The First Sexual Revolution--in the 18th Century

[jenny_islander]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/ja ... revolution

A look back at the Good Old Days and the first sexual revolution. One incident that jumped out at me: 17th-century man becomes ill. Fears that this is God's punishment (fundie-approved). Confesses hidden sins publicly (fundie-approved). Hidden sin includes having attempted, long ago, to have sex with a young bride. Bride now lives far away, has no contact with sick man. The authorities arrest the woman, bring her to trial, and she confesses (fundie-approved). Both of them are found guilty and hanged. All the way to the foot of the gallows they two of them keep telling the crowd that this is right and proper, that they should both die, that women (of course, women!) should learn from this example, that this is how things should be. At the time of her death the woman is 18 years old. So much for New England's marvelous theocracy. This is what we want to go back to?

I also note that the class in History of the Novel that I took in college treated Pamela as sui generis when actually it's just the first widely read novel about women in peril that was written by a man. :roll:

[koolmom]

Wow, that is bone-chilling! The way the fundies in government act, things like this are not too far from reality!

[CanadianHippie]

Of course it's what they want to go back too. If we end up back there they can kill anyone who commits what they deem a "bad enough sin".

[Not That Kind of Dr]

If it offers any reassurance, readers tore apart this article in the comments, and rightly so. It is quite selectively argued. Just one example: illegitimate births may have been rare in the seventeenth century in England, but that doesn't mean that unmarried couples weren't having sex. They just married before the child arrived. Bridal pregnancy was fairly common and not particularly harshly punished. The community's main concern was preventing the addition of a "chargeable bastard" to the parish's financial responsibilities. Also, last week, Germaine Greer wrote a cutting review of this book in The Guardian's sister publication, The Observer. Why is The Guardian promoting it so forcefully?

[samurai_sarah]

If it offers any reassurance, readers tore apart this article in the comments, and rightly so. It is quite selectively argued. Just one example: illegitimate births may have been rare in the seventeenth century in England, but that doesn't mean that unmarried couples weren't having sex. They just married before the child arrived. Bridal pregnancy was fairly common and not particularly harshly punished. The community's main concern was preventing the addition of a "chargeable bastard" to the parish's financial responsibilities. Also, last week, Germaine Greer wrote a cutting review of this book in The Guardian's sister publication, The Observer. Why is The Guardian promoting it so forcefully?

Seconded that the author is highly selective. There's quite a bit of academic literature on unmarried mothers in early modern England. It's a while since I studied this stuff, but off the top of my head, different regions had different rules pertaining to unmarried mothers and their children. In London, in the 17th century, an unmarried mother could be flogged, fined ten pounds and sent to gaol for up to a year. In practice, it was rarely enforced, for a variety of reasons. As far as I recall, the parish was also bound by law to take the mother's word for naming the father, who would then have to pay child support. The mother's word was enough. Nothing pro-female here, this was just because otherwise the parish would have to cough up support for a child born within parish boundaries. In some cases parish authorities would chase a pregnant, unmarried woman across parish boundaries to avoid having to pay. That's not to say that illegitimate births weren't rare, just that there was a whole set of rules and "provisions" in place. So, while probably rare, it wasn't uncommon either.