The Making of Victorian Sexuality

by Michael Mason

We tend to think of the Victorians as the personification of prudery and puritanism, a people whose sexual attitudes, practices, and knowledge differed greatly from our own, to their detriment. Indeed, even in the midst of the AIDS crisis and our growing concern about safe sex, the Victorians hardly seem an appealing role model of sexual behavior. But is this image really very accurate? What did the Victorians really think about sex? What were their sex lives like? And what wider concepts--biological, political, religious--shaped their sexuality?
The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent cliches of modern times. Drawing on a wealth of sources from medical and scientific texts, to popular fiction, evangelical writing, and the work of radicals such as Godwin and Mill, Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of nineteenth-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Covering such topics as premarital sex, marriage, prostitution, women's sexuality, and male masturbation, Mason shows that, far from being a license for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexuality was guided by a humane and progressive vision of society's future. Mason reveals that the average Victorian man was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois pater familias of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic, radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children. He paints a society in which husbands and wives knew full well about female orgasm and
women's sexuality; where if some specialists believed that nervous disorders in women, ranging from epilepsy to schizophrenia, were due to masturbation, most experts emphatically denied the connection; and where the extensive use of birth control devices first began (pioneered oddly enough by the bottom of the middle shop-owners, hotel-keepers, and other nonmanual but nonprofessional and nonmanagerial workers). Furthermore, he points out that Victorians were the first to concern themselves about sex education for children, the quality of urban nightlife, commuter marriages, the competing claims of pleasure and procreation in married sex, and the rationale of divorce.
Persuasively arguing that there is much in Victorian sexual moralism of interest to the late twentieth century, this lively and fascinating study offers a radical challenge to one of the most enduring myths of our age.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Victorian, Historical

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Martine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Victorian attitude towards sex ought to be a good topic for an interesting book. After all, we all know the clichés and stereotypes, and they're so outrageous that any attempt to confirm or debunk them or put them into a historical context ought to make for an interesting read. Especially if the person tackling the clichés is someone who has obviously spent years doing his research, reading more Victorian documents and examining more census figures than any modern scholar before him (allegedly).

Sadly, Michael Mason, the author of The Making of Victorian Sexuality, is not a good story-teller. Rather than aiming, journalist-style, to inform his reader in a readable and light-hearted way of the truths and untruths of the myths surrounding the Victorian era, he set out to write a scholarly treatise and succeeded rather too well. He spends a long first chapter detailing his research methods, which I'm sure is vital from a scholarly point of view but doesn't make for very exciting reading. He also frequently loses himself in technical details and theoretical debates of a kind which may be of interest to fellow scholars but won't interest many lay readers. And on top of that, he has a maddening tendency to bring up potentially good stories only to refuse to go into detail. For instance, on several occasions he describes at length dull practices which were apparently common in England and closes by stating that 'things were quite different in Scotland'. He then completely fails to explain how things were different in Scotland, which might have made for a better read than the preceding paragraphs. Likewise, he has a habit of mentioning fascinating-sounding titbits about prostitutes, kept women and their men, only to declare primly that they are not the subject of this book and drop the subject altogether -- an act of literary sadism if ever I saw one. And finally, he completely fails to acknowledge homosexuality in the book. I know homosexuality wasn't particularly well documented during the Victorian era, but surely it's worth some mention?

To be fair, there are interesting facts in the book, in between pages of stultifying tedium. I was quite startled to learn, for instance, that comparison of dates of marriage and dates of baptism of first child has shown that around 40 per cent of English brides in the first half of the nineteenth century were pregnant; in some areas the rate pushed up past the half-way point as the century advanced. So much for Victorian girls being chaste, then. These eyebrow-raising numbers are backed up by statements from contemporary foreign visitors who asserted that English girls were much freer than their American and continental European counterparts and that they were generally given ample opportunity to indulge in 'vices' (especially in the upper classes, it would seem). Interestingly enough, the tables were turned after marriage. While nineteenth-century American and continental European women generally gained much freedom upon marriage, English brides allegedly largely lost theirs, being kept on a tight leash after getting married. Apparently, that too was different in Scotland, but as usual, Mason refuses to go into detail, focusing instead on far less interesting material. He does, however, do a creditable job proving that England's harried housewives might have had better sex lives than previously assumed. Think the term 'female orgasm' is a recent coinage? Not true. Apparently, Victorian men were all too aware that women were capable of climaxing, too, and tried hard to make their wives/mistresses come -- not just because this meant they had succeeded in giving pleasure, but also because female orgasms were said to be a prerequisite for conception. The latter belief may have inhibited a few women (I'd think twice about enjoying sex, too, if I believed it might lead to my fifth pregnancy in as many years), but overall it seems that many Victorian wives enjoyed the act of love-making, and that their husbands did their best to satisfy them. So much for 'lie back and think of England', then.

Mason also convincingly debunks a few other clichés about Victorian prudery, such as the one that sex was absolutely unmentionable in Victorian households. He comes up with a good many quotes from perfectly non-seedy sources which indicate that not only was sex a popular topic of discussion, but it was considered a good activity to partake in, if only for married couples. Apparently, even at the height of Victorian prudishness sex between married partners was advocated as something healthy and pleasurable, something in which all couples should indulge frequently, and not just to produce offspring, either. There was much concern over the fate of those who never had sex, such as old spinsters. Allegedly, one of the reasons why Victorian girls were so often married off at a young age was because it was believed that suppression of their sex drives would lead to all sorts of physical maladies, neurosis, hysteria, etc. It was also believed (even by some eminent doctors) that semen had a positive effect on women's health, so to rob women of this powerful medicine would be an act of cruelty (or so many doctors said). Apparently, the healing properties of semen were a hotly debated topic in the Victorian era. Who would have thought?

Mason also has some interesting things to say about illegitimacy, birth control, the differences between the classes, male masturbation and the way it was dealt with by both legitimate doctors and quacks, but they are few and far between and hidden so expertly among page upon page of theoretical discourse and arguments which don't really seem to go anywhere that I really can't recommend the book to anyone except die-hard historians, sociologists and anthropologists, or people who are thinking of writing a novel set in the Victorian era and need some historical background. Pity -- an awful lot of research clearly went into the book, and it had the potential to be good.

[Dfordoom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few things fascinate me more than the Victorian attitude towards sex, and Michael Mason’s The Making of Victorian Sexuality, published by Oxford University Press in 1994, is yet another welcome nail in the coffin of traditional views on this subject.

Mason starts his attack with an in-depth look at demographic data from the 19th century, with devastating results. He shows that there was a truly remarkable amount of pre-marital sex going on throughout the period. In some areas as many as 4 out of 10 brides were pregnant at the time of their marriage. In fact pre-marital sex was more or less an accepted part of courtship. And among the working class marriage was by no means universal, with long-term cohabitation being extremely common.

He launches an even more withering attack on the traditional interpretation of Victorian views on female sexuality. William Acton’s celebrated remark that women were rarely troubled by sexual feelings has been quoted countless times, but Mason points out that Acton was completely our of step with the opinion of his own age. The Victorians placed great stress on female sexuality, and on the female orgasm. It was widely believed that conception was in fact impossible unless the woman had an orgasm. Victorian marriages were by no means passionless or joyless.

Mason does not deny that there was an anti-sensual dimension to Victorian thought, but argues that it was always balanced by a pro-sensual dimension that was at least as significant. He also makes the interesting argument that anti-sensualism was associated not so much with Evangelical religious beliefs as with progressive secular thought.

The Making of Victorian Sexuality is a provocative and intriguing look at the controversial issue of the Victorians and sex, and is essential reading for anyone with even the smallest interest in this period of history. Highly recommended.

[Fran · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mason pretty clearly has an ideological agenda here--he is just too eager to present Victorian men as liberal-minded sex-gods who practiced birth control regularly and gave their wives orgasms every time. An example of this bias is below:

“the very obvious [birth control techniques] of abstinence and extra-vaginal ejaculation, and there is something rather absurd in the view that these must be learnt, or conversely could be forgotten —and that individuals were burdened with children they did not want because it never occurred to them that these methods would help their situation.” (57)

This presumes that people are completely logical when sex and feelings were involved. If you take an under-educated group of high-schoolers today, and you tell them to use the above two contraceptive methods to avoid getting pregnant, they may intellectually know that information, but will that stop some of them from having sex–and perhaps getting pregnant–when they’re put in a heated situation? Not necessarily! I’d presume the temptation to give in is even worse when you’re a Victorian man, masturbation is off the table for fear of negative health effects, and you’re sleeping in the same bed as your wife every night. Get real.

Mason himself admits that his entire analysis is based solely on male-written accounts and data collected by men, on men, but he really makes no attempt to remedy this, and at one point ridicules the "lamentation" of women's condition at this time and place:

"'as long ago as 1890 the pioneering suggestion was made that high female rates of marriage (and to a lesser extent lower ages for brides) occur in regions where there is a high level of female employment—thus exploding laments on the unhappy condition of women, who are represented as driven to matrimony because they are unable by any other means to support themselves’.” (51-2)

First, I'm not sure why he's so enthusiastically latching onto this extremely dismissive statement coming from a period of time when it was normal to impregnate your wife to death. Look at the language he uses here "exploding laments." It's giving "Ben Shapiro COMPLITELY OBLITERATES CRINGE FEMINIST."

Second, I regret to inform you that much female employment was bottom-of-the-barrel and poorly paid, and for many women having a job and supporting themselves still would keep them in a life of poverty. There is a reason that much literature from the time linked female autonomy with poverty.

Third, some women may have chosen to get married, as it was considered weird and pathetic if you didn't get married, even if you had a job.

Fourth, just because one area of women had the option of supporting themselves does not negate the fact that most women in this period got married because they had no other option. Get real.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the second volume in Mason's look at Victorian sexuality. The first volume I read in November of last year and enjoyed a great deal. I finally managed to get around to reading the second volume. The first volume looked at what the Victorians did and this looked more about what they thought about it. Unfortunately the people who wrote about it were much smaller than the people who actually did it, so it was harder to get a prevailing look at attitudes but Mason did an excellent job at looking at the most important influences on people's attitudes towards sex. One of his leading arguments was that people took up the anti-sensual attitudes of the Evangelicals without taking up their religious beliefs. He started by looking at "The Theological View" towards sexuality and the spread of anti-sensualist, he then traced these beliefs to the Evangelical views towards sex, both marital and extra-marital. From there he looked at different attitudes towards prostitution and focused a great deal on the different attitudes towards prostitution and the varying attempts of prostitute reformation. He ended the book by looking at the different views towards birth control. Like in his first book he focused exclusively on heterosexual sex and ignored fetishes. Though he does trace some interesting ideas towards marriage such as the Swedenborgian idea of sex in heaven, and the different arguments for free love and equitable marriage and divorce. My only criticism of the book would be that time was often confusing, Mason appeared to draw many of his sources from the early 20s and 30s and then later from the 80s but it was hard for me, albeit as a non-specialist, to put together the link between these views. It would have been clearer if he looked at them in order and traced the impact of these views over time (even if it was just in each chapter or each particular trend) rather than repeatedly going back and forth over the whole Victorian period. But apart from that it was a very interesting and insightful look at Victorian sexual attitudes. The last chapter looked at the sexual attitudes of women, and modern historians who were studying these attitudes. I felt that this was a particularly interesting topic, especially as the Victorian women themselves had such a limited view of their own sexuality, and wish that Mason had spent more time examining these views. But at least he mentioned several other studies which would also be interesting to read. All in all a very interesting and useful book.

[Chris Burgess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, but very much an academic work, so rather dry. Contains interesting information, but is not the smoothest of reads.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting topic and good information/arguments but christ this was dense

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second volume in a two-part study, the first being The Making of Victorian Sexuality. The first volume deals with what the Victorians actually did; the second deals with how they thought about sex.

Mason is interested in the evolution of the anti-sensual attitude that is so often thought of as being the distinguishing characteristic of the Victorian view of sex, and the conflicts between this attitude and the surprisingly vigorous competing Victorian pre-sensual position. Mason sees the anti-sensual view as being linked most strongly with politically progressive and secular thought, including (to a very considerable degree) feminist thought, rather than, as you might expect, with religious convictions such as Evangelicalism. And he shows that the religious point of view was often associated with an unexpectedly pro-sensual position.

Mason tries to deal sympathetically with Victorian anti-sensualism, which can be a little disconcerting at times, especially in the bizarre final chapter. It’s still fascinating reading.

[Vignette-Noelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent resource for the curiously wayward or the causal Victorian era enthusiast. I've not only used it as a resource to support essays on Victorian literature and life, but as a resource for my own creative "period" pieces. Wonderfully full of factoids and interesting parallels to our own time of "sexual repression" and "sexual exhaustion".

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry in places, but some excellent insight and surprising information about the range of sexual attitudes and behaviours in Victorian England.

[Suzanne Hess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating.