Blog Etiquette
To all those blog followers who use a comment to ask a question about a particular blog post; please ensure you post the comment-question on the relevant blog post.
There have been a number of comments recently asking questions of Mistress Tracy about her last account, and the comment-questions are posted on the recent post of Mistress Suzanne’s latest account. This is simply discourteous to these generous Mistresses who provide the accounts and also it devalues the posts in question, as Mistress Tracy’s answers end up on the chain of comments on Mistress Suzanne’s account.
I will no longer be approving for publication, questions asked in a comment made on the wrong post. (I have to add I found Mistress Tracy’s last answer very hot indeed, so I provide it below.) The question was:
Mistress Tracy, Thank you again for continuing to update us. Moving in with your boyfriend is a huge step change for your slave. How did she react upon hearing the news that you both would move in with your boyfriend? How did the conversation go when you announced this change to your slave? I imagine considerable shock and humiliation for her and arousing pleasure for you.
She was not happy. A lot of delicious tears from her. I do love it when she cries. I did give her the option to leave and that I would help her find a place if she wanted to but she asked to stay.
I told her that, similar to what I said when I told her I was pursuing a romantic relationship with my bull, there would be no romantic contact with her. Purely a relationship of owner and slave. She again asked to stay.
And for a third time because I wanted to make sure, I said she would be living a miserable life of control, constant work and humiliation. Again, she asked to stay. Through tear stained eyes I might add. Very hot.
Myself and my boyfriend are in the process of discussing the dynamic.
Mistress Tracy
Setting Lines
Many Dommes like their uxo to write lines; many many lines. Mistress Jess and Mistress Christine immediately come to mind. So below is an excerpt from a book; The Female Disciplinary Manual, published by the Wildfire Club, in the 1960s I think, and the famous lesbian dominant Miss Martindale was the author, (I think). It is a very long excerpt!
While on the face of it, it is about boarding school female pupils, it was in reality written for adult uxo female discipline, and uxo male discipline when the male is treated as a schoolgirl-of-the-past, as part of his punishment and subjugation. I enjoyed reading the excerpt, thinking of my uxo bitch dressed and treated as a 1950s schoolgirl, being one of the girls, about which the excerpt’s suggestions are aimed. Although I like my bitch to write lines on my toilet rolls, but this does not feature in the excerpt below.
The Excerpt
The sensibility of lines – Practical merits as a form of punishment. The set line – Length of the line. Neatness and uncertainty whether work will be checked – Correcting lines – The ‘bare glance’. Unusual words. The ‘Magical Thousand’ – Multiples of 1,000 lines.
Among those punishments which do not fall into the category of “corporal”, the most usual takes the form of an imposition – a task, preferably lengthy and repetitive, which must be completed by the ‘girl’ being thus disciplined. Among impositions – especially in schools, but also in the home, the office and elsewhere – the best known and most frequently employed is the long tried and tested, the well-beloved imposition of ‘lines’. The form of this punishment is so well known that it seems almost unnecessary to describe it, however, for the sake of completeness, we shall do so.
Essentially, the punishment may take two forms, either the setting of so many lines of poetry to be copied or, more usually, the written repetition of a sentence dictated by
the Mistress or prefect (we assume the scholastic setting throughout the main part of this essay as that is the one in which we have most experience of this form of discipline). It is a punishment which is too often treated in a cold and functional manner, as if it were somehow less vital than, say, a spanking or a dose of the strap. We wish to put forward most strongly the thesis that this is not so: that there may be a depth of sensibility in the imposition of lines quite as profound as that which may be found in any corporal chastisement. There is, in some respects, even a greater intensity: a more pronounced sense of ruling over the life and liberty of the ‘girl’ subjected to this discipline – of dictating, with a few lightly-spoken words, the entire course and colour of her existence in the near future. We have known the closest and most fruitful of disciplinary rapports to be founded partly or even largely upon the imposition of lines and are firm supporters of the extension of this form of discipline beyond the boundaries of the academy. For a maidservant, for example, the condemnation to spend a portion of her precious leisure hours in the written repetition of some improving sentence may well be more effective on occasions than a good switching (or may be a salutary supplement to the same); for office ‘girls’, the taking home of a sheaf of foolscap to be covered with lines by the next morning is a wonderful promoter of future neatness, diligence, smartness and punctuality (they may also remain behind in the office after hours to complete the imposition, but this really comes under the heading of detention – a form of discipline which also might profitably be used more widely than its current scholastic application).
Indeed, with the introduction of the Office Cane into many advanced places of business today, the use of such impositions would seem to be the logical next step – and one which would perhaps find favour among the backward-looking minority who still imagine that an occasional caning with the light-weight implement authorised by the Home Office for this purpose is in some way bad for an office-girl (it might also open their eyes to see how many ‘girls’, faced with the choice between a substantial imposition and a caning will freely choose the latter to ‘get it over with’). On the purely practical side, lines have the advantage of being one of the few punishments which can effectively be given in absentia.
Where a protegee is separated from her Mistress, effective discipline may be imposed very satisfactorily by letter or over the telephone. In this age of discipline, when the looseness of yesterday is being so roundly rejected and new areas of sensibility discovered and understood, we feel that the often-undervalued discipline of lines should be seen with fresh eyes: its delicacy and grace, its great versatility and its psychological subtlety should be appreciated by the new generation of feminine disciplinarians. The imposition of lines should be refined to a gentle art, and valued as one of the delicate and purifying things of life.
Non – Corporal Punishments
The Virtues of a Set Line
One of the beauties of this punishment is its ease and simplicity— the fact that but a moment’s thought and the speaking of a few words by a Mistress may condemn a child to hours of repetitive and tiresome labour. Sometimes, in order to increase this
element, a ‘set line’ or ‘standard line’ may be established, so that the Mistress is not even put to the trouble of devising a line. This system was used at ***** School at various periods. In one house the set line for the week was pinned upon the noticeboard by the housemistress, and the prefects and Mistresses had merely to say to a girl “ One hundred lines” and the punishment was imposed. The girl knew that she must copy the ‘set Line’ one hundred times and deliver it to the Mistress’s study by five o’clock the next day— the standard time for the submission of such punishments. Of course, those in authority were always free to set their own lines, and often did so, especially if they wished to amuse the young delinquent by setting a rather longer line than the standard one, but the existence of the ‘set line’ had a very definite effect toward increasing the amount of written punishment imposed in that house.
The ease and freedom felt, especially by the prefects, in being able to say “Lydia, 100 Lines”, perhaps as a sort of aside, without even turning away from one’s conversation with a fellow-prefect, was almost intoxicating in its bestowal of a sense of effortless power. At the same time, the younger girls stood more in awe of the prefects as an order of beings who could and would ruin an afternoon’s leisure without giving the matter a minute’s worth o f her own attention. It was noticed also that the prefects and even the Mistresses often gave larger numbers of lines than before, perhaps tiring of constantly saying “50 lines” and “100 lines” and finding it interesting to vary the refrain with “250 lines”. “300 lines” and even perhaps the occasional four or five hundred.
This system was introduced and found to be of great advantage whenever one of those occasional periods of turbulence and unruliness setted upon the school or upon a particular form, year or house (all schoolteachers and Governesses will be familiar with this phenomenon). It has a great effect in increasing respect for authority, calming the passions, and, indeed, in giving the children something more tranquil with which to occupy their leisure hours!
The Length of the Line
As WELL AS THE question of the number of lines, the punishment may be varied in other ways, the most obvious of these being the length of the line. Some Mistresses take a whimsical pleasure in, say, keeping a girl behind after class to receive her punishment and saying, “Well, Veronica, you are to write fifty lines for me,” and even as Veronica is breathing a sigh of relief, proceeding to dictate, or to write upon the blackboard a form of words orotund and leisurely in its expression, replete with dependent clauses, causing the child’s heart to sink ever more deeply as the line seems
to be coming to a natural conclusion only to open into some fresh convolution of bluestocking verbosity and as it becomes apparent that the task will be as heavy as three or four hundred lines of a more usual length. Such procedures, of course, would lose their force if employed with too great a frequency, and, in any case, some Mistresses never use them; but it should be considered as a means of increasing the psychological effectiveness of the punishment. Conversely, a prefect may set the line first, giving a simple line of just a few words ‘I must not shout’, for example, and then dash the child’s hopes with an off-hand “Two hundred and fifty by tomorrow evening, please.”
The opposite effect may also be achieved. The girl who is noisy in the corridor may be brought up sharply with the following: “I am going to make an example of you, Fiona. You will have ample time to repent your thoughtlessness over the writing of four hundred lines.” A lengthy lecture – or perhaps the leaving of the room for some time to attend to some other business – is recommended at this point. And then: “Take down the line, please: Silence is golden.” This is still a substantial imposition, but the child is forcibly impressed with the thought of how much worse it might have been and doubtless will be should the offence recur, and of how wholly her fate is in the hands of her superiors.
The length of the line is often not a matter of much considered thought, and can easily become dictated by mere habit. Certain Mistresses are known for mostly setting short, simple lines, probably because they are the first that pop into their heads (they
probably set longer ones every now and then, when they are cross). Others dutifully compose lines of a middling length because that is what seems to them the “right” length for a punishment line, while Miss S——is well known for the length of her lines; solid slabs of artfully constructed prose three or four lines long, even though she sets the same numbers as the other Mistresses. Very probably there are one or two prefects who gleefully copy this trait, perhaps making their youthful compositions
even more elaborate than those of the Mistress they have suffered under. No doubt these foibles are an ineradicable part of human nature, but we wish here to express our opinion that the length of the line is, ideally, something to be considered: a part of the psychological balance of the punishment as a whole which should be so weighed as to make the punishment as elegant, effective and as appropriate to its circumstances as possible.
Neatness
The third important consideration in the setting of lines is neatness; some prefects and Mistresses – probably the majority – will accept lines of almost any quality, others will take pleasure in rejecting a hundred lines for a few minor imperfections, demanding that they be done again and perhaps even doubling or trebling them, or bringing out the cane for the offence of “unsatisfactory completion of punishment work.”
Girls quickly mark the difference between the two types, and it would be a revelation to many to compare a page of lines written by the same girl for a mistress whom she knows will accept them with a cursory glance and for a prefect who has a reputation for re-setting, doubling and strapping. Curiously, there is often little ground between these extremes, which is unfortunate, because a girl should at least work in the realisation that her lines will be looked at. Some girls are so confident that the lines will not be checked that they deliberately do the wrong number, or even insert “amusing” variations into the lines in the middle of the imposition, on the (usually correct) assumption that only a few at the beginning or end will ever be read. These variations are often shown to other girls before the lines are submitted in order to demonstrate the ‘wit’ and daring of the writer.
The present writer recalls one girl who ‘concealed’ a great deal of innocent hilarity within the lines that ‘would never be read’ and well remembers the consternation registered on the countenance of this young person upon learning that she must repeat the imposition of 150 lines every day for a fortnight, with a sharp application of between three and a dozen strokes (depending upon the excellence or otherwise of the lines) of the Junior Dormitory Cane (a light instrument, but, as the girls put it, “a real
stinger” ) upon the reception of each repetition. Methods of ‘correcting’ lines are various and each has its particular charm. The simple act of tearing the lines in half or into pieces with the information that they are unsatisfactory and must be repeated is especially effective where a long imposition has been completed and sometimes has the effect of reducing a girl to tears.
Some Mistresses go through the imposition, scoring in red ink through each unsatisfactory line, or circling unsatisfactorily formed letters; each line thus rejected to be repeated several times – often three, five or ten times. Other Mistresses may award a stroke of the strap or five minutes’ detention for every rejected line. To tell a girl in advance that her imposition is to be “marked” in this way greatly increases her care and patience in writing it. The girl who has not been warned of this strict marking may be given a salutary shock as she sees the Mistress, whom she had expected to receive the lines with no more than a glance, set to work closely examining them with a severe countenance and dotting the page with red marks. The simple rejection of the
entire imposition with the instruction that it is now doubled – or even, occasionally, trebled – is perhaps the most devastating ‘correction’ of all. This penalty may be awarded for lateness of presentation as well as for untidiness.
As we have suggested, the degree of severity with which an imposition is ‘marked’ and ‘corrected’ should be a matter for some consideration. Undoubtedly the temperament of the Mistress or prefect is, and should be, a factor. Some really do not wish to concern themselves with an imposition once it is completed, and the off-hand, scarcely-noticing manner in which they accept what may represent two or three hours of girlish tedium is an important nuance of the punishment. Others have a sense of order and neatness which demands that lines be checked carefully. Nonetheless, we feel that, in the interests of effective and subtly-calculated punishment, the matter should sometimes be considered.
It should be borne in mind that when a girl knows that her work is to be sternly marked, fifty lines which must be written with the most painstaking care and attention may be a greater punishment than a hundred lines of the same length set in the ‘normal’ way— a punishment which is also intensified by the psychological uncertainty as to whether the task will really be ‘over’ when it is completed; that when she does not know it, the imposition of 100 lines which are almost certain to be rejected and repeated is psychologically very different from setting 200 lines in the first place, and 100 lines which are repeated twice and finally doubled before they are at last accepted (making 500 in all) is an entirely different sort of punishment from a straightforward imposition of 500 lines, a punishment on some occasions much better and on others not so good. On the other hand, the fairly free acceptance of lines is not to
be derided. It has its uses. Very strict marking does greatly increase the time taken up by lines, both from repetition (unless other means are used to chastise unaccepted lines) and from the much slower speed of a girl working to make each line, each word, each letter acceptable to her taskmistress. 150 lines under these circumstances, even if no correction work is necessary may be the equivalent of 300 ‘ordinary’ lines. This is often an excellent thing, but sometimes the Mistress may want the sound and feel of setting the higher numbers. She may desire the crushing effect of announcing “ 500 lines” without actually giving the equivalent of 1,000 or 1,500. She may want the overwhelming psychological effect o f giving the dreaded “ thousand lines” without prolonging the punishment to inordinate lengths. In such cases lighter marking is called for, though even here, the present writer cannot advocate the ‘bare glance’ or automatic acceptance which is all too common.
Is there ever a case for the ‘bare glance’ ? Yes, we should say there is. As we have already indicated, it can be psychologically effective in indicating how very little the girl’s punitive labours may signify to the superiors who impose them. Some Mistresses and prefects are known for this and it is part of their ‘style’ – it
suits them. Others may vary their methods, and it can be particularly effective when a girl is expecting the strictest marking, to accept the lines occasionally without a glance. She has worked at them with the greatest care, extending the dreary time of her punishment to twice its normal length or more. Now her careful work does not receive even ten seconds’ attention. The pages are not turned. She might have scribbled it all at breakneck speed. She might have written only half the set amount. It would not have mattered after all. When a Mistress is known for being unpredictable in her reception of impositions, an interesting tension is created in the hearts of her pupils – should one really work so horribly slowly and carefully when, as likely as not she will accept the work without considering it for a moment? Dare one risk rushing a bit when she may be in one of her ‘fussy moods’ and examine every individual line? It is something of an unorthodox ‘effect’ , perhaps, to aim for, but one that is not without its piquance and charm.
Unusual Numbers
Just as too many Mistresses give too little attention to the examination of lines, so they may give too little thought to the numbers they set. In a way, of course, this is often as it should be. Lines do not demand much of the setter. It is the pupil who has
to think about them, write them, live with them until they are finished. Many Mistresses set the standard ‘100 lines’ for almost everything, occasionally venturing to two or three hundred when much displeased, and there is nothing wrong with this style. Nonetheless, there are shades and colours that many mistresses might enrich their work by considering. Each number of lines has its own subtle feeling. ‘100 lines’, of course, is the standard, classical imposition. ‘50 lines’ (often set by prefects) has a feeling of lenity about it, although it is a tiresome enough imposition when one actually sets about doing it.
Slightly more unorthodox numbers should sometimes be considered. 150 is a number with a gentle charm. More than the standard 100, but not yet ‘taking wing’ into the multiples of 100. It is an interestingly homely little punishment which at once feels lenient because it has avoided the more obvious 200 and severe because it is substantially more than the standard 100. 250 is a nice, solid quantity: it has a feeling of being well-considered. It is half 500, seeming to suggest the higher reaches of punitive imposition and, while it does not yet aspire to them, the pupil will find it weighty enough. It is a good ‘warning’ number. 350 is another number with charm. Do consider it from time to time. Small numbers are also not without interest. Sometimes in
schools where a standard line is written up for the week, the habit of giving ten, fifteen and twenty-five lines for minor offences is encouraged.
Such sums are irritating rather than crushing, but they are good for maintaining order in little things and may rapidly mount up. It is a useful system to consider in some circumstances. 25 lines is a punishment which should not be neglected. It sounds light and whimsical. It is light, but not quite as light as it sounds. If you are inclined to disbelieve us, stop now, in the middle of this paragraph, and write, 25 times, “ I must be a good, demure, obedient young lady.” Have you done that? Then no doubt you see what we mean. 25 to 50 lines is an excellent punishment for breaking small bad habits like bad posture, bad pronunciation and so forth. The lines must be written immediately, every time the girl is found doing – or not doing – whatever is in question.
The Magical Thousand
From small numbers to large ones. Perhaps the most crushing phrase in the schoolMistress’s repertoire is “You will take a thousand lines.” There is something magical about the dreaded thousand: so utterly crushing; such a heavy, inescapable sentence
that comes down upon one, changing the colour of one’s immediate life. One remembers the oppressive tedium of the 100 or 200 one wrote last week, but a thousand seems almost outside comprehension. There is a curious satisfaction in imposing such a rounded, thorough punishment. From 500 onwards, lines take on a darker, more serious colouring. 600, 700, 750, 800 are numbers whose announcement leaves one numbed and a little chilled, but 1,000 brings one somehow into a new dimension of seriousness and severity. A thousand lines has something of the fateful, drastic quality of the cane in schools where the cane is rarely used and only for serious offences: something which suddenly brings the erring child up against the hard reality of Fate. The very phrase “ a thousand lines” has something of the classic severity of ‘six o f the best’, and, indeed, with less whimsy and more heaviness about it. The present writers are of the opinion that every girl should at some time endure the experience of writing a thousand lines or more. There are few, if any, who do not on some occasion deserve it, and distressing as it may be at the time, it is, in itself, a part of the education of character.
We have seen many girls surprisingly improved after such a long and gruelling imposition – at once quietened and in a curious way deepened, and also somehow refreshed, as if a period of dull restriction had increased their appreciation of the simple pleasures and everyday liberties of life. As with the severer forms of discipline in general, girls vary considerably in how frequently large numbers of lines will benefit
them. Some girls – probably most – require such discipline only rarely, but there are those who benefit and actually flourish under their fairly frequent application. These are not necessarily the girls who find them most tolerable; rather they are those who have an inward need for submission and the subjugation of the will to that of another. Such subjugation does not come within the compass of usual school discipline, but may sometimes flower between a Mistress (or often a prefect) and a girl who have a particular rapport. Conversely, it is true that some Mistresses are prone to set the
dreaded thousand lines more easily than others. A majority will not do it save in exceptional circumstances, but there are those who regard this form of punishment as a salutary part of regular school discipline. They will set a thousand lines not infrequently and sometimes will sentence a whole class to this crushing imposition.
Their classes tend to be exceptionally quiet, subdued and well turned-out. Such Mistresses will be prone to set 1,500 or 2,000 for more serious offences, and we have heard such formidable ladies speak warmly of the virtues o f “ a few thousand lines”
for the cure of this or that fault. Such Mistresses may also set a thousand lines of more than usual length: an instruction to write a long, complex sentence one thousand times is one of the most heart-oppressing that can be received. This brings us on to the subject of multiples of a thousand. These are rare for all Mistresses and all girls, only occurring in exceptional circumstances, but can be an excellent discipline in
certain cases. We recall a girl who was directly defiant to a Mistress who, after consideration of the matter, decided to suspend her from all lessons and to take her to every class she was teaching for the next few days, seating her always at the back of the class where she would employ her time in completing 3,000 lines which were
subject to the closest scrutiny, several pages often being rejected for inadequate neatness. At the end of this ordeal (which also included several corporal chastisements) the girl’s tendency to insubordination went into abeyance for a very long time. We have heard of prefects giving one, two or even three thousand lines as ‘holiday tasks’ to their favourite juniors at the end of term. This is not a practice which is officially approved, but in our view, so long as there is a real rapport and the girls are not being oppressed entirely against their will (and this is not usually the case among girls, especially those brought up in the sensitive atmosphere of an advanced school), it does little harm and often much good.
Spread over the period of a holiday, these large impositions are not as onerous (provided they are approached sensibly and not left to the last minute) as when given in a more concentrated form. This is generally the case with high numbers of lines. The instruction “You will present 150 lines a day for the next week” is actually an
imposition of just over a thousand lines (if Sunday be included), yet it has not nearly the suffocating weight of a thousand lines to be presented in one or two days. What it lacks in immediate force, of course, it makes up in duration – the obligation to produce today’s 150 lines being continually with the girl. As we have said before, the skilful Mistress will weigh the relative merits of setting the same imposition in different forms. We might even say that there is a method midway between these two. If one were to say “ You will take a thousand lines” and to follow this (either immediately or at a later time) with the instruction that they may be presented in instalments of 100 a day for the next ten days, one has at once the effect of setting the fateful thousand, and of giving the longer punishment, which is at once a mitigation and an extension of the suffering.
A punishment such as “You will write 100 lines a day for the rest of term” is in fact likely to be an imposition of several thousand lines, but has a very different tone and character from a simple imposition of four or five thousand lines. The unimaginative may argue that the words, or the precise form in which a punishment is set, is of no real importance, and is purely psychological, but we reply that lines are in any case a
wholly psychological punishment. The suffering is “ all in the mind” . A girl can only ever be writing one line at any given time, and few girls would mind writing a single line in the least – it is the memory o f what she has written before and the knowledge
of what she has still to write which make the imposition a punishment at all. Therefore the way it is set, the perception of the punishment, is a vital part of its nature.
This also is why such questions as the length of a line, the meticulousness with which it is marked and the severity with which it is ‘corrected’ are all vital to the ‘colouring’ of the punishment. One hundred long lines; 200 ‘normal’ lines; 300 very short ones; 50 lines which will be scrutinised, rejected and doubled, the new work therefore done with painstaking care and slowness – these four punishments may all take the same length of time by the clock, sitting in uniform at a desk, to complete. To the unsubtle mind they are ‘the same’, or at any rate equivalent punishments.
To the mind alive with the New Sensibility, they are four quite different things, each with its own unique flavour and bouquet, each appropriate to a particular combination of occasion and individual girl rather than another, each to be weighed, sensed, savoured and appreciated in its own particular way. There are of course, a dozen variants and hybrids o f these four, all of which would take up the same amount of objective disciplinary time – but by no means the same amount of subjective time, or the same quality of time. When we say – as we propose to say – that setting lines is an art, we are likely to be suspected of making a statement that is both clicked and strictly
untrue. We maintain, nonetheless, that setting lines is an art – or at any rate that it can be. A minor art to be sure, but insofar as it conveys to its ‘audience’ a particular nuance of this particular aspect of the variegated human tapestry called discipline, an art by all means.
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