The making of Victorian sexual attitudes

Abstract

How were sexual attitudes formed? sexual moralism was real enough, but what was its nature? Victorians are often called puritanical, with the implication that their secular moralism was religiously based. It was opposed, we like to think, by freethinkers and progressives, and perhaps also by the working class. Michael Mason has already pointed to the fallacy of such views in his previous volume, The Making of Sexuality. Here he develops his revisionist account of sexual ideology and shows that to be Victorian about sex was actually, in its day, to be progressive, optimistic, and modern-minded. Taking a look at crucial movements, episodes, and individuals from the Swedenborgians to prostitute rescue, and Owenism, this book strikes at the root of conventional wisdom about the English 19th century.

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