It seems that, when people think about sex in the historical past, they have a tendency to think in terms of extremes. For instance, the popular perception of the ancient Romans seems to be that they were all having wild sex orgies all the time. (This perception is usually coupled with the idea that this sexual “degeneracy” somehow led the Roman Empire to collapse, which, as I address in this article from July 2020, is complete nonsense.)
By sharp contrast, the popular perception of nineteenth-century British people is that they were so prudish and sexually repressed that young women had no idea that sex even existed. This idea that nineteenth-century women had no idea how a woman becomes pregnant is notably a major part of the Netflix historical drama series Bridgerton, which is set in London in the year 1813.
In reality, however, nineteenth-century mothers generally saw it as their responsibility to tell their daughters what sex was so that they could know to avoid having it before marriage. Moreover, a parent of any social rank in any society in any time period would have to go to truly extraordinary lengths to shelter their daughter in order to prevent her from finding out what sex is until she reached young adulthood. Trying to shelter a daughter to this degree in the nineteenth century would have been at least as difficult as trying to do such a thing today.
The young women in Bridgerton’s total ignorance about sex
The first glimpse we receive in the show Bridgerton of just how ignorant the young women are about sex comes near the beginning of the second episode (“Shock and Delight”), when Eloise, the second-oldest Bridgerton daughter, and Penelope, the youngest Featherington daughter, have a conversation that reveals that neither of them has even the faintest clue that sex is a thing that exists and that they have no idea how a woman might become pregnant. Both characters are apparently supposed to be seventeen years old in the show. The conversation goes as follows:
Penelope: “I know of someone… with child.”
Eloise: “Is it your Mama? Is she not advanced in age? I suppose your father should still want a boy.”
Penelope: “It is not my Mama. It is a maid.”
Eloise: “Which one of your maids is married?”
Penelope: “She’s not married.”
Eloise: [suddenly overtly panicked] “How did she become with child if she’s not married?”
Penelope: “I do not know—but I will find out.”
Eloise: “You must! Otherwise how can we make sure it never happens to us? We have accomplishments to acquire!”
This conversation might come across as a bit more surprising than it otherwise would because, although the two characters are ostensibly supposed to be seventeen, they are both played by much older actresses, who don’t really look seventeen. Eloise is played by Claudia Jessie, who is thirty-one years old, and Penelope is played by Nicola Coughlan, who is thirty-four years old, making her exactly twice the age that her character is supposed to be.
Later in the episode, Penelope asks Marina Thompson, who actually is pregnant, how she got pregnant, but the only answer she gives her is “love.”
ABOVE: Screenshot of the characters Eloise (left) and Penelope (right), who are both supposed to be seventeen, but are actually portrayed by actresses who are thirty-one and thirty-four respectively
What’s even more surprising is that Daphne, the oldest Bridgerton daughter, who is apparently supposed to be twenty-one years old in the show, has no idea what sex is until Simon, the Duke of Hastings, tells her. In episode three (“The Art of the Swoon”), Daphne and the Duke have the following conversation while strolling through the park:
Daphne: “What I mean is, there are other things… physical or perhaps intangible… that bring a couple together.”
Simon: “Well, yes, of course there’s more to a marriage—physical and intangible. Both.”
Daphne: “Both? But how can something be both physical and intangible when they are indeed quite the opposite?”
Simon: [smiles and laughs]
Daphne: “You are beastly! Nevermind!”
Simon: “No, no, I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing at the absurdity of how little mothers tell their daughters.”
Daphne: “They tell us nothing.”
I won’t spoil the rest of the series for those who, like me until earlier this week, haven’t watched it, but I will say that Daphne’s ignorance about sex and the exact process of how a woman becomes pregnant ends up being a hugely important part of the story later on.
In any case, did mothers in the nineteenth century really tell their daughters absolutely “nothing” about sex? Despite what Bridgerton would have you believe, the answer to this question is “no”; mothers in the nineteenth century actually did tell their daughters a little bit about sex.
ABOVE: Screenshot of Daphne and Simon, the Duke of Hastings, walking outside
What girls learned from their mothers
It is extremely difficult for a person to avoid doing something if they don’t know what they are supposed to avoid doing. If a girl or young woman in the early nineteenth century genuinely had no idea what sex was or that it was forbidden outside of marriage, it would be all too easy for her to meet a man who knows what sex is and end up having sex with him without realizing that she’s doing something she’s not supposed to be doing.
Consequently, mothers in the early nineteenth century generally saw it as their responsibility to teach their daughters what sex is and that it leads to pregnancy so that they could teach them not to have it until they were married. We know this, in part, because, as the Polish YouTuber Karolina Żebrowska discusses in this video from a couple months ago, nineteenth-century books about parenting discuss how much and at what age a mother should inform her daughter about sex.
Generally speaking, the information that early nineteenth-century mothers gave their daughters about sex was extremely limited and not always entirely accurate, but it was still information. In most cases, it was probably very similar to the kind of information that a person might receive in a modern abstinence-only sex “education” program: not a lot, but enough for them to know the basic idea of what sex was, that it could lead to pregnancy, and that they should wait until they were married.
How girls could find out about sex from extra-parental sources
Part of the reason why mothers generally saw it as their responsibility to teach their daughters about sex is because they knew that, if they didn’t teach them, their daughters were certain to find out about it on their own, because, even in the early nineteenth century, there were nearly infinite ways that a girl or young woman could find out about sexual matters, even if she was not trying to find out about them.
If you want to find out how people in a certain historical society thought about sex, one really informative way to learn is to examine their pornography. As it happens, throughout the nineteenth century, there was a thriving underground market of erotic literature in Britain and the United States. All nineteenth-century pornographic literature is now in the public domain and many of the more famous works written in this genre are available for free on Wikisource.
I read some of these works out of, um, intellectual curiosity a few years ago. Unfortunately, I found that a substantial proportion of Victorian erotica is frankly more disturbing than titillating. Many works written in the genre creepily fetishize extremely young girls for their sexual ignorance, including, in some cases, girls who would be well below the age of consent in most jurisdictions today. Nonetheless, these works can reveal a lot of interesting things about Victorian sexuality.
A Night in a Moorish Harem is a rather notorious erotic novella that was originally published in 1896 by an anonymous author writing under the pseudonym “Sir George Herbert.” It is an Orientalist fantasy about a British sea captain who, through a series of extremely contrived circumstances, inadvertently finds himself in a Moroccan harem full of extraordinarily attractive young women who are, for some reason, unattended and eager to have sex with him.
Each woman tells a story about her past sexual experiences, usually beginning with a description of how she first learned about sex. The stories that the harem women from non-European backgrounds tell are, for the most part, clearly rooted in Orientalist tropes about supposed eastern “barbarism,” but the stories that the women from European countries tell are perhaps somewhat more reflective of the world in which the author really lived. All of the European women in the harem describe learning about sex in ways their parents probably wouldn’t approve of—and generally when they were much younger than any of the major female characters in Bridgerton:
- In “The Spanish Lady’s Story,” Inez describes how she was introduced to sex when she was sixteen years old by her lover Carlos.
- In “The Grecian Lady’s Story” Helene describes how she heard “many stories of the trials and hardships of a virgin on her marriage night” before she married herself. Her age at the time of hearing these “stories” is not stated, but she is described as being twenty-two years old at the time that she is telling the story and we can probably assume she must have been significantly younger at the time the story takes place.
- In “The Italian Lady’s Story,” Laura describes how, when she was sixteen years old and at school in a convent, a friend gave her a pornographic book filled with illustrations of the ancient Roman deities having sex, leading her to masturbate to orgasm in her bedroom for the first time.
- In “The Circassian Lady’s Story,” Anna describes how she secretly observed her mother having sex with the old chief who was her stepfather. Her age at the time is not specified, but she is described as “about nineteen years of age” at the time she is telling the story.
- In “The Portuguese Lady’s Story,” Virginia describes how she sexually experimented with a boy her own age named Diego when she was apparently very young. Her age at the time is not specified, but she is stated to be “not more than seventeen, and very small for that age” at the time she is telling the story (which is very creepy, especially considering that the Captain has sex with her).
- In “The French Lady’s Story,” Renee describes how, when she was sixteen years old and at school in a convent, she and her friend Lisette were obsessed with finding more information about sexual intercourse, which they already know is a thing. She and Lisette end up having lesbian sex using a strap-on dildo.
A Night in a Moorish Harem is, of course, a work of pure sexual fantasy and it should not be taken as a work of accurate history in any sense. We also need to remember that it was almost certainly written by a man, who probably wasn’t especially familiar with what it was like to grow up as a woman.
Nonetheless, the kinds of scenarios the women in the novella describe for how they learned about sex are, at least for the most part, fairly realistic. Many Victorian girls probably did learn things about sex from talking to other girls, accidentally or intentionally observing adults who lived in the same household having sex, coming across lewd writings, and so on. Meanwhile, if they lived on or ever visited a farm, they would also be likely to witness animals having sex.
Aristotle’s Masterpiece: a widely available book about sex and obstetrics
As it happens, books about sex and pregnancy were widely available in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. Most middle and upper-class girls in the nineteenth century knew how to read and write, meaning that, if they happened to find one of these books, they could most likely read it without difficulty. Even if they were illiterate and couldn’t read, these books often contained extensive illustrations.
One of the best selling books in Britain and English-speaking parts of North America throughout the nineteenth century was Aristotle’s Masterpiece, also known as The Works of Aristotle, the Famous Philosopher. This book gave detailed (although not always completely reliable) information about sex, obstetrics, and raising infants. It was basically the early modern equivalent of The Joy of Sex and What to Expect When You’re Expecting combined together into one.
Aristotle’s Masterpiece was not really written by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (lived 384 – 322 BCE). Nonetheless, it falsely claims to have been written by him in order to capitalize on his lofty reputation. As I discuss in this article I wrote in October 2020, the real-life Aristotle wrote extensively about human and animal anatomy. He also discusses animal reproduction in great depth in his treatises History of Animals and Generation of Animals. These works established his reputation as a scientific expert on matters of reproduction and anatomy.
In reality, large parts of Aristotle’s Masterpiece were overtly plagiarized from earlier bestselling English writings about sex and obstetrics, including Levinus Lemnius’s Secret Miracles of Nature (originally published in Latin in 1599), the anonymous The Complete Midwives Practice Enlarged, John Sadler’s A Sick Women’s Private Looking-Glas (originally published in 1636), and Nicholas Culpeper’s Directory for Midwives (originally published in 1651).
ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the frontispiece and title page of a 1704 printed edition of Aristotle’s Masterpiece
Aristotle’s Masterpiece itself was first published in 1684 and it remained continuously in print in the English-speaking world until the early twentieth century through dozens of editions by different publishers. Alongside the Bible, it was one of the few books that any given household in the English-speaking world during the nineteenth century was likely to have a copy of.
Your average girl or young woman growing up in Britain in the nineteenth century would most likely be able to find a copy of Aristotle’s Masterpiece under her mother’s pillow or tucked away in a drawer. Even if she couldn’t find the book there, it was widely sold in bookshops all over the English-speaking world.
Indeed, even in the early twentieth century, copies were still easy to come by. In James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which was first published in its entirety in 1922, the character Leopold Bloom finds a copy of the book in a Dublin bookstall and skims through it, looking at the illustrations.
ABOVE: Frontispiece and title page from an 1846 illustrated edition of Aristotle’s Masterpiece, printed in New York
