09/12/2021
We remain forever obsessed with this image of a woman terrifying the devil himself with her v***a but did you know there's context? And the context is weirder than the picture itself...
It's an 1896 illustration by Charles Eisen of the poem "The Devil of Pope Fig Island" by Jean de la Fontaine, a 17th century French fabulist. In the story, the devil has turned up on this island, and he's going around terrorising the villagers, as devils do. You know, cuckolding husbands, nicking people's crops, generally making life crappy. One day he decides to screw with a farmer called Phil, and demands the guy gives him half of his crops. The farmer decides to trick the devil by giving him what he asked for, literally - the half that's basically leaves rather than the actual veg. The devil is annoyed and embarrassed by this and resolves to punish the farmer. The farmer is obviously quite frightened by this, and goes crying to his wife. His wife is like "babe, chill, I've got this, I have more power in my little finger than that jerk". (we paraphrase - she actually says "My little finger, if I like can show / More malice than his head and body know.")
When the devil turns up, the farmer goes and hides in a vat of holy water because he's scared and has made the very good decision to just let his wife handle the whole thing. The wife (her name is Perretta) turns on the tears and cries to the devil about how her husband is a very strong and scary man who beats her. She's like "he is SO scary, look at this wound he gave me".
And she lifts up her skirts and shows the devil her v***a.
The devil has never seen a v***a before (presumably when he was off cuckolding he was doing it in the dark or with his eyes closed or something). He is HORRIFIED by this enormous wound this poor lady has. And he's like "holy crap, I screwed with the wrong guy, this man is scary af" So he goes away, and leaves that village alone, and then everybody claps and Perretta is a hero.
You can read the entire poem here: https://allpoetry.com/The-Devil-Of-Pope-Fig-Island
If you like this image even more now you have context, you can buy it on bookmarks, greeting cards and more in our gift shop! You can get 10% off everything in our shop until 14th December using the code MERRYCLITMAS https://vaginamuseumshop.co.uk/
