# Writers who were virgins **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 18, 2006, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989 "2006-11-18T23:42:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr\_McChoakumchild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8797f3/32.png) [@Dr\_McChoakumchild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_McChoakumchild)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/21 "2006-11-19T01:14:23Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] I’m interested in how Henry James and Jane Austen managed to craft exquisite depictions of human relations despite never having indulged in sexual dalliance. [/QUOTE] Imagination? And probably coupled with observation, as jsgoddess says. Another possibility is Alexander Pope. He suffered from Potts Disease and was physically deformed and apparently quite misanthropic and bitter. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/22 "2006-11-19T01:50:41Z")
George Bernard Shaw is rumored to have never consummated his long marriage to Charlotte Payne Townshend, and thus died a virgin. He wrote some great plays, but there’s probably a price – many critics have written of his characters as sexless, and one describes Shaw’s characters as hermphrodites. The best quote about this I can’t find online, but it goes something like that: “You can learn everything there is to know about men and women by reading Shaw’s plays, except that they have sex.” I don’t know that I completely agree with that. Shaw once wrote that he thought of women as being just like men, if men were the ones who got pregnant and were generally smaller and so forth. I don’t think Shaw had much understanding of how hormones affect the mind, or how the libido works. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_McChoakumchild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8797f3/32.png) [@Dr\_McChoakumchild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_McChoakumchild)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/23 "2006-11-19T01:59:49Z")
This might be slightly off-topic, but I found it interesting at the time I was reading it: Fay Weldon wrote a book that purported to be a series of letters to her teenage neice who was finding it difficult to study Jane Austen in English classes at school. Weldon basically goes into various intriguing biographical details on Austen and on the England of her time. One statistic she brought up was that, because there was no reliable form of contraception or way to avoid getting STDs, about 30% of middle-class English women would have remain virgins all their lives. (Obviously the other 70% were married, prostitutes, or women who were good at concealing their sex lives and were lucky enough not to get pregnant or contract syphilis). I think the book was called _Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen_. I don’t like Fay Weldon but this is a pretty interesting non-fiction work of hers and it’s mercifully short as well. ---
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/24 "2006-11-19T02:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] George Bernard Shaw is rumored to have never consummated his long marriage to Charlotte Payne Townshend, and thus died a virgin. He wrote some great plays, but there’s probably a price – many critics have written of his characters as sexless, and one describes Shaw’s characters as hermphrodites. The best quote about this I can’t find online, but it goes something like that: “You can learn everything there is to know about men and women by reading Shaw’s plays, except that they have sex.” I don’t know that I completely agree with that. Shaw once wrote that he thought of women as being just like men, if men were the ones who got pregnant and were generally smaller and so forth. I don’t think Shaw had much understanding of how hormones affect the mind, or how the libido works. [/QUOTE] Evil, the theory that GBS was a virgin was prevalent for several decades, but research in recent years has revealed that in middle and old age he had affairs with several women. Shaw was sexually repressed in his youth, probably because his parents’ marriage had been a source of scandal and embarrassment. His mother, father and a male lodger lived openly together in a menage a trois and Shaw was never sure whether his mother’s husband or the lodger was his father. It gave him a distaste for matters sexual that stayed with him well into midlife. He had a wife, but it seems he married for money (his wife was rich) and quite possibly they never consumated the marriage. But he eventually had affairs, no question. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/25 "2006-11-19T02:10:49Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] I’ve often wondered about the adulterers in _Mansfield Park_. Jane gives such a good depiction of them and how their affair develops and plays out. How much did Jane know about the actual mechanics of sexual intercourse? Would she have known what constituted an adulterous act? [/QUOTE] It’s possible she knew enough. Jane was writing before the Victorian age, when women were kept incredibly sheltered. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/26 "2006-11-19T02:26:38Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] While he seems to have lived without sexual _relationships_, he did have sex at least once. Or got syphilis some other way. [/QUOTE] Er - he picked it up off a toilet seat? :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/27 "2006-11-19T02:27:37Z")
[QUOTE=Guinastasia] It’s possible she knew enough. Jane was writing before the Victorian age, when women were kept incredibly sheltered. [/QUOTE] Well, the Georgians - Jane lived and died during the reign of George III - may not have gone to the lengths that the Victorians did to preserve their daughters’ innocence. The Victorians put pantalettes on piano legs so that ladies wouldn’t be be reminded of human anatomy, and invented euphemisms such as calling chicken parts “white meat” and “dark meat” so that no one would have to speak the words “breast” and “leg” at the dinner table. The Victorians edited the bawdy bits out of Shakespeare - or at any rate, out of the editions sold for family perusal. The Georgians may not have gone to those prudish extremes, but they were still very strict with their daughters. I’ve often wondered how much Jane knew of the facts of life. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/28 "2006-11-19T02:41:15Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug] Thanks for all the cites, but fuck the OED. The OED never helped me get any in college, and the connotations of _virgin_ and _virginity_ didn’t either. [/QUOTE] Well, if you trying to fuck it, no wonder. You should have been reading it instead. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/29 "2006-11-19T02:55:10Z")
This board shows there is a positive correlation between virginity and the ability to write very well. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/30 "2006-11-19T02:57:00Z")
Have I ever mentioned how eloquent **Bear\_Nenno** is? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/31 "2006-11-19T03:16:13Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] The Victorians put pantalettes on piano legs so that ladies wouldn’t be be reminded of human anatomy, [/QUOTE] :dubious: That is actually an urban legend. Victorians never put skirts on their piano legs. They may have on piano benches, but not because they didn’t want to scandalize the ladies-it was to protect from scratches and such. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/32 "2006-11-19T03:24:33Z")
Frankly, I have to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that there’s a correlation between sexual expression and artistic ability. Outside of explicit erotica (you know when you’re feeling a woman’s breasts, and the feel like sand?), what can’t an observant virgin write about? Most writers never experience a fraction of the things they write about. Dante may have gotten laid, for example, but he certainly never visited Hell. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/33 "2006-11-19T03:56:34Z")
Assuming _arguendo_ the word “virgin” can properly apply to a male: I recall once on an episode of _Prairie Home Companion_ broadcast from Denmark, (the actor playing) Hans Christian Andersen said, “I regret keeping my virginity.” Don’t know how well-documented that is. [_Nietzsche_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzsche) probably died a virgin even though he (probably) died of syphilis (infected-blood transfusion is one theory). **That’s** gotta suck. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/34 "2006-11-19T03:58:05Z")
And I wouldn’t be surprised if St. Paul (he counts as a writer, doesn’t he? in terms of readership, one of the most successful in human history) died a virgin. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/35 "2006-11-19T06:08:31Z")
I had no idea Jane Austen was a virgin – so I guess she never married then? Considering how much she went on about marriage (see [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=395128) thread) I assumed she’d had some experience. J.M. Barrie supposedly died a virgin. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/36 "2006-11-19T06:17:16Z")
Austen never married. As for St. Paul, he was a Roman soldier, and a pagan before his conversion, so probably not. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/37 "2006-11-19T06:29:19Z")
Alexander Woollcott, one of the founding members of the Algonquin group, had a bad case of mumps as a young adult that appears to have left him impotent. I say appears because there is no confirmation of this that I know of, but it’s the consensus of modern researchers. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/38 "2006-11-19T07:33:02Z")
[QUOTE=Sonia Montdore] The Victorians put pantalettes on piano legs so that ladies wouldn’t be be reminded of human anatomy [/QUOTE] That’s been debunked as legend. No one has ever found any proof of that actually being done. ---
**Author:** ![Nymphadora](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/aeb1de/32.png) [@Nymphadora](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nymphadora)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/39 "2006-11-19T08:02:16Z")
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug] Only the women writers could ever have _properly_ been virgins, and then only until their age of majority. Everyone on the list should really be called celibate. [/QUOTE] As many have said you are speaking crap. I’ve long thought that meaning of the word virgin has changed over the years. At the birth of Jesus it was a female who wasn’t married. A century ago it was a female who hadn’t slept with anyone. Today it’s a person who isn’t a parent:) Many people looked down their nose at us when we parented outside of matrimony. Only thing was we knew many of them were rooting like rabbits outside of matrimony. What gives anyone the right to look down their nose at someone for the simple fact that their condom hasn’t broken? Not a dictionary definition, I’m just a realist. ---
**Author:** ![Snowflake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Snowflake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowflake)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2006, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989/40 "2006-11-19T08:12:31Z")
So, sex makes you dumb. 🆒 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writers-who-were-virgins/380989.md?page=3)