Debauchery in Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Part One: Historical Context

A quick glance at any eighteenth-century British literature anthology deems the era a particularly libidinous one. Gender relations are the focus of much of the time period's most popular works; male and female writers alike documented their sexual preferences and expectations and presented them in a forum much more public than ever before. In 1665, Londoners suffered the effects of a devastating plague, and in 1666, their city was decimated by the Great Fire. Consequently, following the spread of disease and aftermath of the fire, there was no pure drinking water to be found, therefore alcohol became the primary beverage of consumption. An increase in alcohol consumption, coupled with a lack of prophylactics, lead to an unprecedented population increase during the eighteenth century. Arthur J. Weitzman, author of the essay “Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City,” claims that “after the plague and fire in the 1660s, the city doubled in population by 1800” (473).

However, the post-disastrous state of London was not the only contributing factor to an increase in sexual activity. According to Karen Harvey, author of “The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century,” historical examinations of sex and the body “focus on the period 1650-1850, with heavy emphasis on the eighteenth century … the century of change in the ways in which bodies were understood, sexuality constructed, and sexual activity carried out” (900). This “century of sex” was precipitated by the Enlightenment, which promoted scientific and historical thinking over the former belief in magic and spirituality. “British Society in the Eighteenth Century” writer Robert Allan Houston says that the “witch craze of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had almost died out by 1700, partly as a result of a greater understanding of nature” (453). With this “greater understanding of nature” came a greater understanding of the human body, and in turn, of human sexuality. Harvey calls this new understanding “a prodigious hedonistic liberation of the libido” (899). New medical information and discoveries about sex and the body could also be disseminated widely now thanks to an increase in print media. Individuals were becoming increasingly enlightened about their own bodies, and subjective sexual desires became characteristics of the myriad of developing sexual identities.

Prior to the Enlightenment, men and women were believed to possess the same sexual organs; the female vagina was pictured as “an interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries as testicles” (Harvey 901). Therefore, women were viewed as little more than defective men. New medical information during the Enlightenment debunked this Aristotelian theory, proving that there are distinct physical differences between male and female genitalia. Most importantly, it was discovered that the female orgasm is dispensable to conception. Prior to the Enlightenment, “women had been perceived as lascivious and lustful creatures,” but “by the middle of the the eighteenth century they were increasingly reimagined as belonging to another order of being: loving but without sexual needs” (Harvey 903). At this time, men became considered the more libidinous sex, and as this shift occurred, along with it came what author Faramerz Dabhoiwala calls a “growing acceptance … of libertine assumptions about male sexual conduct” (213). In other words, men discovered the natural implications behind their sexual desires, thereby justifying their libertinism and debauchery.

Randolph Trumbach's essay “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London” is a precise examination of the sexual identities developed during the eighteenth century. He explains that during the Enlightenment, the contemporary “gender role for men presumed that most men desired women exclusively and that all masculine behavior flowed from such desire” (187). This was a reversal of former sexual mores in which the most masculine men had sexual relations with both women and adolescent males. The new two-sex theory indicated that men were created to have sexual relations with women only. This new sexual identity gave women undeniable power that they never previously possessed. Fearing women's demand for equality, men were now tasked with inventing a new sexual hierarchy to maintain their position as the dominant sex.

The debauchery that is prevalent in much eighteenth-century literature can be attributed to the contemporary reevaluation of sex and the development of the concept of gender. Having previously suppressed female sexuality through religious doctrine and medical assumptions, eighteenth-century men developed the concepts of masculinity and femininity in order to stress their sexual superiority. This redefinition justified the libidinous actions of eighteenth-century men while condemning unchaste women. According to Dabhoiwala, the development of gendered characteristics “was clearly to validate the sexual immorality of men … as 'natural' or 'uncontrollable,' whilst simultaneously increasing the social pressures on women to guard their chastity” (213). Femininity became synonymous with victimization just as masculinity became synonymous with sexual irresponsibility. Harvey claims that the shift is a result of “men's need to find a more secure basis and future for patriarchy … by replacing its ancient scriptural and medical basis with a new secular ideology of gender” (910). While the recognition of gender may have been a ploy to prioritize mens' sexual needs, the abundance of racy literature produced throughout the period exhibits the emergence of multiple sexual identities, “where before there was only one” (Harvey 908).

Part Two: New Sexual Identities

The development of the concept of gender did far more than simply justify the lewd behavior of men. It produced many different sexual identities which became the focus of much of the era's literature. While libertines like John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, wrote in defense of their lasciviousness, intelligent, honorable women like Mary Astell wrote of the hardships women face when subjected to marriage with a man. Other highly intelligible women like Aphra Behn refused to ignore their sexual desires, writing racy literature to inspire other women to listen to their bodies. Men who had, prior to the eighteenth century, engaged in sexual activity with young boys were now referred to as sodomites, and were ostracized for their desires. Similarly, there was no place in the new sexual hierarchy for lesbians or hermaphrodites, but Restoration literature does not marginalize these identities. Despite the male attempt to, through gendered characteristics, prove their sex dominant, they instead created a system where sexual desire is entirely subjective to the individual. The outcome is a variety of sexual characters such as the libertine, the virgin, the passive wife, the prostitute, the sodomite, the lesbian, and the hermaphrodite. The next part of my analysis will focus on the most highly sexualized of these characters: the libertine, the prostitute, the sodomite and the hermaphrodite. I refrain from discussing the sexual activity (or lack thereof) of the virgin, the passive wife, and the lesbian, because the sexuality of these characters was considered of so little importance. Women like Astell wrote about the frustration of being dominated sexually by men, but I am more interested in those characters who could not repress their sexual urges at a time when medical information validated their desires.

The Libertine

John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, was the very definition of a libertine. A favored rake of King Charles II, he wrote about his sexual exploits with unrestrained pride. In his poem, “Against Constancy,” he promotes the debauchery for which the eighteenth century is so well-known. “Tell me no more of constancy / The frivolous pretense,” he writes (1-2). Wilmot denounces the traditional view that men and women should be loyal to one another. He recommends that “duller fools” with a kinder heart should “be kind to one alone,” and that he, who “in love excel[s] / Long[s] to be often tried” (5-16). Wilmot suggests that men with sexual desire as strong as his should have the right to bed as many women as they choose. Indeed, he closes the poem with a promise: “As each kind night returns: / I'll change a mistress till I'm dead” (18-19).

Dabhoiwala suggests that the development of libertinism “created a powerful polar opposite to the Christian ideal: one in which sexual debauchery was actually to enhance male reputation” (205). Where men were previously permitted to have sex with adolescent boys in addition to their wives, the Enlightenment sex model indicated that men should be with women alone, therefore they had to give up their male companions to instead seek extramarital sex from women other than their wives. Trumbach elaborates: “It was, after all, quietly accepted by legal authority … that some men were likely to need a sexual outlet that for whatever reason was not available to them in marriage. The constables therefore ceased to arrest men found with prostitutes in bawdy houses or in the streets” (195). While public opinion generally denounced women for working as prostitutes, it never indicated that men should be punished for going to them. Many aristocrats at the time were thought to have taken a wife just to hide their sexual preference for boys. Therefore, often times, men would go to prostitutes simply to prove that they were not effeminate sodomites (Trumbach 202).

The Prostitute

The only women capable of expressing sexual passion during the eighteenth century were “prostitutes, seduced servants, remarrying widows, and adulterous wives” (Harvey 207). Prostitutes took advantage of the sexual vivacity of libertines, making a career out of their biggest asset – their sexual gifts. Daniel Defoe's 1724 novel Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress depicts a woman who, deserted by her husband and left to fend for herself and her five children, turns to prostitution for survival. She begins the career of a mistress, moving from one man to the next while she collects an abundance of wealth. While her actions are questionable, she fails to allow men to immobilize her: “I thought a Woman was a free Agent, as well as a Man, and was born free, and cou'd she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that Liberty to as much Purpose as the Men do” (Defoe 147). Defoe's novel depicts prostitution as a threat to domesticity and the free market, a domain previously dominated by men. Once women are awarded their own sexual identity, it becomes difficult to marginalize them, especially when they can use their sexual skills to harvest capital from sexually-motivated men.

As in Roxana, prostitution in the eighteenth century was simultaneously denounced and supported. “The act of whoredom,” according to Dabhoiwala, was a sin, but “all sins could be redeemed” (207). Many women turned to prostitution despite their religion, knowing that they were selling their virtue out of necessity, and that God would forgive them for their sins. Also, once a woman's chastity was ruined, so was her reputation. However, if “she could be placed in a different and improved environment … by the disciplines of work and religion she would be able to rejoin the domestic life” (Trumbach 196). Indeed, the prostitute contradicted all preconceived notions about the natural domesticity of women. However, she gave men an escape from the demands of marital intimacy, as well as a means to prove they were not sodomites. Reiterating the recommendation of Thomas Aquinas, many eighteenth-century physicians tolerated prostitution to avoid acts of sodomy (Trumbach 195).

The Sodomite

Men who enjoyed the company of other men did not disappear with the advent of the Enlightenment's sex model. Instead, men continued to privately engage in sex acts with other men. Often, these acts originated from a desire for camaraderie and companionship that women did not provide. Women's demands that a sexual debt be paid unto them left many impotent men frustrated with their marital relationships. Wilmot writes of this frustration in his poem, “The Disabled Debauchee.” The first half of the poem depicts a battle scene: man and woman, “Two rival fleets,” engage in sexual combat, climbing “to the top of an adjacent hill,” each determined to reach orgasm first (3-4). However, the subject of the poem cannot clear his mind long enough to please his woman: “absent yet,” he “enjoys the bloody day” (12). Wilmot's poem then shifts to his intentions for when his “days of impotence approach,” and he is “driven from the pleasing billows of debauch” (13-15). He testifies to relate his battle tales to whatever “youth (worth being drunk) prove[s] nice” (25). His goal is to seduce young men with his lewd and raucous stories: “With tales like these I will such heat inspire / As to important mischief shall incline” (41-42). Trumbach explains that, while sodomites were considered lesser men in eighteenth-century society, they were “tolerated for their amusing tongues” (188). Wilmot, a self-professed libertine and sodomite, became a favorite of the royal court precisely because he could relate such lascivious tales.

The Hermaphrodite

Aphra Behn challenged the masculine literature of the eighteenth century, offering bold feminine responses that demanded sexual equality for women. One such response is found in her poem, “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman.” This surprising poem documents one woman's relationship with a hermaphrodite, a female with an enlarged clitoris, resembling a penis. The work could be read as a satire on the sodomite's desire for young boys, as Behn paints the subject of this poem as a “lovely charming youth” whom she, “without blushes,” pursues (4-7). It can also be read simply as an account of yet another sexual character, one created “In pity to [the female] sex / That [they] might love, and yet be innocent” (12-13). Clarinda, the hermaphrodite in this poem, appears in the form of a woman, and thus understands the sexual desires of another female. She has a mock-penis, which offers stimulation, but no ejaculate, which prevents the risk of pregnancy, an indicator of the “crime” Behn speaks of (14).

Trumbach explains that the hermaphrodite was particularly threatening to the male-dominated sexual hierarchy: “Only two kinds of sexual acts endangered an individual's gender standing: sexual passivity in an adult male (but not in an adolescent) and sexual activity by a woman that included the use of an artificial penis or a supposedly enlarged clitoris. Such individuals, along with biological hermaphrodites, were likely to be viewed as dangerous, since they passed back and forth from active to passive rather than remaining in the passive female or active male conditions to which they had been assigned at birth” (192). Behn's portrayal of this sexual character indicates that the advent of gender is not enough to keep a woman in her place. Women, by taking charge of their sexuality, can find other ways to please themselves, even if that means engaging in sex with a third, more non-traditional gender.

Conclusion

The Enlightenment provided individuals with more sexual knowledge than they'd ever previously possessed. An increase in publishing and the dissemination of printed materials allowed this information to reach men and women alike, so that they might begin to explore their own sexual identities. Fearing a demand for sexual equality from women, eighteenth-century men attempted to set themselves higher on the sexual hierarchy by creating the notions of gender, insisting that the masculine was superior to the feminine. While this shift did help to subjugate many women, leaving them helpless to the debauchery of their male counterparts, it also created and affirmed multiple sexual identities. Men and women alike wrote about their sexual discoveries, either to justify their actions or to argue for sexual equality. Eighteenth-century literature reflects a contemporary sexual revolution that extends to the modern age.


Works Cited
Behn, Aphra. “To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2135.

Defoe, Daniel. Roxana. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.

Dabhoiwala, Faramerz. “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 201-213. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Harvey, Karen. “The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century.” The Historical Journal 45.4 (2002): 899-916. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Houston, Robert Allan. “British Society in the Eighteenth Century.” The Journal of British Studies 25.4 (1986): 436-466. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.

Trumbach, Randolph. “Sex, Gender, and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 2.2 Special Issue, Part 1: The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe (1991): 186-203. JSTOR. Web. 24 Feb. 2010.

Weitzman, Arthur J. “Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City?” Journal of the History of Ideas 36.3 (1975): 469-480. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2010.

Wilmot, John. “Against Constancy.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2203-2204.

Wilmot, John. “The Disabled Debauchee.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. 4th ed. Ed. David Damrosch & Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 2204-2205.