn female pleasure outright.
He does give a fairly good account of the uses of the "female organs of generation", but the abuses he blames for all manner of physical, emotional, and psychological ills. In men, he is certain beyond doubt that masturbation leads to IMPOTENCE (his capitalization).
He tells young women not to lie in bed until late morning "...because of the fatal habits to which it sometimes gives rise, and which it fosters to a most alarming degree."
Of a pair of fun-loving newlyweds, he remarks upon their reaching a point of asexual relations:
"For a few days they enjoyed great pleasure, but as they continued this course week after week, they exhausted the flame of pleasure. To speak plain English, they wasted their seminal fluid too lavishly - they drained their bodies of that precious liquid, which is the cause of beauty, youth, and love."
Of another patient whom he examines, he states, "I also discovered that she was finely formed for giving the highest pleasure to a companion equally amorous with herself." Oh doctor!
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An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar and professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring tale of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.
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Poor reading of an important book
- By Hilary on 11-15-04
By: Hannah Crafts, and others
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Joseph Andrews
- By: Henry Fielding
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of the first novels in the English language, we follow the picaresque adventures of Joseph Andrews, a virtuous young man who is keen to maintain his innocence despite being coerced by nearly every woman he encounters.
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Action and Ideas
- By John on 01-27-20
By: Henry Fielding
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What Matters in Jane Austen
- Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved
- By: John Mullan
- Narrated by: Paul Collins
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In What Matters in Jane Austen?, John Mullan shows that we can best appreciate Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction. Asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals the inner workings of their greatness. In 20 short chapters, each of which explores a question prompted by Austen’s novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most in her beloved fiction.
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Intriguing details and background
- By Barbara JA on 11-12-13
By: John Mullan
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
- Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
- By: Seth Grahame-Smith, Jane Austen
- Narrated by: Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.
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One word - Awesome!
- By Katelyn on 05-22-09
By: Seth Grahame-Smith, and others
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The Birthmark
- By: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Narrated by: Walter Covell
- Length: 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Hawthorne approached the Romantic notion of the ability of science to destroy art (or beauty) in the form of fictive "horror stories" of biological research out of control. This story is the best of that group. A devoted scientist marries a beautiful woman with a single physical flaw: a birthmark on her face. Aylmer becomes obsessed with the imperfection and his attempts to remove it via his scientific skills, thus rendering his bride perfect.
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Bland uninspired
- By Holcomb on 10-02-12
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Timeless Tales for Kids
- By: E. Nesbit, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and others
- Narrated by: Alistair McGowan, Olivia Colman, Bill Nighy, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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Timeless Tales for Kids is an enchanting compilation of children's classic stories read by an all-star cast. Olivia Colman reads E. Nesbit's classic novel The Railway Children, a masterpiece in children's fiction wonderfully evoking a bygone age, packed with fun, excitement and adventure. Bill Nighy reads a much-loved children's classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which continues to delight young and old with its enchanting tale of witches, flying monkeys and magical shoes.
By: E. Nesbit, and others
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The Death of Ivan Ilych
- By: Leo Tolstoy
- Narrated by: Soren Filipski
- Length: 2 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In his perceptive and moving depiction of Ivan Ilych, a worldly careerist facing his own mortality in the midst of a self-absorbed family and indifferent colleagues, Tolstoy provides one of literature's greatest and most memorable reflections on the meaning of the good life and on life as preparation for death.
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Great experience
- By Amazon Customer on 08-03-16
By: Leo Tolstoy
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Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, Volume 1
- By: Samuel Richardson
- Narrated by: Samuel West, Lucy Scott, Roger May, and others
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson’s epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. When beautiful Clarissa Harlowe is forced to marry the rich but repulsive Mr. Solmes, she refuses, much to her family’s chagrin. She escapes their persecution with the help of Mr. Lovelace, a dashing and seductive rake, but soon finds herself in a far worse dilemma. Terrifying and enlightening, Clarissa weaves a tapestry of narrative experimentation into a gripping morality tale of good versus evil.
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Gripping Novel & Performance
- By Harold on 07-29-18
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Looking Backward
- By: Edward Bellamy
- Narrated by: Edward Lewis
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The hero is anyone who has ever longed for escape to a better life. The time is tomorrow. The place is a Utopian America. This is the backdrop for Edward Bellamy's prophetic novel about a young Boston gentleman who is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from a world of war and want to a world of peace and plenty.
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This Book is socialist Propaganda
- By Paul on 04-26-04
By: Edward Bellamy
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The Life of Samuel Johnson
- By: James Boswell
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 51 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time.
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 02-02-18
By: James Boswell