Victorian Discourse in Volumes
Victorian Discourse in Volumes
In the Puritan world, the hand of God or the temptation of the devil were to be found anywhere and everywhere. For the Victorians, the readings for this week seem to point less to an obsession with sin than to an obsession with words and language. The Victorian era may have featured many people talking about being prim and prude—Victoria’s exhortation to her daughter, to “Lie still and think of the Empire,” (229) as quoted by Lystra, seems the summation of thought about sexuality in regards to this era by our own—but the key is that that they were talking about sexuality; it seems to matter less what was being said than the simple volume of language regarding sexuality that was produced during that era.
Communication, and the forms it took, were multiplying rapidly during this period, due to urbanization, social mobility, and the growth of democratic culture (Battan 253). These societal changes resulted in changes to the power structure at work in the era; power was concentrating around different groups and figures, and with that, discourse surrounding prominent issues changed. Three key Victorian figures were empowered to not only talk about sexuality, but to attempt to stifle the discussion of it by others; these figures were the physician, the clergyman, and the moral reformer (Battan 254). These figures focused on establishing sexual norms in society through establishing an idea of the sexual “other”—the creation of sexual perversions, and the labeling of those who engage in them as a specific societal type, no longer just a person, but someone unfit, unhealthy, and to be wholly avoided, the “pervert”—this is evidenced T. G. Comstock’s account of the case of Alice Mitchell, whose act of murder he attributes to a sick bloodline, evidenced in her by her sexual “perversion,” (197-201).
However, as Foucault wrote that in understanding power, we must decapitate the king, so it is that we must see sexuality in the Victorian era for more than the discourse from figures in more prominent positions than the average person. That these figures were even speaking so much about sexuality indicates that they felt there was something important, something worthwhile, in discussing the matter, and this is reflected in the writings of ordinary (if such a term may be used) people of the time. Sexuality was of great discussion in people’s letters and diaries, and, even if not talked about, was something that was certainly being thought about and acted upon: the birth rate among certain groups began to decline, indicating a rise in the use of contraceptives or contraceptive techniques (Lystra 235).
The explosion of discourse about sex in the Victorian era established groundwork for the dialogue surrounding sex in our own. The codification of sexual behaviors, the establishment of perversions, and the authority given to certain experts to speak about sex publicly continued on after the Victorian era came to a close. Sex and sexuality were not just spoken about by these three figures, however: sex infused the discourse at multiple levels of society, and also became a cause celebre for certain resistance movements, such as the Free Lovers. Interestingly enough, these reformers and resisters also placed much importance on language, terminology, and discourse; additionally, they spoke extensively about behavior deemed “deviant” at the time not to condone it, as one might expect of a resistance group, but to expose it and, in so doing, bring it to an end (Battan 256). The resistance, it seems, was fighting a force focused on defining down sexuality by drowning many of the same targets in even more discourse.
Tags: birth control, Free Lovers, perversion, power, resistance, Victorians
