Sorry if the thread title shocks or offends. If that is the case, I'll move it to the Thinking of England forum.
I've just been lurking on Manwe and saw vison's incredibly interesting comments about the words used to refer to female anatomy. I'd KILL to join that discussion, but since I cannot do it there, I thought we could perhaps have it here.
I'd especially like to explore the dichotomy between pure, virginal female figures (mothers, sisters, wives...) and the evil ones. It's thankfully a dying stereotype, but as a scholar of 19th century art I encountered that to be a pervasive attitude.
Good books on the subject are Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-siecle Culture by Bram Dijkstra, as well as Erika Bornay's Las Hijas de Lilith (as far as I know, in Spanish only).
Before I write more on the subject, I'd like to get some input on whether this would be a worthy topic...