Lapdogs and Libidos
The field of Sexualwissenschaft emerged in the early twentieth century.9 The designation of the field marked a culmination of important work on the subject of sex, which had been conducted in the previous decades by psychologists, anthropologists, and physicians. Sexologists sought both to raise the understanding of the importance of sex to the human condition and to make the study of sex an important category of scientific knowledge. At the same time, as historian Harry Oosterhuis has argued, “nineteenth-century medical interest in sexuality was dictated by wider social anxieties.”10 Debate surrounding women's rights informed the ways in which sexual scientists approached female sexuality in general as well as the sexuality of unwed females in particular. An examination of the work of Central European sexologists, including Iwan Bloch, August Forel, Sigmund Freud, Magnus Hirschfeld, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Max Marcuse, Hermann Ploss, Hermann Rohleder, Wilhelm Stekel, and Otto Weininger, demonstrates that the stereotype of the alte Jungfer received new vigor as unmarried women came under the lens of sexual science.11
While scientific examination of sexuality was relatively new, conjecture about the single woman's sensual life was not. The mockery that pervaded cultural depictions of unwed women also penetrated discussions about the alte Jungfer as sexually abnormal. The keystone of such lampooning was the alleged attachment of the spinster to her pets. The association of unmarried women and animals has an extensive history and was a central feature of the persecution of women as witches.12 Most turn-of-the-century accounts did not exhibit such a diabolical component; in fact, many justified the perceived affection of old maids for animals as a consequence of their lonely lives. Amalie Baisch's advice book for maturing girls observed that most unwed women were “too proud to admit their unsatisfying existence and as a result take on a more and more unpleasant life of ambiguity. Everything good, loving, and heartfelt that remains in them is mainly wasted on dogs, cats, parrots, other pets; in such a way they resign themselves to a bad situation and add to it the horrible reward of ridiculousness.”13 Another account featured the loyal poodle and canary as the only friends an old maid ultimately could trust in a monotonous life.14
In his extensive biological and anthropological study of women, physician and ethnologist Hermann Heinrich Ploss implied a deeper relationship between single woman and household pet:
She is left with nothing to hope for and remains yet again excluded by the unfeeling male world…Thus [she] retires into herself. She has only one who belongs to her heart, who endures all of her moods, in whose devotedly silent bosom she can pour all of her life's sorrow and grief, and who, in the same way that the hostile world stands opposed to her, stands by her: that is her loyal roommate and bedmate: her lapdog. With him the withered rose sits desolately behind the ivy trellis that adorns her window and remembers with quiet wistfulness the days when she was still a fresh bud.15
The lapdog is the most familiar symbol in the iconography of the alte Jungfer. In cartoons parodying single women, the dog is a mainstay. Ploss' rendition of this well-known image was made vivid by the physical yearning latent in the description. The male world and all of its comforts have rejected her. Seeking relief, she comforts herself in the dog's bosom, sharing her life and even—especially—her bed.
Ploss hinted at bestiality; sexologists would be more explicit. Krafft-Ebing succinctly noted in Psychopathia Sexualis that, “The intercourse of females with beasts is limited to dogs.”16 In 1908, Iwan Bloch provided the following description of female bestiality:
The peculiar zoöphily of many city women…is due not to any diseased predisposition but to the influences of continued intimate association with the animal. The role which dogs have always played in this connection is well known, not less known is the fact that they are trained by women to carry out the most perverse practices…[It has been reported] that women train dogs, cats, and at times even monkeys genitalia lambere by smearing these parts with honey or putting sugar in them…The “lap dog” is [not] the consoler only of old maids yearning for love; it is to be found at least as frequently in the possession of married women, to whom the pleasures of normal sexual gratification are by no means unknown.17
This characterization of the literal love between females and pets made three significant assumptions. First, Bloch situated the phenomenon among urban women, adding perverse particulars to fears about the proliferation of unwed women in cities. Second, Bloch took for granted that his audience had an inkling of his subject and thus relied on standing presumptions about women and their pets. Third, Bloch paused to establish the fact that married women joined and perhaps even exceeded single women in this base means of gratification. Yet the very need for such a clarification reveals the extent to which Bloch's discussion was founded upon conventional stereotypes of the old maid. Bloch offered no case studies to support his assertions. Instead, his findings regarding female bestiality were based upon the perception of shared assumptions about unwed women and their associated perversities.
Old maids preceded sexology. Indeed, the iconography of the antiquated spinster provided a wealth of traditional views for sexologists to examine. Some sexologists were more sympathetic than Bloch in regard to pets; August Forel saw the problem as being more psychological than physical: “Having lost [out on] love, all her mental power shrinks up. Her cat, her little dog, and the daily care of her person and small household occupy her whole mind. It is not surprising that such persons generally create a pitiable and ridiculous impression.”18 But whether one explained the unnatural attachment in Forel's compassionate terms or demonstrated the debauchery in Bloch's dreadful detail, the paradigm of the odd and perhaps dangerous old maid remained. The topic of bestiality provided a conventional and simultaneously shocking means for sexologists to commence their consideration of surplus women as sexually abnormal.
Turn-of-the-century scientists sought to verify the existence of the old maid as well as to define her pathology. Max Marcuse took an interdisciplinary approach, observing that “the alte Jungfer [is] an anthropologically well-defined type to be regarded solely as the outcome of sexual abstinence and whose pathological characteristics quickly would be eliminated if regular sexual intercourse took place”; moreover, the work of neurologists, sexologists, and gynecologists “confirm that this alte Jungfer is not…simply a product of indolence and lack of responsibility.”19 Another account placed the onset of old maidenhood in the mid twenties: “this seems to be the critical age [when young women] fall physically and mentally ill due to half-unconscious sexual arousal and the frustrated yearning for love and motherhood: mild mental disturbances with erotic overtones, sexual visions, fantasies and hallucinations emerge.”20 The unspent potential for sexual activity, romance, and reproduction dominated such classifications of the alte Jungfern.
Ultimately, the scientific essence of the old maid could be verified only in the physical realm. If a woman did not meet her natural, biological calling, she joined the ranks of a group that was alternatively vilified, satirized, and pitied. The physician Julius Weiss argued that the phrase alte Jungfer could only be defined in sexual terms: “alte Jungfer—the concept really must be more distinctly expressed…The virgin is old if she comes to the thirtieth year and she has a right to the designation ‘alte Jungfer as long as her sexual maturity lasts, as long as she ovulates and can become a birth mother, as long as she menstruates.”21 The old virgin—the basic essence of the alte Jungfer—merited the status of maiden only as long as she was capable of reproduction. According to Weiss, once she passed through menopause, the sexual nature of the female was defunct and the status of her virginity was no longer relevant. The potential for sexual activity and reproduction thus dominated any classification of old maidenhood. The fact that unmarried females might also be sexually active did not enter Weiss' discussion—further securing the image of unwed women as unsexed.
Iwan Bloch agreed that fertility was the kernel of female sexuality; it followed that sexually
