The Making of Victorian Sexuality
Seiten
1995
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-285312-7 (ISBN)
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-285312-7 (ISBN)
Drawing on a wide range of evidence about 19th-century behaviour and opinion - from popular medicine to Malthusian polemic - this study argues that the present-day perception of 19th-century sexual culture misrepresents the true attitudes of Victorians.
What did the Victorians think about sex? What was the reality of their sexual behaviour? What wider concepts - biological, political, religious - influenced their sexual moralism?
The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent clichés of modern times. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of evidence about 19th-century behaviour and opinion - from modern demographic analysis to the travel writing of foreign visitors, and from popular medicine to Malthusian polemic - Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of 19th-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Far from being a licence for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexual moralism is shown to be in reality a code intelligently embraced by wealthy and poor alike as part of a human and progressive vision of society's future. The "Average" Victorian man, for example, was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois pater familias of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic, radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children.
A lively and fascinating synthesis of a wealth of new research. The Making of Victorian Sexuality is a timely disruption of our present comfortable consensus on nineteenth-century society. Moreover, it persuasively argues that in Victorian sexual moralism there may be much to teach the complacently libertarian 20th century.
What did the Victorians think about sex? What was the reality of their sexual behaviour? What wider concepts - biological, political, religious - influenced their sexual moralism?
The Making of Victorian Sexuality directly confronts one of the most persistent clichés of modern times. Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of evidence about 19th-century behaviour and opinion - from modern demographic analysis to the travel writing of foreign visitors, and from popular medicine to Malthusian polemic - Michael Mason shows how much of our perception of 19th-century sexual culture is simply wrong. Far from being a licence for prudery and hypocrisy, Victorian sexual moralism is shown to be in reality a code intelligently embraced by wealthy and poor alike as part of a human and progressive vision of society's future. The "Average" Victorian man, for example, was not necessarily the church-going, tyrannical, secretly lecherous, bourgeois pater familias of modern-day legend, but often an agnostic, radical-minded, sexually continent citizen, with a deliberately restricted number of children.
A lively and fascinating synthesis of a wealth of new research. The Making of Victorian Sexuality is a timely disruption of our present comfortable consensus on nineteenth-century society. Moreover, it persuasively argues that in Victorian sexual moralism there may be much to teach the complacently libertarian 20th century.
Michael Mason has edited the Oxford Authors edition of William Blake (OPB, 1988), and is Wordsworth and Coleridge: Lyrical Ballads (Longman, 1992), and Trollope: Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews (Arno 1981). He lives in Oxford.
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 6.4.1995 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Oxford |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 128 x 196 mm |
| Gewicht | 286 g |
| Themenwelt | Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sexualität / Partnerschaft | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-19-285312-0 / 0192853120 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-19-285312-7 / 9780192853127 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
Mehr entdecken
aus dem Bereich
aus dem Bereich
der stille Abschied vom bäuerlichen Leben in Deutschland
Buch | Hardcover (2023)
C.H.Beck (Verlag)
CHF 32,15
vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart
Buch | Softcover (2024)
C.H.Beck (Verlag)
CHF 16,80
