Indigo absolutely hates corner time and it is always a last resort with us and it is used sparingly. Not that she gets the last say, but one has to respect what works and thee feelings of your sub. Not that Indigo has a completely corner free life.

It seems that  women react very differently to corner time. I knew of a 20-year-old who would do 40 minutes with nothing more than a pout and another who went from rebelling at five minutes to meekly taking an hour.

A while back a college student who discovered my blog while researching about corner time, of all things. She tells me that it was corner time and not spanking that featured in her domestic sanctions at the hands of her guardian right up to leaving for college and she hated it.

However, after almost three years being young free and single she sometimes misses the “clarity and guidance” of being strictly handled. As an adult these feelings have become mixed up with a curiosity and a prurient interest in spanking, which is why, she says, she is a “big fan” of the blog.

Now I am obviously flattered and gratified by her interest here, but beyond that she posed me a question. “What is corner time and where did it come from?”

I love to do some proper research into this and I am fascinated by others experience and ideas, but that might be one for the future when I have more time. For now, this is what I have.

Corner time is in many ways a form of bondage. One places a girl in a corner, or sometimes facing a wall where she is forced to consider her sins and punishment. The interesting thing about it is that ostensibly it is voluntary. It is a recognition on some level of the authority of another to someone to the corner and an acceptance of an offered cooperation, all without ropes or chains.

Now obviously there is often the threat of a spanking attached to not obeying, but as with most such customary things, this is rarely overt.

Corner time comes in many different forms, it is most often done fully clothed by the very young as a ‘time out,’ given as a chance to cool down and is all the more embarrassing when given to a young adult. As we know this is often, but not always accompanied by a spanking.

A trawl of YouTube revealed one office spanking, played for laughs, but the woman lost in a rather unstable grainy movie looked embarrassed enough. Sadly there was no explanation. There was also a late teen giving it attitude to a concealed camera phone, saying she was “in community college for Christ sake and I got a swat on the butt and sent to the corner. Man this sucks;” again no explanation.

There was also a gang of what looked like some English college kids cajoling a girl of maybe 19 or 20 to go and sit in the corner facing the wall for some unnamed sin. She seemed bemused and uncomfortable, especially as she was being filmed and teased, but making a joke of it she did finally comply. Again I have no idea what was going on, a bet maybe?

My point about all of this is that it does seem to be going on in the 21^st century English-speaking world. This brings me to the question is Corner Time a mainly an Anglo-Saxon pursuit?

I did find an early 19^th century reference to Prussian governesses (that’s German to you) using corner time. It seems to have been used for girls of all ages as either an alternative to birching or as an accompaniment.

I had to do a rough type from a Photostat of an old magazine, which was in German and then run it through Google translator. So do bear with me. The gist of it was:

A girl or young woman of any age may be contained in her behaviour by demanding that she standing a corner facing the wall. This method can be employed as prelude to a sound birching and has the effect of making her wait (in shame?) to dwell upon her crimes.

Further shaming can be effected by exposing that area of operation either before and certainly afterwards, if more time in the corner is needed.

I am not sure if nudity was more acceptable in Prussia, they certainly went in for some quite harsh birch thrashing on the bare bottom and often in public. But in England it featured less.

Most of the line drawings in serious magazines depict women, even married ones either fully clothed or stripped to the petticoats. I found this:

It was most shameful to me to be standing at the corner with my behind burning under my skirts from the slipper. To my way of thinking I was much too old to be treated so, especially as my siblings and young cousins were on hand to witness my shame.

In another update to this post I have removed the Sally Field reference, although she was spanked in movies, it seems the corner time picture was a misreport, thanks to FFairm who corrected the Field reference. They pointed out that Lara Flyn Boyel got public corner time in court as a naughty lawyer in the TV show who is sent to the corner by the judge. See last picture above.

There is also a 1950s western where a young 20-something actress playing a 17-year-old is sent to the corner and warned to stay there “or I’ll paddle your behind to a shiny red.” I saw the movie years ago but don’t remember its name. It’s the kind they don’t show anymore just because of scenes like this.

The earliest reference I found to some form of time out dated back to early American colonial days. A 17^th century settlement in Massachusetts was confronted with the problem of dealing with three unmarried girls indulging in “unseemly behaviour.”  The justice of the peace and the preacher were vexed that there was no pillory or stocks. So although the girls’ families “would no doubt whip them soundly” a public shaming was felt necessary.

The girls were ordered stand “on their honor” at the village pump for two hours after church.

Indeed I have seen engravings of women being tethered at the neck or ankle to a village whipping post from this era. It is not obvious what is keeping them there other than their own cooperation as the tethers seemed mainly symbolic.

Twitter threw up some interesting pictures with comments like, “my sister in time out,” “phooey, the paddle and some corner time, no fair,” “my bad, I guess I deserve it,” and “me in the corner.”

I have no idea if the images weren’t just cribbed and I leave you to put captions to pictures. I have also included some other random pictures for your edification. All the pictures used are of the 18+ variety and I haven’t included faces where not appropriate. There are a million of them out there. It seems no domestic spanking is now complete without putting a picture of your wife or girlfriend in the corner on social media.

There also seems to be a trend, perhaps post-50 shades, of putting magazine models in the corner to make them more sexy. Among the pictures is also a rare picture of Lady D, the famous dominatrix from Real Spankings from the early 1980s when she was still on the receiving end.

Do you use corner time in your lives? Do you have nay insights?