The Making of Victorian SexualityOxford University Press, 1994 - 338 pages BL A challenging examination of Victorian sexuality. BL Confronts one of the most persistent historical cliches of modern times. BL Draws on a wealth of documentary evidence including medical, scientific, religious, demographic, and literary texts. At a time when AIDS, abortion, and sexual abuse have become favourite topics of media and academic debate, it is no surprise that the Victorians, with their strong associations with prudery and puritanism, are frequently held up as an example of a sexual culture far different from our own. Yet whatdid the Victorians really think about sex? What was the reality of their sexual behaviour, and what wider concepts - biological, political, religious - influenced their sexual moralism? The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent cliches of modern times. Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of nineteenth-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Far from being a license for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexual moralism is shown to bein reality a code intelligently embraced by wealthy and poor alike as part of a humane and progressive vision of society's future. The `average' Victorian man was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois `paterfamilias' of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic,radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children. Persuasively arguing that there is much in Victorian sexual moralism to teach the complacently libertarian twentieth century, this lively and fascinating study offers a radical challenge to one of the most persistent myths of our age. |
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Table des matières
EVANGELICALS AND SEX | 63 |
VOLUNTARY Restraint | 117 |
FREETHOUGHT VERSUS FREE LOVE | 167 |
Droits d'auteur | |
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Agapemone Anglican Annie Besant anti-sensualism attacks attitudes belief Besant birth control Bradlaugh celibacy century Charles Charles Bradlaugh Chartist chastity Christian Church classic moralism coitus interruptus concubinage contraception creed dissenting divorce doctrines Drysdale's early Elements of Social England English Evangelical fact Female Mission feminist Francis Place G. J. Holyoake George Drysdale girls Holyoake hostile human important intercourse J. S. Mill John later lectures libertarian London Female Magdalen's Friend magdalenism magdalenist Malthusian marriage married middle-class Midnight Meeting Mill missionary Moral World moralistic movement National Reformer nature neo-Malthusian nineteenth nineteenth-century Nonconformist numbers Owen Owen's Owenite Owenite sexual passim penitentiary period political Prince Princeites principle pro-sensual prostitute prostitute rescue radical religion religious Saturday Review sect sectarian secular secularist seems sense sensual sexual codes sexual drives sexual morality sexual policy Social Science socialist spirit Swedenborgian Taylor teetotal tion transgressive Unitarian Urania Vice Society Victorian views Wilberforce William woman women working-class