Suchergebnisse

In the process of establishing continence as the norm of gentlemanly sexual behaviour, continence became a Victorian gospel. The mere narration of the process under Section II in the previous issue of this journal did not in itself yield the historical meaning of the gospel of thrift in semen. To understand the process historically is to ascertain the function of continence in a comprehensive system of relationships. More specifically the gospel of continence reveals its meaning when it is related to (1) the dynamic quality inherent in the structure and functioning of the Respectable Economic System, the compulsion to accumulate and reinvest capital, (2) Respectable thought about the purpose of political economy, and (3) the degree of integration of the virtue of continence into the Respectable Social System.

As others before him, the late Humphrey House once remarked upon the paucity of our knowledge concerning sexual behavior in Victorian England. For House the extreme reticence of the Victorians magnified the value of every fragment of evidence pertaining to sexual behavior that scholars uncovered. To fathom the meaning of the extreme reticence itself does not seem to have been particularly relevant to the problem for House. In this paper, which is an analysis of late-Victorian Sexual Respectability, not only the fragmentary sorts of knowledge that House alluded to, but a comparatively unexplored source, medical books, have been made meaningful and interpreted within the frame of reference of the Respectable Social System prevailing in England roughly between 1859 and 1895.