Sex In History. Part 7: Sex Denied

In imagination, the Victorian era appears to me in the guise displayed in the paintings of Frith: a world of top-hatted men and parasol`d women moving like dolls beneath the traceries of the new cast-iron architecture. But it is a world like Grand Central Station. Ornate at ground level, the dirt and fumes are tucked out of sight in caverns below. Somewhere beneath the level on which paterfamilias moves with assured dignity, followed by his brood, is a second and more sombre plane, peopled by a race whose duty is to emerge occasionally to provide variegated crowds, such as those which fill "Derby Day". Only by applying the microscope of Dickens does one discover that each of the units in these crowds is a living individual, each with its own hopes, its own sensibility, its own armour of attitude and its own despair.

With this picture, as vivid and unreal as a magic-lantern slide, goes a stereotype of Victorian rectitude, harshness and prudery in the civilized overworld, and of carnivorous exploitation, serpentine deception and bovine suffering in the shades beneath.

The reality, of course, is far more complicated. I cannot hope, in a single chapter, to bring out more than a few points. To begin with, the period with which we are concerned is not the England of the Great Exhibition and the rising population pressures, but something a good deal earlier. The patrist reaction started about 1760; by 1860 the swing-back was already under way. Furthermore it was a reaction led, not by the orthodox Church, but by the Wesleyans who were outside it, and the orthodox Church frequently protested against the extremes which they advocated. Clearly an increasing number of persons was becoming sympathetic to these reformist ideas, for the Wesleyans worked largely through reform societies; but it is also true that they succeeded in imposing their views on people to a considerable extent, for we find frequent protests, constant complaint that the young ignore the rules of behaviour, and even adults who do not hesitate to ignore the taboos, up to a point. As early as 1814 a writer complains, "I observe with grief and astonishment that marriage has dwindled into a state of temporary convenience to be continued or dissolved at pleasure.

What is perhaps not realized is the severity of the Evangelical ideal, and its extensive "kill-joy" character. The three great objects to which the reform societies devoted themselves were, officially, the improvement of Sunday observance, the abolition of prostitution and the reduction of blasphemy. But since the term prostitution was enlarged in practice to cover all extra-marital sexual experience, and the term blasphemy, most kinds of statements which patrists found objectionable, and since to regulate Sunday enjoyment, in a period when men worked upwards of twelve hours a day, six days a week, was equivalent to regulating all enjoyment, the programme was all embracing. George Burden`s Sermon on Lawful Amusements laid down that Christians must refrain from all amusement on Sunday, including travelling and paying visits. Hannah More added that a stroll in the public gardens on Sunday evening or attendance at a sacred concert were to be condemned, and that to tell the maid to say one was not in, when one was, was a sin.

In fact, one of the astonishing features of this Evangelical morality was the lack of proportion it displayed. It condemned such classic offences as adultery and prostitution, to be sure, but it regarded a host of minor pleasures as scarcely less reprehensible. The "Evangelical Barometer" reproduced by Quinlan places all the principal virtues and sins of the day in fifteen grades, seven above zero and seven below. In the fourth grade below zero we find drunkenness paired with theatre-going; in the fifth, novel reading equated with neglect of private prayer. In the sixth grade, reserved for the most heinous sins short of total perdition, we find adultery grouped with parties of pleasure on the Lord`s day. Nor was this lack of proportion wholly confined to the Evangelicals; the grotesque extremes to which it was carried are illustrated by the fact that in I798 the Bishop of Durham solemnly assured the House of Lords that the French, having despaired of conquering England by force of arms, had conceived the deliberate and subtle plan of undermining her morals, and for this purpose had sent over a number of ballet dancers.

The Evangelical campaign, though undoubtedly based on sexual anxieties, as I shall seek to show, took the form not merely of a campaign against sexual indulgence, nor even of a campaign against all forms of pleasure; it had the character, rather, of an attack on all spontaneity of impulse. And to a considerable extent, people accepted the new standard. Places of resort, such as Vauxhall Gardens, the Apollo Gardens and the Temple of Flora closed for lack of support. Theatres were deserted. Men gave up archery, wrestling and football for such restrained and solitary activities as breeding pigeons. No one played practical jokes any more. Christian names went out of use except between members of the same family. But perhaps the flavour of this fear of spontaneity can be conveyed even better by saying that Dr. Johnson`s famous 3 a.m. excursion with Langton and Beauclerk ("What, is it you, you dogs!" he said when suddenly aroused, "I`ll have a frisk with you") was regarded as a most improper and undignified incident. Gravity of demeanour was as essential for children as for adults. Robinson Crusoe was regarded as quite unsuitable reading for children - since, as Maria Edgeworth said, it might have the dangerous effect of inspiring young readers with a taste for adventure. How to inspire a suitably solemn attitude in the young is demonstrated in "The Fairchild Family", in which on three occasions the children are taken to see the dead or dying, so as to provide an occasion for suitable reflections upon corruption and mortality.

But if this general condemnation of pleasure reminds us of the Puritans, there were also aspects of Evangelical morality which seem almost medieval. I am thinking particularly of the tendency to see in every misfortune the direct manifestation of divine displeasure and even the inevitable consequence of departing from the law. Not only was the death of individuals interpreted as God`s punishment for their evil deeds, but political and economic ills were attributed not to defects of government or to poor harvests, but to the immorality of men`s behaviour.

"To the decline of religion and morality our national difficulties must both directly and indirectly, be chiefly ascribed", said Wilberforce in his Practical View. Bowdler, similarly, blamed corruption in private life in his "Reform or Ruin". The Evangelicals were latter-day prophets, telling of the Lord`s forthcoming vengeance upon his stiff-necked people.

Like Calvin, the Evangelicals insisted upon a completely literal and fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Writ, a fundamentalism which was to bring them into headfirst collision with the scientists, when the ideas of evolution and fossil geology were put forward, and into still more acute embarrassment when the higher criticism of Biblical texts was developed. Naturally, the idea of original sin also reappeared. Hannah More praised the dictum that children should be taught that they are "naturally depraved creatures" and parents willingly followed the suggestion. But nothing illustrates the common psychological origins of medieval and Victorian patrism more vividly than the bitter battles which were fought to prevent the use of anaesthetics in childbirth. The patrist`s resentment of women finds a convenient rationalization in the proposition that the pains of childbirth are God`s punishment for the sin of Eve. Simpson`s use of chloroform, in 1847, to relieve these pains forced that resentment into the open. Since it is so easy to delude ourselves that these beliefs belong to the remote and almost barbaric past, and to pretend that opposition to new techniques was a product of medieval superstition and ignorance, which could never occur in an age of science among educated persons, it is worth recalling the facts in more detail.

The Church at once protested on the grounds that to relieve the pains of childbirth was in defiance of religion, since the Bible had said that woman should bring forth her young in sorrow. Just as blatantly as in the Middle Ages, some pro-ponents resorted to lies and misrepresentation: thus one tract gave a highly coloured description of a birth taking place in the midst of an undignified orgy of chloroform intoxication and contrasted it with the "natural dignity" of a birth without anaesthetics. Simpson counterattacked on the Church`s own ground, pointing out that God had thrown Adam into a deep sleep when extracting Eve from his side, and was thus the first anaesthetist. He reminded people that the Church had opposed the introduction of winnowing machines on the grounds that "winds were raised by God alone, and it was irreligious in man to attempt to raise wind . . . by efforts of his own"; that it had opposed proposals to build a Panama canal on the grounds that man should not attempt to improve what the Creator had ordained - in this case a boundary between the Pacific and the Atlantic; and that it had objected to the use of forks, declaring it to be "an insult to Providence not to touch our meat with our fingers". Such arguments, he pointed out, could be applied equally to anything which man had contrived - the wearing of hats, or the use of public transport.

Fortunately, England was at this time governed by a queen, not a king: Victoria, who had experienced the pains of six deliveries without anaesthetic, in 1853 decided to try chloroform, and this broke the back of the resistance.

It was also characteristic that the new movement of reform should lay stress on circumscribing the movements of women and on subordinating them to the male. As was soon made clear in such books as "The Duties of the Female Sex", women`s status was returned to medieval level: submission, modesty and hard work were her lot, with visiting the poor for relaxation. Mary Wollstonecraft`s Rights of Women, appearing in the midst of such a trend, aroused a scandal: even so worldly a figure as Walpole referred to her as a "hyena in skirts". The Ladies Magazine published a case-study of four girls who had, it asserted, been perverted by reading this work: one of them not only rode to hounds but even groomed her own horse, while another - oh, horror! - introduced into her conversation quotations from the classics.

But the Victorian attitude to women was different in some important respects from the medieval. Where the medievals had regarded woman as the source of sin, the Victorians regarded her as pure and sexless. There was, at the same time, a difference in their attitude to sex itself. The Victorians, if mistakenly, regarded themselves as more civilized than the men of the preceding century: it was with only a trace of irony that a writer in the "Gentleman`s Magazine" could say:

"We are every day becoming more delicate, and, without doubt, at the same time more virtuous; and shall, I am confident, become the most refined and polite people in the world." That was in 1791; and fifty years later the conviction of moral superiority was even stronger. But the sexual act was not refined, it was not even dignified. Animals must rut, but man - noble, grave, rational should be able to procreate without descending to such uncivilized contortions. In short, the Victorian saw sex not so much as something sinful, but as something bestial, something disgusting. Besides which, conceiving himself as rational, he distrusted an activity which was so evidently not under rational control. But to say that the Victorian thought sex bestial does not explain why he should pretend that women were incapable of sexual feeling. As we have seen, the father identifier feels a conflict in respect of his mother - he feels that she has betrayed him sexually by her relationship with his father. The medieval patrist met this by decomposition: he presupposed a completely pure ideal mother, who had never had sexual relations (the fact that Mary had other children besides Jesus was conveniently forgotten) and urged all women to a like purity. But while he urged women to purity, he felt women were inherently wicked. He wanted them to be virgins but believed them to be courtesans. The Victorian patrist felt the same conflict, but was no longer disposed to solve it by postulating a divine Virgin: he was therefore compelled to divide the female sex into two categories: "good" women who had no taste for sex, and "bad" women who had. No more telling remark can be found than W. Acton`s assertion - ant remember it was not a hyperbole but a cold statement of supposed fact, made in a scientific work, "The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs" - that it was a "vile aspersion" to say that women were capable of sexual feeling.

The reformers did not, as a rule, succeed in getting Parliament to provide legal sanctions against the matters which they criticized, frequently because of their extremist character. Thus in 1800 and again in 1856 and 1857, attempts were made to have Parliament impose the death penalty for adultery, but the motions were defeated. The reformers did, however, succeed in securing the passage of an Act banning marriage with a deceased wife`s sister - a measure which was not repealed until 1907. No doubt they would have attempted to revive use of the ecclesiastical courts, but ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the laity had been finally destroyed in 1788 when an Act was passed preventing ecclesiastical action against incontinence. Nevertheless, on two occasions attempts were made to act against adultery by "presentment". The authorities, however, showed themselves reluctant to challenge the civil power, and both cases were dropped. Probably the last occasion on which the ecclesiastical courts attempted to impose the traditional penance of appearing in church in a white sheet was in 1833, when a court imposed it on a woman who had offended against the Deceased Wife`s Sister Act: but a medical certificate that this would endanger the woman`s health was submitted, and the matter was allowed to drop.

On the other hand, the private societies for the suppression of vice multiplied and brought numerous prosecutions. As early as 1757 a Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded with Wesleyan support. Five years later it was driven into bankruptcy when convicted of employing false testimony (echoes of medieval mendacity!) but in that five years it had brought more than 10,000 prosecutions. In 1789 the Proclamation Society was founded to give effect to the royal Proclamation against Vice: in 1803 it set up a Society for the Suppression of Vice. Other reformist societies included the Association for Securing a Better Observance of Sunday, the Society for the Prevention of Female Prostitution, and the Religious Tract Society, which by 1844 was distributing the prodigious number of 15 million tracts a year.

The declared object of the Proclamation Society (which numbered on its board a duke, both archbishops and seventeen bishops) was to suppress "licentious publications", but, as usual, the attempt was made to suppress all free speech on matters which the patrists found unacceptable. Its offspring, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, was used to prosecute "The Republican", a paper defending free speech and a free press. Tom Paine was obliged to flee the country on the publication of his "Rights of Man" (and had in turn to flee from France to America, where his "Age of Reason" was no better received). The Society, however, prosecuted and succeeded in having imprisoned a bookseller who had continued to sell his works. In 1820 a so-called Constitutional Association was formed to prosecute "seditious works". Among the works it thought seditious, and against which it successfully brought prosecutions, were Palmer`s "Principles of Nature" and Shelley`s "Oedipus Tyrannus" and "Queen Mab". Murray, Byron`s publisher, was so afraid of its activities that he hesitated to print the first two cantos of Don Juan. But this gang of intolerant patrists - it included the Duke of Wellington, six bishops and twenty peers - went so much further than public opinion would allow even in that age of reaction, that after only three years it had to suspend operations. The State, too, began to act against free speech, raising the tax on newspapers to 4d., at which figure it remained until 1855. The political character of the tax was made abundantly clear by its extension in 1819 to political magazines.

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