To the extent that you can show anything from that article, it supports my point.
The author does not show any evidence of anyone in Western society in the last several thousand years being unconcerned about others viewing them having sex. To the contrary, the proof of consummation of marriage had to be done via exhibiting the sheet, and the valet was only able to testify about his master’s virility by having seen him with an erection. These would both suggest that more direct evidence was generally unavailable.
These were about hunter-gatherer societies (which are generally in warm climates).
I don’t know of any such people, but then I don’t know of anyone whose choice is either have a curtain or have sex in view of others.
I suppose if the choice was walking around completely naked 24/7 versus having sex in front of household members a few times a week, then I can see it. But if the choice is fewer and rattier clothing and a curtain versus more/newer/better clothing and sex in view of the entire household, then people would go for the first option, yes.
That’s also possible. Or strategically placed furniture. Curtains was an example.
Again, the claim I was responding to was that kids “saw their parents go at it as well. Sex was never hidden away …”.
I would assume that doing it quiet in the dark under the covers was sufficient and available privacy. Those too young would know something was going on over there, and those old enough to know didn’t say anything or dad would thrash them for the interruptus. A curtain hung across the room would more likely be for modesty / privacy in dressing and undressing. it probably wouldn’t disguise anything more than a blanket covering would in the dark.
Bed curtains were a luxury of the middle class and rich who already could afford their own room most of the time. They were more practical for keep the heat in the bed. (You see them around ornate four-posters with canopy in royal bedchambers.)
Outdoors was quite popular, according to the literature of the time. Many a couple would go “hunting for berries.” People just assumed they were optimists, because they expected to bring back a picking in a blanket instead of a basket.
I’m amused because this thread is another example of the principle that people don’t internalize the fact that people who lived in the past thought differently than we do (with the corollary that when you point it out to the person who is making the fallacy, they get indignant because they never can see it in themselves).
The false assumption here is that the Victorians had the same attitude toward privacy that we do. They didn’t ( and obviously couldn’t), so all the argument about curtains (which tacitly assumes the same attitude toward privacy during sex as we have) is moot. The argument boils down to “we require privacy, so they must also have felt the same.”
But the understand history, you have to drop your assumptions and think like a Victorian.
probably pretty much how I learned it all :by having a cat that gave my grandparents neighborhood several generations of mousers
I seen her mating and ran to grandma saying my cat was getting hurt grandma sighed and said no well be having kittens soon …and I witnessed said kittens being born
And when I asked how my soon to be youngest brother happened she said remember how you seen the 2 cats a while back and then the kittens ? that’s pretty much how babies happen my response was " mommys having 6 babies ? grandma said no humans have only one sometimes 2 or 3 at once … later I asked if it hurt mommy when the baby was created and she sided stepped it by saying no and you’ll learn about it later …
You can google various beds - Rembrandt’s house, Versailles, Anne Hathaway’s cottage…
First, most of these examples substantially pre-date the Victorian era. They had curtains not for privacy, but for heat conservation in the days before central heating. Plus, these are the beds of relatively rich (or, middle class) people preserved for posterity. The rough peasant constructions are long gone.
Also, regarding privacy - keep in mind that even corridors are a recent invention. Walk through the manors of the middle ages, even up to the 1700’s with places like Blenheim Palace, and one room leads into another. Construction until the 1700’s was too expensive to waste valuable space on a mere walkway. So rooms were not usually “dead ends” with privacy. Similarly, unless you were the lord of the manor, you bunked down with everyone else. In Hampton Court, the great hall was emptied of tables and the knights all bunked down on the floor. Catherine Howard - before her head was chopped off at 19 - was kept from age 5 by her aunt (who had to money to care for poor relatives). She described at trial how the girls all slept in one large attic dormer room, and the males in another.
On the topic of learning about sex - She was initially molested by one of the music teachers…probably around age 12 or 13 - but apparently too young for intercourse?
If you want to go down that route, I would take a different path.
IMO this thread is an example of one way in which a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. People like to think they’re clever and know things that other people don’t know, and if they come across some lesser known aspect about the past they tend to overdo it and exaggerate well beyond anything that can actually be supported, in the name of feeling all the more superior in their supposed knowledge.
I don’t know if this is correct. In the specific case of Blendheim Palace, it appears that while you walked through rooms to get to other rooms, only the final room was a bedroom, and the intermediate rooms were things like receiving rooms and dressing rooms.
it was standard construction from time immemorial… The King’s (and Queen’s) bedrooms were at the end of a chain in old castles and palaces because the intermediate rooms could be full of troops and servants, and any potential assassin would have to fight their way into each room in turn before reaching the final target. But for most construction, rooms were connected to each other, not to corridors or hallways. (Except IIRC the “gallery” originally was a long thin balcony along the side of a big hall, allowing access to a series of second floor rooms)
in the manor houses, typically the servants got to live in the less comfortable (in the days before insulation) attic. Rarely was this broken into individual rooms. If you visit the Merchant House Museum in Manhattan (if you can get there before construction next door makes it crumble) built in the early to mid 1800’s, the two to 4 servant girls all got to sleep in the one big attic room, just like Catherine Howard and all the poorer relatives and servant girls at her Aunt’s manor.
Blenheim Palace (at least, the part open to the public) was built as a series of grand rooms. I don’t know how the living quarters were designed.
