Re: Peiss Chapter four
The ideology of female purity—the expression of passionlessness or maybe, the absence of Nymphomania—seems like, by the standards of theocratic doctrine and by the events that filled the beginning of the 19th century, an opportunity for a woman to obtain a sense of residual power; however, progress in sexual liberation, and women’s liberation for that matter, was minimally sporadic to none to negative.
Nymphomania, as a social conundrum in the 19th century, was coined as a disease—“This disease…” (William Alcott, 1855). Pre-marital sex was impure and if a woman gave into her sexual desires, she was considered morally inferior; if a woman did not engage in pre-marital sex—or did and was not caught—she was considered morally superior to those who succumbed to lust. Hester Prynne was ostracized for such acts of impurity and was exposed in front of those who hadn’t fallen victim to the “disease” as an example.
Moral superiority is power. According to the vox populi of the early 19th century, to render oneself sexually inactive until after marriage is empowering. And to separate the “impure” from the “pure” is a way of creating those power divisions.
The licentious men, despite having slightly more sexual liberties than women, were not safe from the unrelenting backhand of theocratic doctrine either—gayness—explored in Buskirk’s private journal (1852-1853)—was shunned and, with consideration to Boston Female Moral Reformers Condemn Licentious Men (1838), adulterous acts were considered to be solely initiated by licentious men.
During my reading of some articles from the early 19th century, I felt as if there was an impalpable, yet omnipresent, miasma of theocratic malpractice—non-heterosexual/ pre-marital/ animal-involving sex linked itself to sin and sin, in effect, linked itself to a place with a lot of fire. The link between church and government made laissez-faire sexuality impossible.
March 8th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Technically, these examples of 19th century writing were not theocratic since they did not adhere to the idea that sacred scripture should provide the law that would govern their society. The Puritans we read, like Bradford, were theocrats. But the women moral reformers and Alcott and Graham were not. So think about the way that theocratic principles were absorbed into more secular forms that take hold but were also altered in the process. This is a key to the kind of shift Foucault points to in the deployment of sexuality operating through the 4 major strategic unities that he describes. This shift will better clarify what Buskirk was in agony about in terms of his desires.