Art of Ingeniously Tormenting

First published in 1753, this satire on the pleasures of causing pain, addressed to both men and women, in fact reveals the art to be the one in which women have become masters. Collier demonstrates that the ways of the cat - alternately wounding and soothing the victim - are inculcated with the codes of feminine conduct and suggests that because they are denied access to the male tools of power, women fashion instruments of retaliation from the very chains of femininity.