So what did the doctor answer? Did they have condoms back then, and / or know enough about reproductive cycles to use the rhythm method successfully? (Yeah, I know it’s not terribly successful even now, but hey, it would have been better than nothing and I imagine some couples would have been willing to chance it.)
I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that Albert and Victoria, for all the reputed heat of their amours, may never have indulged in anything outside of the straightforward, er, missionary act. Although less than 100 years before it was still believed by some medical practitioners that female orgasm was required for conception, by the time they married it was much more usual to believe that sex was mainly a bore, even a martyrdom, for typical women. (I could post some amusing quotations–but today is a busy day for me.) Of course, I don’t think that means that lots of women didn’t, in fact, enjoy sex; but I do imagine that most “respectable” couples were less experimental than they might otherwise be.
Semi-related Victoria factoid: she was among the very first women to use chloroform to ease the pain of childbirth.
“But doctor, must I have no more fun in bed?”
Clearly apocryphal, Guin, as Victoria would have called herself “we.” 
Fretful: “Did they have condoms back then, and / or know enough about reproductive cycles to use the rhythm method successfully?”
Some form of condom, mainly to prevent STDs, were in use as far back as the Renaissance, IIRC. As to rhythm, no they didn’t know enough about reproductive cycles. In fact, in the early nineteenth century lots of doctors believed that women were most fertile during menstruation; i.e., they made an analogy to dogs in heat. I think spontaneous ovulation was discovered in the 1840s but it took a while longer before the cycles were understood enough to give rhythm a try (I don’t know how long though).
I have read that longterm breastfeeding was used to limit family size (which is about as reliable as rhythm). But in spite of all that, middle-class families were definitely (somehow) limiting family size–another way of improving their economic status since educating and finding jobs for children was very expensive. From the little I’ve read, some have thought just abstinence; some have speculated on coitus interruptus.
By the end of the century both feminists and eugenicists were urging birth control especially for poorer women (the latter had no problem with sterilization) but, again, this isn’t a strong area of off-the-top knowledge for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if some kind of reliable condom did come into use towards the end of the nineteenth century, but I can’t say I’ve read about it. Probably the kind of thing easier to find on the net than to listen to my babbling ;).
Birth control was illegal, IIRC.
And she wouldn’t say “we” when talking about herself, personally.
The thing is, since Victoria hated being pregnant, I would suspect that they had recreational sex. She was pregnant with the future Edward VII before their first daughter was even four months old. They slept in the same bed during their entire marriage.
shrugs
People have ALWAYS liked sex. I just see a lot of people claiming that Oh, in those days everyone thought sex was evil, and you had to lie back, close your eyes and think of England. NOT TRUE.
Victoria’s and Albert’s morality was mostly a reaction to the previous generation of royalty. Albert’s parents both had their lovers and his father divorced his mother over HER lover. Plus, Edward VII was really randy!
I want to get back to Lissa’s OP for a while. The people we’re discussing equated manners (etiquette) with morality. When did this stop? We like good manners & resort to etiquette books because good manners make life generally more pleasant, and because, once they’re hard-wired, you really don’t have to think about saying thank you, using the right fork, etc. I’m not a reader of modern etiquette books, and can’t think of any “rule” of good manners today that equates with a moral issue.
Oh, someone here just said, “Isn’t there an Emily Post-type ‘rule’ that people who are getting a divorce shouldn’t date until the decree is final? Isn’t that based on morality rather than etiquette?”
Ah, but does chair-gendering pre-date the bustle?
Maybe the reason ladies backs weren’t supposed to touch the back of the chair (aside from the fact that a corset prevented leaning back in the first place) was because doing so would crumple her bustle.
**Guinastasia **: Birth control was illegal, IIRC.
I’m not sure, actually. It think though you could get in trouble for publishing information on birth control–more like an obscenity thing. But what actual statutes there were, how this varied between the US and UK, and whether there were bans on actual products (which I tend to doubt) I’ve really got no idea.
And she wouldn’t say “we” when talking about herself, personally.
That was a joke! See smilie above.
(Though I have my doubts for other reasons that she actually said that.)
“The thing is, since Victoria hated being pregnant, I would suspect that they had recreational sex.”
I’m not sure what you mean there. Do you mean they tried to not to concieve? If so, they weren’t too successful, were they? Again, “recreational sex” is a fairly modern notion so I don’t think it would translate–as such–into the consciousness of the time. But if your point is that they had sex for pleasure without the wish to conceive then I absolutely agree.
From another view, Charles Dickens, who fathered something like 10 children seemed to blame his wife for her fertility. One has to wonder what he was thinking!
“People have ALWAYS liked sex. I just see a lot of people claiming that Oh, in those days everyone thought sex was evil, and you had to lie back, close your eyes and think of England. NOT TRUE.”
Well, in spite of what I’ve been trying to say as against extrapolation from etiquette manuals, I wouldn’t underestimate the power of a culture to give people serious “hang-ups”–including in our own day. It’s certainly true that Victorian doctors and other authoritative men believed that women were not very sexual; that they submitted to sex for maternal reasons. And to the extent that they talked about such things at all, some women probably felt compelled to toe the line. But that’s not to say that in her private life every woman adhered to what some authoritative men felt they should feel.
There were certainly women who turned down the chance to marry (e.g., Christina Rossetti, Florence Nightingale) but whether that was b/c they didn’t want sex, or b/c they didn’t want husbands/marriage/children/domestic duties, or a combination of both, is very hard to say. Certainly you can’t come away from reading Charlotte Bronte or George Eliot with the sense that either woman wasn’t what we would call sexual. Charlotte’s latish marriage didn’t seem to have made her that happy–but the guy was no Rochester ; Eliot’s unofficial “marriage” with Lewes was among the happiest.
So many women today are either uninterested in sex or unable to enjoy it as much as they’d like to that it’s hard for me to believe that Victorian women didn’t experience comparable reactions to reigning ideologies about female sexuality. (Though I’m not suggesting that the ideologies themselves are the same.)
And then it’s also the case that plenty of men seem to have been made sexually hung up in various ways (and still are). There are several well-known Victorian marriages that are known to or believed to have been unconsummated. W.E. Gladstone, a Victorian prime minister, seems to have resorted to self-flagellation in order to curb his appetite for extra-marital sex. (OTOH, maybe he just liked flagellation; that was a common Victorian enticement among men.)
“Victoria’s and Albert’s morality was mostly a reaction to the previous generation of royalty. Albert’s parents both had their lovers and his father divorced his mother over HER lover.”
Yes, but royal families were always prone to this kind of thing–especially the men. (And there was, as I’m sure you know, a huge double standard at every level. When divorce was finally introduced for average people men could sue on grounds of adultery; but women had to have some other cause such as abandonment or abuse.)
I’m not saying that V & A’s personal histories weren’t important in shaping their choices: but I think that they also responded to their social context.
However, that is an undeniable occupational hazard of being a historian: I almost never see anything in purely personal or biographical terms.
Also, as a book source I would suggest George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 . In it, he details the changes in sexual mores for both hetero- and homosexual males from pre-WWII to post-Stonewall New York City. It’s a fascinating read, and some of the examples of what the Amazon reviewer calls “permeable sexual boundaries” are really quite surprising for modern readers.
I know you were kidding over the “we.”
Hehehe…
BTW, on A&E right now they’re showing “Victoria and Albert”, with Jonathan Firth. GREAT movie.
Yes, chair gendering did pre-date the bustle. Chair gendering seems to have emerged in the late 1700s-early 1800s when ladies wore straight skirts with layers of petticoats. (Such asthese ladies.) The bustle we think of came much later.
** Mandelstam: **
The only state I am aware of that banned contraceptives was Connecticut. Married couples in that state could techically be arrested for using birth control in the privacy of their own bedrooms, and subjected to a one-year prison sentence. (Though in reality police tended to look the other way.)
It * was * illegal to send birth control products or information through the mail, because of the 1873 Comstock Act. Anthony Comstock was the worst kind of prude. (He once had a store owner arrested for leaving a naked dummy in his window.) The Comstock Law was meant to stop trade in “obscene literature” and “immoral articles” which was any birth control device or information on how to prevent pregnancy. He saw any information on sex as obscene.
The Act allowed him incredible access to mail. He could open and inspect any letter or package he felt was suspicious. Founder of the New York Society for the Supression of Vice, Comstock boasted about the numbers of “libertines” that he had driven to suicide. Comstock later claimed that he had convicted enough people to fill a train with 61 passenger cars – roughly 4,000 citizens after he managed to get his Act passed into law. By the end of his first decade as an anti-vice crusader Comstock had arrested ninety-seven people for advertising or selling abortifacients or “indecent rubber articles,” including contraceptives, and seized 202,214 “obscene” pictures and photographs, 21,150 pounds of books, and 63,819 contraceptive devices, abortifacient instruments, and instruments used to enhance sexual pleasure.
Comstock’s biggest problem with contraceptives was that “young people, afflicted with lust from reading pornography, to sin while affording themselves and their partners protection from disease and pregnancy.” In essence his problem was that people who fornicated might get away with it.
What is considered “moral” fluctuates within a society. A myriad of factors went into the gradual decline of what we think of as “Victorian Morality.”
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Women’s liberation: When woman came down from her vaunted pedastal of saintly motherhood, society’s very foundation was shaken. The women’s lib movement wasn’t just about voting rights, but about changing the traditional sex role of women as silent partners in the marriage. Behaviors which had before been unheard of, such as public smoking and makeup, slowly moved into acceptance. Society women led the way. Middle class mothers who saw that their “betters” were allowing their daughters to wear makeup and shorter skirts gave in.
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War: Wars have a way of rapidly changing what is acceptable in society. During the Civil War, mothers were horrified that their daughters were marrying men quickly, rather than waiting the decorous six months or year which was traditional. Not knowing if their men would return from the battlefield, girls were quickly accepting proposals rather than following the intricate dance of courtship. Much the same happened during WWI.
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The changing face of marriage: *Divorce was emerging from its status of shame into one of grudging acceptance. No longer was a woman shunned by society if she divorced. After WWII, the divorce rate skyrocketed. (At one point, Reno, Nevada was registering thirty divorces per day.) This was, in part, because of the number of “necessity marriages” which didn’t work out. Marriage was no longer seen as a permanant status no matter how bad it was.
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Psychiatry and social science: Psycho-analysis opened new worlds. The concept of studying the human mind changed the way we look at problems. No longer did people need to feel shame for their inner turmoil: there was a reason for it. Sociologists studied human behavior patterns in a scientific way. Instead of seeing behavior as a natural outgrowth of propriety and morality, these social scientists dissected it as ritual, demystifying it, in a way.
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Technology: Technology turned some manners upside down. Whereas everyone understood the rules of calling, what about telephone calls? Cars allowed people to travel farther. Instead of being forced to stay in town under the watchful eye of gossipping neighbors, a couple could take off for another town in a car. Movies exposed people to different standards of behavior. Telegrams which charged by the word made it difficult to use delicate language to express sentiments which were traditionally less bluntly put. By the time rules were written governing behavior regarding technological advances, the technology had already changed, or people had already determined their own etiquette.
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Eduaction: As more women headed off to college, the idea that women could be just as smart and independent as men took hold. Women read more, and discussed openly topics which had before been the sole property of men: politics, money, etc.
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Working women: Especially during wartime, women were now working more outside the home. Secretaries, telephone operators, teachers, etc. No longer did a woman have to sit at her parents home and wait for marriage before leaving. She could now go out on her own, making her own money, and living alone if she chose.
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Secularization: Religion slowly became less important to society. In the past, church had been the primary entertainment for some women-- the only time when they could get away from the house to socialize, and many social clubs were built around church groups. As technology and society changed, there came many more things to occupy the time and thoughts of people. Working on Sunday was a must for many factory workers, and some of those who had only that day off would rather spend the day having fun with the family than in church. More and more secular books and newspapers were published. As industrialization progressed, the focus of society shifted to a more capitalistic outlook. Simply put, there was more to * do * now than there was in the past. Religion was losing its grip over society.
These are but a few of the factors that affected society. The post-Victorian era was one of rapid change. Etiquette was hard-pressed to keep up.
Actually, Lissa, those look like Regency gowns, which were less restrictive than the heavy Victorian crinolines. Regency undergarments were very light-brief corsets and maybe a chemise.
Of course, before that you had those wide, Marie Antoinette skirts with paniers and rolls and all that.
Exactly. The fashions of the 1780s and 90s were born in the French Revolution, in which the peasantry rejected the fancy clothing of the aristocrats for a more flowing, simpler dress style, which were loosely modled on Greek gowns which they called a la sauvage. This is a painting from 1794. Clothing like this was typical of the period.
This is one of those types of gowns in a museum.
These are the styles which women were wearing around the time gendered chairs came into being, which, of course, is why bustles and poofy skirts wouldn’t have been an issue.
A few small contributions:
H. L. Mencken wrote that during much of the 19th Century, American newspapers referred to vast areas of the human anatomy as “the stomach”. (There seems to be some carry-over of this today; people will refer to having been struck “in the stomach” when they merely mean the abdomen.) IIRC, Mencken wrote that the “stomach” could extend all the way to the knees. This must have made for interesting reading in the case of crime reports: “The victim was shot six times in the stomach, including one shot to the stomach.”
The distinction between “male” and “female” chairs is an interesting one. Later the distinction was made in reverse; Le Corbusier’s “female” chair, a box-like arrangement of rectangular leather cushions set in a tubular steel frame, differs from its “male counterpart” in that it is wider and roomier. My guess is that an analogy was being made to the male and female pelvis, a comparison people (at least in America) would have been resistent to making in public in the 1800s.
Well after the Victorian era had passed, the legendary publicist Harry Reichenbach is said to have made the painting September Morn by Chabas famous by convincing the Comstock organization that it was dirty so that they would denounce it.
This stale trick still seems to be in use; take, for instance, the incident a few years back in which the producers of the television series Roseanne claimed that ABC was “preventing” them from airing an episode in which Roseanne was kissed by Mariel Hemingway. It was, of course, aired anyway, but only after a good deal of publicity was generated. (A comparable episode in which a man was kissed by another man would not be produced, largely, I suspect, because male TV executives would not find it tittilating.)
It is hard to imagine that a network would readily stand the expense of acquiring an episode and not airing it. The only instance I know of where this happened was when an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was suppressed for being too gory and too macabre–it concerned the old magic trick of a woman being sawed in half, only in this particular story it didn’t work quite right.
The advance publicity which surrounded the ‘coming out" of Ellen Degeneres’ character, and the flap over David Caruso’s buttocks before the show NYPD Blue ever aired are other examples of publicity being used to generate interest among viewers who are easily led to believe they are getting away with seeing something dirty.
Incidentally, seeing a man’s buttocks on screen in a non-pornographic work was actually already old news by the time NYPD Blue premiered. Not only had Ed Flanders mooned the camera at the conclusion of an episode of St. Elswhere, but more than forty years before Marc Antony had appeared bare-assed in the David Bradley production of Julius Caesar. Amusingly enough, the actor in that instance was future NRA head, all-round family values champion Charlton Heston.
**
I agree- I don’t think that pelvis-width had anything to do with gair gendering in the 1800s. Many historians agree that the purpose of gendered chairs was to display status. Whereas the womens’ chairs were lower and more “humble,” the man of the house had a mighty “throne.” Some historians argue that lower chairs for women were intended to make child care easier, but this seems unlikely to me. Gendered chairs tended to be in wealthier homes (the poor, for whom affording any kind of chair was difficult, didn’t usually make such distinctions) child care likely would have been the domain of servants.
On another furniture note, fondness for rocking chairs seems to have been an American phenomenon. (I have read experpts from a British lady’s diary in which she expresses horror at the bizzare and unseemly American custom of rocking back-and-forth.) Rocking chairs were more popular with women, though Benjamin Franklin is said to have owned and enjoyed one. Elderly people of both sexes used rocking chairs, but healthy young men seem to have somewhat avoided them.
**
That last sentance hits the nail on the head. The surest way to attract an audience is to have moral authorities moaning about how immoral a production is. Curiosity is incredibly powerful.
I remember when I worked in a book store there was a sudden flurry about a certain book. For some reason, local preachers started condemning this book from the pulpit. (It wasn’t even a new book. How they chose it, and how they co-ordinated their efforts to denounce it is a mystery to me.) Editorials ran in the paper about how this terrible book was about to lead us all into a moral sewer. There was even a small (poorly attended) protest outside our store because we sold the book.
Sales of this particular volume skyrocketed. The book had languished on the shelf, collecting dust until all of the public outcry. Our manager was secretly very pleased.