Sexual Intercourse Began in 1863

[steepholm]

This is another query flung tangentially from our History Project like a spark from a Catherine wheel. It's common wisdom, both on the web and in print, as dozens of hits on Google Books attest, that Victorian women advised their daughters - usually before their wedding nights - to lie back (or perhaps close their eyes) and think of England (or possibly the Empire). Indeed, this is frequently cited as evidence of the resistance at the time to the idea of female sexual pleasure.

But is there any evidence that this phrase was ever used during Victoria's reign? Apocryphally it's sometimes attributed to Victoria herself, although this tendency has abated as Victoria's enthusiastic enjoyment of sex has become better known. Other than that, the earliest citation appears to be from the 1912 journal of Alice, Lady Hillngdon, in which she expresses her relief that these days she is obliged to "lie down on [her] bed, close [her] eyes, open [her] legs and think of England" only twice a week. But that quotation first appeared in print in the 1970s, and the journal itself (as Brewer notes) has never been produced, so it must be treated with suspicion at best. Something similar is said to have been given as advice to her daughter by the wife of Stanley Baldwin, but again, no evidence.

It's tricky, of course, the subject matter being such that people who might have conceivably have used the phrase would have shied from putting it down in print; but surely there would have been many women from the early to the middle part of the twentieth century who would have attested to its use in earlier times? Did the Suffragettes make no mention of it? Marie Stopes? Virginia Woolf? Gwen Raverat? Marie Lloyd? Anyone at all?

By this point I'm pretty much convinced that the phrase is a twentieth-century invention, foisted on the Victorians as a way of poking fun at them (c.f. Victoria refusing to outlaw lesbianism) - but I'd still like to know who first came up with it.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

oursin has a wonderfully informative web page about Victorian sex factoids which fails to find a reliable source, though the phrase does seem to have been current in the early 20th century.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That looks like some good reading there.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

In the course of debunking one myth, Hall writes, "moral earnestness and libertine behaviour were both to be found in Victoria's subjects but very seldom in the same individual."

That may be true, but they may often be found today in the same individual, when that individual is an American fundamentalist preacher. The number of those whose denunciations against homosexuality turn out to be self-beatings for their own, apparently irresistible, homosexual inclinations is truly remarkable.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, George Rekers springs to mind (and then, thankfully, out again).

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

It depends how you define "libertine." Charles Kingsley (who was certainly an earnest fellow) and his fiancee Fanny Grenfell engaged in some mighty heavy petting before marriage (in the 1840s), apparently without any sort of guilt. "My hands are perfumed with her delicious limbs, and I cannot wash off the scent. And every moment the thought comes across me of those mysterious recesses of beauty where my hands have been wandering, and my heart sinks with a sweet faintness and my blood tingles through every limb." Fanny was just as enthusiastic, from all accounts.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

oursin did say "very seldom" rather than "never". Also you have to remember a) that America in 2011 is not Britain under Victoria's reign and b) consider how many (as a percentage of the population) of these fundamentalist religious hypocrites there are currently in the US. Just because a few cases makes a good story for the media doesn't make their behaviour the norm -- which is what oursin is saying about the Victorians.

Of course hypocritical behaviour exists. We have plenty of instances here of hypocrisy more recently; the whole "back to basics" ideology of John Major's Tory government foundered on that very point, but many people think that all Victorian men were repressive tyrants at home and sexual libertines outside it, which is very much not the case.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

You write as if you think you're disagreeing with me about something, but I don't know what it might be.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I remember a discussion at rec.arts.sf.composition (c. 2000?) with David Friedman and others. Someone (DF iirc) came up with a reference suggesting that it was originally advice given for use during childbirth rather than during sex. And Queen Victoria had said something else about something else. ;-)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

An intriguing possibility! Not that childbirth is that passive an activity, but it's easy to imagine it being said.

Alas, I just went back and checked the discussion, and the person who mentions it - Cally Soukup, in conversation with Friedman - can't remember where she saw the reference (which seems to be the story of this phrase).

And Queen Victoria had said something else about something else. ;-)

That I find easy to believe.

[gillo]

Good grief. I know Cally quite well from other online sources. All roads eventually lead to...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, it turns out that there are only about five dozen of us using the internet, but we all have a lot of aliases...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My searches have brought up a source that may have been influential, between the 1940 example she gives of Thurtle and the dubious 1972 journal extract: Pierre Daninos's Les Carnets du Major Thompson (1954), which was made into a film starring Jack Buchanan, and which (in its English translation) has the Major's wife Ursula being advised by her mother to "just close your eyes and think of England!"

I wouldn't be surprised if that book gave the phrase quite a boost, at least. But Major Thompson is a fictional version of the typical Englishman, and one invented by a Frenchman, no less - so certainly a case of "He would say that, wouldn't he?"

[owlfish]

ngram viewer hits for the phrase "and think of england" certainly imply you're right.

There's a 1977 play "Shut your eyes and think of England" that may well have helped popularize the phrase?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's a useful graph: I was trying to figure out a way to use the ngram for this query but couldn't do it. I suppose we have to factor in that people might have been thinking of England for other reasons, especially if they were living abroad, but it's still striking.

[owlfish]

I did check all the pre-1920 entries on that list to make sure they were thinking of England in other contexts before giving you the link.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I appreciate it.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Between the end of the Catholic ban
And Dedalus' first long pee.*

----
*Stephen Dedalus, in the Proteus Chapter of Ulysses

Such Larkins, Pip!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

:)

(I happen to be reading Great Expectations at the moment...)

I feel safe in saying...

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

... that Lucy, Lady Baldwin - she of the openly gay son and the midwifery lobbying - damned well never said anything of the sort. Not least given the ages of her daughters and their several dates of birth, w/r/t the 'Victorian-ness' of the alleged remark.

Re: I feel safe in saying...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Indeed not. She does seem a strange choice as spokeswoman for tightlaced prudery. Orphaned quotations batten on the unlikeliest hosts, sometimes.

Re: I feel safe in saying...

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Otoh, if it was in fact advice given for use during childbirth, a context of midwifery would be appropriate.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Can't comment on the sex, but the evidence of my great-aunt's letters about a holiday in Ireland during the 1890s is that young Victorian women liked to sit up until three in the morning smoking and drinking champagne.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

And riding bicycles, I don't doubt!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

They didn't mention bicycles. Curraghs, now...

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Riding bicycles at three a.m. while smoking and drinking champagne? I would't mention it either. ;-)

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

In a book published in 1972 it is described as 'the classic story of the Victorian bride'. I cannot trace it any earlier.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Being untraceable seems to be the defining characteristic of this phrase, unfortunately.

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

As I recall, Tim Hitchcock's _English Sexualities_, 1700-1800 (Macmillan, 1997) is good on how the received wisdom on women's sexual appetite changed markedly over the course of the eighteenth century. This is tangential to your query, of course, but I thought it might perhaps be useful context.

Odzywki

[(Anonymous)]

Get in our website and know more about
[url=http://www.gainery.super-suple.com.pl/]odżywki na masę[/url]