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The Making of Victorian Sexuality, by Michael Mason; pp. 338. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,1994, 17.99, $25.00.
The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes, by Michael Mason; pp. ix + 256. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, 17.95, 8.99 paper, $29.95, X14.95 paper.
The "Making" in Michael Mason's two volumes signifies the construction of sexuality not only during the nineteenth century, but also for us as we depict the Victorians. In large part, Mason's agenda is to dismantle what the Edwardians and all of us since then have made the Victorians out to be. Mason wants doubly to locate both what really happened sexually between 1800 and 1900 and what specific strains of contemporary thought and behavior provided the material for later generations to stereotype the Victorians as insufferable prudes.
The results of Mason's first search-what the Victorians "really" said and did sexually-will shock those readers who have clung insistently to stereotypes characterizing Victorians as prigs or hypocrites. Mason's balanced, superbly researched picture shows a society harboring both-and many other women and men who treated sex more matter-offactly. Mason tends to trumpet this version of the nineteenth century as a little more surprising than it might be for specialists and fans of either Peter Gay's The Bourgeois Experience (1984) or Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality (1977). But Mason's two volumes do accomplish something new and important Above all, Mason synthesizes an impressive amount of monographic, specialized literature in social history, demographics, the history of sexuality, feminism, and family, and several untapped primary sources, particularly from the 1850s to the 1870s. Mason's mapping of nineteenth-century attitudes and behaviors is among the most detailed and nuanced yet, revealing striking shifts from one decade to another and dramatically heterogeneous practices coexisting at any one moment.
The results of Mason's second search-where did we get this idea the Victorians were so sexually prissy-are less clearly spelled out, but probably will surprise readers. The cliches, Mason suggests, exist because they are partly true: a real shift towards moral restraint did occur in the first quarter of the nineteenth century; and throughout the age, there existed diverse sexual attitudes and behaviors, including moral restraint and "cant" But more surprisingly, a paradox which penetrates our own century existed:...