Women and Sex in the 18th Century

Women and Sex in the 18th Century

DEATH OF WOMEN

Women, Sex and the Age of Marriage

  • In the 18th century, marriage was based on puberty onset. Girls as young as 12 and boys around 14 could marry. Childhood was virtually nonexistent; children were seen as “little adults,” born sinful and prone to fleshly temptations.
  • The Statute of Westminster in 1275 was the first age-of-consent law. It criminalized relations with a “maiden within age,” like 9-year-old Mary Hathaway in Virginia in 1689.
  • Similar practices existed in American colonies and Europe. The French Revolution set the age of consent at just 11 in 1791, showing disregard for children’s rights.
  • Marriage was seen as protection against prostitution or destitution for girls. Yet, many girls were forced into early marriages.

Women and Sex in 18th-Century France

The Women Of The French Revolution Who Had A Weirdly Morbid Pastime

  • Despite the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity brought about by the French Revolution, it failed to protect women’s rights.
  • In 1791, the age of consent for girls was shockingly set at 11 years, showing a lack of empathy for young girls.
  • Children were viewed as miniature adults, vulnerable to exploitation. Young girls were forced into marriages, disregarding their well-being.
  • Despite some women’s active participation, progress for women’s rights was slow during the revolution.
  • Women were confined to domestic roles, and their voices were overshadowed by male dominance.
  • Sadly, the French Revolution did not bring significant advancements in women’s rights.
  • Only in later centuries, with feminist movements and evolving norms, did progress take shape.

 

Women, Sex and the Job Market

Lichfield Storytellers bringing tales of historical characters to life at city museum - Lichfield Live®

  • In the 18th century, women’s job opportunities were severely limited. Laws and conventions barred them from most professions, forcing many into the sex trade for survival.
  • Independence was a distant dream for most women. They relied on family or husbands for financial support, losing ownership of inherited property upon marriage.
  • With few viable options, sex work became a means of sustenance for thousands of women. Prostitution thrived in bustling cities like London and Paris, offering anonymous encounters to passersby.
  • Charlotte Hayes was among the few who controlled their assets in the sex trade. Her successful brothel provided elite clients with well-trained women.
  • Despite some women finding advantages, many faced exploitation. The infamous Harris’ List detailed London prostitutes’ attributes, exposing their harsh reality.
  • While the Victorian era brought changes in societal attitudes, underground sex work persisted.

Women, Sex and Hogarth

The Harlots Progress ensnared by a procuress, from The Works of Hogarth published London 1833 (bw engraving)

  • In 1732, William Hogarth’s “The Harlot’s Progress,” a series of six paintings, vividly depicts the tragic life of Moll Hackabout, a young woman descending into prostitution. This series marked a turning point in British visual culture and Hogarth’s career.
  • Moll’s journey unfolds with poignant realism, from an innocent country girl arriving in London to a destitute harlot. Each plate exposes her struggles in the city’s dark alleys – poverty, exploitation, and emotional turmoil.
  • Hogarth’s masterpiece reflects the harsh realities faced by women in 18th-century London. Moll’s tragic fate mirrored countless others ensnared in poverty and desperation.
  • Yet, despite the powerful message, “The Harlot’s Progress” couldn’t change the prevailing conditions. Prostitution persisted in Georgian London, trapping many young girls and women in its grip.

Women, Sex, Charlotte Hayes and Her “Nuns”

French Revolution Hygiene: Just How Poor Was It?

  • Charlotte Hayes, an exceptional woman within the sex trade, ran a thriving brothel, dubbed a “nunnery.” She amassed wealth and trained her girls in etiquette to attract elite clients.
  • Sadly, many girls like Emily Warren, muse to Sir Joshua Reynolds, entered prostitution at tragically young ages. Emily, an “exquisite beauty,” began at 12, reflecting countless others forced into this life for survival.
  • “The Harlot’s Progress” and Charlotte Hayes’ story reveal women navigating an exploitative system. Despite their resilience, they faced a dangerous reality.
  • The Georgian sex trade’s legacy and stories like Moll Hackabout and Emily Warren’s are stark reminders of women’s hardships in the 18th century.

 

The Harris List of Covent Garden Ladies

  • During the 18th century, the infamous Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies circulated, detailing London prostitutes’ charms and services. Although meant to titillate readers, it revealed the harsh realities faced by these women.
  • Being listed in Harris’s List was a double-edged sword. It increased visibility and potential income but also exposed women to danger and exploitation.
  • The publication’s popularity mirrored the booming demand for sexual services in London. Lavishly adorned women roamed Covent Garden, attracting clients from locals to travellers.
  • The List showcased the diverse backgrounds of women in prostitution, some forced into it by desperation, others hoping to escape poverty.
  • A German visitor expressed dismay at the prevalence of very young girls in the trade. It highlighted the tragic fate of those trapped at such tender ages.
  • The Victorian era brought changes in societal attitudes, and prostitution became less visible. The Harris’s List eventually stopped publication, but the underground sex trade persisted.

The legacy of Harris’s List is a reminder of the economic hardships faced by women in 18th-century London and the exploitation they endured in the sex trade for survival.

Sources:

 

Princess Sophia Dorothea the Uncrowned Queen of Britain

Princess Sophia Dorothea the Uncrowned Queen of Britain

Jacob Ferdinand Voet (1639-1689) — Portrait of Sophia Dorothea of Celle 2

Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle

This is the history of the shocking case of a Princess who was married against her will, spurned by her husband, divorced, and then imprisoned for 33 years.

Princess Sophia Dorothea of Brunswick- Lüneburg did not have a good start in life; she was born illegitimately; the daughter of her father’s long-term mistress, Eleonore d’Esmier d’Olbreuse, Countess of Williamsburg (1639–1722) on 15 September 1666.

Her father, Prince George William, Duke of Brunswick Lüneburg, eventually did the right thing and married his mistress which had the effect of legitimising his only child.

Sophia Dorothea was ten years old when she became heir to her father’s kingdom, the Principality of Lüneburg in Lower Saxony and this made her a highly attractive marriage prospect.

 

Like her mother, Princess Sophia-Dorothea was attractive and lively. At the age of sixteen, she has married her cousin, George Louis of Hanover, the future king of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1705. When she was told of the match Princess Sophia Dorothea shouted, “I will not marry the pig snout!”

George 1

George I of Britain

Twenty-two-year-old George Louis was not keen on the match either; he already had a mistress and was happy with his life as a soldier.

Although he was a prince he was ugly and boring, even his mother didn’t like him.

For his pains, George Louis received a handsome dowry and was granted his father-in-law’s kingdom upon his death; Princess Sophia-Dorothea was left penniless.

The unhappy couple set up home in Leine Palace in Hanover where Princess Sophia Dorothea was under the supervision of her odious aunt, the Duchess Sophia, and spied on by her husband’s spies when he was away on campaign.

Despite their unhappiness, the pair produced two children; George Augustus, born 1683, who later became King George II of Great Britain and a daughter born 1686 when Princess Sophia Dorothea was twenty.

Sophia von Kielmansegg, Countess of Darlington

Sophia Charlotte von Keilmannsegg.

 

 

Having produced two children George became increasingly distant from his wife spending more time with his dogs and horses and his nights with his mistress, the married daughter of his father’s mistress, a woman called Sophia Charlotte von Keilmannsegg, who was rumoured to be George Louis’ half-sister.

Aggrieved, lonely, and unhappy Princess Sophia Dorothea found a friend in the Swedish count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, (1665-1694) who was a soldier in the Hanoverian army. Philip was a year older than Princess Sophia Dorothea and the antithesis of her ugly, boorish husband.

Princess Sophia Dorothea was no saint. She was quick-tempered and rarely discrete. Her choice of Von Königsmarck as a lover was not the best. Königsmarck was a dashing handsome gigolo and the former lover of her father-in-law’s mistress, the Countess of Platen and the Countess had a jealous nature.

Königsmarck and Princess Sophia Dorothea began a love affair of clandestine trysts and physical love facilitated by coded correspondence through a trusted go-between. Their love affair did not stay secret for long. In 1692  the Duchess of Platen presented a collection of their correspondence to Princess Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law, the Elector of Hanover.

Countess Platen

Countess of Platen

Von Königsmarck was banished from the Hanoverian court but soon found a position in the neighbouring court of Saxony where one night when he was deep in his cups he let slip the state of affairs in the royal bedchamber of the house of Hanover. George Louis got wind of what had been said and on the morning of 2 July 1694, after a meeting with Sophia at Leine Palace, Königsmark was seized and taken away.

Princess Sophia-Dorothea never saw her lover again. George Louis divorced her in December and early the following year she was confined her to Schloss Ahlden a stately home on the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. She stayed there for the rest of her life. Her children were taken away from her and she was forced to live alone. She was probably one of the most unlucky royal women in history.

In August 2016, a human skeleton was found under the Leineschloss (Leine Palace, Hanover) during a renovation project; the remains are believed to be those of Swedish count, Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, (1665-1694).

Sophia Dorothea in 1686. Philip Christoph von Königsmarck 5

Philip Christoph von Königsmarck (1665-1694)

History shows that when Princess Sophia Dorothea died in 1726 she had spent 33 years in her prison. Before she died she wrote a letter to her husband, cursing him for his treatment of her. A furious George forbade any mourning of her in Hanover and in London. George I died shortly after.

The Countess of Platen and George I were suspected of Von Königsmarck’s murder by both Princess Sophia-Dorothea and her children. The Countess was exonerated from any involvement in Von Königsmark’s death by the deathbed confessions of two of her henchmen so on whose orders Von Königsmarck met his death remains one of history’s mysteries.

What we do know is that his son George II never forgave his father for his treatment of his mother.

 

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Dorothea_of_Celle
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty By Leslie Carroll
The Georgian Princesses By John Van der Kiste

A Room of One’s Own – A History of Letter Writing

A Room of One’s Own – A History of Letter Writing

The history of letter writing is part of women’s history. Writing letters to family and friends was one of the new pastimes enjoyed by 18th-century middle-class women. Although the Post Office had been open since 1660  it was not until the 18th century that the use of letters for private correspondence took off. It was only then that middle-class women began to enjoy what had been until then an aristocratic luxury.

Should letters be personal and private, public or works of art? These were the questions being debated in the parlours of the 18th-century chattering classes.

For the 18th century household, the distinction between what was public and what was private was seldom straightforward. Controlling relatives or husbands were frequently concerned by the potential secrecy between correspondents, especially female ones. This gave rise to a general unease about the propriety of women’s letter writing.

Samuel Richardson’s fictional heroines, Pamela and Clarissa are repeatedly praised for their talents in letter-writing by their hosts. but it was an insult to a host if a lady refused to read aloud the contents of her correspondence. The contents of women’s letters were viewed by many in society as public property.

Letter writing was a place where a woman might show off her literary prowess in the same way she might demonstrate her ability on the pianoforte. But, as Richardson wrote to one of his female correspondents, Sophia Westcomb, in 1746, letter-writing was not only a social talent.

The Pen is almost the only Means a very modest and diffident Lady (who in Company will not attempt to glare) has to shew herself, and that she has a Mind. … her Closet her Paradise … there she can distinguish Her Self: By this means she can assert and vindicate her Claim to Sense and Meaning.’ (Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson)

Richardson’s sentiment was echoed and expanded by Virginia Woolf two centuries later when she wrote; ” A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” This is the central theme of her book ‘A Room of One’s Own.’ In it, Woolf asserts that unlike their male counterparts, women are routinely denied the time and the space to produce creative works. Instead, they are saddled with household duties and are financially and legally bound to their husbands. By being deprived of rooms of their own, there is little possibility for women to rectify the situation. Woolf’s assertion, even in the mid 20th century was deemed revolutionary.

An example of a woman who used her letter-writing to assert their intelligence and enter the public sphere is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Montagu’s Letters from Turkey, written between 1716 and 1718 and published in 1762, were influential both as models of epistolary style and as anthropological works.

Other women followed where Montagu had led. Mary Masters’ ‘Familiar Letters’ (1755) discussed women’s education and domestic abuse. Hester Chapone published her ‘Letters on the Improvement of the Mind’ in 1773. These letters and Elizabeth Carter’s to Catherine Talbot were published in 1809, were referred to by Elizabeth Gaskell in ‘Cranford.’

After being estranged from her husband, Lady Sarah Pennington wrote ‘An Unfortunate Mothers Advice to Her Absent Daughters’. This was a book in a series of letters instructing women on religion, prayer, dress, needlework, the theatre, marriage, dancing, and other “feminine” pursuits. it was published in 1761.

Pennington wrote that a good marriage is rare. “So great is the hazard, so disproportioned the chances, that I could almost wish the dangerous die was never to be thrown for any of you.”

Lady Sarah also discusses the need for a certain “cheerful compliance” when it comes to men and their disagreeable habits. The book enjoyed much popularity and ran to three print runs, the last was in 1803. ((See Vivien Jones, “Mary Wollstonecraft and the literature of advice and instruction,” in Claudia Johnson, ed., Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft (2002), 119-40, at 124).

In one of life’s ironies, it was men not women who would excel when it came to transposing the letter into literature and commercialising it. Perhaps this was because writing for a living was considered morally suspect for women. In an ideal world, women had no reason to seek financial independence through their writing. Nevertheless several of the major female novelists of the period began with the epistolary form.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Fanny Burney abandoned the epistolary form after her first novel Evelina and, most famously, Jane Austen dabbled with the form in her short story ‘Lady Susan’ subsequently finding a more satisfying form in the omniscient authorial narrative.

In its private capacity, the letter allowed a woman confined to the home to communicate outside the home with both men and women. While in the form of published letters it was a valuable platform from which publicly to assert women’s intellectual capabilities. Of course, the eighteenth century did not wholeheartedly embrace the potential of such a development. Both kinds of letters aroused contemporary criticism, but it was the suspicion aroused by private, domestic letters that inspired many of the novels of the period, exploiting as they do the potential scandals and secrets and it was female novelists such as Jane Austen who created the modern novel.

This article is based on an original article by Mona: https://blue-stocking.org.uk/2011/03/01/public-and-private-real-and-fictional-the-rise-of-womens-letter-writing-in-the-eighteenth-century/

@juliaherdmanbooks

 

The Portland Vase – An 18th Century Obesssion

The Portland Vase – An 18th Century Obesssion


The story of the Portland Vase encapsulates so much about the 18th century. It is a story of fascination with the classical world, the acquisition of antiquities and of technological and artistic excellence of British manufacture.

The vase that is known as the Portland Vase is a Roman cameo glass vase, dated to between AD 1 and AD 25. Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador in Naples, purchased it in 1778-1780 from James Byres, a Scottish art dealer, who had acquired it after it was sold by Cornelia Barberini-Colonna, Princess of Palestrina. Hamilton brought it to England and sold it to Margaret Cavendish-Harley, widow of William Bentinck, 2nd Duke of Portland.

The vase is a Roman two-handled glass amphora dating to between the second half of the 1st century BCE and the early 1st century CE. It has a cameo-like effect decoration which perhaps depicts the marriage of Peleus and Thetis from Greek Mythology.  Standing  24.5 cm in high and 17.7 cm at its maximum width it was made by blowing the dark cobalt blue coloured glass covered with a layer of opaque white cased glass. Large areas of the white glass were then removed to reveal the underlayer of blue. Areas of white were left and carved in relief to depict the scenes. The style of the decoration has led scholars to date the piece to the reign of the first Roman Emperor Augustus (27 BCE – 14 CE). The fineness of detail of the decorative scenes is comparable to the highest quality Roman cut-gems and so it must be the work of a superbly talented gem-cutter or diatretarius.

The scenes on the vase are divided into two parts by a bearded head (perhaps with horns), one under each handle. The first scene has four figures which include a young man leaving a shrine in the countryside and wearing a cloak. The man holds the arm of a semi-naked woman sitting on the ground preoccupied with stroking an animal resembling a snake. Above the woman is the flying figure of Eros with his customary bow and a torch in his right hand. On the right is a bearded male standing between two trees and depicted in a contemplative mood with his chin resting on his hand.

The second scene on the other side of the vase shows three figures all sitting on rocks with a background of a single tree. On the left is a young male next to a column or pillar, whilst in the centre is a young woman with her arm raised to her head and holding a torch which hangs down to the ground. On the far right is another half-dressed woman who holds a sceptre or staff in her left hand.

The two-handled amphora vase is incomplete as it has lost its pointed base and the mouth of the vessel is curiously uneven in the cut. The base was repaired using a similar coloured disk carved in the same style and depicting Paris. Although it is remarkable that such a delicate object has survived at all from antiquity, the vase is not unique, as a similar type vase has been found at Pompeii which dates to the mid-1st century CE and depicts scenes from a grape harvest. However, these cameo-cut vessels are regarded as something of an experiment in Roman glassware, carried out in a limited period spanning just two generations, so they were almost certainly not commonly produced.

It was sold again in 1786 and passed into the possession of the duchess’s son, William Cavendish-Bentinck, the 3rd Duke of Portland who lent it to Josiah Wedgwood who copied it in his new jasperware.

Wedgwood devoted four years of painstaking trials to achieve the perfection required to replicate the vase. He had problems with cracking and blistering and the sprigged reliefs ‘lifted’ during firing. In 1786 he feared that he would never be able to apply the Jasper relief thinly enough to match the glass original’s subtlety and delicacy. However, his copy of The Portland Vase was placed in a private exhibition in Greek Street, Soho, during April and May 1790. The exhibition was so popular that visitor numbers had to be restricted.

Wedgewood’s success inspired a 19th-century competition to duplicate its cameo-work in the glass, with Benjamin Richardson offering a £1,000 prize to anyone who could achieve that feat. Taking three years, glassmaker Philip Pargeter made a copy and John Northwood engraved it, to win the prize. This copy is in the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.

After a long history of changes in ownership, disaster struck in 1845 when the vase was smashed to pieces in the British Museum. Fortunately, it has since been painstakingly restored so that it can once more take its rightful place amongst the very finest masterpieces of Roman art.

The Wedgwood Museum, in Barlaston, near Stoke-on-Trent, contains a display describing the trials of replicating the vase, and several examples of the early experiments are shown.

The original Roman vase can be seen in the British Museum.

Sources:

https://www.ancient.eu/article/654/the-portland-vase/,

Wikipedia