All Comments on 'Maud Comes for Valentine'

That is such an unusual offering. Lovely. Well written, grammatically correct (sorry, ex-teacher here) and - well, good.

I liked her voice, the story sounds so Victorian, and Maud so like the quintessential blushing, virginal maid. and I was impressed at how well you managed to communicate the restrictiveness of Maud's circumstances despite her lack of insight, as the tale is being told from only her perspective. Well done, Thats hard to pull off well

Esther (commenting from my mobile)

The formal, flowery tone was spot on. Did educated women of the period really speak like that? Yes, no question as evidenced by their prose. Well done. By the way, a very special young lady introduced me to Byron's "She Walks In Beauty" way back in 1969. We were each other's first love.

I think this should have gone longer. It would liked to have seen where Maud and Valentine's relationship goes from here. As a romance story it seems a lot like this is only the start rather than a complete whole. What is here to read was fun though.

Just lovely!

5 *'s

This is very well done. This very convicingly reads like it was written by a ,Victorian, upper class repressed lady. Very good writing.

I am not sure that it needs to be extended as some have suggested. We can imagine what happens next, she accepts his proposal, is a virgin on her wedding night, her mother tells her to "lie back and think of England"' but Maud ignores this and has a wonderfull time. We don't need the author to spell this out for us.

One point, my reading suggests that Victorian doctors adminteringi "pelvic massage" concentrated on the clitoris and avoided the vagina completely. Sex was seen as entirely vaginal, stimulating the clitoris relleived hysteria but was not seen as sex!

The voice of the repressed young Victorian woman is very well conveyed and the psychology of her responses to her surroundings and the "medical treatment" seem very believable.

For myself, I don't feel a great deal of romance or eroticism in the story, more a witty presentation of a social reality of the time, but that is worthwhile in itself. I think the hints of eroticism which are there lie in Nurse Smith's puncturing of the seriousness of the treatment. Otherwise it would be too clinical to be sexy. And when it comes to romantic feeling, it is hard to feel a strong wish fulfilment identification with Maud when she doesn't know what she is wishing for. But her confused state of mind is somewhere that a conventional romance wouldn't take us. And I'm glad I went there.

Thank you so much for these lovely comments. I'm really delighted to hear that my work on the Victorian tone of the writing gets that right. I normally write fantasy as I'm too lazy to do historical research so this was a bit of a venture for me. I am very grateful to Bramblethorn and Bt's wife, and to commentators here, for support with some of the historical details.

I'm also grateful to Aussie for pinpointing that he wasn't that turned on by the 'sex' scene. For me, and I suspect many other women, although an actual smear test is uncomfortable and no fun, a medical fantasy about being closely inspected 'down there' is a thrilling fetish. Aussie's reaction explains to me why I didn't get the score I was looking for with this story - strokes for folks; I can see that some might not have been that turned on even if they found this a well-written story, so justifiably marked it down.

As the score is a bit lower than I'd hoped, I am particularly grateful for this kind feedback about the quality of the writing <3