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Marriage, Sexuality, and the Facts of Ltfe

ln the nineteenth century, sexuality became the subject of much anxious debate, largely because it raised other issues: roles of men and women, morality, and social respectabilrty. Doctors threw themselves into the discussion, ot't'ering expert opinions on the health (including the sexual lives) of the population; yet they did not dictate people's private Nineteenth'century men and women responded to what they experienced as the t'acts of life more than to expert The first document provides an example ot' medical knowledge and opinion in 1870. The second oft'ers a glimpse ol daily realities of family life in 1830.

A French Doctor Denounces Contraception (1870)

CI ne of the most power- ful instincts nature has placed in the heart of man is that which has for its object the per-

spring. Such, however, is not the case, and I shall show that those who have an unlimited confidence in the patriarchal habits of our country people are deeply in error. At the present time frauds are practiced by all classes. . . .

The laboring classes are generally satisfied with the practice of Onan [withdrawal]. . They are seldom famil- iar with the sheath invented by Dr. Con- dom, and bearing his name.

Among the wealthy, on the other hand, the use of this preservative is gen- erally known. lt favors frauds by render- ing them easier; but it does not afford completesecurity....

Case X.-This couple belongs to two respectable families of vintners. They are

both pale, emaciated, downcast, sickly. . . . They have been married for ten

years; they first had two children, one immediately after the other, but in order to avoid an increase of family, they have had recourse to conjugal frauds. Being both very amorous, they have found this practice very convenient to satisfy their inclinations. They have employed it to such an extent, that up to a few months

ago, when their health began to fail, husband had intercourse with his habitually two and three times in four hours.

The following is the condition woman: She complains of continual in the lower part of the abdomen

neys. These pains disturb the

the stomach and render her

petuation of the human race. But this instinct, this inclination, so active, which attracts one sex towards the other, is liable to be perverted, to deviate from the path nature has laid out. From this arises a number of fatal aberrations which exercise a deplorable influence upon the individual, upon the family and upon6ociety....

We hear constantly that marriages are less fruitful, that the increase of pop- ulation does not follow its former ratio. I believe that this is mainly attributable to

genesiac frauds. lt might naturally be supposed that these odious calculations

of egotism, these shameful refinements of debauchery, are met with almost entirely in large cities, and among the luxurious classes, and that small towns and country places yet preserve that simplicity of manners attributed to prim- itive society, when the pater familias was

proud of exhibiting his numerous off-

nervouS.

By the touch we find a very intense great sensibility to pressure, and all signs of a chronic metritis [infl ofthe uterus]. The patient attributes itively her present state to the too guent approaches of her husband.

The husband does not exculpate himself, as he also is in a of extreme suffering. lt is not in the tal organs, however, that we find his order, but in the whole general system; his history will find its the part of this work relative to disturbances. . . .

Source: Louis-Frangois-Etienne Bergeret, fhe

Preventive Obstacle, or Conjugol Onanism, trans.

P. de Marmon (New York: 1870), pp.3-a, Q, 20-22, 25, 56-57, 100-101, 111 -113 published in Paris in 1868.

648 I cHneren re The lndustrial Revolution and, Nineteenth-Century Society

An alyzing

Death in Childbirth (1830)

rs. Ann B. Pettigrew was taken in Labour after returning from a walk in the garden, at 7

o'clock in the evening of June 30, 1830. At 40 minutes after 11

o'clock, she was delivered of a daughter.

A short time after, I was informed that

the Placenta was not removed, and, at 10 minutes afler 12 was asked into

the room. I.advanced to my dear wife, and kissing her, asked her how she was,

to which she replied, I feel very badly. I

went out of the room, and sent for Dr. Warren.

I then returned, and inquired ifthere

was much hemorrhage, and was answered that there was. I then asked

the midwife (Mrs. Brickhouse) if she ever

manual exertion to remove the pla-

centa. She said she had more than fifty times. I then, fearing the consequences

of hemorrhage, observed, Do, my dear

sweet wife, permit Mrs. Brickhouse to

remove it: To which she assented.

After the second unsuccessful attempt, I desired the midwife to desist. ln these two efforts, my dear Nancy suffered exceedingly and frequently exclaimed: "O Mrs. Brickhouse you will kill me," and

to me, "O I shall die, send for the Doc- tor." To which I replied, "l have sent."

After this, my feelings were so ago- nizing that I had to retire from the room

and lay down, or fall. Shortly after which,

the midwife came to me and, falling upon her knees, prayed most fervently

to God and to me to forgive her for say-

ing that she could do what she could not....

The placenta did not come away, and

the hemorrhage continued with unabated violence until five o'clock in the morning, when the dear woman breathed her last 20 minutesbefore the

Doctor arrived.

So agonizing a scene as that irom one o'clock, I have no words to describe.

O My God, My God! have mercy on me.

I am undone forever. . . .

Source: Cited in Erna Olafson Hellerstein, Leslie Parker Hume, and Karen M. Offen, eds.,Victorian Women: A Documentary Account olWomen's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the

United States (Stanford, CA: 1981 ), pp. 193-9a, 219-20.

Questions for Analysis

1. The French doctor states that the impulse to have sexual relations is "one of the most powerful instincts" given to humans by nature, while simultaneously claiming that this nat-

ural instinct is "liable to be perverted."

What does this reveal about his atti- tude toward "nature"?

2. What does he mean by "genesiac frauds"? Who is being deceived by this

fraud? What consequences for indi- viduals and for society as a whole does

the doctor fear from this deception?

3. What does the story of Mrs. Petti- grew's death reveal about the dangers

of childbirth and the state of obstetric

medicine in the nineteenth century?

Russia to nurse British soldiers fighting there in the IB50s, remains the most famous of those women whose deter- mination to right social wrongs compelled them to defy conventional notions of woman's "proper" sphere. Equally

famous-or infamous, at the time-was the French female novelist George Sand (1804-1876), whose real name was

Amandine Aurore Dupin Dudevant. Sand dressed like a man and smoked cigars, and her novels often told tales of independent women thwarted by convention and unhappy

marriages.

QueenVictoria, who came to the British throne in 1837, labored to make her solemn public image reflect contempo- rary feminine virtues of moral probity and dutifui domes- ticrty. Her court was eminently proper, a marked contrast to

that of her uncle George IV, whose cavalier ways had set the

style for high life a generation before. Though possessing a

bad temper, Victoria trained herself to curb it in deference to her ministers and her public-spirited, ultrarespectable husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. She was a success- ful queen because she embodied the traits important to the middle class, whose triumph she seemed to epitomize and whose habits of mind we have come to call Victorian. Nineteenth-century ideas about gender had an impact on

masculinity as well: soon after the revolutionary and the Napoleonic period, men began to dress in sober, practical clothing, and to see as effeminate or dandyish the wigs, ruffled collars, and tight breeches that had earlier been the pride oI aristocratic masculinity.

The Middle Classes 649

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