Sexuality and American Culture

In her essay, Smith-Rosenberg concludes with an essential point:  “The supposedly repressive and destructive Victorian sexual ethos may have been more flexible and responsive to the needs of particular individuals than that of the mid-twentieth century.”  In echoing Foucault’s repressive hypothesis, this statement succinctly rejects the misconceptions about American sexuality in Victorian times.  The 19th century sexual ethos is not defined by a struggle between normal and abnormal, rather it is a “continuum or spectrum” with a “wide latitude of emotions and sexual feelings” (Peiss ed., 214).  This is illustrated through the acceptance of intimate, romantic female friendships as well as through efforts of the “Free Lovers.”  The Victorian Era is an important point in the shift from the deployment of alliance to that of sexuality; it embodies a transition from the operation of a sovereign power to that of multiple, local centers of power.
The intimate female networks and friendships of the 19th century constitute a fascinating response (possibly a resistance) to gender-segregated realities of American society at the time.  With biological and emotional realities separating women from men and often resulting in actual spatial distance (i.e. when a woman moves to isolation as she nears labor and birth), women turned to one another and built upon existing kinship systems.  Hansen’s reference to the African American creation of “fictive kin” can also be applied the greater networks of female relationships (Peiss ed., 223).  As discussed in the various letters and essays in our chapters, this female love was both platonic and sensual.  Although genital contact was most probably not practiced in these relationships, other physical expressions of love certainly were, including kissing, embracing, caressing and lying together.  “Bosom sex,” as discussed by Hansen,” may or may not have been a common physical sexual practice among 19th century American women.  Either way, the “imagery of breasts evokes notions of comfort, nurturing and maternity as well as female sexuality” (Peiss ed., 220).  Perhaps most poignant in relation to what seems to be a commonplace social interaction is its apparent acceptance within society.  Although these intimate female relationships were not considered replacements for heterosexual marriage, they were accepted and considered healthy and unthreatening in cooperation with that institution [of marriage].  This is progressive even for Bonobos communities, wherein males are often threatened by sexual associations among females.
Another important progressive movement of late 19th century America is that of the “Free Lovers,” a group of people who opposed sexual prudery.  Their work, based on the belief that “open and broad discussion” of the body and sexuality would lead to moral improvement (Peiss ed., 238) should be considered a primary step in Foucault’s “discursive explosion.”  Greatly inspired by the Transcendentalist belief in the democratization of language, the Free Lovers were a local center of power resisting a “system of economic and political domination.”  They were, according to Battan, “striking out at the oppression bred by the centralized control of knowledge” by “eliminating the artificial boundaries that separated public life from private life” (Peiss ed., 260).  Much of the tension did arise from this hypocrisy between public and private; the frustration of facing such a gap between practice and preach was certainly a precipitator of the Free Lovers’ efforts.  In their resistance, Free Lovers considered themselves “sexual scientists pursuing knowledge” to “liberate men and women from the corrupting influences of orthodox morality” (Peiss ed., 261).  The work of the Free Lovers fits into the budding deployment of sexuality as part of Foucault’s model of scientia sexualis.  Confession, in publications like The Word, was important in the sexual discourse, but more relevant is the fact that deviant sexual behavior was “neither celebrated nor condemned;” emphasis was on acknowledgement and understanding (Peiss ed., 256).
From these chapters, Victorian America seems shockingly unprudish.  Despite efforts to control, regulate and censor the discourse on sexuality, it is evident that passion and desire were still important, at the very least in people’s private lives.  That romantic relationships among women were accepted and that publications like The Word printed explicit accounts of sexual experiences is progressive, even today.  Our society is getting closer to recognizing the spectrum of sexuality, but still recognizes and stigmatizes an “abnormal.”