Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T10:12:45.586Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some Radical Concepts of Sex and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Madeleine B. Stern
Get access

Extract

Much of the excitement of nineteenth-century America probably arose from the fact that for nearly every ill some reform was hopefully put forth. Slavery was countered by abolition; alcoholism by temperance; tight lacing by the bloomer dress; indigestion by graham bread. In that spawning ground of panaceas, “every possible form of intellectual and physical dyspepsia brought forth its gospel. Bran had its prophets. Everybody had a mission.” Sex too had its prophets, who not only fulminated against rigid marriage laws and consequent injustices to women, but advocated reforms based upon highly individualized principles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 2 , October 1977 , pp. 147 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Schlesinger, Arthur M., New Viewpoints in American History (New York: Macmillan, 1928), p. 215Google Scholar, citing James Russell Lowell in his essay on Thoreau (1865).

2. Stern, Madeleine B., Heads & Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), passim.Google Scholar

3. These, quoted in Stern, , Heads & Headlines, pp. 42–45Google Scholar, include Fowler, L. N., Marriage: Its History and Ceremonies (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1847)Google Scholar; Fowler, L. N., The Principles of Phrenology and Physiology Applied to Man's Social Relations (New York and Boston: L. N. & O. S. Fowler, 1842)Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Amativeness: or Evils and Remedies of Excessive and Perverted Sexuality (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1848)Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Creative and Sexual Science (New York: Fowlers & Wells, [1875])Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Fowler on Matrimony (New York: O. S. & L. N. Fowler, 1842)Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Love and Parentage, Applied to the Improvement of Offspring (N.p.: Fowler & Wells, [1844])Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Matrimony; or Phrenology and Physiology Applied to the Selection of Companions for Life (London: G. Berger, 1843).Google Scholar

4. Goodrich, Jesse W., The Phrenological Organs: The Phrenological CharacterGoogle Scholar: (as marked, and given by Prof. O. S. Fowler,) together with … Occasional Poems, and Prose Writings ([Worcester, Mass.: C. Hamilton], 1855).

5. Fowler, O. S., Creative and Sexual Science, pp. 51, 287Google Scholar, and passim; Fowler, O. S., Sexuality Restored, and Warning and Advice to Youth against Perverted Amativeness (Boston: [H. O. Houghton, 1870])Google Scholar. For Orson Fowler on sex, see also Stern, , Heads & Headlines, pp. 191–95.Google Scholar

6. Stern, , Heads & Headlines, pp. 240–42.Google Scholar

7. Stern, Madeleine B., The Pantarch: A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews (Austin, Texas: Univ. of Texas Press, 1968)Google Scholar. For Modern Times and Andrews on Free Love, see pp. 73–86, 132f.

8. Andrews, Stephen Pearl, ed., Love, Marriage, and Divorce, and the Sovereignty of the Individual (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1853 and Boston: Benj. R. Tucker, 1889), passim.Google Scholar

9. Conway, Moncure Daniel, Autobiography Memories and Experiences (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1904), I, 266.Google Scholar

10. For the Nicholses, see Gleason, Philip, “From Free-Love to Catholicism: Dr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Nichols at Yellow Springs,” Ohio Historical Quarterly 70, No. 4 (10 1961), 283–307Google Scholar; Richards, Irving T., “Mary Gove Nichols and John Neal,” New England Quarterly, 7, No. 2 (06 1934), 335–55Google Scholar; Stearns, Bertha-Monica, “Memnonia: The Launching of a Utopia,” New England Quarterly, 15 No. 2 (06 1942), 280–95Google Scholar; Stearns, Bertha-Monica, “Two Forgotten New England Reformers,” New England Quarterly, 6, No. 1 (03 1933), 59–84.Google Scholar

11. Andrews, , Love, Marriage, and Divorce, p. 97.Google Scholar

12. Stearns, , “Two Forgotten New England Reformers,” pp. 71f.Google Scholar

13. Nichols, T. L. and Nichols, Mary S. Gove, Marriage: Its History, Character, and Results (Cincinnati: V. Nicholson, [1854])Google Scholar. The appendix, pp. 425–47, includes “Institute of Desarrollo” from Nichols Journal of October 1853, and “Our School of Life” from Nichols Journal of November 1853. See also Stern, , The Pantarch, pp. 84f.Google Scholar

14. See pp. 230, 286, 287, 289, 291, 293, 295, 309–10, 313.

15. [Mary Gove Nichols], Mary Lyndon or, Revelations of a Life. An Autobiography (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1855), pp. 329f.Google Scholar

16. The best full-length biography of Victoria Woodhull is still Emanie Sachs, “The Terrible Siren” Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) (New York: Harper, 1928)Google Scholar. See also Stern, Madeleine B., We the Women: Career Firsts of Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Franklin, 1974), pp. 251–72, 372–79.Google Scholar

17. For Woodhull's lectures, articles, and writings, see Stern, Madeleine B., ed., The Victoria Woodhull Reader (Weston, Mass.: M & S Press, 1974)Google Scholar, from which all quotations, unless otherwise indicated, have been made.

18. Stern, , We the Women, pp. 256f.Google Scholar

19. Quoted in Nichols, and Nichols, , Marriage: Its History, Character, and Results, p. 188.Google Scholar