Download or read book To Kiss the Chastening Rod written by Geoffrey M. Goshgarian and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining ideas about masturbation, female sexuality, the family, and post-Calvinist religion that shaped the readership of popular woman's fiction, To Kiss the Chastening Rod shows that passionlessness was the privileged theme of a pervasive discourse which sought to exert social control through the rigorous repression, minute supervision, and covert cultivation of sexuality.