AustLit

'In our contemporary world, the idea that sex is pleasurable is rarely questioned: pleasure is a key way of understanding what sex is and what it means. Yet this was not always so. Historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women, and there were significant changes across the 20th century.' (Introduction)

'This article explores the multiple and complex ways white heterosexual women constructed female sexual pleasure and desire in early twentieth-century Australia. It considers the idealisation of female sexuality, and the ways this was both subverted and re-iterated by women themselves, through a study of female writers. It suggests that the challenge to female sexual normativity—as marital and reproductive—was slow and staggered, with many women unable to firmly challenge the sexual ideal. But a close reading of the work of a number of female authors, especially the poet Zora Cross, allows glimpses of how some women did explore, construct and rethink sexual pleasure within their writings, negotiating between the sometimes contradictory impulses of purity and desire.' (Introduction)