Cherish Lacey

Victorian Sexuality

Victorian sexuality is widely seen as being repressed. According to some medical journals and writings of the time one might draw that conclusion. However, that was not true of all the writings of the time. In fact, several authors urge that this notion that bedroom behavior was no existent is simply not true. It is much more complicated than simply saying Victorians were sexually repressed. There are several factors that created the allusion that Victorians were sexually repressed but that is just what it was, an allusion. Sexuality was linked with being poor or “animalistic”. Middle class women were seen as asexual and something that needed to be protected and hidden from the outside world. The truth of the matter is that someone was having sex otherwise the population would not have continued to grow like it did in the 19^th century. Sex was used to determine the natural and unnatural. It was used as a platform to oppress women. It was used to create a hierarchy of social rank according to dressing and loitering standards. In short, the Victorians sexual repression is largely a rumor that has been passed down through generations. Medical journals along and research of the time point to the fact that while they may not have talked about it publicly the sexual life of Victorians was definitely present and in some sense less repressed than now.

            One reason that Victorians may seems to have been sexual repressed is because they associated sexual freedom with those of the lower class.  Many Victorians believed that the upper class was able to practice self-restraint in their sexual lives while those in the lower class were animalistic when it came to sexual behavior among other things. People in the lower class lived in very poor conditions. They lived several people and even multiple households in the same one room dwelling at times. They were unable to properly clothe themselves and wore their hair down. The upper class thought that their dress and close living quarters lead to sexual immorality. The upper class was also the literate class and where most of the writings and publishing of the time came from. The story of the lower class was told through someone who was not living the life and therefore cannot be counted as more than speculation. According the article “Love in the time of Victoria,” “The bestiality from which many narrators derived their images vividly reflected the idea that primitive irrationality, the sensual of an inferior species, was threatening to reverse humankind’s progress towards civilization and cause a terrifying collapse into chaos.”(37) Middle class Victorians seemed to think that the living conditions were an embarrassment to their civilized to society. They did not want to be associated with their fellow human beings and therefore dehumanized them in their own mind. This notion seems to be more about power among the classes rather than actual differences in sexual practices. If the middle-class were in fact sexually repressed they would not be able to infer that “nakedness” and close living spaces would cause for sexual license. If the middle class truly did not closed their eyes and thought of England on their wedding night than they were have no idea that nakedness and sleeping with someone caused sexual tensions. The fear and embarrassment of the lower class to the upper class caused them to want to dissociate themselves as a higher moral class.

            Logically speaking however it is much more likely that the lower class living in such close quarters was not the cause of sexual immorality but rather a living condition that was not desired but a means of survival for the people in the lower class. The upper class could not fathom having to share such intimate details of their everyday lives with so many others. They were used to only having social gathering at appointed times and calling on people at specific hours of the day. Adams confirms the idea that the upper-class could not fathom being moral in such close living quarters when he state, “the assumption that the most private and intimate facts about human beings have to do with sex” (125). The upper class felt that sex was only seen as acceptable and moral if it were behind closed doors in private. Since there was not apparent means of being able to be private in such small living spaces the upper class assumed that sexuality among the lower class could not possibly be “proper”. They used this notion to separate themselves into classes according the wealth and in turn morality. If the upper class could label them as different from themselves they were justified in treating them as such. I argue that the notion that upper classes practiced self-restraint when it came to sex was a mask that the upper class wore. They may have said that they practiced this to somehow put themselves above others morally but prostitution and large population growth prove otherwise. “The population was five time greater at the end of the nineteenth century than at the beginning and at its most explosive nearly tripled in two generations” (5) Barrett-Ducrocq.

            Another important issue that is widely discussed about Victorian sexual repression is the idea of the middle class woman as the angel of the household. Again, it is important to note that most of the authors and medical professional that came to the conclusion that women were to be an angel of the household were widely written by men. We are unable to get a good sampling of woman’s sexuality because their story is told through the opinions of others. Much like the treatment of the sexuality of the lower classes, the created image of the sexuality of women was used as a means of repression. Women were to be protected from the outside world and their place was in the home. It is however differing in the argument of the lower classes in that women were not obsessed with sex but rather asexual.  In an article about the sexual preconceptions and truths about Victorian society James Adams reported, “The very un worldliness of a woman’s love, it was claimed m, made it important that she be insulated from the coarsening influences of public life-such as the right to vote.”(129) Adams. The Victorian woman was seen as the moral compass for a family. She was supposed to take care of her family’s needs before her own. Since they needed to be protected it was not proper for a woman to be out in public without an escort. If she were she would be suspected of improper behavior on her part. This stereotype placed upon women was another means of repression. Most women did not want to be seen as amoral and therefore obey the rules of society in order to keep the respect of themselves and their family. Barrett-Ducrocq confirms this idea of social properness when he states “Loitering in the street, on the other hand, hanging about for too long or without an obvious errand, was seen as unnatural, since female activity was firmly centered on the world of the interior, indoors” (10).  If a woman were outside of the social norm she would be seen as having “doubtful morality”.

             Since a woman’s sexuality was so tied to her place in society that we must examine what exactly was expected of a middle-class woman in order to fully understand where this idea stemmed from. The essay, The "Predominance of the Feminine" at Chautauqua: Rethinking the Gender-Space Relationship in Victorian America Jeanne Halgren Kilde examines the importance of specific gender roles in Victorian society. She reports that many scholars supported the idea that Victorian life included spheres in which masculine and feminine were separate. The female’s realm was seen as the home and the male was the outside world. These spheres were thought to be a means of repression. She also goes one step further in her research and notes that woman used their home to create their own sense of power. Much like the idea that Victorians were sexually repressed the notion that woman only stayed at home was more of an ideal than a fact. Her evidence that woman attended social gatherings, worships services and other public gatherings both refute and confirm my theory that the sphere was used as a means of repression. Although these women had their own social sphere it still had boundaries. The women worked within their proper spaces in order to be socially accepted. Because the woman wanted to be socially accepted they may not have reported behavior that noted evidence to the contrary.

            In a controversial and well known medical article by William Acton we see what common misconception on sexuality shaped the idea that Victorians were sexually repressed. The article contradicts itself several times. It argues that women are asexual in one sense but presents evidence to the contrary in the next. It talks of a common problem that women that masturbate are unable to enjoy or be interested in sex. The fact that he has encountered many women that admit to masturbation on a regular basis proves that women are sexual and have sexual desires. He also talks about the fact then men do not want to marry because they feel that they were have to have sex too much. They feel this was because they experience “loose” women before marriage and feel they will not be able to live up to the sexual expectations that their future wife will have. That is also contradictory because it is obvious that the men are the ones whom are paying for the sex, not the women. It is much more likely that these same men do not want to marry because they do not want to give up their sexual freedom rather than the fact that they do not want to have too much sex with their future wives. This article also mentions a story of a woman that refused to have sex with her husband because she does not want to have any more children. This account brings up a very important issue related to the sexuality of woman. Much like today’s society if I woman has sex without contraception she could quite possibly become pregnant and her activity would be made public. The man however does not share this physical responsibility. In arguing that woman are not sexual because she did not want to have sex with her husband is absurd. This is obviously a case that she doesn’t want more children to care for, not that she doesn’t want to have sex. Contraception was not readily available to women so if they did not want to have more children than they would have to abstain for sex. The fact that Acton draws these types of conclusions proves that he is influences by the societal ideal that women are not interested in sex.

            Another important argument that Acton makes is that the clitoris has no pleasure. In fact it has been proven that it is the only organ in the body both male and female that is specifically for pleasure. This statement proves that medical information was not through and complete in this time period. It was medical essays like these that gave a false perception of Victorian sexuality to our generation. Just because science did not understand the female body does not mean that women did not understand their own bodies, the evidence that he presents of woman’s problem with “self-abuse” proves that they did understand their own bodies. Their lack of sexual desire for their husbands was not attributed to them not being sexual being but in at least two instances it was because their husbands did not understand the woman’s body or she simply did not want children. Adams comments that this particular medical opinion cannot be evidence of the entire medical community but rather that it is the most quoted because of its absurdness. Adams argues that “research has uncovered much more variety of sexual experience-including erotic fulfillment-and much less unanimity in official stories about that experience”(126). Therefore it is important to note that this common misconception about Victorian sexuality cannot be linked to just one factor. Just as women had many different reasons for wanting or not wanting to have sex, documentation has been found to support that Victorians both misunderstood and understood their own sexuality.

            Adams brings up the important point that one common misconception with that if a woman has an orgasm she will conceive. As discussed earlier women did not have means of contraception. They may have felt that if they experienced sexual pleasure during sexual intercourse they would have the responsibility of another child. This is a more valid argument why women did not have sexual pleasure than the argument than the argument that they did not want or desire sex. If a woman was under the impression that she would get pregnant if she experienced sexual pleasure then she might feel inclined to not reframe from the pleasure or even abstain from sex all together.

These idea that an orgasm equal a child for a woman might be linked to the reports that Williams talks about of men that say their wives are not interested in sex or do not enjoy it. The whole misconception of the female body by a widely male dominated medical staff could be the cause of many misconceptions of Victorian sexuality as a whole. Other documented reports by Williams points to common knowledge of the female body. Women are reported as wanted to have sex a little after then period and then maybe not again until they have their next period. This could quite possibly be a woman that desired sex during the time that she was ovulating. If Williams had the knowledge of the ovulation cycle of a woman he wouldn’t find this report at all abnormal and would report that the woman was very in tune with her body.

In conclusion it can be said that according the evidence presented confirms that while there was misconceptions about sex during the Victorian time period it does not mean that Victorians were not having sex. Constraints placed on the Victorian people socially, economically and physically may have had an effect on sexual choices made by the people of this time period. If a person's sexually immorality was linked with being poor than people would most likely not want to associated themselves with that idea. If women were thought of as angels they may have felt the pressures to live up to an ideal placed on them. However, much evidence to the contrary suggests that one must consider who was speaking on these topics about social class and women; it was upper-class men. Walter Herbert says it beautifully in his essay “The Erotics of Purity: The Marble Faun and the Victorian Construction of Sexuality” when he states, “Victorian purity-to compress this analysis into a phase-was the feature of the sexuality inscribed upon women’s bodies by demands of the sexuality placed on men’s bodies, under the pressures generated by male-dominated power relations in the economic and political order that would advance the middle class to cultural preeminence.”(116) Sexuality was used as a way to make divisions among people. It was used to make a division between the classes. Because the lower classes were seen as over sexualized and animalistic the upper-class put themselves about them. They were able to treat them as animals because of the misconceptions that they place upon them. It gave them license to not only consider themselves better than the lower class but not feel guilty for using them for their own gain. In this sense sex was definitely used as a means of power. In a way it was not directly used to have power over someone such as it might be used in the case of rape but it was used to create an imaginary distinction that somehow some humans are better than others. Much in the same sense as it was used with women. Women’s sexuality was widely misunderstood. They were seen as asexual and moral beings. This idea however led to the notion that women needed to be protected from a sinful world and needed to stay in the home to do that. They were not able to make decisions for themselves and were confined to meeting the sexual ideals of society.  They were unable to have the same sexual freedoms as men because if they did have sex they would have a child to take care of. It was true then as it is today that some women like to have children more than other women but that does not make them void of sexual desire. Reports that women masturbated and had sexual desire possibly during ovulation speak to the point that Victorian sexuality was not much different than today’s society. It would be idealistic to think that we have come so far in our misconceptions about sex compared to Victorian society but I argue that is not the case. Medically speaking we do have a lot more information about the body and its functions. However, we still have several of our own ideas about what is proper and not proper. There are arguments of abortion, homosexuality and “slutty” vs. “good girls”. That the way a women acts and dresses still directly relates to how she is seen sexually. That men and women of lower socioeconomic status are less immoral because they have higher rates of single teenage mothers. In some ways the Victorians were much more sexually repressed than our generation because of access to contraception and the knowledge of the human reproductive system but I would like to argue that we are not as far from them as we would like to think. The world is still driven by these same Victorian issues of sex that determine the hierarchy of power in our nation today. 

Bibliography

Adams, James. Victorian Sexualites

Love in the time of Victoria

Acton, William. Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs pp207-214

Barrett-Ducrocq,  Francoise.  Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality, Class and Gender in Nineteenth-Century London. By, translated by John Howe (London and New York: Verso, 1991. 225 pp.).

Cohen, William. Trollope’s Trollop Novel: A forum of fiction Vol. 28, No. 3 (Spring 1995) pp. 235-236. Duke University Press.

Kilde, Jeanne Haldgren. The Predominance of Feminine at Chautauqua: Rethinking the Gender Space Relationship in Victorian American Signs, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Winter, 1999), pp. 449-486, The University of Chicago Press

Herbert, Walter Jr. The Erotics of Purity: The Marble Faun and the Victorian Constuction of Sexuality. Representaions No.36 (Auttumn 1991) pp. 114-132 University of California Press