Years ago while watching an old black and white movie set in some kind of senior girls’ school there was a chance reference to Abelard and Heloise. It meant nothing to me at the time and if I ever knew it the name of the movies escapes me.
It was an odd set-up with ‘schoolgirls’ all being women (or at least played by women) and the scene in question revolved around a senior girl ambiguously ‘seducing’ a master in a classroom as an elaborate way of embarrassing him.
“If you don’t cut along Miss…” whatever, he says, “I shall spank you.”
This is the moment the teacher’s colleague choses to enter and overhear and she quips, “Not exactly Abelard and Heloise is it.”
The girl scurries away while the male teacher stutters his explanations to a woman who is dismissive and has the naughty girl sussed.
The movie, which was made circa 1950, was otherwise unremarkable and was of the sort that was often shown on UK TV up to the 1980s and never seen again. But it did set me on a short quest to find out more about Abelard and Heloise.
This story has featured on this blog before, but not in any detail. One of the books dealing with the story was a biography by Enid McLeod, which was published in 1938. At the time a copy wasn’t be had but tantalisingly a reference at the library to the book said it “was over endowed with spanking other romantic nonsense.”
As you can imagine it was with regret that a copy couldn’t be found.
If you are wondering and didn’t know Peter Abelard and Héloïse d’Argenteuil were real lovers in the 12th century and he was indeed her tutor and empowered to thrash the girl as he saw fit; this at the orders of her uncle Fulbert.
Heloise was unusually talented and although her age at the outset of this arrangement isn’t known, it has been put between 17 and 27 by scholars.
The point of interest for us is that some of these scholars have speculated as to whether Heloise’s chastisements were a cover, a duty or something more erotic.
The tale is a tragic one as the picture above, which may be an engraving depicting the couple, suggests.
