The Victorians
I’m well into my Victorian wip about a young woman who suffered a traumatic experience in her youth, begins her emotional growth through a series of family secrets.
One of these is the discovery that her mother had a lover before her marriage to her father and to clarify what this means in her own mind, she alludes to the sex act, but doesn’t actually give it a name.
I’ve been criticised for making the character ‘too naïve’ in her attitude. However my research illustrates, and my own family history where Victorian characters are remembered with awe and affection, confirms, this wasn’t an unusual attitude.
Victorian sex among polite company was rarely alluded to, much less referred to directly. My twenty year old heroine may sound naïve by modern standards, but no well brought up girl in 1882 would talk openly about sex – apparently. Who really knows what went on within polite families?
Attitudes had changed by the later Victorian years. At one time, women attracted all the sympathy and none of the blame over indiscretions as they were considered as bordering on sexless. Men represented the fallen, sinful, lustful creatures, wrongfully taking advantage of the fragility of women.
By the 1870’s, it was the women being held accountable, while men were regarded as slaves to their sexual appetites and couldn’t be blamed. This put women into two categories, frigid or insatiable. A young lady was only worth as much as her chastity, and once she was awakened sexually, there was no stopping her. I can only assume a fair amount of wishful thinking went into this conclusion; must have been all those corsets and tight binding!
Chastity, or at least the appearance of it, was crucial, for once a woman fell victim to sexual urges, nothing could redeem her reputation. A great deal of prudery resulted and of course - the word prude means ‘one who pretends to an ignorance he or she does not possess.’
Or perhaps I am only seeing one end of the social scale - the bottom end!! [Excuse the pun]
My own mother, born in 1928 was brought up in a household where no one actually said ‘it’, but everyone had at least a vague idea of what ‘it’ was and especially when and with whom you were supposed to do it.
Fiercely proud of her parents and the fact they brought up nine children in a three-bedroomed house in turn-of-the-century London, she responded to my perfectly innocent twelve-year-old question of, "If they only had a three bedroom house, why did Grandma have so many children?"
"She couldn’t do anything about it, they never discussed what happened in the bedroom. No one ever talks about such things."
"Not even to say 'Get off?"
I got a clip round the ear for that!