Frank and I (Part 3)

This is the final part of my series about the spanking novel Frank and I. Here are part 1 and part 2. In this final part I would like to share two scenes from the Lady Libertine with you, a movie from 1984 based on the novel Frank and I. The first scene is the one in which Charles Beaumont discovers during a caning that his protégé Frank is a woman.

The second scene which you find below is one which takes place quite some time later when Beaumont and Frances have become lovers. Charles Beaumont finds out that Frances has been spending time with a young man she was not supposed to meet. Frances offers to take a thrashing from his hands as a punishment.

I like the way the two scenes are filmed, I think the action is decent for a vanilla film. Of course, it is quite obvious that the whippings and the marks aren't real (this is an example the conspiracy theorists should watch before claiming that, for instance, Mood Pictures or Lupus Pictures show faked whippings). I find the filming good nonetheless.

I have to admit that I don't care too much for the vanilla sex scenes, though. And there are quite a few differences between the movie and the book, about which I want to say a few words.

First of all, there are many more spanking scenes in the book than in the film. I don't like all of them, but there is one main difference which annoys me about the movie: In the book, it is made very clear that Charles Beaumont is a spanko. He sexually enjoys dishing out a thrashing. Not so in the movie.

There are five corporal punishment scenes in the movie. The two shown above, one that shows Frances being slippered by the brothel keeper, one (which I think takes place off screen) in which Charles Beaumont slippers the brothel keeper as revenge for Frances' mistreatment and finally one in which the ladies at the brothel enact a judicial whipping. The last scene is the only one which is sexually loaded, but Charles Beaumont doesn't really seem to enjoy it and it is made clear that the show stage whipping is faked.

What's more, after the second scene which I have shared with you in this post, Charles Beaumont tosses away the crop and it is implied that he never spanks Frances again. I think it is sad that even in a sex film the video makers obviously didn't like the idea of showing spanking as a sexual kink which can be fun.

The second main difference is how the plot unfolds. In the movie, Frances announces to Charles Beaumont that she is going to leave him after he has chastised her for talking to the other guy. But then Charles Beaumont offers to marry her and show the world that he is truly hers and so they stay together and live happily ever after.

Maybe I am the only one who isn't so much into these clichéd "all a woman really wants is to be married and then all is well" storylines. Well, okay, sometimes I love these fairy tale endings, too. But I have to admit that I like the story which is told in the book more because I think it is more realistic given the traits of the characters involved while not being sad.

In the book, Frances decides to leave Charles Beaumont and get married to another man because she knows that Charles is likely to leave her once she gets older and doesn't catch his sexual interest as much anymore. Her husband is a widower with two children. Frances is faithful to her husband whose children she also raises and so her relationship with Charles Beaumont ends. But then her husband dies and Charles and Frances revive their love relationship.

By the way, in my opinion the book implies that Frances also enjoys a bit of kink. For instance, she lures her stepchildren's governess, Miss Martin, into letting Frances whip her. Partly, the scene is for Charles' eyes who is watching secretly, but it seems that Frances is having fun as well.

Still, Charles Beaumont and Frances don't stay together. Frances falls in love with another man, Mr Gilbert, tells Charles about it and even asks him to give her away as her guardian. Again, Frances is faithful to her new husband and asks Charles not to touch her anymore when she tells him about Mr Gilbert's proposal. Charles Beaumont obliges immediately and also gives her away at the wedding.

I very much like the ending of the book because it implies that both Charles and Frances are quite happy with the lives they have chosen and remain in contact with each other as affectionate friends. So I want to end my series about the book by sharing the last paragraphs of the book with you:

The last few days before the marriage slipped away rapidly, and uneventfully; the wedding day arrived, and then, according to my promise, I gave Frances away. She was exquisitely dressed, in the most perfect taste; and though she was thirty years old, she was still a very beautiful woman, and I felt a pang of regret at knowing that I should never again poke her, or even have the pleasure of feeling her plump bottom or her firm bubbies.

At the wedding breakfast there was a large party of guests, including a number of the bridegroom's relatives; the usual speeches were made, and everything passed off well.

Frances was in good spirits; and just before she left the room to put on her travelling-dress, she drew me aside out of sight of the guests, and giving me a kiss, said: "Charley, I love my husband and I will be faithful to him; but I shall never forget how kind you have been to me, from the day you took me into your house, up to the present moment."

I clasped a bracelet on her wrist, as a wedding present, and kissing her for the last time, bade her good bye; then she ran upstairs to her room.

In a short time she came down, dressed for her journey; and then the newly-married couple got into their carriage, and were driven off, amid showers of rice, to Charing Cross station, en route for Italy, where they intended to spend their honeymoon.

And so, for the second and last time, my sweetheart passed out of my life.

Next day I went home to Oakhurst, and settled down to my old life as a country gentleman.

Five years have passed since the last lines were written, and I again take up my pen to put the finishing touches to the story.

Frances is now a buxom matron, thirty-five years old, with two little children. She and her husband are perfectly happy; they are very well-off, and they live in London half the year; and I am always a welcome guest at their house whenever I choose to go there. Gilbert and I are very good friends; as he has not the faintest suspicion that I ever was anything to Frances but her "guardian." She has quite a daughterly affection for me, and whenever we meet we talk and laugh about the old days.

Miss Martin, after leaving Frances, got a good situation as governess in a family, where she remained until she heard of her husband's death in South America. Then she married again. I have never seen her since.

Frances' two step-children live with their father's relations: but they often visit their stepmother, and I have frequently seen them. Robert is sixteen years old, and is studying for the army. Dora is nineteen years old, and has grown- as I knew she would-into a magnificent young woman, tall and shapely, and most "divinely fair." She is engaged to be married.

My story is finished, and though I am fifty years of age, I am in good health, and I can still "look upon the wine when it is red," and I can also still enjoy a pretty girl.

But often, in the long winter evenings, when I am sitting all alone in my big dining-room after dinner, I think of the "boy Frank" whom I had picked up on the road twenty years before, and who had eventually turned out to be a loving, faithful woman.