Gagged And Inspected
This is a strange artwork from the 1880s. Are we looking at a slave auction, a medical exam, or a witch being examined for Satan’s mark? I don’t know. The woman is gagged but not bound, which to me signals “powerful men who nonetheless fear the power of a woman’s tongue.” So I am going with the assumption that this is some sort of Inquisition fuckery:
The artist is Jules Arsene Garnier.
Elsewhere on Bondage Blog:
In another work of Garnier, the theme is the punishment of adulterers.
Maybe the guy seated at right is her husband, and he has just been informed of his wife’s adultery.
The guy standing at center has a look of challenging the husband, as if wanting to know what does husband plan to do about it. What are his views on what an appropriate punishment should be.
His look is contemplative and grim. Her look is one of shame.
The priest at far right cannot of course break the seal of the confessional. But perhaps he made it a condition of her penance that she confess and submit to her punishment. Her sin has been forgiven, but she still owes penance and whatever temporal punishment is her due.
Garnier did a LOT of illustrations for Rabelais’s book GARGANTUA AND PANTAGRUEL. This illustrates an incident in Book IV, Chapter 58, of a woman who claimed that a demon inhabited her belly, and could talk and answer questions.
To prove that the voice is actually coming from inside her, they have her naked and gagged—the standing on a table bit is the artist’s idea. (And the man standing beside her isn’t moving his lips.)
There’s more Garnier at the webpage link on my name, and it features this cutline under your “standing on the table” illustration.
“Pour houster tout double de fiction et fraude occulte, la faisoient despouiller toute nue, et luy faisoient clourre la bouche et le nez.”
In English, that’s
“Such a one, about the year of our Lord 1513, was Jacoba Rodogina, an Italian woman of mean extract; from whose belly we, as well as an infinite number of others at Ferrara and elsewhere, have often heard the voice of the evil spirit speak, low, feeble, and small, indeed, but yet very distinct, articulate, and intelligible, when she was sent for out of curiosity by the lords and princes of the Cisalpine Gaul. To remove all manner of doubt, and be assured that this was not a trick, they used to have her stripped stark naked, and caused her mouth and nose to be stopped.”
The findings by the Doctor about this painting are both authoritative and conclusive. I thank him.
That being said, I find it interesting that to rule out fraud, the men found it necessary to strip the woman naked. Now, I can see why it would necessary to gag her: to rule out the possibility of her using ventriloquism. But why must she be naked? In those days, they did not have electronics such as miniature speakers that could be taped under her clothing to her belly. I suppose the idea behind this part of the presentation was that the voice emanating from her abdomen was so soft one had to remove her clothing to hear it.
But I think it more likely that her nakedness is intended to draw the men’s focus. Yes, there is a ventriloquist, but it is the guy standing next to her. He wants her naked so that the guys are looking at her, rather than at his lips. He watches his audience carefully, and stops ventriloquising when he notices them watching him.