Primers for Prudery: Sexual Advice to Victorian AmericaIn Primers for Prudery Ronald G. Walters examines the historical and social context as well as the substance of sexual advice manuals in nineteenth-century America. Allowing the authors of these manuals to speak for themselves—with generous excerpts by contemporary authorities on subjects ranging from the virtues of celibacy to the vices of masturbation—Walters offers his readers a complex reading of the Victorian "prudery" referred to in the book's title. Supplementing each of the excerpts with extensive commentary, he places the advice manuals in the larger setting of gender and class issues. -- Publisher's description. |
Contents
Approaching This Delicate Subject | 19 |
A Destructive Impulse | 32 |
The Path Downward | 49 |
Copyright | |
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advice literature advice manuals advice-manual authors Alcott American Anthony Comstock become Beecher behavior believed birth control cause century CHARLES KNOWLTON chastity contraception corrupt culture cure depravity desire disease effects Elizabeth Blackwell erotic activity erotic drives erotic impulses evil excess excitement exercise fear female Fowler function habits happiness Henry Ward Beecher Hollick human individual indulgence JOHN COWAN John Harvey Kellogg John Humphrey Noyes laws Lectures to Young less licentiousness lives Male Continence man's marital marriage married masturbation matrimony matter ment mental mind Moral Physiology nature nineteenth nineteenth-century advice nineteenth-century authorities Oneida organs orthodox morality passions persons phrenologists physical physician population practice procreation proper prostitution purity race reform regard reproduction result Robert Dale Owen secret vice sensuality sexual attitudes sexual expressiveness sexual intercourse sexual morality social society stimulating Sylvester Graham thought tion vice virtue Weems woman women writers York youth