by Kate Lister
In the middle of the flanks of women lies the womb, a female viscus, closely resembling an animal; for it is moved of itself hither and thither in the flanks, also upwards in a direct line to below the cartilage of the thorax, and also obliquely to the right or to the left, either to the liver or the spleen, and it likewise is subject to prolapses downwards, and in a word, it is altogether erratic. It delights also in fragrant smells, and advances towards them; and it has an aversion to fetid smells, and flees from them; and, on the whole, the womb is like an animal within an animal.19
By the nineteenth century, the wandering womb theory had fallen out of favour, though the link between the womb and hysteria clearly enjoyed a last hurrah in theories of pelvic massage and womb manipulation. A hysterical paroxysm was simply another ill-defined category of hysteria that can be found in nineteenth-century medical manuals, along with the hysterical coma, hysterical headaches, hysterical excitement, hysterical convulsive affections and (of course) hysterical flatulence.
But more than this: the Victorians knew what an orgasm was! There was no need to dress it up in euphemistic language. Even a cursory glance at the erotic literature of the time will tell you that the Victorians were well aware of orgasms. The Pearl (1879–80) is crammed full of women orgasming: ‘I felt her crack deluged with a warm, creamy spend whilst my own juice spurted over her hand and dress in loving sympathy.’20 The Romance of Lust (1873) is also pretty clued up as to what women want: ‘She rapidly came to the ecstatic ending, nearly thrusting my whole face into her vast orbit, and spurting out a very torrent of sperm, all over my face and neck.’21 And Jack Saul conducts a concerto of orgasms in Sins of the Cities of the Plain (1881): ‘How many times I made her spend it would be impossible to say.’22 As Fern Riddell, one of the leading academics in Victorian sexuality, argues, ‘Victorian doctors knew exactly what the female orgasm was; in fact, it’s one of the reasons they thought masturbation was a bad idea.’23
Anonymous Victorian pornographic photograph.
Not only did Victorian doctors know what an orgasm was, but nineteenth-century medical theories largely taught that orgasms were potentially dangerous and needed to be limited. Masturbation in women was thought to cause hysteria, not cure it. In The Generative System and Its Functions in Health and Disease (1883), James George Beaney claimed that a disease ‘associated with, and very often closely depending on, female masturbation is hysteria’.24 Edward John Tilt (1815–1893) wrote that ‘habitual masturbation lowers the tone of the whole system, causes an irritable condition of the temper, [and] the milder manifestations of hysteria’.25 In 1852, Samuel La’mert drew a clear distinction between hysterical paroxysm and masturbation when he wrote ‘females devoted to libidinous and solitary pollutions, are more particularly exposed to hysterical paroxysm’.26 In 1894, Dr A. J. Block of New Orleans in an article entitled ‘Sexual Perversion in the Female’ referred to female masturbation as a ‘moral leprosy’.27 So dangerous was female masturbation thought to be that it was cited on numerous patient admission forms to Victorian lunatic asylums, and led to quack doctor Isaac Baker Brown routinely carrying out clitoridectomies.** Now, I ask you, does this sound like a group of people likely to prescribe a session of ‘fingerblasting’ (2003)?
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Although orgasms were not administered by Victorian doctors, they were generally encouraged between husband and wife, and an absence of orgasm when paying the conjugal debt was recognised as a bad thing. An article published by Dr W. Tyler Smith in The Lancet in 1842 defined impotence in women as ‘failure to produce the sexual orgasm’.28 One school of medical thought had it that orgasms helped a woman to conceive. For example, in 1872, Dr J. R. Beck argued that an orgasm allowed the cervix to contract and helped the sperm to reach the egg.29 Others, like Dr John S. Parry, didn’t discount the possibility that an orgasm may help things along, but was quite sure that ‘an orgasm is not essential to conception’.30 But whatever the medical profession had to say on the subject of blowing one’s lady lumps, Victorian pornography provides substantial evidence that the orgasm was also understood as a very important, and fun, part of sex.
So, what can we salvage from this much-loved and widespread myth? It is true that Victorian doctors were fascinated with the female reproductive system, and, like their medical predecessors, linked madness to the womb. To cure hysteria, in all its weird manifestations, they prescribed all manner of kinky-sounding treatments, including pelvic massage, which is really just fancy fingering. Doctors also had some very strange ideas about orgasm and masturbation damaging health and causing hysteria. There really was such a thing as a ‘hysterical paroxysm’, which is not an orgasm, but is described as a giggly, farting fit that could last for hours. It’s also true that vibrating massagers became popular in the late nineteenth century and were recommended to cure all manner of ills.*** But here is the crucial thing: doctors may have been manipulating, sedating, institutionalising and pummelling the pussies of their poor patients – but they were not masturbating them to ‘hysterical paroxysm’ with steam-powered vibrators to cure them of hysteria. Sorry to be such a buzzkill.
* * *
* In The Sexual Life of our Time in its Relations to Modern Civilization (1908), Bloch lists the motion of a sewing machine treadle as giving ‘rise to masturbatory stimulation’, along with horse riding, cycling and rubbing the thighs together. Iwan Bloch and Maurice Eden Paul, The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization, trans. by M. Eden Paul (London: Rebman, 1908), p. 413. Havelock Ellis also describes women using sewing machines for sexual stimulation, as well as sealing wax, bananas, hairpins and corks. Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex: A Manual for Students (London: Heinemann, 1933), p. 104.
** See ‘Looking for the Boy in the Boat’ for a detailed discussion on Dr Isaac Baker Brown. The 1872 state report to the Governor of California reports that ‘masturbation still holds its place at the head of the list of assigned causes’ for confinement in an asylum. Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly of the Nineteenth Session of the Legislature of the State of California (Sacramento: T. A. Springer, 1872), p. 211.
*** For further reading about the development of the vibrator in the twentieth century, see Hallie Lieberman, Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017).
1 Helen King, ‘Galen and the Widow: Towards a History of Therapeutic Masturbation in Ancient Gynaecology’, Journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity, 2011, 205–35; Hallie Lieberman and Eric Schatzberg, Journalofpositivesexuality.org, 2018
2 Rachel Maines, ‘The Study that Set the World Abuzz – Video’, Big Think, 2017
3 Cesare Lombroso and others, La Donna Delinquente, La Prostituta E La Donna Normale, 1st edn (Milano: Et.al, 2009).
4 Joseph Mortimer Granville, Nerve-Vibration and Excitation as Agents in the Treatment of Functional Disorder and Organic Disease, 1st edn (J. & A. Churchill: London, 1883), p. 57.
5 The Pearl:Victorian Erotica ( 2017), Kindle edition, locations 6118–19.
6 Ibid., location 11360.
7 Samuel Ward and others, ‘Reports on the Progress of Medicine’, New York Medical Journal, 23 (1876), 207–10, p. 209.
8 Robert Ziegenspeck, Massage Treatment (Thure Brandt) in Diseases of Women: For Practitioners (Chicago: Westerschulte, 1898), p. 26.
9 Ibid., pp. 30–32.
10 Ibid., p. 47.
11 Ibid.
12 Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), p. 3.
13 William John Anderson, Hysterical and Nervous Affections of Women. Read Before the Harveian Society, 1st edn (London: Churchill, 1864), p. 26.
14 Andrew Whyte Barclay, A Manual of Medical Diagnosis: Being an Ana
lysis of the Signs and Symptoms (Philadelphia: Blanchard, 1864), p. 138.
15 John Henry Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Medicine and Surgery: Revised Edition (London, Frederick Warne, 1878), p. 150.
16 William Potts Dewees, A Treatise on the Diseases of Females (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1843), p. 470.
17 Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Medicine and Surgery, p. 150.
18 George B. Wood, A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine, 1st edn (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852), p. 581; W. W. Bliss, Woman, and Her Thirty Years’ Pilgrimage (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1870), p. 98.
19 ‘Aretaeus, De Causis Et Signis Acutorum Morborum (Lib. 1), Book II., Chapter XI. On Hysterical Suffocation’, Perseus.Tufts.Edu, 2018
20 ‘Sub-Umbra or Sport Among the She-Noodles’, in The Wordsworth Book of Classic Erotica (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2007), p. 1091.
21 ‘The Romance of Lust’, in The Wordsworth Book of Classic Erotica (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 2007), p. 163.
22 Jack Saul, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, Or the Recollections of a Mary Ann (London: Privately printed, 1881), p. 132.
23 Fern Riddell, ‘No, No, No! Victorians Didn’t Invent the Vibrator’, Guardian, 2017
24 James George Beaney, The Generative System and its Functions in Health and Disease (Melbourne: F. F. Bailliere, 1872), p. 359.
25 Edward John Tilt, A Handbook of Uterine Therapeutics and of Diseases of Women (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1878), p. 119.
26 Samuel La’mert, Self-Preservation: A Medical Treatise on the Secret Infirmities and Disorders of the Generative Organs (London; 1852), pp. 105–6.
27 A. J. Block, ‘Sexual Perversion in the Female’, New Orleans Medical Surgery Journal, 22 (1894), pp. 1–7.
28 W. Tyler Smith, ‘Principles and Practices of Obstetricy’, The Lancet, 2 (1847), 669–71, p. 669.
29 John S. Parry, Extra-Uterine Pregnancy; its Causes, Species, Pathological Anatomy, Clinical History, Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment (Philadelphia: Henry Lea, 1876), p. 45.
30 Ibid.
On Your Bike
Sex and Cycling
What is the most important invention in the fight for sexual equality? The Pill? The self-cleaning vibrator? Kleenex Mansize? How about the humble bicycle?
Before you panic, this is not a chapter about people having sex with bicycles, although if you are interested in that then both the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam and the Sex Museum in New York have examples of ‘dildo bikes’.1 But there is something quite sexy about bikes. Perhaps it is the saddle rubbing against the genitals, or maybe it is the bent over, arse-up posture that must be assumed to ride one. Maybe it’s just the word ‘ride’. But whatever it is, bicycles have long had an air of cheeky ‘Carry On’ fun about them. Freddie Mercury knew it when he sang about fat-bottomed girls riding their bicycles. Queen even featured just such a fat-bottomed girl riding a bicycle on the picture sleeve of their album Jazz (1978).
Victorian erotic postcard of a nude woman on a bike.
The role of the bicycle in the sexual emancipation of women is often overlooked, but it allowed them a freedom they had never experienced before. And not only the freedom to travel – the bicycle also liberated women’s bodies from cumbersome skirts and the tit-crushing corset. The bicycle changed attitudes to health, fitness and exercise and proved women were not desperately delicate little flowers. The popularity of the bicycle forced a medical debate on the stimulating effects of the saddle on the reproductive organs, and the nature of female sexuality.* American suffragette Susan B. Anthony claimed that the bicycle had ‘done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world’.2 For some Victorian moralists, this was all too much, and the bicycle came to be associated with sexual promiscuity, so much so that bicycles feature heavily in nineteenth-century pornographic photographs. Not only because they provide a convenient excuse for bending over, legs akimbo, but because the bicycle signified a sexually liberated woman, who enjoyed pleasure.
Victorian erotic postcard showing a nude woman on a bike. How daring.
The Victorians did not invent the bicycle, but they did refine the design so it could be used without rupturing internal organs and endangering life. One of the earliest designs for a two-wheeled apparatus dates to 1534 and is attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti (a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci), but the first usable bicycle was designed by German Baron Karl von Drais in 1817, and was called a ‘running machine’. There were no pedals, brakes or suspension, but the device allowed the rider to propel themselves forward in a half run, half cycle motion. Soon, British designer Denis Johnson brought out an improved, more streamlined version called the ‘pedestrian curricle’ or the ‘velocipede’, but it would take another fifty years for the bicycle to become popular.
An 1817 illustration of a ‘draisine’.
Four-wheelers, push-bikes, penny-farthings and the 1860 ‘Boneshaker’ were all important points in the evolution of the modern bicycle, but they were dangerous.** They didn’t have suspension, brakes or pneumatic tyres, and were notoriously unstable. Falling at speed from the height of a penny-farthing caused horrible injuries and numerous fatalities. The open spokes and precariously placed saddle meant that ladies couldn’t ride them in skirts and bustles without their petticoats getting tangled up and their bloomers torn off. As a result, bicycles were associated with thrill-seeking young men who cruised Victorian cobbles on a pimped-up penny-farthing.
Picture of the Rover Ladies Safety Bicycle, designed by John Kemp Starley, c.1889.
Thankfully, the 1880s saw the invention of the ‘safety bicycle’, which featured steering, brakes, pedals, suspension and, eventually, pneumatic tyres. Finally, the bicycle could be used by anyone. Historians often refer to the 1890s as ‘the golden age of the bicycle’, and with good reason. The bicycle was suddenly the must-have item, and women started cycling in droves.
As exciting as all this was, the lady cyclist was regarded with suspicion from the get-go. As the bicycle cannot be ridden side-saddle, doctors worried about the potentially stimulating effects all that bouncing about on a saddle would have on a lady’s well-being. Men were regarded as robust and physically able to withstand the potentially stimulating dangers of the bike, but women were regarded as constitutionally weaker. As the South Wales Echo reported in 1897, ‘the cycle was invented by the male creature and is still a male creature’s vehicle’; women, it reported, ‘should beware of the dangers of cycling’.
A Victorian erotic postcard showing a nude woman posing with a penny-farthing.
A Victorian postcard showing ‘the new woman’ and her sexy bike. Bikes were considered the must-have accessory of the modern woman.3
The dangers of cycling being alluded to were far greater than taking a tumble over the handlebars. Because the saddle rubbed up against the genitals, the dangers a woman faced related to her sexual and reproductive health. One French physician warned that ‘the unusual physical exertion, combined with the perilous lack of corsetry, would damage the feminine organs of matrimonial necessity and shake them loose’.4 Although bicycle anxiety was felt around the world in the 1890s, American and Canadian doctors seemed to be particularly concerned about women cycling and their ‘organs of matrimonial necessity’, and it’s here that the loudest anti-cycling voices were heard.
In 1895, the St Louis Medical Review not only stated that cycling was an ‘exceedingly ungraceful and unbecoming occupation for young ladies’, but it might lead to ‘ovarian inflammation, bleeding from the kidney or womb, displacement, and miscarriage’.5 An article in the Iowa State Register warned that cycling ‘may suppress or render irregular and fearfully painful the menses, and perhaps sow the seeds for future ill health’.6 The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic (1895) broadly s
upported cycling, but had concerns about the saddle acting as a ‘frictional agent’ and sending a lady into a ‘dangerous condition’.7
Indeed, it was the ‘frictional agent’ the saddle provided that concerned most of these medical texts. All the blustering around saddle-induced ‘uterine disorders’ and ‘ovarian inflammation’ was little more than a sublimated anxiety that a woman might experience sexual pleasure riding over the cobbles with a wad of leather between her legs. Other doctors were far more direct in voicing their concerns. In 1896, the editor of the Canadian journal the Dominion Medical Monthly was widely quoted as saying that ‘the consensus of opinion is increasing overwhelmingly day by day that bicycle riding produces in the female a distinct orgasm’.8 Outraged at the suggestion that Canadian women were putting their bicycles to less than wholesome purposes, a flurry of articles soon followed denouncing the claim, like this one in the Canadian Medical Practioner (1896):
The report that comes to us, indeed, is such that, were it credible, we should be led to despair of the future of the country, for, compared to Canada, or at least to Toronto, Sodom and Gomorrah were as pure as Salvation Army Shelters. It appears that cycling, which, with us is adding so much to the health and beauty and the charm of our women, is in Canada, or at least in Toronto, merely a means of gratifying unholy and bestial desire.
It continues, ‘the filthy rubbish to which the Record refers is in itself essentially nasty, while the direct charges against the women and girls of Toronto are simply infamous’.9 It’s doubtful that the idea women regularly orgasmed on their bicycles was widely held within the medical community, but the very fact that a public debate was needed to address this is testament to the fact that some people regarded it as a possibility.