The History of Sex... kind of

For my roommate’s birthday, I gave her a pretty spectacular gift (if I say so myself): The History of Sex, in DVD form, courtesy the History Channel online shop. Besides being a good conversation starter (“I see you have… the History of Sex… on your end table…”), the set of documentaries are really interesting. Subsets of history include the ancient world, the eastern world, the middle ages, “From Don Juan to Queen Victoria,” and the 20^th century.

“From Don Juan to Queen Victoria” was by far the most interesting of the documentaries. It covers… well, Don Juan to Queen Victoria. Fictional libertine Don Juan, created in the mid-1600s, began the documentary with a characterization of the liberal 17^th-century mindset. To make a long story short, there was a lot of sleeping around.

Which makes it all the more stranger to see the end of this chapter in The History of Sex. By the time the late 1800s roll around, women can’t even show their ankles. The program documents instances of married women who didn’t know what sex was. I’m still not sure how that happens, but hey. As they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

Most people know, or have heard, that Queen Victoria was famous for being a prude. But that doesn’t completely explain the late-1800s attitude that sex = taboo. How can a society go from free-for-all-skirts-around-your-ears to strait-laced Puritans in a mere 200-300 years? Take modern society: each generation is successively more permissive than those before it. (Imagine watching a movie like… say, Zombieland, with your mom. Feel a little awkward? I mean, I know it did when I watched Zombieland with my mom yesterday.) Back to the task at hand. How does a generation go from syphilis-ridden to sex-free if the normal trend is in the other direction?

According to The History of Sex, the reason for this prudence is economic. It is between Don Juan and Queen Victoria that the middle class starts to emerge. And as the middle class gains wealth, they want to be equal to the ruling class. Unfortunately, as The Great Gatsby can attest, old money likes new money about as much as Democrats like Sarah Palin. Money wasn’t enough to make the rich folks accept them, so the middle class reverted to other tactics. If they couldn’t be the upper class’s equals, they would just be better.

The way to be better, in the eyes of the middle class, was to be better-behaved. So instead of raking in the cash, the ratcheted up the rules. They created the angel in the house, the virginal, modest, chaste image of womanly perfection, in retaliation against not being let in to the exclusive clubs of aristocracy. And society has been sexually frustrated ever since. (I’m fairly certain that this is also where get obsessive etiquette, a la Emily Post. Oh, emerging middle class, how can we ever thank thee?)

But at least we have a sense of irony. As society becomes more liberal, we get boutiques like Victoria’s Secret—which, incidentally, takes its name from the same prudish queen who lent her moniker to Victorian Era. Yep: I imagine Queen Victoria is rolling over in her grave every time someone unhooks one of her secrets.