Sexual Mores in the Victorian Era
When contemplating the notion of sexuality in the Victorian era before completing this reading assignment, one likely thought of the attitude expressed by the doctor in the Mitchell piece who described a love affair in clinical terms that he deemed strictly a “matter of professional interest and of great importance to medical experts.” Another example would be the views as expressed by Comstock. These attitudes condemned expressions of obscenity and their “controlling influence” which people like Comstock attempted to stifle in society as “pleas for moral purity.” However, Comstock needed to condemn such material, because there was an appetite for it.
The reader has the opportunity to compare the traditional ideal of Victorian purity or virtue with the featured advertisements on page 238 that demarcate the frank expression of sexuality that must have been consumer-generated in order for the advertisers to promote their material. Further challenging the prudishness associated with the era are the efforts of proponents of the derisively called “free love” movement to change societal understandings of sexuality. Heywood and his fellow free love reformers viewed love as an “agreement” between the sexes, which should not be used to oppress others. As Batton explains, the free love proponents rejected the repressiveness of the Victorian prudes in a “battle of language between competing sexual ideologies.” According to Batton, the free love proponents tried to use language to transform society. Heywood believed that using less prudish language to discuss sexuality would serve to further equalize the relationship between the sexes.
The very stark contrast between the image of sexual repressiveness that people usually associate with the era and the frankness with regard to sexuality that was exhibited by some activists for openness with regard to sexual discourse demarcates the societal understandings of sex itself during that period. As Smith-Rosenberg explores, the dichotomy between the male and female spheres emotionally segregated the genders from each other. This segregation between the men and women shaped the way that sexuality was understood in the culture of the era.
According to Smith-Rosenberg, it was this bifurcation between the sexes that led the sexes to develop a sexual spectrum. The cultural consequences of this spectrum explain the ways in which, as in the Freeman piece on female friendship, women were able to have intense and intimate relationships with one another that were understood to be platonic and coexisted with heterosexual marriage. It is this bifurcation between the sexes that seems to be influencing both those who advocated censorship with regard to sexuality as well as those who wanted to change societal mores related to sexuality through speech.
Activists such as Woodhall advocated that in a sexual relationship, each person has the right to have power and consent over sexual relations, contending that “anything less is not freedom.” As Heywood stated, love should be an agreement between sexes, and the established societal rules of that era limited the natural sexuality.
The partisanship between the prudes and those interpreted to be free love radicals was based on the fact that they differed in the way in which they believed society should be structured, and their support for the discussion (or lack of such) of sexuality, in turn both shaped and reflected sexual societal norms. Heywood differed from Comstock in that the latter wanted to limit society’s sexual discussion through language censorship, and Heywood believed that openly discussing sexuality would transform society and the gendered relationships of the era.
-Ariella Medows
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Tags: Censorship, Free Love Movement, sex, Victorian
