- Courtship and marriage - sexuality more closely linked to love, less
closely tied to reproduction.
- Gender assumptions linking women to
quality of innate purity.
- shifting sexual control from
traditional outside community pressures (church, family) to self-control -
building individual character.
- Middle-class men - succeed through
self-improvement.
Dr. John Cowan, "Especially should the
continent man exercise and train his will power, for this not only enables him
to lead a continent life, but it as surely guides to success in all business
undertakings."
- Sexual advice literature - written by both
doctors and lay people, male and female. William Alcott, Young Man's Guide
(1833), Russell Trail, Sexual Physiology, Alice Stockham, A Book for Every
Woman.
- Health reform movement 1830s quest for both
physical & spiritual perfection.
body as closed energy system,.Benjamin Rush early 1800s: the sexual
appetite, "when excessive, becomes a disease of both the body and mind."
For men, warnings that masturbation led to
disease & insanity. Health reformer Sylvester Graham 1830s
- Dr. Andrew Ingersoll encouraged married
couples to "yield" to complete sexual enjoyment.
1882: "The sexual relationship is among the
most important uses of married life; it vivifies the affection for each other,
as nothing else in the world can, and is a powerful reminder of their mutual
obligation to each other and to the community in which they live."
- early 1800s- idea that women had fewer
sexual desires than men. British doctor William Acton, "The majority of women
(happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any
kind. Love of home, of children, and of domestic duties are the only passions
they feel."
Eliza Duffey What Women Should Know (1873):
"the passions of men are much stronger and more easily inflamed" than those of
women. "the purity of women is the everlasting barrier against which the tides
of man's sensual nature surge."
Ideal of sexually pure womanhood.
"Even as woman is supremely virtuous," she
became "when once fallen, the vilest of her sex."
-
Control sometimes meant resisting sexual
desire; other times meant managing sexuality. Important result - when men &
women taking charge of sexual decision-making, opened up way to take charge
over reproductive decision-making.
-
1800s, marriage increasingly romantic,
especially among middle-class. Expectations new levels of personal intimacy,
romantic novels.
Married men & women talk about pleasures of
sex in letters, diaries.
for others, sexuality source of marital
stress.
-
19thC marriage still unequal in economic &
legal terms.
-
Double standard persisted, recognizing
men's "natural" lust. Prostitution as safety value,
early 1800s Philadelphia, prostitution
itself not a crime. Laws against it often not really enforced.
women's adultery costly - divorce, social ostracism & loss of custody.
-
Both men & women increasingly conscious of
sexuality as personal choice - not under community regulation.
Sexual desires linked to romantic ideal of
marriage.
Gender still made a difference, though -
separate spheres, double standard, emphasis on female purity, fear of
pregnancy still made transformation of sexuality more problematic for women
than for men.
-
Sexual politics: early 1800s, "cult of
true womanhood, cult of domesticity," doctrine of "separate spheres"
As man's business
world and employment became more stressful, writers idealized home as refuge -
woman's responsibility to keep home sacred, keep men moral. Sarah Josepha Hale,
Godey's Lady's Book 1830s, "our men are sufficiently money-making; let us keep
our women and children free from the contagion as long as possible."
-
1820s-1840s "Age of
associations" - voluntary groups of new middle class.
Safe new middle ground
for women - halfway between public life of formal politics & private sphere of
home.
- 1820s mass religious revival - Second Great
Awakening. Evangelical reform generated enormous energy - led to reform
movements.
-
Syphilis; ideal of female chastity. Prostitutes as victims - goal of protecting
"working girls" & protecting homes & families from the "predatory nature of
the American male, reckless & drenched in sin."
- "sexual purity"
Civil War, Union army worried about
venereal disease - system for medical inspection of prostitutes . Dr. J. Marion Sims, prominent gynecologist
& AMA president, recommended that regulated prostitution become postwar norm
in US cities. 1890s, social purity movement -
suffragists, temperance workers, clergy, doctors.