Spare the rod and spoil the pervert: Corporal punishment and the nineteenth century in popular culture.

This article examines the depiction of corporal punishment in nineteenth-century British fiction and its twentieth-century film and television adaptations, focusing on how these portrayals reflect and subvert Victorian schooling practices. It identifies two key nineteenth-century literary influences on modern adaptations: the respectable school narratives and the covert, illicit flagellation literature of the fin de siècle, both emphasizing ritualized punishment tableaux and the complex power dynamics involved. Using the 1971 BBC adaptation of Thomas Hughes's *Tom Brown's School Days* as a focal point, the article argues that twentieth-century popular culture made explicit the subversive and sometimes perverse elements that were covert in nineteenth-century texts, aligning these portrayals with contemporary debates on the abolition of corporal punishment in schools. The study highlights how these adaptations present corporal punishment not as corrective but as a practice that undermines authority and evokes sexual and ritualistic undertones, contributing to cultural discourse on the efficacy and morality of physical chastisement.