While it is popular to blame the New England Puritans for America's culture of sexual repression relative to many European and East Asian cultures, the Puritans were arguably one of the more liberal groups of their day. That is, we would find them repressive, but we would find many of their contemporaries even more repressive.
Why were they comparatively liberal? One reason was their interpretation of Christian teachings regarding sex. Because of how they interpreted the Bible -- especially I Corinthians 7 -- the Puritans highly valued sex in the context of marriage and placed almost no restrictions on it. On the contrary, both men and women could use their partner's failure to provide them with sex as legal grounds for divorce. Unlike some of their contemporaries, the Puritans did not interpret Christian teachings to conclude there was anything intrinsically wrong with sex. In short, blaming them for America's culture of sexual repression is most likely a stretch.
On the other hand, a much stronger case can be made for blaming the Victorians. But only some of the Victorians.
Victorian society was divided into socioeconomic classes. As a rule, the richest and the poorest classes were the least sexually restrictive -- although rich and poor had somewhat different rules, customs, and practices. Among the most wealthy, the rule seems to have been "anything goes so long as it does not become a public scandal". Among the least wealthy, there were few natural reasons to adopt morals that discouraged immediate gratification of ones sexual desires. But the Victorian middle classes were another matter.
In the case of the Victorian middle classes, economics was THE decisive factor in shaping their sexual morality -- with Christianity playing a supporting role. The emerging Industrial Revolution was creating heretofore untold of wealth and opportunities. By today's standards, we would scorn the Victorian economies, but by the standards of the time, things were 'on the up and up'.
Now, the key to understanding how the economies in places like Britain and America influenced middle class sexual morality is to grasp that they were more or less rich enough to make possible upward social mobility but not quite rich enough to make it as easy as can be. Hence, a young man looking to financially establish himself well enough that he could support a family usually took several long, hard years to accomplish his goal. Which, of course, meant he would be a fool to get a girl (who was his social peer) pregnant if and when getting her pregnant might mean he'd be forced to marry her before he could properly support her and their child. Consequently, he had to defer marriage for some years -- perhaps even more than a decade beyond what the Puritans before him were required to do.
As you might guess by now, the economic facts of life translated into repressing ones sexual desires. That they did, but not in a straight-forward manner. There were huge complexities to it. For instance, the pressure put on women to remain virgins until marriage was on an order of magnitude greater for them than it was for the men. Again, the relatively large population of horny young middle class men without wives created a huge demand for the services of prostitutes. Even relatively small cities of a few hundred thousand people might have hundreds (or thousands) of sex workers. Young middle class men were quite often privately encouraged to make use of a prostitute's services by their male relatives, even while being publicly exhorted by their ministers and priests not to do so. etc. etc. etc.
And there were also differences that depended on which part of the middle class you came from. That part of the middle class made up of men who were destined to become professionals tended to somewhat greater sexual leniency than that part made up of highly skilled craftsmen, such as master furniture makers. And so on.
How did Christianity come into it? The pastors and priests tended to shape the Christian message about sex to meet the needs of the young men and women to repress their sexual desires at least until marriage, and very many of those pastors and priests went way overboard in that regard. They not only condemned sex outside of marriage, but they cast sex in such a negative light that it took on a guilty pallor for many people even within marriage. For most middle class Victorians, shame and guilt about their sexuality became the order of the day.
In sum, despite the many variations and nuances, the Victorian middle class in general was comparatively more sexually repressed -- not only than the upper and lower classes of their day and age -- but also more repressed than the generations that had come before them. That repression has been handed down even unto this day (especially in some segments of the American population).
Please note: This has been a gloss. I have left out tons of detail and even some fairly important points in order to reduce this to a length that has any chance at all of being read.
Comments?
P.S. Please don't be too hard on the Victorians. They were only being human.
_______________________
Why were they comparatively liberal? One reason was their interpretation of Christian teachings regarding sex. Because of how they interpreted the Bible -- especially I Corinthians 7 -- the Puritans highly valued sex in the context of marriage and placed almost no restrictions on it. On the contrary, both men and women could use their partner's failure to provide them with sex as legal grounds for divorce. Unlike some of their contemporaries, the Puritans did not interpret Christian teachings to conclude there was anything intrinsically wrong with sex. In short, blaming them for America's culture of sexual repression is most likely a stretch.
On the other hand, a much stronger case can be made for blaming the Victorians. But only some of the Victorians.
Victorian society was divided into socioeconomic classes. As a rule, the richest and the poorest classes were the least sexually restrictive -- although rich and poor had somewhat different rules, customs, and practices. Among the most wealthy, the rule seems to have been "anything goes so long as it does not become a public scandal". Among the least wealthy, there were few natural reasons to adopt morals that discouraged immediate gratification of ones sexual desires. But the Victorian middle classes were another matter.
In the case of the Victorian middle classes, economics was THE decisive factor in shaping their sexual morality -- with Christianity playing a supporting role. The emerging Industrial Revolution was creating heretofore untold of wealth and opportunities. By today's standards, we would scorn the Victorian economies, but by the standards of the time, things were 'on the up and up'.
Now, the key to understanding how the economies in places like Britain and America influenced middle class sexual morality is to grasp that they were more or less rich enough to make possible upward social mobility but not quite rich enough to make it as easy as can be. Hence, a young man looking to financially establish himself well enough that he could support a family usually took several long, hard years to accomplish his goal. Which, of course, meant he would be a fool to get a girl (who was his social peer) pregnant if and when getting her pregnant might mean he'd be forced to marry her before he could properly support her and their child. Consequently, he had to defer marriage for some years -- perhaps even more than a decade beyond what the Puritans before him were required to do.
As you might guess by now, the economic facts of life translated into repressing ones sexual desires. That they did, but not in a straight-forward manner. There were huge complexities to it. For instance, the pressure put on women to remain virgins until marriage was on an order of magnitude greater for them than it was for the men. Again, the relatively large population of horny young middle class men without wives created a huge demand for the services of prostitutes. Even relatively small cities of a few hundred thousand people might have hundreds (or thousands) of sex workers. Young middle class men were quite often privately encouraged to make use of a prostitute's services by their male relatives, even while being publicly exhorted by their ministers and priests not to do so. etc. etc. etc.
And there were also differences that depended on which part of the middle class you came from. That part of the middle class made up of men who were destined to become professionals tended to somewhat greater sexual leniency than that part made up of highly skilled craftsmen, such as master furniture makers. And so on.
How did Christianity come into it? The pastors and priests tended to shape the Christian message about sex to meet the needs of the young men and women to repress their sexual desires at least until marriage, and very many of those pastors and priests went way overboard in that regard. They not only condemned sex outside of marriage, but they cast sex in such a negative light that it took on a guilty pallor for many people even within marriage. For most middle class Victorians, shame and guilt about their sexuality became the order of the day.
In sum, despite the many variations and nuances, the Victorian middle class in general was comparatively more sexually repressed -- not only than the upper and lower classes of their day and age -- but also more repressed than the generations that had come before them. That repression has been handed down even unto this day (especially in some segments of the American population).
Please note: This has been a gloss. I have left out tons of detail and even some fairly important points in order to reduce this to a length that has any chance at all of being read.
Comments?
P.S. Please don't be too hard on the Victorians. They were only being human.
_______________________
