aelent_ of Marie de France this Breton knight
is represented as very chaste, possessing a high ideal of love
and able to withstand the wiles of women. One day when he is
hunting in a forest he comes upon a naked damsel bathing,
together with her handmaidens. Overcome by her beauty, he seizes
her clothes in case she should be alarmed, but is persuaded to
hand them to her; then he proceeds to make love to her. She
replies that his love is an insult to a woman of her high
lineage. Finding her so proud, Graelent sees that his prayers are
in vain. He drags her by force into the depth of the forest, has
his will of her, and begs her very gently not to be angry,
promising to love her loyally and never to leave her. The damsel
saw that he was a good knight, courteous, and wise. She thought
within herself that if she were to leave him she would never find
a better friend.

Brantome mentions a lady who confessed that she liked to be
"half-forced" by her husband, and he remarks that a woman who is
"a little difficult and resists" gives more pleasure also to her
lover than one who yields at once, just as a hard-fought battle
is a more notable triumph than an easily won victory. (Brantome,
_Vie des Dames Galantes_, discours i.) Restif de la Bretonne,
again, whose experience was extensive, wrote in his
_Anti-Justine_ that "all women of strong temperament like a sort
of brutality in sexual intercourse and its accessories."

Ovid had said that a little force is pleasing to a woman, and
that she is grateful to the ravisher against whom she struggles
(_Ars Amatoria_, lib. i). One of Janet's patients (Raymond and
Janet, _Les Obsessions et la Psychasthenie_, vol. ii, p. 406)
complained that her husband was too good, too devoted. "He does
not know how to make me suffer a little. One cannot love anyone
who does not make one suffer a little." Another hysterical woman
(a silk fetichist, frigid with men) had dreams of men and animals
abusing her: "I cried with pain and was happy at the same time."
(Clerambault, _Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle_, June, 1908,
p. 442.)

It has been said that among Slavs of the lower class the wives
feel hurt if they are not beaten by their husbands. Paullinus, in
the seventeenth century, remarked that Russian women are never
more pleased and happy than when