In the Inner Quarters: Erotic Stories from Ling Menchu's Two Slaps

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria.

In the Inner Quarters is a collection of five stories written by Ling
Mengchu (1580–1644), a prolific writer from the Ming dynasty era in
China, and translated by Lenny Hu and R.W.L. Guisso. The collection
begins with a long (and rather dry) academic dip into the life and times
of Ling Mengchu. (Those with a keen interest in Confucian literature or
the historical period will get value from this section, if it is read in
its entirety.) The collection then presents five stories of the 80
originally found in Ling Mengchu’s Two Slaps.

Each story consists of two complementary tales (presumably, each tale
being one of two slaps). “Fatal Seduction” tells of the evils that
might befall women who put their trust in nuns: two women are both
drugged by nuns and raped by co-conspiring men. “One Women and Two
Monks” expresses a Chaucerian contempt for monks: one monk imprisons
women for his own sexual gratification, and another competes with his
young apprentice for the sexual favors of a visiting woman. “The Wife
Swappers” tells first of a sexual love between young lovers, whose
eagerness for sexual gratifications keeps them forever apart, and then
of two couples who swap wives. The virtues of concisely defined gender
are upheld in “The Elopement of a Nun”: first, a hermaphrodite with
a hankering for women is killed for her/his (but mostly her)
perversions; second, a virtuous girl who cross-dresses to escape
lecherous nuns and pursue heterosexual love gets married. Finally, in
the title story, two men are separately put to the daunting sexual task
of sexually gratifying a multitude of sexually insatiable women.

This collection gives readers an excellent literary look at a different
time and culture; it also serves as an excellent reminder that misogyny
transcends time and culture.