Synopses & Reviews
A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of nineteenth-century American attitudes toward sexuality—what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse, masturbation, contraception, and abortion; about the power of sexual words and images.
Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with the prohibitions broadcast from the pulpit and the printed page by evangelical Christian elements. She describes the new sensibility of agitators like Victoria Woodhull placing sex at the center of life, visionaries like Robert Owen and Frances Wright espousing free love, faddists like Sylvester Graham obsessing about the dangers of masturbation, a country physician writing the first scientifically grounded book on contraception, the lively new commerce in erotica—including newspapers such as the Sunday Flash and, most famous, the National Police Gazette (which featured a legal way to write explicitly about sex). We see a rising opposition instigated by conservative New Yorkers who feared the corruption of young male clerks living in boardinghouses, deprived of parental influence. And we see how this movement led into an era of suppression—pitting Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails, against the new dissenters committed to free speech—an early battle of the national cultural war that continues to this day.
Review
andldquo;Haynesandrsquo;s compelling argument will change the way scholars think, write, and teach about the moral reform movement, antislavery movement, and female sexuality in the nineteenth century. The book is deeply original, persuasive, and rich, and readers will discover something new with each encounter. Riotous Flesh is a revelation.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Haynesandrsquo;s book is a rare treat: an important contribution to the interwoven histories of white and black women, antislavery reform, medicine, and sexuality that is well-researched, clearly-argued, and beautifully written.and#160;It will greatly enrich scholarsandrsquo; and studentsandrsquo; conversation about the possibilities of imagining a feminist sexuality in particular contexts of power.and#160;And although one strugglesandmdash;with a nod to her topicandmdash;to exercise appropriate restraint, it is worth acknowledging that reading, and engaging, with Riotous Flesh is also great fun.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Haynes has written one of those rare books that provokes me to reinterpret much of what I once understood about antebellum sexual reform. And by thoroughly integrating race into her analysis of sex and gender, Riotous Flesh makes for a compelling and courageous rewrite of nineteenth-century reform. It is also replete with memorable stories dug laboriously out of the archives and honed into well-placed narrative diamonds.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Haynes is a discerning researcher, a brilliant interpreter of historical evidence, and a gifted writer. Focusing on a topic still often taboo, Riotous Flesh brings together the histories of sexuality, medicalization, and race in the United States and presents a multifaceted and intricate history that is dazzlingly fresh and revelatory. Riotous Flesh will change not only the way we think about black and white womenandrsquo;s sexuality but how we understand the political culture of nineteenth-century America.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Nineteenth-century America saw numerous campaigns against masturbation, which was said to cause illness, insanity, and even death.
Riotous Flesh explores womenandrsquo;s leadership of those movements, with a specific focus on their rhetorical, social, and political effects, showing how a desire to transform the politics of sex created unexpected alliances between groups that otherwise had very different goals.
As April Haynes shows, the crusade against female masturbation was rooted in a generally shared agreement on some major points: that girls and women were as susceptible to masturbation as boys and men; that andldquo;self-abuseandrdquo; was rooted in a lack of sexual information; and that sex education could empower women and girls to master their own bodies. Yet the groups who made this education their goal ranged widely, from andldquo;ultraandrdquo; utopians and nascent feminists to black abolitionists. Riotous Flesh explains how and why diverse women came together to popularize, then institutionalize, the condemnation of masturbation, well before the advent of sexology or the professionalization of medicine.
Synopsis
The claim that masturbation isnand#8217;t good for you didnand#8217;t just come out of nowhere. As April Haynes shows, a range of feminist reformers in nineteenth century America all agreed that the solitary vice caused untold suffering and death; that women and girls masturbated as frequently as did men and boys; that they did so because they lacked access to sexual information; and that therefore, female sex education would save lives. Haynes, in short shows that nascent feminists remade what might have been a puritanical crusade into a basis for envisioning their own sexual self-masteryand#151;with mixed results, for Haynes also tells the story of how, before the advent of sexology or even the professionalization of medicine, a and#147;great silent armyand#8221; of evangelical female reformers first popularized, then institutionalized, the normative sexual discourse of the nineteenth century.
About the Author
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Sylvia Dlugasch Bauman Professor in American Studies at Smith College, is the author of The Power and Passion of M. Carey Thomas (1994), Campus Life (1987), Alma Mater (1984), and Culture and the City (1976). She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from, among others, the Radcliffe Institute and the American Antiquarian Society. She has taught at Scripps College and the University of Southern California. She and her husband live in Northampton and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Gender of Solitary Vice
2. Licentiousness in All Its Forms
3. Making the Conversation General
4. A Philosophy of Amative Indulgence
5. Flesh and Bones
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index