In the Middle Ages, sleeping naked with a stranger in the same bed was something completely natural. The modern era has brought more prudery to life, for what would the Victorian era be without the numerous brothels?
Sleeping naked with a stranger in the same bed in a hotel room now appears to us as a frame from an erotic movie. In the Middle Ages, however, this was an everyday situation. Savoir-vivre handbooks of the time taught how to do the right thing.
And if that happens at night or at any other time,
That you are going to lie with someone better than you,
Leave him the side of the bed of his choice
[…] And when you're in bed it's polite
Lie straight, keep your arms and legs with you.
He used to talk at will, wish him good night every day,
Because it is great politeness, which you should know.
Ages of shame
With the end of the Middle Ages and the advent of modern times, the approach to not covering the body during a shared night with a stranger has changed. The famous Dutch philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam taught in 1530:
When you undress or stand up, remember about shame, be careful not to show the eyes of others what custom and nature wanted to hide.
If you share the bed with your companion, lie still, do not squirm from side to side, lest you expose yourself and harass your companion by removing the quilt.
Erasmus of Rotterdam in the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger
In the 17th and 18th centuries, social norms impose further restrictions in the area of appropriate behavior:
It is very wrong to have the opposite sex sleep in the same room; and if circumstances dictate it, arrange for the beds to be separated and that shame does not suffer from the confusion. Only great poverty can justify such practices ...
If you are forced to share your bed with someone of the same sex, which is rare, you should behave with strict and alert modesty ...
This change in the expectation of behavior towards the Middle Ages and earlier eras was associated with the fact that with the development of civilization and social progress, the threat of physical aggression was replaced by social pressure, which resulted in a feeling of shame in a person whose behavior exceeds certain social norms.
The French Sexual Revolution
At the end of the 18th century, a significant sexual revolution took place in France, forgotten by many. The National Assembly passed a provision to the constitution from 1791, thanks to which marriage ceased to function only in the area of religious regulations and takes the form of a civil law agreement. The law of 1792 guaranteed the French people the right to divorce, as well as systematized the issue of cohabitation and inheritance of property by illegitimate children. From that moment on, husbands were prohibited from inflicting corporal punishment on their wives, and young people who reached the age of 21 were allowed to marry on their own.
The New Swell's Night Guide - Men and Prostitutes, London 1847
The French sexual revolution led to the fact that the contracted marriage ceased to be a form of a patriarchal institution, but the beginning of a partnership relationship between two people. Such an important change for women took place in the area of home miracle. They still had to wait for the civil rights revolution. Meanwhile, the right to divorce was significantly restricted by Napoleon Bonaparte, and when the Bourbons regained the throne, it was completely revoked.
Female irrationalism
The Victorian era brought women a kind of enslavement. Representatives of the "fair sex" were considered too emotional and irrational to participate in public life or even make important family decisions. As a result, the husband could take care of his children or dispose of his wife's belongings, and even place the woman in a psychiatric institution without any problems.
Prostitutes, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
As Jules Michalet noted, the woman had a completely different task then:
In the evening [the man] comes back exhausted. He is tormented, depressed, less human. At home he finds an infinity of goodness, a weather so great that he almost doubts the cruel realities to which he has been exposed all day ... This is the mission of a woman (more than giving birth):to strengthen a man's heart.
The husband protected his sensitive and empathetic wife from the ruthless labor market and the brutal outside world and in return the woman was to create a calm and warm home for her beloved.
Sex on demand
As a result of not participating in professional and public life, women had a considerable amount of free time, and they were delighted to be carried away by their dreams. The housewives read touching novels, taking them to a world full of events and emotions that they could not personally experience. Women fantasized about liberation and sexual adventures but it was only in their imagination, since only a man could have sexual needs.
Wives could not feel sexual attraction and it was their duty to meet the needs of their husbands whenever they asked for it. Husbands did not have to make real erotic desires with their children's mothers, so they realized them with prostitutes or servants.
Sex with a "utilitarian woman" was all the more justified, because at that time it was believed that masturbation caused many health complications in men:indolence, digestive problems, blindness and tuberculosis.
Rationalizing sexuality
The nineteenth century marked the beginning of modern psychology. Thanks to psychologists and psychiatrists, it was possible to scientifically categorize human emotions and drives - into those compliant with the then norms and those exceeding them, called deviations. However, the level of knowledge of sexual behavior was very low. Women were still treated as beings deprived of their sex drive, and masturbation in young men was the starting point of idleness.
Sigmund Freud contributed to a change in the perception of human sexuality
The turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the time of the birth of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis. Thanks to the work of the outstanding Austrian physician, the previous Victorian views became a thing of the past, and man, regardless of his age or gender, was recognized by science as a sexual being with specific desires and desires.
Bibliography:
- A. Sikora, Freedom, equality, violence. What we don't want to tell ourselves, Karakter 2019
- Erasmus of Rotterdam, De civilitate morum puerilium, 1530
- J.-B. de La Salle, Les règles de la bienséance et de la civilité chrétienne, Paris 1774
- J. Michelet, L'amour, Paris 1858
- N. Elias, On the process of civilization. Socio-psychogenetic analyzes, W.A.B. 2011
- N. Luhmann, The Semantics of Love. On encoding intimacy, Scholar 2003
- Stans puer ad mensam, between 1463 and 1483, translated by Ewa Życieńska