So That’s What the Victorians Did
My notion of the Victorian lifestyle has been shattered. Gone are the images of couples cold to one another in bed, and a society as tight as the petticoats the women wore. Replace it with sexually charged men and women who were not abashed to share their feelings with one another, and radical thinkers espousing subjects I thought belonged in the 1960s. A big thank you to Kathy Peiss for illustrating aspects of 19th century sexuality that I never knew existed.
I knew my world was about to be turned on its head from the very first sentence of the first document in chapter 6, “Julian Deane Freeman Praises ‘Woman-Friendship’, 1861.” Freeman mentions that society accepts friendship between men but is wary of it between women (188). This struck me as odd because today female friendship is normative, whereas close relationships between men are often viewed suspiciously (are they friends, or more?). This type of thinking is what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg instructs us not to do. In “The Female World of Love and Ritual” she makes it clear that same-sex relationships can exist in an area not clearly defined as loving, sensual, or sexual. “The twentieth-century tendency to view human love and sexuality within a dichotomized universe of deviance and normality…distorts the nature of these women’s emotional interaction” (205). I think that our uncomfortable and unsure manner of how to regard sexuality in part comes from this inability to understand the gray area. The third essay in Chapter 6, Karen Lystra’s “Sexuality in Victorian Courtship and Marriage” also rocked my Victorian boat. I loved reading the letter that a woman wrote to her husband describing her sensual desires for him (232). Lystra makes a point especially important to remember when reconsidering life in the Victorian age. While sexual desire between married couples was accepted, the line was drawn at sex before marriage.
Foucauldian concepts appeared numerous times in the essays and documents. The document “Alice Mitchell as a ‘Case of Sexual Perversion’ 1892” illustrates scientia-sexualis in action. Mitchell’s relationship with Freda Ward, and subsequent events, are viewed through the medical lens. Mitchell is described as abnormal (a pervert); she is classified as an “Urnings,” and her behavior is compared to that of “lower animals” (199). The Deployment of Sexuality is evident throughout Chapter 7, “Free Love, Free Speech, and Sex Censorship.” Jesse F. Batan’s essay describes how the Free Lovers “tried to create an alternative sexual discourse” (255). Indeed, the power-relations between the Free Lovers and reformers such as Anthony Comstock are battled out in the discourse of what should be allowed in public discourse. This is not a case of juridico-discursive action; there is no sovereign power deciding what will be allowed. Instead, there are local centers of power-relations: the Free Lovers, the reformers, and the public.
…Sorry for the late post!
Tags: Discourse, Female Friendship, Foucault, Peiss, Scientia-Sexualis, The Deployment of Sexuality
