Suburban Souls: The Erotic Psychology of a Man and a Maid
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Suburban Souls: The Erotic Psychology of a Man and a Maid was first published anonymously in 1901 by Charles Carrington, an active publisher of erotica in England and France. The author identifies himself only as Jacky S., a 43-year-old broker with the Paris stock exchange. His erotic memoir tells of his five-year love affair with 19-year-old Lilian Arvel. The introduction by Richard Manton and Barney Rosset speculates that Carrington may have been the author. The Carrington edition includes 20 appendices, among them the complete text to another novel, The Yellow Room.
Plot
The publisher notes that "The narrator of this tale is Jacky, a stockbroker of 43. He describes his five-year affair with the 19-year-old Lillian Arvel who, at first, willingly reciprocates his passion. However, she refuses to sacrifice her maidenhead and signs of her infidelity become unmistakable."
Comments by Richard Manton
Richard Manton notes that Suburban Souls is a novel of sex and jealousy, obsessive in its way as the self-consuming passion of the narrator for Albertine in À la recherche du temps perdu. A decade before the first volume of Proust's great novel, Suburban Souls dwells on the true nature of erotic jealousy. In its final stages the jealous emotion is not Othello's torment of tragic grandeur. Rather, it is necessary to the victim and, in its way, gratifying as the stimulation of sexual enjoyment."
