BDSM & literature: Nana

Nana is one of the great novels of the French writer Emile Zola. It was completed in 1880 and tells the story of the rise and meteoric career of a girl of humble origin, Nana, who thanks to its appeal and its charm is introduced into the high society of Paris, where she practises high-class prostitution. The plot continuously mixes luxury and sexuality. At the end, Nana becomes a capricious and tyrannical woman who submits her lover, Count Muffat, to all sorts of humiliations. Some of the situations described fully fit with BDSM femdom repertoire. See for example these fragments of chapter 13:

When she had him in her room, with the doors fastened, she would feast herself with the sight of man's infamy. At first it was merely fun. She would give him little slaps and make him do comical things, such as lisping like a child, repeating ends of sentences… He would be obedient…

The old devout frights of their (Muffat’s) night of wakefulness had now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for going on all fours, for grunting and biting. Then one day, as he was doing the woolly bear, she pushed him so roughly that he fell against a piece of furniture; and she broke out into an involuntary laugh as she saw a bump on his forehead. From that time, having already acquired a taste for it… she treated him as an animal, goaded him and pursued him with kicks.

"Gee up! gee up! you're the horse. Haw, gee! dirty jade! move along quicker than that!"

At other times he was a dog. She would throw her scented handkerchief to the other end of the room, and he had to go and pick it up with his teeth, crawling along on his hands and knees.

…And he delighted in his baseness, and relished the enjoyment of being a brute. He aspired at falling still lower he would cry out,

"Hit harder! Bow wow! I'm mad, hit away!"

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