Lady Good For Nothing: A Man’s Portrait of a Woman by Q
Another book featuring a good whipping scene is Lady Good For Nothing: A Man’s Portrait of a Woman by Q (Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch), (1910).
Ruth Jocelyn, who is in her early twenties, is the daughter of one of the leading families in colonial Massachusetts in the 1700’s. Her mother belongs to another prominent family, so Ruth is firmly ensconced in the colony’s elite..
For this reason, Ruth carries on as if she is above the law. Nonetheless, when she is convicted of disorderly conduct, an infraction punishable by the lash and the stocks, she finds out that the law applies to everyone and that even a leading citizen such as herself is susceptible to a humiliating and painful punishment usually reserved for the common people—which she realizes, to her horror, when she finds herself being escorted by constables to the whipping cart.
Before her hands are secured to the end of the cart, Ruth must endure the humiliation of having to do a strip-tease. Her bodice and shift are removed, and for a few minutes, she is displayed topless in front of dozens of townsfolk. But the author Q is living in the Edwardian Age, and he wants his book to be a bestseller, not sold under the counter, so before her whipping commences, he has her fitted with a shift made from a sack with holes cut in it for the arms and head. After she puts it on, the rear of the sack is pulled back over her head and in front of the neck, so it resembles a modern-day halter top. Although her breasts are now covered, her back, arms and stomach remain bare, leaving her indecently, albeit not obscenely exposed by eighteenth-century standards. Her wrists are then bound to the cart end with cords that cut into the skin.
Ruth may be from a leading family, but the whipper lays the lash on with a will, beating her as he would any other common miscreant, as she is heckled and taunted by the crowd, which includes small children. Afterwards, she must spend five hours in the stocks.
While in the stocks, her top is pulled back over her head and down over her stripes, but her sleeveless garment, while fashionable in the 21st century, is degrading and downright indecent in the 1700's in that it renders her arms bare to the shoulders. The rough material also irritates the wounds made by the whip and greatly adds to her discomfort. She is taunted and admonished as she sits in the stocks, her face contorted with pain, and looking far more like one of the lowest and commonest of reprobates than one of the colony’s upper crust.
Following her punishment, family members scold her for committing a crime that brought disgrace to her family by getting her her "paraded naked through the streets.”
The book is available online for free at Gutenberg.