Disciplined Childhood

The following pages are extracts from the autobiographical works of Edith Cadivec, written in the 1920s by a French woman of notorious repute who shocked a nation with her scandalous sexuality, for which she was imprisoned. The extracts concern her descriptions of her childhood punishments and just how much they sexually aroused her.

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Excerpt:

In school I was inattentive; I daydreamed, and took little joy in planned learning. However, because Gabrielle's industriousness and irreproachable conduct in school exceeded all expectations, father looked proudly into the future of his true daughter. He began to teach her Latin and French, while I was allowed only to listen to the lessons and not to participate.

At that time I showed little interest in subjects that could not prove their usefulness through practical application. I liked much better to concern myself with the active life around me. I took a lively interest in my schoolmates, the members of their families, and their way of life. I never neglected to ask my school comrades about their parents and brothers and sisters, about the sternness or tenderness in the family, in order to ferret out whether they were punished for certain types of misbehaviour and in which way this punishment was administered, whether they loved their father or mother more, or whether they themselves were favoured or punished by the father or mother. These were the favourite questions that I asked of every child. And my thirst for such knowledge was always satisfied.

Gabrielle found less sympathy among her classmates; she was not interesting enough and her exemplary goodness bored most of them. Moreover, Ella spent little time with children, preferring adults. I was overtly "bad" but guileless, and sympathetic to the fate of others; hearts flew toward me although I was not especially charming. I was never evil and never malicious. The leitmotif of my behaviour lay in the injunction - love thy neighbour as thyself. That was practical reason.

At home there was a lively traffic of families with whom my parents were friends and they often came to visit us with their children. But especially, the reciprocal invitations among school friends often gave me an opportunity to practice my inclinations. Gabrielle felt best when she was near father. I, however, ran around with children of my own age, or younger, and even with small tots whom I directed at my pleasure and ruled over.

Even playing school was a source of pleasure for me as long as I could play the strict, pitiless woman teacher draconically swinging the cane over her pupils. But this game too never lasted long because the ill-treated "pupils" soon ran away from it in tears, declaring that they no longer wanted to join in the game because the "teacher" really and soundly whacked them.