of moral and mental inhibition, due probably to troubles of the
climacteric, led to indulgence, under abnormal conditions, in
those primitive contacts which are normally the beginning of
love, and these, supported by the ideal image of the early lover,
constituted a complete and adequate symbol of natural love in a
morbidly perverted individual. (P. Penta, _Archivio delle
Psicopatie Sessuali_, January, 1896.)


FOOTNOTES:

[1] The term "erotic symbolism" has already been employed by Eulenburg
(_Sexuale Neuropathie_, 1895, p. 101). It must be borne in mind that this
term, implying the specific emotion, is much narrower than the term
"sexual symbolism," which may be used to designate a great variety of
ritual and social practices which have played a part in the evolution of
civilization.

[2] _Sexual Selection in Man_, iv, "Vision."

[3] K. Groos, _Der Æsthetische Genuss_, p. 122. The psychology of the
associations of contiguity and resemblance through which erotic symbolism
operates its transference is briefly discussed by Ribot in the _Psychology
of the Emotions_, Part 1, Chapter XII; the early chapters of the same
author's _Logique des Sentiments_ may also be said to deal with the
emotional basis on which erotic symbolism arises.

[4] A number of synonyms for the female pudenda are brought together by
Schurig--cunnus, hortus, concha, navis, fovea, larva, canis, annulus,
focus, cymba, antrum, delta, myrtus, etc.--and he discusses many of them.
(_Muliebria_, Section I, cap. I.)

[5] Kleinpaul, _Sprache Ohne Worte_, pp. 24-29; cf. K. Pearson, on the
general and special words for sex, _Chances of Death_, vol. ii, pp.
112-245; a selection of the literature of the rose will be found in a
volume of translations entitled _Ros Rosarum_.

[6] G.S. Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 470.

[7] Goron, _Les Parias de l'Amour_, p. 45.

[8] A.R. Reynolds, _Medical Standard_, vol. x, cited by Kiernan,
"Responsibility in Sexual Perversion," _American Journal of Neurology and
Psychiatry_, 1882.

[9] R. Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part III, Section II, Mem. II,
Subs. II, and Mem. III, Subs. I.

[10] Numerous examples are given by Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_,
third edition, pp. 265-268.

[11] Chevalier (_De l'Inversion_, 1885; id., _L'Inversion Sexuelle_, 1892,
p. 52), followed by E. Laurent (_L'Amour Morbide_, 1891, Chapter X),
separates this group from other fetichistic perversions, under the head of
"azoöphilie." I see no adequate ground for this step. The various forms of
fetichism are too intimately associated to permit of any group of them
being violently separated from the others.

[12] This has already been considered as a perversion founded on vision,
in discussing _Sexual Selection in Man_. IV.




II.

Foot-fetichism and Shoe-fetichism--Wide Prevalence and Normal
Basis--Restif de la Bretonne--The Foot a Normal Focus of Sexual Attraction
Among Some Peoples--The Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, etc.--The
Congenital Predisposition in Erotic Symbolism--The Influence of Early
Association and Emotional Shock--Shoe-fetichism in Relation to
Masochism--The Two Phenomena Independent Though Allied--The Desire to be
Trodden On--The Fascination of Physical Constraint--The Symbolism of
Self-inflicted Pain--The Dynamic Element in Erotic Symbolism--The
Symbolism of Garments.


Of all forms of erotic symbolism the most frequent is that which idealizes
the foot and the shoe. The phenomena we here encounter are sometimes so
complex and raise so many interesting questions that it is necessary to
discuss them somewhat fully.

It would seem that even for the normal lover the foot is one of the most
attractive parts of the body. Stanley Hall found that among the parts
specified as most admired in the other sex by young men and women who
answered a _questionnaire_ the feet came fourth (after the eyes, hair,
stature and size).[13] Casanova, an acute student and lover of women who
was in no degree a foot fetichist, remarks that all men who share his
interest in women are attracted by their feet; they offer the same
interest, he considers, as the question of the particular edition offers
to the book-lover.[14]

In a report of the results of a _questionnaire_ concerning
children's sense of self, to which over 500 replies were
received, Stanley Hall thus summarizes the main facts ascertained
with reference to the feet: "A special period of noticing the
feet comes somewhat later than that in which the hands are
discovered to consciousness. Our records afford nearly twice as
many cases for feet as for hands. The former are more remote from
the primary psychic focus or position, and are also more often
covered, so that the sight of them is a more marked and
exceptional event. Some children become greatly excited whenever
their feet are exposed. Some infants show signs of fear at the
movement of their own knees and feet covered, and still more
often fright is the first sensation which signalizes the child's
discovery of its feet.... Many are described as playing with them
as if fascinated by strange, newly-discovered toys. They pick
them up and try to throw them away, or out of the cradle, or
bring them to the mouth, where all things tend to go.... Children
often handle their feet, pat and stroke them, offer them toys and
the bottle, as if they, too, had an independent hunger to
gratify, an _ego_ of their own.... Children often develop [later]
a special interest in the feet of others, and examine, feel them,
etc., sometimes expressing surprise that the pinch of the
mother's toe hurts her and not the child, or comparing their own
and the feet of others point by point. Curious, too, are the
intensifications of foot-consciousness throughout the early years
of childhood, whenever children have the exceptional privilege of
going barefoot, or have new shoes. The feet are often
apostrophized, punished, beaten sometimes to the point of pain
for breaking things, throwing the child down, etc. Several
children have habits, which reach great intensity, and then
vanish, of touching or tickling the feet, with gales of laughter,
and a few are described as showing an almost morbid reluctance to
wear anything upon the feet, or even to having them touched by
others.... Several almost fall in love with the great toe or the
little one, especially admiring some crease or dimple in it,
dressing it in some rag of silk or bit of ribbon, or cut-off
glove fingers, winding it with string, prolonging it by tying on
bits of wood. Stroking the feet of others, especially if they are
shapely, often becomes almost a passion with young children, and
several adults confess a survival of the same impulse which it is
an exquisite pleasure to gratify. The interest of some mothers in
babies' toes, the expressions of which are ecstatic and almost
incredible, is a factor of great importance." (G. Stanley Hall,
"Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self," _American Journal of
Psychology_, April, 1898.) In childhood, Stanley Hall remarks
elsewhere (_Adolescence_, vol. ii, p. 104), "a form of courtship
may consist solely in touching feet under the desk." It would
seem that even animals have a certain amount of sexual
consciousness in the feet; I have noticed a male donkey, just
before coitus, bite the feet of his partner.

At the same time it is scarcely usual for the normal lover, in most
civilized countries to-day, to attach primary importance to the foot, such
as he very frequently attaches to the eyes, though the feet play a very
conspicuous part in the work of certain novelists.[15]

In a small but not inconsiderable minority of persons, however, the foot
or the boot becomes the most attractive part of a woman, and in some
morbid cases the woman herself is regarded as a comparatively unimportant
appendage to her feet or her boots. The boots under civilized conditions
much more frequently constitute the sexual symbol than do the feet
themselves; this is not surprising since in ordinary life the feet are not
often seen.

It is usually only under exceptionally favoring conditions that
foot-fetichism occurs, as in the case recorded by Marandon de
Montyel of a doctor who had been brought up in the West Indies.
His mother had been insane and he himself was subject to
obsessions, especially of being incapable of urinating; he had
had nocturnal incontinence of urine in childhood. All the women
of the people in the West Indies go about with naked feet, which
are often beautiful. His puberty evolved under this influence,
and foot-fetichism developed. He especially admired large, fat,
arched feet, with delicate skin and large, regular toes. He
masturbated with images of feet. At 15 he had relations with a
colored chambermaid, but feared to mention his fetichism, though
it was the touch of her feet that chiefly excited him. He now
gave up masturbation, and had a succession of mistresses, but was
always ashamed to confess his fancies until, at the age of 33, in
Paris, a very intelligent woman who had become his mistress
discovered his mania and skillfully enabled him to yield to it
without shock to his modesty. He was devoted to this mistress,
who had very beautiful feet (he had been horrified by the feet of
Europeans generally), until she finally left him. (_Archives de
Neurologie_, October, 1904.)

Probably the first case of shoe-fetichism ever recorded in any
detail is that of Restif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), publicist
and novelist, one of the most remarkable literary figures of the
later eighteenth century in France. Restif was a neurotic
subject, though not to an extreme degree, and his shoe-fetichism,
though distinctly pronounced, was not pathological; that is to
say, that the shoe was not itself an adequate gratification of
the sexual impulse, but simply a highly important aid to
tumescence, a prelude to the natural climax of detumescence; only
occasionally, and _faute de mieux_, in the absence of the beloved
person, was the shoe used as an adjunct to masturbation. In
Restif's stories and elsewhere the attraction of the shoe is
frequently discussed or used as a motive. His first decided
literary success, _Le Pied de Fanchette_, was suggested by a
vision of a girl with a charming foot, casually seen in the
street. While all such passages in his books are really founded
on his own personal feelings and experiences, in his elaborate
autobiography, _Monsieur Nicolas_, he has frankly set forth the
gradual evolution and cause of his idiosyncrasy. The first
remembered trace dated from the age of 4, when he was able to
recall having remarked the feet of a young girl in his native
place. Restif was a sexually precocious youth, and at the age of
9, though both delicate in health and shy in manners, his
thoughts were already absorbed in the girls around him. "While
little Monsieur Nicolas," he tells us, "passed for a Narcissus,
his thoughts, as soon as he was alone, by night or by day, had no
other object than that sex he seemed to flee from. The girls most
careful of their persons were naturally those who pleased him
most, and as the part least easy to keep clean is that which
touches the earth it was to the foot-gear that he mechanically
gave his chief attention. Agathe, Reine, and especially
Madeleine, were the most elegant of the girls at that time; their
carefully selected and kept shoes, instead of laces or buckles,
which were not yet worn at Sacy, had blue or rose ribbon,
according to the color of the skirt. I thought of these girls
with emotion; I desired--I knew not what; but I desired
something, if it were only to subdue them." The origin Restif
here assigns to his shoe-fetichism may seem paradoxical; he
admired the girls who were most clean and neat in their dress, he
tells us, and, therefore, paid most attention to that part of
their clothing which was least clean and neat. But, however
paradoxical the remark may seem, it is psychologically sound. All
fetichism is a kind of not necessarily morbid obsession, and as
the careful work of Janet and others in that field has shown, an
obsession is a fascinated attraction to some object or idea
which gives the subject a kind of emotional shock by its
contrast to his habitual moods or ideas. The ordinary morbid
obsession cannot usually be harmoniously co-ordinated with the
other experiences of the subject's daily life, and shows,
therefore, no tendency to become pleasurable. Sexual fetichisms,
on the other hand, have a reservoir of agreeable emotion to draw
on, and are thus able to acquire both stability and harmony. It
will also be seen that no element of masochism is involved in
Restif's fetichism, though the mistake has been frequently made
of supposing that these two manifestations are usually or even
necessarily allied. Restif wishes to subject the girl who
attracts him, he has no wish to be subjected by her. He was
especially dazzled by a young girl from another town, whose shoes
were of a fashionable cut, with buckles, "and who was a charming
person besides." She was delicate as a fairy, and rendered his
thoughts unfaithful to the robust beauties of his native Sacy.
"No doubt," he remarks, "because, being frail and weak myself, it
seemed to me that it would be easier to subdue her." "This taste
for the beauty of the feet," he continues, "was so powerful in me
that it unfailingly aroused desire and would have made me
overlook ugliness. It is excessive in all those who have it." He
admired the foot as well as the shoe: "The factitious taste for
the shoe is only a reflection of that for pretty feet. When I
entered a house and saw the boots arranged in a row, as is the
custom, I would tremble with pleasure; I blushed and lowered my
eyes as if in the presence of the girls themselves. With this
vivacity of feeling and a voluptuousness of ideas inconceivable
at the age of 10 I still fled, with an involuntary impulse of
modesty, from the girls I adored."

We may clearly see how this combination of sensitive and
precocious sexual ardor with extreme shyness, furnished the soil
on which the germ of shoe-fetichism was able to gain a firm root
and persist in some degree throughout a long life very largely
given up to a pursuit of women, abnormal rather by its
excessiveness than its perversity. A few years later, he tells
us, he happened to see a pretty pair of shoes in a bootmaker's
shop, and on hearing that they belonged to a girl whom at that
time he reverently adored at a distance he blushed and nearly
fainted.

In 1749 he was for a time attracted to a young woman very much
older than himself; he secretly carried away one of her slippers
and kept it for a day; a little later he again took away a shoe
of the same woman which had fascinated him when on her foot, and,
he seems to imply, he used it to masturbate with.

Perhaps the chief passion of Restif's life was his love for
Colette Parangon. He was still a boy (1752), she was the young
and virtuous wife of the printer whose apprentice Restif was and
in whose house he lived. Madame Parangon, a charming woman, as
she is described, was not happily married, and she evidently
felt a tender affection for the boy whose excessive love and
reverence for her were not always successfully concealed.
"Madonna Parangon," he tells us, "possessed a charm which I could
never resist, a pretty little foot; it is a charm which arouses
more than tenderness. Her shoes, made in Paris, had that
voluptuous elegance which seems to communicate soul and life.
Sometimes Colette wore shoes of simple white drugget or with
silver flowers; sometimes rose-colored slippers with green heels,
or green with rose heels; her supple feet, far from deforming her
shoes, increased their grace and rendered the form more
exciting." One day, on entering the house, he saw Madame Parangon
elegantly dressed and wearing rose-colored shoes with tongues,
and with green heels and a pretty rosette. They were new and she
took them off to put on green slippers with rose heels and
borders which he thought equally exciting. As soon as she had
left the room, he continues, "carried away by the most impetuous
passion and idolizing Colette, I seemed to see her and touch her
in handling what she had just worn; my lips pressed one of these
jewels, while the other, deceiving the sacred end of nature, from
excess of exaltation replaced the object of sex (I cannot express
myself more clearly). The warmth which she had communicated to
the insensible object which had touched her still remained and
gave a soul to it; a voluptuous cloud covered my eyes." He adds
that he would kiss with rage and transport whatever had come in
close contact with the woman he adored, and on one occasion
eagerly pressed his lips to her cast-off underlinen, _vela
secretiora penetralium_.

At this period Restif's foot-fetichism reached its highest point
of development. It was the aberration of a highly sensitive and
very precocious boy. While the preoccupation with feet and shoes
persisted throughout life, it never became a complete perversion
and never replaced the normal end of sexual desire. His love for
Madam Parangon, one of the deepest emotions in his whole life,
was also the climax of his shoe-fetichism. She represented his
ideal woman, an ethereal sylph with wasp-waist and a child's
feet; it was always his highest praise for a woman that she
resembled Madame Parangon, and he desired that her slipper should
be buried with him. (Restif de la Bretonne, _Monsieur Nicolas_,
vols. i-iv, vol. xiii, p. 5; id., _Mes Inscriptions_, pp. ci-cv.)

Shoe-fetichism, more especially if we include under this term all
the cases of real or pseudo-masochism in which an attraction to
the boots or slippers is the chief feature, is a not infrequent
phenomenon, and is certainly the most frequently occurring form
of fetichism. Many cases are brought together by Krafft-Ebing in
his _Psychopathia Sexualis_. Every prostitute of any experience
has known men who merely desire to gaze at her shoes, or possibly
to lick them, and who are quite willing to pay for this
privilege. In London such a person is known as a "bootman," in
Germany as a "Stiefelfrier."

The predominance of the foot as a focus of sexual attraction, while among
us to-day it is a not uncommon phenomenon, is still not sufficiently
common to be called normal; the majority of even ardent lovers do not
experience this attraction in any marked degree. But these manifestations
of foot-fetichism which with us to-day are abnormal, even when they are
not so extreme as to be morbid, may perhaps become more intelligible to us
when we realize that in earlier periods of civilization, and even to-day
in some parts of the world, the foot is generally recognized as a focus of
sexual attraction, so that some degree of foot-fetichism becomes a normal
phenomenon.

The most pronounced and the best known example of such normal
foot-fetichism at the present day is certainly to be found among the
Southern Chinese. For a Chinese husband his wife's foot is more
interesting than her face. A Chinese woman is as shy of showing her feet
to a man as a European woman her breasts; they are reserved for her
husband's eyes alone, and to look at a woman's feet in the street is
highly improper and indelicate. Chinese foot-fetichism is connected with
the custom of compressing the feet. This custom appears to rest on the
fact that Chinese women naturally possess a very small foot and is thus an
example of the universal tendency in the search for beauty to accentuate,
even by deformation, the racial characteristics. But there is more than
this. Beauty is largely a name for sexual attractiveness, and the energy
expended in the effort to make the Chinese woman's small foot still
smaller is a measure of the sexual fascination which it exerts. The
practice arose on the basis of the sexual attractiveness of the foot,
though it has doubtless served to heighten that attractiveness, just as
the small waist, which (if we may follow Stratz) is a characteristic
beauty of the European woman, becomes to the average European man still
more attractive when accentuated, even to the extent of deformity, by the
compression of the corset.

Referring to the sexual fascination exerted by the foot in China,
Matignon writes: "My attention has been drawn to this point by a
large number of pornographic engravings, of which the Chinese are
very fond. In all these lascivious scenes we see the male
voluptuously fondling the woman's foot. When a Celestial takes
into his hand a woman's foot, especially if it is very small, the
effect upon him is precisely the same as is provoked in a
European by the palpation of a young and firm bosom. All the
Celestials whom I have interrogated on this point have replied
unanimously: 'Oh, a little foot! You Europeans cannot understand
how exquisite, how sweet, how exciting it is!' The contact of the
genital organ with the little foot produces in the male an
indescribable degree of voluptuous feeling, and women skilled in
love know that to arouse the ardor of their lovers a better
method than all Chinese aphrodisiacs--including 'giusen' and
swallows' nests--is to take the penis between their feet. It is
not rare to find Chinese Christians accusing themselves at
confession of having had 'evil thoughts on looking at a woman's
foot.'" (Dr. J. Matignon, "A propos d'un Pied de Chinoise,"
_Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, 1898.)

It is said that a Chinese Empress, noted for her vice and having
a congenital club foot, about the year 1100 B.C., desired all
women to resemble her, and that the practice of compressing the
foot thus arose. But this is only tradition, since, in 300 B.C.,
Chinese books were destroyed (Morache, Art. "Chine,"
_Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales_, p. 191). It
is also said that the practice owes its origin to the wish to
keep women indoors. But women are not secluded in China, nor does
foot compression usually render a woman unable to walk. Many
intelligent Chinese are of opinion that its object is to promote
the development of the sexual parts and of the thighs, and so to
aid both intercourse and parturition. There is no ground for
believing that it has any such influence, though Morache found
that the mons veneris and labia are largely developed in Chinese
women, and not in Tartar women living in Pekin (who do not
compress the foot). If there is any correlation between the feet
and the pelvic regions, it is more probably congenital than due
to the artificial compression of the feet. The ancients seem to
have believed that a small foot indicated a small vagina. Restif
de la Bretonne, who had ample opportunities for forming an
opinion on a matter in which he took so great an interest,
believed that a small foot, round and short, indicated a large
vagina (_Monsieur Nicolas_, vol. i, reprint of 1883, p. 92).
Even, however, if we admit that there is a real correlation
between the foot and the vagina, that would by no means suffice
to render the foot a focus of sexual attraction.

It remains the most reasonable view that the foot bandage must be
regarded as strictly analogous to the waist bandage or corset
which also tends to produce deformity of the constricted region.
Stratz has ingeniously remarked (_Frauenkleidung_, third edition,
p. 101) that the success of the Chinese in dwarfing trees may
have suggested a similar attempt in regard to women's feet, and
adds that in any case both dwarfed trees and bound feet bear
witness in the Mongolian to the same love for small and elegant,
not to say deformed, things. For a Chinaman the deformed foot is
a "golden water-lily."

Many facts (together with illustrations) bearing on Chinese
deformation of the foot will be found in Ploss, _Das Weib_, vol.
i, Section IV.

The significance of the sexual emotion aroused by the female foot in China
and the origin of its compression begin to become clear when we realize
that this foot-fetichism is merely an extreme development of a tendency
which is fairly well marked among nearly all the peoples of yellow race.
Jacoby, who has brought together a number of interesting facts bearing on
the sexual significance of the foot, states that a similar tendency is to
be found among the Mongol and Turk peoples of Siberia, and in the east and
central parts of European Russia, among the Permiaks, the Wotiaks, etc.
Here the woman, at all events when young, has always her feet, as well as
head, covered, however little clothing she may otherwise wear.

"On hot nights or on baking days," Jacoby states, "you may see
these women with uncovered breasts, or even entirely naked
without embarrassment, but you will never see them with bare
feet, and no male relations, except the husband, will ever see
the feet and lower part of the legs of the women in the house.
These women have their modesty in their feet, and also their
coquetry; to unbind the feet of a woman is for a man a voluptuous
act, and the touch of the bands produces the same effect as a
corset still warm from a woman's body on a European man. A
woman's beauty, that which attracts and excites a man, lies in
her foot; in Mordvin love poems celebrating the beauty of women
there is much about her attire, especially her embroidered
chemise, but as regards the charms of her person the poet is
content to state that 'her feet are beautiful;' with that
everything is said. The young peasant woman of the central
provinces as part of her holiday raiment puts on great woolen
stockings which come up to the groin and are then folded over to
below the knee. To uncover the feet of a person of the opposite
sex is a sexual act, and has thus become the symbol of sexual
possession, so that the stocking or foot-gear became the emblem
of marriage, as later the ring. (It was so among the Jews, as we
see in the book of _Ruth_, Chapter III, v. 4, and Chapter IV, vv.
7 and 8). St. Vladimir the Great asked in marriage the daughter
of Prince Rogvold; as Vladimir's mother had been a serf, the
princess proudly replied that she 'would not uncover the feet of
a slave.' At the present time in the east of Russia when a young
girl tries to find out by divination whom she will have as a
husband the traditional formula is 'Come and take my stockings
off.' Among the populations of the north and east, it is
sometimes the bride who must do this for her husband on the
wedding night, and sometimes the bridegroom for his wife, not as
a token of love, but as a nuptial ceremony. Among the
professional classes and small nobility in Russia parents place
money in the stocking of their child at marriage as a present for
the other partner, it being supposed that the couple mutually
remove each other's foot raiment, as an act of sexual possession,
the emblem of coitus." (Paul Jacoby, _Archives d'Anthropologie
Criminelle_, December, 1903, p. 793.) The practice among
ourselves of children hanging up their stockings at night for
presents would seem to be a relic of the last-mentioned custom.

While we may witness the sexual symbolism of the foot, with or without an
associated foot-fetichism, most highly developed in Asia and Eastern
Europe, it has by no means been altogether unknown in some stages of
western civilization, and traces of it may be found here and there even
yet. Schinz refers to the connection between the feet and sexual pleasure
as existing not only among the Egyptians and the Arabs, but among the
ancient Germans and the modern Spaniards,[16] while Jacoby points out that
among the Greeks, the Romans, and especially the Etruscans, it was usual
to represent chaste and virgin goddesses with their feet covered, even
though they might be otherwise nude. Ovid, again, is never weary of
dwelling on the sexual charm of the feminine foot. He represents the
chaste matron as wearing a weighted _stola_ which always fell so as to
cover her feet; it was only the courtesan, or the nymph who is taking part
in an erotic festival, who appears with raised robes, revealing her
feet.[17] So grave a historian as Strabo, as well as Ælian, refers to the
story of the courtesan Rhodope whose sandal was carried off by an eagle
and dropped in the King of Egypt's lap as he was administering justice, so
that he could not rest until he had discovered to whom this delicately
small sandal belonged, and finally made her his queen. Kleinpaul, who
repeats this story, has collected many European sayings and customs
(including Turkish), indicating that the slipper is a very ancient symbol
of a woman's sexual parts.[18]

In Rome, Dufour remarks, "Matrons having appropriated the use of
the shoe (_soccus_) prostitutes were not allowed to use it, and
were obliged to have their feet always naked in sandals or
slippers (_crepida_ and _solea_), which they fastened over the
instep with gilt bands. Tibullus delights to describe his
mistress's little foot, compressed by the band that imprisoned
it: _Ansaque compressos colligat arcta pedes_. Nudity of the foot
in woman was a sign of prostitution, and their brilliant
whiteness acted afar as a pimp to attract looks and desires."
(Dufour, _Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. II., ch. xviii.)

This feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and
unconscious form in mediæval Europe. "In the tenth century,"
according to Dufour (_Histoire de la Prostitution_, vol. VI., p.
11), "shoes _a la poulaine_, with a claw or beak, pursued for
more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the
invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediæval
casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty. At a first
glance it is not easy to see why these shoes--terminating in a
lion's claw, an eagle's beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal
appendage--should be so scandalous. The excommunication inflicted
on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some
libertine, who wore _poulaines_ in the shape of the phallus, a
custom adopted also by women. This kind of _poulaine_ was
denounced as _mandite de Dicu_ (Ducange's Glossary, at the word
Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of
Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the garments of the women
of Montpellier). Great lords and ladies continued, however, to
wear _poulaines_." In Louis XL's court they were still worn of a
quarter of an ell in length.

Spain, ever tenacious of ancient ideas, appears to have preserved
longer than other countries the ancient classic traditions in
regard to the foot as a focus of modesty and an object of sexual
attraction. In Spanish religious pictures it was always necessary
that the Virgin's feet should be concealed, the clergy ordaining
that her robe should be long and flowing, so that the feet might
be covered with decent folds. Pacheco, the master and
father-in-law of Velasquez, writes in 1649 in his _Arte de la
Pintura_: "What can be more foreign from the respect which we owe
to the purity of Our Lady the Virgin than to paint her sitting
down with one of her knees placed over the other, and often with
her sacred feet uncovered and naked. Let thanks be given to the
Holy Inquisition which commands that this liberty should be
corrected!" It was Pacheco's duty in Seville to see that these
commands were obeyed. At the court of Philip IV. at this time the
princesses never showed their feet, as we may see in the pictures
of Velasquez. When a local manufacturer desired to present that
monarch's second bride, Mariana of Austria, with some silk
stockings the offer was indignantly rejected by the Court
Chamberlain: "The Queen of Spain has no legs!" Philip V.'s, queen
was thrown from her horse and dragged by the feet; no one
ventured to interfere until two gentlemen bravely rescued her and
then fled, dreading punishment by the king: they were, however,
graciously pardoned. Reinach ("Pieds Pudiques," _Cultes, Mythes
et Religions_, pp. 105-110) brings together several passages from
the Countess D'Aulnoy's account of the Madrid Court in the
seventeenth century and from other sources, showing how careful
Spanish ladies were as regards their feet, and how jealous
Spanish husbands were in this matter. At this time, when Spanish
influence was considerable, the fashion of Spain seems to have
spread to other countries. One may note that in Vandyck's
pictures of English beauties the feet are not visible, though in
the more characteristically English painters of a somewhat later
age it became usual to display them conspicuously, while the
French custom in this matter is the farthest removed from the
Spanish. At the present day a well-bred Spanish woman shows as
little as possible of her feet in walking, and even in some of
the most characteristic Spanish dances there is little or no
kicking, and the feet may even be invisible throughout. It is
noteworthy that in numerous figures of Spanish women (probably
artists' models) reproduced in Ploss's _Das Weib_ the stockings
are worn, although the women are otherwise, in most cases, quite
naked. Max Dessoir mentions ("Psychologie der Vita Sexualis,"
_Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, 1894, p. 954) that in Spanish
pornographic photographs women always have their shoes on, and he
considers this an indication of perversity. I have seen the
statement (attributed to Gautier's _Voyage en Espagne_, where,
however, it does not occur) that Spanish prostitutes uncover
their feet in sign of assent, and Madame d'Aulnoy stated that in
her time to show her lover her feet was a Spanish woman's final
favor.

The tendency, which we thus find to be normal at some earlier periods of
civilization, to insist on the sexual symbolism of the feminine foot or
its coverings, and to regard them as a special sexual fascination, is not
without significance for the interpretation of the sporadic manifestations
of foot-fetichism among ourselves. Eccentric as foot-fetichism may appear
to us, it is simply the re-emergence, by a pseudo-atavism or arrest of
development, of a mental or emotional impulse which was probably
experienced by our forefathers, and is often traceable among young
children to-day.[19] The occasional reappearance of this bygone impulse
and the stability which it may acquire are thus conditioned by the
sensitive reaction of an abnormally nervous and usually precocious
organism to influences which, among the average and ordinary population of
Europe to-day, are either never felt, or quickly outgrown, or very
strictly subordinated in the highly complex crystallizations which the
course of love and the process of tumescence create within us.

It may be added that this is by no means true of foot-fetichism
only. In some other fetichisms a seemingly congenital
predisposition is even more marked. This is not only the case as
regards hair-fetichism and fur-fetichism (see, e.g.,
Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia Sexualis_, English translation of
tenth edition, pp. 233, 255, 262). In many cases of fetichisms of
all kinds not only is there no record of any commencement in a
definite episode (an absence which may be accounted for by the
supposition that the original incident has been forgotten), but
it would seem in some cases that the fetichism developed very
slowly.

In this sense, it will be seen, although it is hazardous to speak of
foot-fetichism as strictly an atavism, it may certainly be said to arise
on a congenital basis. It represents the rare development of an inborn
germ, usually latent among ourselves, which in earlier stages of
civilization frequently reached a normal and general fruition.

It is of interest to emphasize this congenital element of foot symbolism,
because more than any other forms of sexual perversion the fetichisms are
those which are most vaguely conditioned by inborn states of the organism
and most definitely aroused by seemingly accidental associations or shocks
in early life. Inversion is sometimes so fundamentally ingrained in the
individual's constitution that it arises and develops in spite of the very
strongest influence in a contrary direction. But a fetichism, while it
tends to occur in sensitive, nervous, timid, precocious individuals--that
is to say, individuals of more or less neuropathic heredity--can usually,
though not always, be traced to a definite starting point in the shock of
some sexually emotional episode in early life.

A few examples of the influences of such association may here be
given, referring miscellaneously to various forms of erotic
symbolism. Magnan has recorded the case of a hair-fetichist,
living in a district where the women wore their hair done up, who
at the age of 15 experienced pleasurable feelings with erection
at the sight of a village beauty combing her hair; from that time
flowing hair became his fetich, and he could not resist the
temptation to touch it and if possible sever it, thus becoming a
hair-despoiler, for which he was arrested but not sentenced.
(_Archives de l'Anthropologie Criminelle_, vol. v, No. 28.)

I have elsewhere recorded the history of a boy of 14, having
already had imperfect connection with a grown-up woman, who
associated much with a young married lady; he had no sexual
relations with her, but one day she urinated in his presence, and
he saw that her mons veneris was covered by very thick hair; from
that time he worshiped this woman in secret and acquired a
life-long fetichistic attraction to women whose pubic hair was
similarly abundant (_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iii,
Appendix B, History V).

Roubaud reported the case of a general's son, sexually initiated
at the age of 14 by a blonde young lady of 21 who, in order to
avoid detection, always retained her clothing: gaiters, a corset
and a silk dress; when the boy's studies were completed and he
was sent to a garrison where he could enjoy freedom he found that
his sexual desires could only be aroused by blonde women dressed
like the lady who had first aroused his sexual desires;
consequently he gave up all thoughts of matrimony, as a woman in
nightclothes produced impotence (_Traité de l'Impuissance_, p.
439). Krafft-Ebing records the somewhat similar case of a nervous
Polish boy of old family seduced at the age of 17 by a French
governess, who during several months practiced mutual
masturbation with him; in this way his attention became
attracted by her very elegant boots, and in the end he became a
confirmed boot-fetichist (_Psychopathia Sexualis_, English
translation, p. 249).

A boy of 7, of bad heredity, was taught to masturbate by a
servant girl; on one occasion she practiced this on him with her
foot without taking off her shoe; it was the first time the
manoeuvre gave him any pleasure, and an association was thus
established which led to shoe-fetichism (Hammond, _Sexual
Impotence_, p. 44). A government official whose first coitus in
youth took place on a staircase; the sound of his partner's
creaking shoes against the stairs, produced by her efforts to
accelerate orgasm, formed an association which developed into an
auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled to
follow ladies whose shoes creaked, ejaculation being thus
produced, while to obtain complete satisfaction he would make a
prostitute, otherwise naked, sit in front of him in her shoes,
moving her feet so that the shoes creaked. (Moraglia, _Archivio
di Psichiatria_, vol. xiii, p. 568.)

Bechterew, in St. Petersburg, has recorded the case of a man who
when a child used to fall asleep at the knees of his nurse with
his head buried in the folds of her apron; in this position he
first experienced erection and voluptuous sensations; when a
youth he had no attraction to naked women, and in real life and
in dreams was only excited sexually under conditions recalling
his early experience; in his relations with women he preferred
them dressed, and was excited by the rustling sound of their
skirts; in this case there was no traceable neuropathic taint nor
any other personal peculiarity. (Summarized in _Journal de
Psychologie Normale et Pathologique_, January-February, 1904, p.
72.)

In a curious case recorded in detail by Moll, a philologist of
sensitive temperament but sound heredity, who had always been
fond of flowers, at the age of 21 became engaged to a young lady
who wore large roses fastened in her jacket; from this time roses
became to him a sexual fetich, to kiss them caused erection, and
his erotic dreams were accompanied by visions of roses and the
hallucination of their odor; the engagement was finally broken
off and the rose-fetichism disappeared (_Untersuchungen über
Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 540).

Such associations may naturally occur in the early experiences of even the
most normal persons. The degree to which they will influence the
subsequent life and thought and feeling depends on the degree of the
individual's morbid emotional receptivity, on the extent to which he is
hereditarily susceptible of abnormal deviation. Precocity is undoubtedly a
condition which favors such deviation; a child who is precociously and
abnormally sensitive to persons of the opposite sex before puberty has
established the normal channels of sexual desire, is peculiarly liable to
become the prey of a chance symbolism. All degrees of such symbolism are
possible. While the average insensitive person may fail to perceive them
at all, for the more alert and imaginative lover they are a fascinating
part of the highly charged crystallization of passion. A more nervously
exceptional person, when once such a symbolism has become firmly
implanted, may find it an absolutely essential element in the charm of a
beloved and charming person. Finally, for the individual who is thoroughly
unsound the symbol becomes generalized; a person is no longer desired at
all, being merely regarded as an appendage of the symbol, or being
dispensed with altogether; the symbol is alone desired, and is fully
adequate to impart by itself complete sexual gratification. While it must
be considered a morbid state to demand a symbol as an almost essential
part of the charm of a desired person, it is only in the final condition,
in which the symbol becomes all-sufficing, that we have a true and
complete perversion. In the less complete forms of symbolism it is still
the woman who is desired, and the ends of procreation may be served; when
the woman is ignored and the mere symbol is an adequate and even preferred
stimulus to detumescence the pathological condition becomes complete.

Krafft-Ebing regarded shoe-fetichism as, in large measure, a more or less
latent form of masochism, the foot or the shoe being the symbol of the
subjection and humiliation which the masochist feels in the presence of
the beloved object. Moll is also inclined to accept such a connection.

"The very numerous class of boot-and-shoe-fetichists,"
Krafft-Ebing wrote, "forms the transition to the manifestations
of another independent perversion, i.e., fetichism itself; but it
stands in closer relationship to the former.... It is highly
probable, and shown by a correct classification of the observed
cases, that the majority, and perhaps all of the cases of
shoe-fetichism, rest upon a basis of more or less conscious
masochistic desire for self-humiliation.... The majority or all