Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England 1918-1963 is a new book by Simon Szreter and Kate Fisher based on interviews with 89 men and women who married in the first half of the twentieth century. Bel Mooney writes about it in The Daily Mail:

From our perspective, the people telling their stories (many of whom must have died since) led repressed lives. Again and again old women recall their lack of knowledge about the sexual act, and their nervousness on the wedding night.

It is amazing to read how many married couples never actually looked at each other naked: ‘I never seen me husband undressed, never in me life . . . no, no. I used to go to bed first . . . then e’d come up . . . never saw him undress.’

Stories like that feed our ideas about a repressed generation. But can you describe people as repressed if in fact they wouldn’t recognise the term? If they were actually quite happy within the restraints of their lives? It’s an important issue raised by this weighty book.

Social historians generally agree with The Beatles: ‘It’s getting better all the time.’ They point to personal lives transformed by the welfare state, by contraception, women’s and gay liberation, the easing of moralistic attitudes towards unmarried mothers, the assertion of individual rights and so on.

Who wouldn’t rather live in an age of freedom rather than at a time when (according to these interviews) talking openly about sex was a taboo, and even married couples could remain shy?

But the authors of Sex Before The Sexual Revolution demonstrate that this is a very one-sided (and, of course, socially liberal) approach.

They comment: ‘Having lived through a period of extraordinary change, many interviewees felt they were now living in a world that shared few of their sexual values . . . confronted by a culture which denigrated the sexual privacy and silence they had valued so highly.’

These men and women who grew up in the first half of the 20th century feel alienated by a world which judges their lives and loves as somehow inferior.

What struck me most powerfully on reading the detailed interviews was how happy and contented men and women could make each other — without all the openness about sex which can put so much pressure on young people today.

                                              — Comments —

Roger G. writes:

I have always been in awe at how frankly, yet discreetly and subtly, and so brilliantly, John Ford dealt with sex in his immortal John Wayne movie “The Quiet Man.” The movie is completely G-rated, and yet the matter is right out there, but in such a way that kids don’t have any idea (I didn’t, anyway), and aren’t incited to ask. Oh, and Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara) switching to Yiddish to explain her marital troubles to village priest Father Lonergan (Ward Bond)…!

Fred Owens writes:

The love scenes in “The Quiet Man” between John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara are down right steamy. The two of them, under John Ford’s direction, stirred up more heat than any of today’s superstars could with or without their clothes on.

But Maureen’s character spoke to the priest (Ward Bond) in Gaelic, not Yiddish.

Roger writes:

What?! So just why was the bar named “Cohen’s?” Tell me that! : – )

Please follow and like us: