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I had considered entitling this essay, " 'Pussy, Jack, and many of 'em,'" or perhaps, " 'Let's have a little talk about Pussy'" or " 'I'd Pussy you ... if I was Pussy," or " 'You've only to call your Pussys by the dozen to make 'em come,'" all of which are quotes from chapter two of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the first two spoken by Edwin the last two by Mrs. Tope. The trouble is that there are just too many good choices to pick from in this chapter if you want to highlight an example of mischievous sexual doubleentendres. The word "Pussy" occurs 20 times in this chapter - a fact that is particularly remarkable considering the woman in question is not even present. The OED indicates that the word "pussy" has been used as slang for female genitalia since about 1 699, so it's reasonable to imagine that a man with Dickens's proclivities for nighttime slumming would be well aware of the sexual meaning of the term. And his playful juxtaposition of the word with other suggestive language makes the sexual double-entendres even clearer, particularly in chapter 2 and chapter 8. So, what is Dickens up to here - and why should we care?
To start with, Rosa's real name, "Rosa Bud," is also a longstanding term and image for female genitalia. The OED lists several examples of lips being compared to rosebuds in poetry from the seventeenth century onward, and "lips" have been used to refer to the external female genitalia since at least the sixteenth century (1598), so the connection between rosebuds and female genitalia is not hard to make. When Robert Herrick exhorted readers to "gather ye rosebuds while ye may," he wasn't just talking about picking flowers. So naming a young female character "Rosa Bud" and then giving her the nickname "Pussy" is playing pretty heavy-handedly with sex slang (tantamount to calling a male character "John Thomas" and making his nickname "Dick" - but we'll get to John Thomas later).
Chapter 2 of Drood, "A Dean and a Chapter Also," amounts to a tour deforce of sex slang. In this chapter Edwin and Jasper settle in with sherry and walnuts after dinner, when Edwin proposes, "'Pussy, Jack,...