00:02:45.240Yes, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to talk about this. I love when I have the opportunities to kind of combine my academic side and also to talk about the books when I get to be like Professor Alexandra Vasty.
00:03:02.540So I'm very excited and delighted to be here.
00:03:05.140Although I will say I'm a literature PhD.
00:03:08.180I do a lot of literary history, but I'm not a historian.
00:03:12.800I really am like a book reader, a scholar of books.
00:03:17.880So a history, a scholar of books, and you've done a lot of research, obviously, for your
00:03:27.360I guess I just want to clarify also for the listeners, because we're doing a series right
00:03:31.120now about the French Revolution. And I just want to clarify. So what you're gonna be talking about
00:03:35.200is like Regency, which is kind of the decade after when the French Revolution was, but things
00:03:41.160didn't change that much what we're talking about. It's not like, it's not in our modern era. It's
00:03:47.260not like, you know, the difference between the 1980s and the 1990s. It's like things changed
00:03:52.060slowly, especially for like lower class people. Yeah, I always think that's sort of interesting
00:03:57.660though, because I think sometimes we can kind of like flatten out history a little bit and be like,
00:04:00.920oh yes, everything in the 1800s, but actually there's quite vast differences between like
00:04:05.8401804 and 1884. Um, and, and I definitely see that a lot with, uh, historical romance because
00:04:12.360people often say, oh, they're, they sort of treat them all the same or sort of imagine that they
00:04:17.520were all the same or that what would have been on people's minds or happening in 1884 is the same
00:04:23.080thing as a regency, which is definitely not true. So, so yeah, I mean, I think that we'll,
00:04:27.420we'll see a lot of the same books were very popular um you know in the period but definitely
00:04:33.140there are there are definitely differences as well and you know from from france and england
00:04:39.440and the u.s all of those things we see we definitely see differences there too definitely
00:04:43.600definitely so first can you explain um i mean that you have this historical interest just from
00:04:49.600your own personal work um and then from your books also so explain the concept of the the
00:04:55.740library that is in your books? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So my, um, trilogy of novels is called
00:05:03.220the Belfort's library trilogy, and it is centered around this sort of notion that I had of my main
00:05:10.160character. This is a fictional library. It's not real of her starting this secret circulating
00:05:16.000library for the purpose of sex education for women. So the way that this came up is that
00:05:22.740this was not like my first idea for the series i really am like as a as a writer of novels i really
00:05:28.980start with the characters and kind of what the characters interest and problems and conflict and0.92
00:05:34.200you know how how they're going to get through the book um so i had this idea of this female
00:05:40.100main character my heroine as kind of a fixer right like she she's sort of a busybody she's0.99
00:05:46.620like always in people's business and she's she's sort of fixing things and handling things0.93
00:05:49.920And I wanted her to have a deep, dark secret, or else the book would be quite short, you know, 40 minutes long and they get married at the end.
00:05:58.340So I started thinking about this character and thinking about her society and what she would see in the world around her that she wanted to fix, that she wanted to change.
00:06:09.940And I was also thinking about things that were happening in the world around me when I was writing this book and I was thinking a lot about book banning.
00:06:15.340So this was 2021, where we really start to see this big resurgence of book banning in schools, which obviously things haven't really changed in any positive way in 2025.
00:06:26.360But I was thinking about information access and specifically information access about sex and sexuality and about bodies and gender and how that's used as a tool for control, right?
00:06:35.840Like if we can keep that information from people, we can control them better.
00:06:39.740And so obviously that's very alive in the 18th and 19th centuries as well.
00:06:44.060So I had this idea that she would start this library. It's like a well-known public library,
00:06:48.660but has the secret stock of sex ed books for women. And that was sort of her way of tackling1.00
00:06:57.420the problem of sex education in the period. So then, because I'm a literary historian,
00:07:02.400I was like, you know what I need to do is fill this library with real books. What books would
00:07:08.340she actually have stocked her library with, you know, in 1815. So that was kind of the genesis
00:07:14.680of the idea for the library. And I really had a good time stocking her library and filling it
00:07:21.500with all of these books that really existed in the myriad. It's interesting because I have my
00:07:26.780nonfiction book is coming out next year, Rebel of the Regency, The Scandalous Saga of Carolina
00:07:31.680Brunswick, Britain's Uncrowned Queen. And one of the things that I dove into for my research for
00:07:37.420that as well was, was looking at contraception and what would, what would this woman have known
00:07:44.240about, about sex? And this is because, well, her story involves this, but also because she's0.91
00:07:51.580apparently having a lot of lovers. And I was like, well, she's having a lot of lovers.
00:07:55.020Then either she's having a lot of children or she was doing something to prevent having a lot
00:07:59.540of children. And what were those things? And let me just research this a little bit.
00:08:02.300but then also this is coming in your books as well are in a in a post bridgerton on netflix world
00:08:09.520where there's kind of uh even the first season of that there's there's this kind of the way that
00:08:16.180there's a lot of people learn about history the average person not you and me but the average
00:08:22.780person who just kind of like watches bridgerton sometimes reads novels sometimes like wow that's
00:08:28.440history was like, I guess. Okay. So just assuming that like, oh, this is true. Wow. Women didn't
00:08:33.460know about sex until their wedding night. What a shocking way to live. I guess that's how history1.00
00:08:38.120was. And it's like, oh, was it like that? That makes for a dramatic, interesting, um, fictional
00:08:44.620TV show. But like what the research you're finding, it's like, there was, these were books
00:08:49.160that people that existed, like women didn't necessarily like, tell me, tell me about your
00:08:53.940thoughts about that, those plot lines on Bridgerton? Yeah. Yeah. Um, it does make for
00:08:58.380quite good TV. Uh, I, people ask me this all the time, right? Because Bridgerton, I mean,
00:09:03.580that's a big part of the Bridgerton TV show is sort of the sexual education or the sexual0.99
00:09:07.220journeys of women. And in a way, like there's something that's, I think meant to be quite
00:09:10.580liberating about it. Um, and funny, right. It's often played for comedy too, like with the
00:09:14.320Featherington sisters, uh, you know, the like very quick comical, like inserts and stuff where
00:09:19.400I love that scene. It's very funny, but people are always asking me like, is that real? Is that
00:09:23.720real. And the first, the first thing that I want to say about this is that like, it absolutely
00:09:28.920could be just like it could be real today, right? If you talk to, if you did a survey of, you know,
00:09:36.6802000, 20 year old women, they would probably have a vast array of different amounts of knowledge
00:09:43.120about, about sex and sexuality and, you know, what's available to them because that's life.
00:09:49.980it's not something that we tend to talk about super openly, right? Oftentimes it's what,
00:09:54.560you know, what school did you go to and how good was the sex ed program in your school? And maybe
00:09:58.940you were homeschooled. So maybe your parents, you know, never called it a vagina, never called it a1.00
00:10:03.000penis, never used the word vulva. You've never heard the word clitoris before until all of a0.99
00:10:06.320sudden you're like on Wattpad and you're like, Oh my God, you know, what's happening, right? Like0.71
00:10:10.180there are lots of different ways to access information and everybody is different and
00:10:13.800everybody's life experiences are going to be different. And that's true today. And it's true
00:10:17.620in the 19th century, right? So could there have been women who were like absolutely astonished by
00:10:23.320their, you know, whatever, like, you know, consummatory experiences? Sure. But there's no,
00:10:30.500there's nothing to suggest that that was the norm, right? And I think that because we do see that in
00:10:35.460these kind of popular television shows, it tends to get flattened or to be thought of like, oh,
00:10:40.760that's the norm. But if we look at texts from the period, like even one thing that I think
00:10:45.880is really helpful is to look at books that were published like as contemporary novels in the
00:10:52.020period. And, and what did those characters know about sex and sexuality? And they knew a lot.
00:10:57.360They, they totally understood, like even unmarried women understood like the consequences of having0.68
00:11:04.080sex, that that would lead to a baby that, you know, that this was a thing that, that happened
00:11:08.200and how that all worked. It was definitely far more the norm to know what sex was and how sex
00:11:15.860worked and that sex led to a baby than to not know that. Actually, that's such a funny point.
00:11:22.260I hadn't related that to like, what about people today? And I'll just tell you an anecdote that
00:11:26.440occurred to me. So I have a friend who, um, she's an OBGYN and, you know, sometimes she will share
00:11:32.460just interesting things that happened to her in her practice. And there was a patient who I think
00:11:36.280was, I think was a teenage or a pregnant teenager. And they were talking about like her delivery plan
00:11:42.400and stuff. And then it became apparent by the girl's reactions to some of what they were saying
00:11:47.420that she thought that babies were born out the belly button, like a pregnant person who was like
00:11:54.700in a quite advanced stage of pregnancy. And they're talking about her birth plan. And she's
00:11:57.880just like, why are you talking about this? And it's just like, how do you think the baby is
00:12:01.060going to emerge from your body? And she thought the belly button expanded and the baby just comes
00:12:04.640out. Right. Not the norm, but it's totally feasible. I mean, we did fertility treatments1.00
00:12:12.060for our children and it is sort of a well-known thing that in reproductive endocrinology one of
00:12:17.440the things they ask you is like but how are you having sex like you got pregnant but like let's
00:12:23.540confirm the the right because some people don't know and they go to the infertility doctor
00:12:28.960because they've been you know thinking that they're that they're having procreative sex and
00:12:33.980aren't uh so yeah it is it is but again just like today that that's feasible it's possible it's a
00:12:41.040thing that could happen but it definitely wouldn't be the norm like it's not everybody yeah right or
00:12:45.900even common right so Jane Austen um you know we see plenty of characters who are who are having
00:12:51.760you know unmarried sex in Jane Austen she doesn't necessarily say that on the page but it's quite
00:12:56.460clear right like Pride and Prejudice the the reason that this is sort of so dramatic when we
00:13:02.660have the elopement with with Wickham is that they're living in sin together and they're not
00:13:07.960they're not married she even says you know lucid bennett says like oh well for such a purpose as0.79
00:13:13.080this uh she could see why her sister's charms would be would be sufficient like he doesn't1.00
00:13:18.380want to marry her but he does want to have sex with her right there we also see like in jane0.80
00:13:23.000osman's letters to her sister she talks about a cousin who you know was was intimate with her0.92
00:13:29.180husband prior to marriage and she says um they get married and she says to her sister she's she's
00:13:34.920glad she doesn't have a congratulatory letter to write, meaning she's glad that the cousin didn't
00:13:39.800get pregnant, right? Jane Austen, who is an unmarried woman of genteel birth, her dad is a
00:13:46.380vicar, right? She knows what sex is and how it works and the whole process of it. That would
00:13:52.580have been the norm. And she's definitely expecting her readers to understand and to know what she's
00:13:58.120saying and what she's getting at when these characters are having sex in the books.
00:14:02.100I think the Bridgerton thing like I just it's such a popular show so like a lot of people watch that
00:14:08.740and a lot of people who I've talked to are like wow you know isn't it so sad in the past there
00:14:13.140wasn't sex that and women didn't know this and it's part of this sort of trends that I see over
00:14:16.580and over again that I'm sure I'm guilty of as well of people just sort of assuming that people
00:14:20.740in the past were unintelligent and uninformed and we are so much better now like where it's like no0.97
00:14:27.840we're all it's people are exactly the same like it's not that people used to be so dumb and now0.70
00:14:34.600we're so smart but it's kind of like it's the same thing you know like on Downton Abbey or
00:14:38.380something where they're all like a telephone what and everyone's just like oh no like electricity
00:14:43.700like it makes us feel good to see people in the past be like silly but it's that doesn't mean that
00:14:50.440everyone in the past was was less informed than us absolutely it definitely makes us feel better
00:14:57.320to think like oh we've progressed as a species and then you know like when you look at you're
00:15:01.000like oh perhaps not actually and i and i do think there is a lot of like flattening of the historical
00:15:07.280past so i i always blame everything on the victorians they're like my we do too yes all
00:15:13.700right yeah so so in the victorian period we do see a lot of pushback against talking about sex
00:15:20.640publicly right like even in if we look at um novels from like the middle of the 18th century
00:15:27.300people like talked about sex like fairly openly you could talk about sex workers you could talk
00:15:31.960about getting pregnant and and so then it's a Victorian period where we start to get like oh
00:15:35.980she's in an interesting condition you know and and we we just see a big pushback against like
00:15:40.940how open and and and frank you could be about sex and sexuality and I just think that that
00:15:47.240Victorian ideal has kind of got this chokehold on people's understanding of the past that like oh
00:15:52.880that's how you know everyone was like the whole past was all the victorian period and i don't
00:15:58.380understand why that is um and i think it's really harmful actually to think that the historical
00:16:03.800past was all was this like repressed puritanical um you know hyper victorian like we can't talk
00:16:09.340about anything we can't uh be frank about sexuality uh i think it was harmful in the
00:16:14.200victorian period and i think it's harmful uh today yeah and just talking about the differences um
00:16:20.260between country to country as well. Like in the research that I was doing, it's kind of like,
00:16:24.900well, this is happening in England. And then what I've been looking at this season on the podcast,
00:16:29.240French Revolution in France and stuff. It's like a couple of weeks ago, I had an episode where a
00:16:33.180guest was on. We were talking about this American guy. I don't know if you've heard of him,
00:16:37.440Gouverneur Morris. He was like one of the founding fathers. And he went to France and he was like,
00:16:42.500he was like a kind of like ladies man in America. And he went to France and he was like,
00:16:46.360oh my god like this is like everything's up a notch like he went there and the first thing
00:16:50.620they said was like how many lovers do you have and he's just like ah like the just the sexual
00:16:55.920mores were different from country to country like have you come across that like france versus
00:17:00.760england just in your own research oh absolutely so many of the books that um that i have in in
00:17:08.540the library uh so the real books in my fictional library in my books are french we're french and
00:17:14.220And, you know, it's sort of funny because there, I think part of it was like publishing
00:17:18.000laws and obscenity laws were different as well.
00:17:19.980So these things could get published in French more easily.
00:17:22.380But if you look at the translation dates, they are getting translated to English, like
00:17:38.540So a lot of the books, the sort of explicitly erotic books, are definitely French in origin and then get translated into English and sell for a long time in English as well.
00:17:50.580Yeah. And just in terms of what I'm trying, I forget if I read this in your article or in something else that I was researching, but just in terms of like contraception and stuff like it was like there's stores that you can like buy these things and it's kind of like code words where you can buy them.
00:18:03.980but I think it was much people go to France to get them and bring them back to England and stuff
00:18:07.540like that. I think, I think I read that. Well, there's also a, a, so we're right. So the,
00:18:13.100so condoms were used in use. They were specifically used in the period to prevent
00:18:19.640pregnancy. Um, we don't have germ theory yet. So there's, there's maybe sort of a sense that like,
00:18:24.560Oh, if you use a condom, like that seems generally to help you. There wasn't like a
00:18:28.080really clear sense of like, Oh, this can be used to prevent disease. Like it's really very much
00:18:31.240about preventing pregnancy but and it didn't prevent disease because they were made of like
00:18:34.820sheep intestines they could be made of right things that that allowed you know bacteria to
00:18:39.200go through anyway right so so anyway but condoms were absolutely in use um and there's this a lot
00:18:46.040of times when they're referenced um we see them being called like a french device um they were
00:18:53.720i don't know the word off the top of my head but they were called gloves um and they but they would
00:18:57.760use the French word for the glove. But, you know, we see a lot of things even in, in, in England and
00:19:05.460in French, where if it's like a little scandalous, they'll be like, Oh, this was a, this belonged to
00:19:10.120this other tradition. And we didn't invent this. It was the, you know, libidinous French who,
00:19:14.580who created this, this device. Um, but you know, French kissing, we call it French kissing,1.00
00:19:19.420but originally, or not originally, but one of the very early references to it in French,
00:19:23.460they call it florentine kissing it was like oh it was a little bit different who invented this
00:19:29.480this sexy sort of way of kissing right so i i do think that part of it yes um you know is that
00:19:35.680attitudes were a little bit more open um in france and other places in europe but also there was a
00:19:40.880sense that like oh we could just blame it on those um you know lewd uh gallics and and not0.92
00:19:47.100have to take responsibility um for it but yes i'm very interested in talking about contraception
00:19:51.840and how it was popularized and discussed in the period, because I think that's super interesting.
00:19:59.800I think it's also like, that's another thing that, well, part of it is the novel. There's
00:20:04.880so many books, like, you know, in your book, there's this library of real books, like so
00:20:08.800many books existed. And now a daze when you see this section of like classics, it's kind of like
00:20:15.320Charles Dickens, Jane Austen. It's kind of like, these are the authors who
00:20:19.600like survive through till now but it's like but back then there was so many books and we just
00:20:24.720don't know about them so it's kind of like Jane Austen was not the only person writing books in
00:20:29.180the Regency era but they're kind of the only her and like Mary Shelley like a few other people like
00:20:33.500those are the ones that are still kind of like studied and thought about but there was so many
00:20:37.060books and so it's also like that sort of flattening out to be like well that was the only novel anyone
00:20:41.900had to read it's like no there's so many books that people are reading and so stuff about
00:20:45.920contraception I think like a really popular genre of book in this era and in the 18th century and
00:20:54.460in the early 19th century was like courtesans memoirs like the memoirs of uh we did um some
00:21:00.860episodes about this Irish brothel owner called Peg Plunkett and like her diaries like she lays
00:21:05.640it all out like she's just saying everything that happened so people who were not courtesans or
00:21:10.080people who did not visit courtesans like to read these just to be like to learn like the titillating
00:21:14.140stories but also there'd be stuff in there about contraception right oh my gosh yes everything you
00:21:20.240just said is like my deep deep special interest uh so i will try not to lecture for too long
00:21:26.500no please go ahead so all right so my when i'm i'm sitting down i'm gonna like i'm gonna i'm
00:21:34.060gonna think about this library that i'm that i'm creating i'm gonna use real books and i'm thinking
00:21:37.320what books would she use and i write down i'm just sort of like taking notes and i'm like well
00:21:42.960she's going to use memoirs, right? She's going to use like all these, uh, you know, sexy memoirs
00:21:46.820that were very popular. Like she's going to use medical books, right? Like how is, how, how is0.98
00:21:52.040baby form, you know, she's going to use, she's going to want like porn, right? She's going to0.99
00:21:57.420have one erotic, um, illustrations or, or erotic novels. Um, and then she's going to want just like0.89
00:22:03.360romance novels. Right. And, and it's so funny because I just jotted that down off the top of0.99
00:22:07.720my head. I was like, this is what, what she'll, she'll want to have. And then the more and more
00:22:12.060research I did, like that sort of just quick imagining that I had really hit the nail on the
00:22:16.480head on in terms of how sexual education actually was accomplished. And the funny thing is, I think
00:22:23.140that, that my sort of instinctive, you know, it wasn't just because like, Oh, I know a lot about
00:22:27.560history or whatever. It's because that's how it works today. Right? Like so many texts have
00:22:32.960served dual purposes, right? We read a romance novel. Sure. It's titillating, but also you're
00:22:38.540like, I didn't know that could happen. Right. We, the, the line between sex ed and something
00:22:46.100that's designed for titillation or this pornography is not, there's no direct demarcation between
00:22:52.300those. All of those things can be contained within one work. And that was super common
00:22:57.420in the period as well. Right. So we see, like, if we look at, um, peeps, you know, peeps, uh,
00:23:03.620The Diary of Samuel Pepys. So he, he, for any listener who doesn't know,
00:23:07.720I highly recommend P-E-P-Y-S. P-E-P-Y-S. Right. I highly recommend reading this. This man kept0.99
00:23:16.940like a detailed diary of like of his life for a couple of years. And it's like the most frank
00:23:22.520discussion of sexuality that you can imagine. And it's incredibly interesting to learn. But anyway,
00:23:28.560So he's like, and then I masturbated over this textbook, right?0.65
00:23:32.620Because there is no strong demarcation between things that are intended pedagogically and0.96
00:23:38.440things that are intended for titillation.0.99
00:23:43.480And we can get, we can learn from our porn and we can, we can be aroused by our medical1.00
00:23:47.680textbooks and all of these things are, are, are combined.
00:23:51.700And in fact, one of the things that I think is super interesting is a lot of things that
00:23:55.500were explicitly designed for titillation that were explicitly pornographic in the period especially
00:24:02.140in the 18th century are are they pose as an educational text so an incredibly common form
00:24:10.620of erotic novel and a lot of these were french too was just was was was framed as a conversation
00:24:16.280so there would often they're almost always two women lesbian erotica is incredibly common in
00:24:21.20018th century. So we have these two women and one of them is like this older and is experienced and,0.88
00:24:26.580and, you know, knows the ways of the world. Um, and then we'll have another younger woman who's0.94
00:24:32.180maybe embarking on her first relationship. Maybe it's her wedding night and the older woman. And1.00
00:24:36.920again, these are, these are, they're, they're porn. They're meant to be pornographic. They're0.92
00:24:40.780meant to be arousing, but the framing of it is this older woman is saying, let me tell you about
00:24:46.420how it's going to be. And often that involves the older women demonstrating and just like,
00:24:52.220let me show you what it's going to be like when you kiss your husband. I'll let me kiss you and1.00
00:24:57.160say, oh, aren't you turned on? You know, that that's exactly what it's going to be like with
00:25:01.340your husband. It's an incredibly common form that we see in the erotic novels of the period that
00:25:08.320they're framed as these conversations. A lot of them have school in the title, like school of
00:25:13.320Venus is a really, um, popular one from the 18th century against, um, you know, French.
00:25:18.880Uh, so, so this, I was just fascinated by discovering how blurry the lines are between
00:25:27.180these erotic texts and the, the explicitly pedagogical texts.
00:25:32.820Oh, and something that I wanted to bring up also like this, this is, this is, we're having
00:25:37.680this conversation and it's like perfectly positioned where I am in the season of my
00:25:41.880podcast because we've recently just had a discussion of the movie Dangerous Liaisons
00:25:45.980based on the book Dangerous Liaisons which was um which is also another movie like we talked about
00:25:53.000this in the conversation of the movie which is like very very very very similar to the book which
00:25:57.000I read and um you have these extremely sheltered young women who were raised in convents and then
00:26:03.260they're they have no they have not been trained or been prepared for what it's like when like a
00:26:08.740womanizing sociopath, frankly, is like, sets his eyes on you. Um, and he's like, I'm going to teach
00:26:15.680you sex ed. And they're like, great. So it's sort of like on the one hand that shows like, you know,
00:26:20.480a young woman could be taken advantage of this way, but also it shows that book was so popular.
00:26:24.220It's showing young women, here's the warning signs. Like, this is like a man who's going to
00:26:28.440use you. So it's kind of like the book is, and it's also, it's not a conversation like the,
00:26:33.860the ones you're talking about between two women, but like dangerous liaisons is written as letters.
00:26:37.720so it's people are talking frankly because they're writing a personal letter to somebody else so you
00:26:42.840can get to kind of more innermost innermost thoughts in a way right i mean and that's very
00:26:48.300common um in the sort of origin of the novel form like we we really had to invent this concept of a
00:26:54.560novel where you could just be like here this person said this and this person said that like
00:26:58.460that wasn't like a natural um thing like we really had invent and work really hard to come up with
00:27:04.040what now is just like the typical structure of a third person novel. Right. So that starts in
00:27:08.440as the epistolary form. So, so when we first start seeing novels there, that, that epistolary
00:27:13.540framing is, is almost ubiquitous, right? Because otherwise, why would you be writing down the
00:27:17.520story of what this guy did and what this guy said? You have to frame it as like, oh, I'm writing a
00:27:20.680letter to my friend. So, so, so the epistolary form is, is just inherent to the, to many, most,
00:27:28.020almost all early novels. But yeah, I think it's so, so interesting. And also a lot of these books
00:27:34.980are absolutely written as kind of like a warning text. We see a lot of that kind of moral panic
00:27:44.020over like what could happen to women. But the line between warning and something that's designed0.98
00:27:50.440to arouse or titillate is very thin also, right? I particularly, and I guess probably just because
00:27:57.580I'm a romance novelist. I tend to be like extra fond of the ones that aren't warnings, but that
00:28:03.380are just like, and this is great. You know, I'm going to teach you about this thing. School of
00:28:08.940Venus, she describes it as the many ways of fucking. She's like, I'm going to teach you1.00
00:28:12.440about the many ways of fucking because it's going to make your life so much better. And you're,1.00
00:28:16.820and you're going to have a really happy marriage because of that. But so one erotic novel that
00:28:21.700that's like unbelievably famous that you can't talk about the period without talking about is
00:28:25.960Fanny Hill. So Fanny Hill is one of the few that's written in English that they didn't have
00:28:32.800to steal from the French. Um, and it's written by John Cleland and it, it, it, um, was first
00:28:38.720published in 1748. And so Fanny Hill, it's, it's framed as her kind of memoirs. Um, so this idea
00:28:46.500of like framing something as memoirs, sometimes they were real. Um, sometimes they were fake.
00:28:50.320So there was, there was this sort of device that like, Oh, I discovered this woman's letters in a
00:28:55.160drawer where she talks about her, her experiences. And, and now I'm, I'm so scandalized that I'm
00:29:01.240forced to publish this. So you all can be scandalized too. And so, you know, so anyway,
00:29:06.400so it's, it's written as sort of these, these fictional memoirs of, um, Fanny Hill, a woman
00:29:11.420of pleasure. Uh, so she's a sex worker in the 18th century. Um, and she, she falls in love with one
00:29:18.120of her clients. And then she, they, they are separated through the, you know, disasters of
00:29:23.260life. Um, she has this like sexy career and then they get back together and then they live happily
00:29:28.040ever after. It's quite charming actually, the experiences, but Fanny Hill is also written as,
00:29:34.200um, you know, it's, it's like, here's how she learned about sex. So that sexual awakening or
00:29:39.940that sexual discovery, um, is very, uh, very much present in that as well. Um, so she goes to this
00:29:48.020House of Pleasure, uh, intentionally, like she intends to become a sex worker. Um, she's initiated1.00
00:29:53.280into the ways of sex, um, through the other female sex workers, um, who, who, you know, quite, quite1.00
00:30:01.440hands-on teaching, um, experience. So all of the first sex scenes in the book, um, are between two
00:30:06.620women. Uh, and then she goes on to have her various exploits and fall in love and live happily ever
00:30:11.380after with her with her darling and it was unbelievably popular peeps peeps also had a
00:30:18.360great time with fan hill as well um cleland did go to jail for it briefly it's sort of debated as
00:30:24.920like why exactly they um prosecuted cleland uh but he he you know he was fine a lot of people
00:30:32.900went to jail it was actually quite well i feel like i feel like that would just make more people
00:30:36.600want to read the book yes yes absolutely there's another um guy richard carlisle uh who wrote a
00:30:43.560book about contraception um he was a big proponent of free love in the period and he was a really
00:30:48.600big proponent of like women's sexual pleasure uh and so he he is actually an incredibly comical
00:30:54.880book if you read it he's like look at all these women he's like who who are just not getting0.99
00:30:59.400fucked regularly he's like you can just tell by their their pallid they're lethargic he's like
00:31:04.820and you know what's going to help them? Getting railed every day. So the point of the book is0.99
00:31:09.380that, um, it's quite short. You can read it quickly. Um, the point of the book is that
00:31:13.520contraception is going to like solve, um, all of the problems of the world. Uh, he's very in favor
00:31:20.260of it. And so he goes through this long discussion of different types of contraception. Anyway,
00:31:23.500he was jailed also. Uh, and, um, people, the, the, they eventually like released him because
00:31:30.560they were like, the more that we keep this guy in jail, the more that we're drawing attention
00:31:35.180to this. And he was, he was a radical in many ways. He's actually a very interesting figure.
00:31:40.860Tell me about contraception besides like we talked about condoms. What are, what are the
00:31:47.240other methods that people, that women specifically would know about or might be using?1.00
00:31:52.480Yeah. So what is love is a really good one. Um, because he, it's also called the every woman,
00:31:57.640every woman's book every woman he was like is it great you know he's you wanted to sell some books
00:32:02.780also um so he goes through and talks about the different types of contraception um he was a big
00:32:09.120proponent of the sponge um he was he he thought sponges were the way um and they were very popular
00:32:17.180uh in the period as a form of contraception so this is like i'm gonna presume and you can crack
00:32:23.120me some sort of sea sponge based on technology and that would just be a thing that would like
00:32:27.860absorb the semen is that right you'd put it up there the semen would it would form a physical1.00
00:32:34.880barrier um people would soak them in things that they thought would be like a spermicide also so
00:32:40.360you could soak your sponge in vinegar and then you know um insert it yeah um also fun you could
00:32:47.280go into a shop and there would be like a clock. Um, and each, you know, hour was like a different
00:32:54.180form of contraception and you would turn the hand of the clock to the one you wanted. And then the
00:33:00.180clerk would like pass it out to you. Yeah. You could kind of like pretend that you had not really,
00:33:06.020yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, so, um, so he really liked the sponge. He was a big
00:33:11.640proponent of the sponge. He thought that that was good. Um, he thought it was the most effective.
00:33:15.860uh he in the book he's like i don't know people say that you can't even feel it
00:33:22.700when he's like not that i've ever partaken myself um so but also he talks about condoms um as well
00:33:31.720uh he talks about withdrawal um you know as a way of preventing pregnancy again we there's really no
00:33:39.400sense of like diseases or germs or germ theory so yeah because people didn't know anything they're
00:33:44.040just like here's some leeches like everything's cool like yeah i mean we just don't know about
00:33:47.660germs yeah right so they're that's not available to them um he also talks about it's really funny
00:33:53.840um in the book he's like so a lot of people believe that you can ejaculate away inside
00:34:00.320but not up by the womb he's like he's like but you know he's like you can decide for yourself
00:34:08.380But he's like, but to me, the notion that you can really tell if you're by the womb or not, he's like, is not clear.
00:34:17.560He's like, so I'm just going to say that's not the one I would recommend.
00:34:21.360So apparently that was like an extant theory that you could ejaculate but not like by the womb.
00:34:26.080Just direct. Yeah. Okay. Just good luck with that.0.52
00:34:28.380Shoot it elsewhere. Yeah, no, I don't think it was.0.91
00:34:30.420The other thing that Carlisle talks about in the book is that he's like, we don't totally know how conception works, which is interesting too, right?
00:34:40.240Because there's obviously a lot of physical evidence, but the sex cells and different types of cellular meiosis and mitosis is not something that people are clear on in any way.
00:34:53.800um so we've got you know thousands of years of physical evidence that like doing this thing
00:34:58.240results in babies but not a really strong sense of how exactly it works so we're really kind of
00:35:02.840feeling it out as you go for how contraception could could be handled well and this makes me
00:35:07.980think about something else that we haven't yet talked like my season of this podcast we've been
00:35:12.320looking at all these revolutions and like we're leading up to a discussion of marie antoinette
00:35:16.160and her life but like just to get into like some marie antoinette spoilers like she and her husband
00:35:21.280did not have children for several years and it was really stressful for her and for like the
00:35:26.300country of france because it's just like why are they not eventually eventually they do conceive
00:35:30.840like there's sort of like uh intervention her brother like so i think part of it was just like
00:35:36.940what method were they using or what the physiology of her husband was maybe like they had to use a
00:35:41.640different method but it's just if you have these two teenagers and they don't know what they're
00:35:45.360doing like you were saying people going to the fertility doctor or some people going to my
00:35:48.700friend who's the who's the doctor sometimes like yeah we're having trouble conceiving and she's
00:35:52.640like are you having sex like this and they're like what like like like the featherington sisters
00:35:57.800they're like i would never have thought to have done that you know so like there are people who
00:36:01.540just don't know yeah so um there's a book called aristotle's masterpiece and aristotle's masterpiece
00:36:09.200was first published in, I want to say 1648, 1600s. Um, and it purports to be, uh, a medical textbook
00:36:18.820about, um, conception, how to conceive, um, pregnancy, labor, things like that. Uh, and
00:36:28.100this book, Aristotle, so Aristotle, people thought like Aristotle was sort of both like he, he was
00:36:34.120very knowledgeable and this is, Oh, this is classical. So it's, you know, it makes it,
00:36:37.500it sort of gives it this ethos of of of accuracy but also like there was this association of
00:36:42.700aristotle with like sexy stuff like a lot of sexy stuff gets like the aristotle stamp so anyway
00:36:47.280aristotle's masterpiece um when i was first researching this i was doing uh i was i was
00:36:53.420looking up academic articles about aristotle's masterpiece and i kept finding them about james
00:36:58.360joyce's ulysses and i was like what the hell like i was like is this a different book like that book
00:37:03.120you know, it was published in 1922. No, Aristotle's masterpiece is like the biggest
00:37:08.200seller for 300 years. People were, were this book with like the book. Um, so it was published
00:37:17.020anonymously and obviously like copyright, um, is not copyright in 1648. We don't really have that.
00:37:22.900So, so printers would be like, Oh, this is a good book. I'm going to print it too.
00:37:26.600And like print their own version of it. So it gets for literally 300 years, this book is like
00:37:32.340the preeminent book on, on, you know, procreation and conception. Um, and it gets constantly edited
00:37:39.400and changed and new things are added. Um, I've seen some really interesting articles about
00:37:44.540Aristotle's masterpiece. They're like, what, what do we learn about people's ideas of sex?
00:37:48.880If we compare the 1648 version versus the 1748 version versus the 1848 version, because,
00:37:55.600you know, things really change vastly. Um, some of the versions of it are very much
00:38:01.780focused on like learning and, and kind of, this is the most that we know they're more scientific
00:38:08.660and some of them are more kind of like a warning, right? They're like, Oh, this is what can happen
00:38:13.160if things go wrong. There's a lot of sense of like, um, kind of the, the secrets of the woman's0.92
00:38:21.260body and like how do we how can we ever learn her secrets so there's a lot of discussion of
00:38:27.780of like the clitoris and how it works and how is it important is it not important does it play a
00:38:32.880role in procreation we don't know here's what we can observe um there's a ton of discussion of
00:38:38.100virginity um even in uh even in 1648 you know it's very clear in the book that like the hymen
00:38:46.780doesn't necessarily mean anything, right? So they're like, you know, the hymen, it may exist,
00:38:54.100it may not exist. They're like, maybe that there's one part of it that's like the humors
00:38:58.240can eat it away. If you have bad humors, your hymen can just vanish. Um, but there's also a
00:39:03.560big part of it that's like how to fake a hymen. So, right. So, so this idea of the hymen was
00:39:08.940quite, you know, it could be serious business. It could be used in, in courts, um, in the court
00:39:13.420of law. If you're, if you've, you know, a woman was, was examined and found to have a hymen or
00:39:18.240not have a hymen that could be used in court. So there's a lot of situation of like, how do you
00:39:22.240fake it? If you need, if you're about to get married and you're very worried that your husband
00:39:25.740is going to think you're not a virgin, like how can you create a fake hymen? Can I say that is,
00:39:31.940that is still a thing. My, my friend, the doctor has had patients who are from like very
00:39:37.500conservative um cultural groups who ask if like could you sign it like they asked my friend like
00:39:44.260you sign a certificate saying like my hymen is intact even when it's not and she's just like i
00:39:49.280don't i don't do that i that's not a doctor's note that i will provide for you but there's
00:39:53.400yeah and there's people who put insert like blood-filled balloons and like she's she's
00:39:58.300learned about all these things that people do because like in some cultures like it's really
00:40:01.740mandatory that there's this like i'm breaking moment so that's interesting that yeah people
00:40:07.660were doing that then people are still doing that now and now for a quick advertising break
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00:41:50.620Then you might enjoy our podcast Turtle Time.
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00:42:06.120Listen to Turtle Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
00:42:14.080Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood.
00:42:18.340Could we get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here?
00:43:09.760and right and it's it's kind of bonkers too that in 1648 the people writing this book are like
00:43:18.840and even if it doesn't exist that doesn't necessarily mean anything and now it's in
00:43:23.360right and yet still this myth persists somehow yeah so anyway so aristotle's masterpiece is
00:43:31.780is a really great book for just seeing how understandings of sex and sexuality changed
00:43:38.060But anyway, I think the reason I initially started talking about this is because there, I've seen historians say that this was considered a really common and typical newlywed gift. I don't, I don't know if that's true, but I have seen like a historian argue that like you would, I mean, it sold so, so well for 300 years. Obviously people were buying it, you know, and, and anyway, so you're a couple would get married and you'd be like, Hey, here's your, here's your book.
00:44:06.780here's your Aristotle's masterpiece. It's going to teach you like, there's one part of it in the
00:44:10.760later editions that's like a manual for like how to have sex. It's like, you know, first you take0.69
00:44:17.040your clothes off, then you touch the woman here and then you touch the woman there. And it's got
00:44:22.280like a nice little emphasis on like the orgasm too. And like for both parties that that's quite
00:44:26.720important. That was seen as like a big thing, like everybody needed to climax to get pregnant.
00:44:31.860so anyway so this this book was very popular very common and there was
00:44:38.060it's actually very funny um i read a something about aristotle's masterpiece that um in the
00:44:44.8801700s uh like you know all like young men would like passed around for its like you know instructive
00:44:51.640purposes or or whatever reason but that it was kind of like cringy and embarrassing and they0.96
00:44:56.700were like this they called it a granny book like it was like the but it's sort of like you know
00:45:00.220passing around like your grandmother's bodice ripper um but it was still instructive right
00:45:06.380one other thing that bothers me about um kind of representations of how people learn about sex in
00:45:12.300the historical past is that there's it's always women who are like who don't know right so like
00:45:17.460um in in various popular representations of sex in the past it's like oh women don't know anything
00:45:23.520but men are expected to know everything right like they're expected to whatever but as and
00:45:28.880that's one of the things I think is so charming about that Featherington scene, um, in Bridgerton,
00:45:34.320the husband doesn't know either, right? Like he didn't know how it is supposed to work.
00:45:39.840And I think that that's also very harmful. This idea that, that young men who would have gotten
00:45:45.000married to the period are supposed to just like magically know everything about sex and how it
00:45:48.900works. That's, you know, that's not based in any reality either. Yeah. Well, and I would imagine
00:45:54.880like for people like yourself who are writing Regency romances, you know, with that in mind,
00:46:01.600you know, there's the old trope of just kind of like, oh, the virgin who doesn't know what
00:46:04.520she's doing and the man who like comes in and he introduces it. Like I would think
00:46:07.840like contemporary writers are having a more nuanced portrayal of relationships in this
00:46:13.820sort of book. Yeah, absolutely. And I was very shocked. Like the, I don't know. I don't know.
00:46:22.260I was very astonished by this. The first book that I put out features a non-virgin female1.00
00:46:30.560main character and a virgin male character. And I just wrote it. And I, you know, I saw my first0.90
00:46:38.260book was self-published. My first couple of books were self-published. And all these people were
00:46:42.200like, it's a gender swap. And I was like, what? Like that was so far from my mind. That just did0.91
00:46:47.800not even occur to me because, you know, it was just a struggle reality. Sure. That would have
00:46:53.560happened for some people sometimes. Um, and oh my God, I got so many like blistering emails that
00:47:00.260like I had made this, this female main character, a slut and a whore and that she had had, and I0.99
00:47:07.120was like, I was not expecting like the vitriol that I, that I received. Um, of course then I0.99
00:47:15.220was like, you know, like, well, now I'm going to write it 10 times more. So my readers were
00:47:23.000then treated to many more of that exact bearing. Yeah. So it's very interesting. These ideas just
00:47:29.740are very entrenched. And we see them pop up everywhere. And it is, of course, that would
00:47:36.720have represented some people's experiences, but it certainly doesn't represent the totality of
00:47:40.600experiences. Well, and I think in terms of the books written at the time, and you know a lot
00:47:46.620more about this than I do, but I'm just going to say something, you know, tell me if I'm right or
00:47:49.220wrong. But the books written at the time, like French Revolution era, Regency era versus books
00:47:54.920now written about that era, books written, people expect a certain, like you were saying, you know,
00:48:01.040people thought it was a gender swap, but a certain sort of thing of this like naive young virgin,
00:48:05.600and then this kind of like worldly man who teaches her stuff. And it's kind of like, that's just,
00:48:10.600what people imagine things were like then so you want to read books that reiterate that but it's
00:48:15.780like things weren't necessarily even like that then but people get these really entrenched ideas
00:48:21.720of what history was like and then they get mad when someone's like well actually what if history
00:48:27.000wasn't like that but i feel like regency romance is such a long-standing genre that people are just
00:48:33.300like that's what it was like and if you're making it different than that than that to challenge what
00:48:38.080people's understanding of the past is and i mean we're not going to talk about this because i've
00:48:41.020talked about this with other guests but i mean involving black people you know like having
00:48:45.280non-white characters people where it's like what that's that's not true it's like oh actually it
00:48:49.620was true and like every so many people's understanding of what the past is like is
00:48:54.160based on like movies they've seen or like a book they read that was written in the victorian era
00:48:58.960written in the 1950s where it's like well that was true it's like was it like just trying to
00:49:05.380buck against what history was like versus what people think history was like and people like
00:49:10.600their idea of what they think history was like oh absolutely yeah and and I think that um many
00:49:17.440people are actually like quite eager and excited to learn about things being different than what
00:49:23.760they assumed it's just that we we get these sort of like loud voices who are who are so angry about
00:49:30.420it that sometimes that's what what our brains took us on or these loud angry wrong nothing is
00:49:36.840more frustrating than someone being wrong on the internet you know but yeah i also think that if we
00:49:44.020look at hundreds of years of this sexual awakening story being popular obviously there's something
00:49:50.840titillating about that right like obviously people are kinking on this idea of this young
00:49:57.520inexperienced person who has to be taught and sort of led into the ways of darkness and depravity
00:50:03.900right and and you know we see that in 1748 with fanny hill and we see that in the first season
00:50:10.660of bridgerton when when you know simon is like sexually whispering into daphne's ear about like
00:50:14.880how she needs to go home and touch herself and she like has to discover the concept of0.98
00:50:18.660masturbation because of simon obviously this is something that people are like finding kinky0.97
00:50:23.180that doesn't mean it's like the historical reality though right yeah yeah sometimes i want to say to0.94
00:50:28.240people like look if that is your kink that you want like a sexual weakening story that's fine
00:50:33.340but that you don't have to frame it as like because that's how it was because that that's
00:50:38.840when i you know when i when i want to push back a little bit well what i'd also love to get your
00:50:44.400um take on is something that i've come across in well especially in the the french revolution era
00:50:50.040like the there was it's such a weird time of like you know there was so much social change and like0.91
00:50:57.140exciting stuff happening but there's also this huge overwhelming conservative like women should
00:51:02.900like russo was being read by everybody and everyone's and so it's just like women should0.96
00:51:08.320stay home like they should be like having babies like women shouldn't be entering the political0.97
00:51:12.680discourse and so you see things like hatred of marie antoinette and like the female revolutionaries1.00
00:51:16.980And they were all just like, she's a whore. She's a whore. And it's like, when I'm looking at these women's lives, like the revolutionaries, what I've looked at so far, it's like, actually, she wasn't. And she could have been and fine. But like, these are people who, like the slut shaming of just like, especially, I don't know, because my internet was a married woman. So it's slut shaming of married women, of unmarried women, of just being like, these women are sexual entities. And that's bad. And that's wrong. And let's, and in most of the cases I've been looking at, let's murder them, which they did.1.00
00:51:46.980But yeah, so how do you like you've got these sexy novels coming out of France specifically, but then you've also got this like, it reminds me of now like the trad wife conservatism, where it's like women shouldn't be doing stuff. They should just be at home. They should just be having babies. Like, how do you square that off to have this like licentious society, but then also this like weird conservative thing?0.99
00:52:06.740Right. Well, because it is exactly like today, which is that there are a lot of people that we're talking about and there's a vast spectrum of political beliefs and, you know, certain things can be used to incite a moral panic, can be weaponized, and it is extra easy to weaponize claims against women.
00:52:28.160Uh, so Mary Wollstonecraft, right? Um, I love Mary Wollstonecraft. My third book is dedicated
00:52:33.980to Mary Wollstonecraft. Very normal, very normal, not dorky thing to do at all. Um, so, so Wollstonecraft
00:52:41.200writes about Rousseau in Vindication of the Rights of Women. And so, so one thing I think is really
00:52:47.320interesting about Wollstonecraft and about her life and her story is that she was pretty popular,
00:52:51.560actually. Like people always like, Oh, she was, you know, died in penury, which is, which is sort
00:52:56.720of true but but people a lot of people read her books and a lot of people read vindication the
00:53:01.640rights of women and a lot of people were very interested in what she espouses in vindication
00:53:06.960and a lot of people were talking about it and thinking about it and thinking about her in her
00:53:11.880period and then she dies in childbirth and her husband william godwin thought she hung the moon
00:53:18.780he thought she was the most wonderful delightful incredible creature he was just totally he so he
00:53:25.000was like a big proponent of like free love and he was very anti-marriage. Um, and he thought
00:53:29.900marriage was like the root of all society's evils. And he thought it was like playing a big role in0.89
00:53:34.080bringing women down. He thought it was like a prison for women. Um, and then he falls in love0.98
00:53:38.500with Barry Walsoncraft and he was like, you know what? Never mind. I just want to marry you. I love
00:53:42.460you. It's very charming. Anyway, so she dies in childbirth and he is so just like, you know,
00:53:48.200he loves his wife so much that he's like, I'm going to tell everyone about her life because
00:53:52.980she overcame so much. She had a child out of wedlock, you know, she, she, she had all these
00:53:58.940things happen to her and she overcame and she struggled and she fought and she rode and she
00:54:03.500was so brilliant. And he writes this story of her life and talks pretty frankly about her sexual
00:54:09.020exploits, which he thought was great. He was, he thought it was just another sign of how like
00:54:14.080wonderful and radical and amazing and courageous she was. And, and he had absolutely no idea that
00:54:20.020people were going to take this and be like that we knew it you know she wrote this book and it was1.00
00:54:25.200it was pushing the boundaries about women and it was and we knew she was a whore this whole time0.97
00:54:29.120and then they weaponized the fact that she had died in childbirth and they were like this was0.98
00:54:32.540god's punishment on her for all the wrongs and evils and sexual evils that she did and it destroyed
00:54:40.080her reputation for like a hundred years um and i think that this is such a fascinating story because
00:54:46.120part of it is is just a societal shift um especially in the victorian period toward um
00:54:53.440you know toward more of that kind of uh domestic spheres and women are the angel of a house
00:54:58.220but a lot of it too is that it was okay for her to think radical things and to say and write0.99
00:55:04.560radical things but when she put a toe out of line sexually that was the excuse that people could use
00:55:12.120to sort of slap her down and say, see her ideas don't matter. And we shouldn't listen to her1.00
00:55:17.900philosophies after all. And so I just think it's very, you know, I mean, we see that today, right?
00:55:23.740That sex scandals don't really seem to affect men anymore. But even the idea of a sex scandal can be
00:55:31.080used to take down a female politician, for example, even if it's not true. This reminds me of in the0.91
00:55:36.900episode I did about um Charlotte Corday the like murderess of the French Revolution so at first so
00:55:42.420it's at first they're like well she couldn't have done this a woman would never assassinate someone
00:55:46.160herself a man must have made her do it and then she's like no honestly it was just me and they're1.00
00:55:50.220like okay well that must be because you're a whore and then they so they're like she's a whore and0.99
00:55:54.560then they did like uh like a hymen inspection and oh no actually she died and they're like oh she1.00
00:55:59.320still has a hymen they're like oh she didn't they're like oh wow she wasn't a whore she was0.95
00:56:03.180unnatural why wasn't she having sex it's like they kept they kept pivoting it's just like what0.98
00:56:09.520she did was so threatening to like this status quo so but just the same thing to go from it's like1.00
00:56:15.400oh she's a whore oh wait she's not a whore she's a virgin and that's bad like just to it's like we0.98
00:56:20.980want to hate her so let's just like pivot it just seems the same thing for mary wallstongraft like1.00
00:56:25.940they're just looking for a reason to be able to hate her and then her daughter mary shelley
00:56:30.320who absolutely like live this kind of free love thing like i always find that really interesting
00:56:35.780because when we think about when i think about the regency era kind of the main like jane austen
00:56:41.180is who people always fall to and they think about her books which are sort of like full of decorum
00:56:47.080and like etiquette and parties and balls and it's like yeah but mary shelley was also writing at the
00:56:52.640same time and her like and she wrote frankenstein and she was like teenage runaway having babies
00:56:59.080with a man who was married to someone else
00:57:00.900and her stepsister is there for some reason.
00:57:03.280Like that was the same time period, guys.
00:57:05.380Well, it always like sort of puzzles me
00:57:09.820when people are like, oh, Jane Austen was like,
00:57:25.840It is like, it could not be more clear in the book
00:57:28.400that that is what they are doing right so like sure she focuses her story on that but it's not
00:57:36.360like those novels are absent of it's just those aren't the main characters right they're the
00:57:40.040secondary characters anyway yes mary mary shelley is um yeah so mary wallstercraft dies in child
00:57:46.440birth and dead and her daughter her william godwin names the daughter mary wallstercraft godwin
00:57:52.300um and yes she uh i always think this is very funny this is something i always teach that
00:57:59.400godwin was like this big proponent of free love and he didn't believe in marriage until
00:58:03.740his teenage daughter ran off with percy shelley and he was so angry and percy shelley was like
00:58:11.180what do you mean i thought you were i thought you were a proponent of free love and god was like
00:58:15.760not when it comes to my daughter it's quite charming anyway um yes mary mary shelley uh0.99
00:58:22.340i don't know percy shelley is not my favorite he was he was a fuck boy and he oh god no absolutely0.94
00:58:29.440absolutely like i yeah he anyway yeah i did a whole episode about mary shelley but i just think0.55
00:58:36.060that it's interesting that she's she doesn't in my experience come up often when people are talking
00:58:40.260about the Regency era she doesn't really come up except like in her later life when she's like
00:58:47.020you know a widow and she's sort of like a more respectable quote-unquote woman and she's like
00:58:51.880preserving her husband's legacy but publishing his poems it's like yes but it's like no but when
00:58:55.840she was 16 like what was she doing you guys like she was traipsing around Europe like
00:59:00.920with with this like free love like like van life scenario like
00:59:07.140did you know that a lot of scholars think she was bisexual tell me about that um well we don't
00:59:14.600really know we don't have a lot of evidence um but she does talk about how about her feelings
00:59:21.120toward um other women uh and that she's she's like i don't really like men there she's like0.99
00:59:26.720but i do feel a little tuzzy muzzy um about other women and so tuzzy muzzy is playing for the vagina0.99
00:59:32.980so there's like a lot of scholarly focus on what did she mean when she says she has you know feels0.98
00:59:40.340tozzy-muzzy about other women like that's quite seems quite like sexy to say maybe
00:59:44.960so we don't we don't really know but there's there's a lot of speculation uh actually that
00:59:51.640leads beautifully to something that I do want to talk about which is um your book coming out in
00:59:56.400September which is a sapphic story and what can you tell me about lesbians in this time period
01:00:02.360Yeah. I, so I've sort of joked that like with every book that I publish, my author's note gets like longer and longer and like increasingly more defensive. I'm like, this is real.1.00
01:00:13.680so um so ladies in hating is the third book in the um library trilogy and it is a sapphic
01:00:22.620romance and so i in the book so so it's um the premise is that the main characters are sort of
01:00:29.340dueling uh rival gothic novelists um who in research for one of their books end up trapped
01:00:35.340in in this haunted house together that they're they're planning to use as a setting for their
01:00:40.240next book, um, sort of while they're trapped are forced to kind of confront, you know, the
01:00:45.400sexiness underlying the, the hatred as you do in a romance novel. Um, and so because they are
01:00:53.200novelists, um, I got to really indulge in myself in talking about the novels that they would have
01:01:00.160read that would have formed them as writers and that would have been available to them in thinking
01:01:07.680about their sexuality, right? So as I mentioned, Fanny Hill was really popular. It's definitely a
01:01:16.200book that they would have heard of if not read, although of course I have them read it. And like
01:01:22.080I said, the first few sex scenes in that book are all between women. And it's really presented
01:01:30.580in 1748 as like that's that's totally normal so um there is a character uh who the first
01:01:39.080character that um kind of instructs fanny in the ways of um sex is they're in bed together and
01:01:46.120they're you know she's she's she's showing you know fanny how everything works and she gets like0.79
01:01:51.980very aroused and she like kind of has fanny bring her to completion and um then there's a little0.51
01:01:59.840discussion of this character's sexuality. And Fanny says, it wasn't that she preferred women
01:02:06.160necessarily. Although in my experiences, I did meet some women who did. It was just that she
01:02:11.420liked sex and she could be aroused by whoever she was with. And I'm like, oh, you know, like 1748,
01:02:19.860this is just presented as like one of various ways of existing in the world as a sexual being
01:02:28.260and having this outlook on sexuality and different, different sexual, what we would
01:02:34.540today call sexual orientations are presented in the book. They're not really considered
01:02:38.500shameful or shocking. There's like sort of one part is sort of played for comedy, which is that
01:02:43.600one of the women from their brothel likes to dress up as, as a man. That's like part of her0.95
01:02:49.740gender presentation. And so she, then a man thinking she is a man, a man who prefers men
01:02:57.060hits on her and they go off together and then he's like quite upset actually to discover what's
01:03:02.740like underneath her clothing um and but it's presented sort of like for comedic effect but
01:03:07.400he's just like okay well i guess fine sure we'll go at it but it's very funny that this you know
01:03:11.600what we might consider like a traditional heteronormative pairing is like this disappointment
01:03:16.360you know he's like what fine i guess so i guess i'll do it this way um so yeah so it's it's just
01:03:23.660we see this much less judgmental attitude, um, than I think most 2025 readers would expect to
01:03:32.560see in a text written in 1748. Um, we do see kind of increasingly more pushback, um, against, uh,
01:03:40.300homosexuality as we get into the 19th century and especially, especially into the Victorian period
01:03:44.880because the Victorians are the villains as always. Um, but there's a lot of discussion of it. So
01:03:50.960like, um, there were, so one thing that's, I think is always interesting to share is that
01:03:55.460in England, sex between women was never criminalized. Um, that was not there. It was
01:04:00.900like, but what are they doing? Like they're, they're, they're not doing it. You know,
01:04:05.400they're not, they're not doing anything. Uh, right. It's that thing where it's just like,
01:04:10.060well, if there's not a penis, then, then, then there, right, exactly. There's one, um, like0.99
01:04:17.640court case that we have kind of a transcript of. And the guy is trying to sue his wife for adultery
01:04:23.060for sleeping with another woman. And the judge is like, I can't charge her for that. And the
01:04:30.160guy's like, well, she's, she's constantly in bed with our neighbor and I can't get her out of bed.
01:04:34.480And the judge is like, but what are they doing in the bed? I just want to know more about what's
01:04:42.520happening. He like, can't conceive of like what could be going on there. So sex with women was
01:04:46.820never criminalized um although sex between men was um and we see occasional you know kind of that
01:04:52.980would be like a big news story that like someone was was tried for this and um you know whatever
01:04:57.660and and we see a lot of people talking about it in real life about should this be illegal and we
01:05:03.480see a lot of people pushing back at the time saying there's one like really charming it's like
01:05:08.440the the diaries of just like this random farmer um and it's a really interesting uh historical
01:05:13.800document because we a lot of times we only have access to kind of like the upper class and kind
01:05:18.740of what their thoughts on things were but so this diary is one of our few like ways of accessing
01:05:24.240people from the working class and so this farmer his i think i want to say it's like 1810 maybe
01:05:30.980he says something like if god gave them this desire then surely it can't be immoral and it's
01:05:37.020just really lovely. And like, again, like that is 1810, right? Like this is not some thing that
01:05:44.040happened yesterday. And I think people often are really not aware of, of, of the actual historical
01:05:50.120realities of the period, which is not this, you know, homophobic thing, even that we, even that
01:05:55.340we see later in the Victorian period. Well, I think also part of this whole discussion is that
01:06:01.220marriage at that time like french revolution time regency era is very much about like alliances and
01:06:08.160real estate and bank accounts it wasn't like especially in like the higher classes you get
01:06:13.900like it was never about like love and like you had sex so you would have children so they could
01:06:17.540inherit the real estate and the money so it's like if especially in france like so it's like
01:06:22.480yeah so you have lovers but like you have your husband and then that's who's the father of your
01:06:26.520children so if a wife if a woman married to a man is having an a sexual affair with another woman0.72
01:06:33.160it's like well she's not gonna conceive a child so kind of like who cares right like that's not
01:06:39.640gonna threaten the lineage yeah right it's it is very much non-threatening in that way there's like
01:06:46.300a kind of um well-known political cartoon that i also reference in ladies in heating um where
01:06:52.080there's these two women kissing in the park they're they're like sort of entangled on a bench
01:06:56.340and they're kissing and it's called love a la mode with like meaning fashionable love so obviously
01:07:02.200like someone thought this is quite quite you know the trend of the day was to sleep with your with
01:07:06.700your bestie um and then and then it says or two good friends which i think is so funny that people
01:07:12.460are like making that same joke you know in the 19th century as they are today anyway so in the
01:07:17.760cartoon their husbands are behind them um and you it actually uses their names which is not always
01:07:24.980common like a lot of times the cartoons would kind of like try to just do an initial but it
01:07:28.520actually uses their name so we know exactly who these women are and husbands are like what do we0.73
01:07:34.100do because there's nothing that they can do there's no way to kind of like disentangle them
01:07:39.380legally they're just kind of like well hopefully uh they break up and come back to us um but again
01:07:46.820this was like you could you could buy it on the street it was it was not it was so again the
01:07:52.320existence and the idea of same sex desire would have been something that people would have known
01:07:55.160about talked about um would certainly have been available well and then you've got people like0.99
01:08:00.240ann lister right who like did she not marry a woman or something like that yeah she did oh my
01:08:06.620god i love ann lister so much um so ann lister who is also a tv show um gentleman jack is the
01:08:12.360name of the tv show if people want some some more not quite so heteronormative representations of0.89
01:08:18.360the past so ann lister was like this very famous out lesbian um like everyone knew that she was a1.00
01:08:24.500lesbian she was she you know would be like hide your wives because she was like so sexy and like1.00
01:08:32.120so charming and like could just absolutely like get it um and yeah and she so one of her um1.00
01:08:38.700like you know after she finished sewing her wild oats she fell in love uh and she and her wife
01:08:45.540whose name is also Anne, they got married in church in 1834. And then they went on a honeymoon
01:08:50.700together. And one of my favorite facts about Anne Lister is that she used to record her sexual0.98
01:08:55.520exploits in her diary. So this is part of how we know, like, about everything about Anne.
01:09:03.220And, but she did it in code. And her like family sort of it was like passed down and they decoded
01:09:09.500it. And they were like, this can't be because it was so, uh, like so sexy. Um, and she, she loved,
01:09:19.480uh, I don't know. I'm like afraid to say this on your podcast, but I will say it anyway. She loved
01:09:25.000to give head. And it was very much like a little competition for her of like, could she make her,0.98
01:09:30.340her female partner come more often than she came? Uh, and her, her, her, her relatives were like,
01:09:37.740perhaps we have heard but no they had decoded it correctly that's funny so it's like you're
01:09:43.800doing a cryptical and you're like oh this can't be right this can't i must have decoded this wrong
01:09:47.700this can't because these are words but this can be what it means so let's just like tuck this away
01:09:52.180because isn't that what they did her and her descendants like we're like let's just hide this
01:09:56.680back in the wall again for like a few more decades because we're not ready to handle this and then
01:09:59.960like a later generation actually and thank god like the diaries like they're in an archive actually
01:10:04.940used a brief part of one of her diaries as a reference for my book, because she talked briefly
01:10:09.100about Carolina Brunswick, because everybody was. That was my example of like, everyone was talking
01:10:13.640about her, even Ann Lister. Yeah. What does she say about Caroline? Oh, she was just like,
01:10:20.160God damn it. Everyone's talking about it. Even me. It's sort of like people who are like,0.99
01:10:23.140Oh my God, I can't believe I'm watching Love Island. I can't. I was just going to say Love
01:10:27.500Island. That was her vibe. She was just kind of like, I stayed up way too late tonight talking
01:10:31.880about love island i hate myself that was basically but carolina brunswick is what she's talking about
01:10:37.100and i was like i have to include this in my book but then there's also the um oh sorry i was just
01:10:42.200gonna say the ladies of that's what i was gonna say no that's so funny yeah i was gonna say so
01:10:46.280ann actually goes to visit the ladies of flangofflin um who were again very popular couple
01:10:52.460in the period people were very interested in them um queen charlotte actually persuaded george to
01:10:59.120given like a royal pension that they, that they lived on, um, because they were such an interesting
01:11:04.980sort of celebrity couple. So basically one of the women, um, was sort of from this like upper
01:11:09.840class family. She was the daughter of an, of an Irish Earl. So the family was like, you need to
01:11:14.640get married. We need to whatever. And they revolted these two women. They were kind of neighbors
01:11:20.500and they kept eloping together. The two, two women. Um, and they, the first time they got like
01:11:28.280sort of tracked down in like a like a farmer's hay field or something um but the second time that
01:11:35.780they eloped together um they were allowed to they were i think their family just sort of like gave
01:11:39.960up and was like all right fine um and they had an aunt uh who supported them uh financially at first
01:11:45.940and they lived together in wales for 50 years uh and people were super interested in them and they
01:11:51.980were like are they fucking like i need to know everyone like they were constantly visited by um0.63
01:11:59.180like wordsworth wrote a poem about them byron came and visited them uh people were very very um0.98
01:12:04.800compelled by the story and so ann lister went and visited them and and was trying to like hint at
01:12:10.780like are you a couple and and they wouldn't answer um and she like wrote to her friend later and she
01:12:17.180was like I just don't believe that they're not a couple but she was actually supposedly she was
01:12:23.440very inspired by them was part of the inspiration for her marrying Ann Walker so this is like so
01:12:29.980your book it's coming out I think September ladies in hating which is your sapphic story but also I
01:12:34.720wanted to mention like first of all that's the most important thing everybody should pre-order
01:12:38.200that book and get that book but also the like getting back to Bridgerton again there was hints
01:12:44.340in this last season that there's going to be a sapphic love story on bridgerton and some people
01:12:49.700freaked it well some people were mad because like the original novel like that pairing was was a
01:12:54.720heterosexual couple and i was going to be sapphic and people will it's the same thing they're like
01:12:58.120but well there wasn't lesbians and regency england and everything you just explained it's like
01:13:03.060they're completely were there absolutely were like if we're looking at any any era in like british
01:13:10.320history. It's like, this is one of the time periods where we have the most confirmed
01:13:14.840sapphic relationships happening. So it's like, I think it's what we were talking about before,
01:13:20.760where people are just like, no, I want to believe that the past is this specific kink I have.
01:13:25.560And you can't like, don't, don't kill that for me. But like, so I love that your book is coming
01:13:31.180up because it's like, I'm sure the authors know you get into all of this as well, but it's just
01:13:34.740like another example of like, no, this was like this, this was happening. This is not made up.
01:13:39.080yeah that was a real reckoning for me as someone who has been reading historical romance for 25
01:13:47.020years and is very engaged in the community and i mean i i read those bridgerton books when they
01:13:53.000came out i was like 11 and i was devouring you know like i have i when they made that a tv show
01:13:58.300and it became like the phenomenon it has been it was like the best day of my life and you know and
01:14:02.260this is a community that i'm very passionate about and a part of and then like seeing this push back
01:14:06.640against this it broke my heart I'm not gonna lie it really made made me devastated to see that and
01:14:12.080I don't know how Julia Quinn does it because she is such a lovely person um and she is like she
01:14:18.000is still she'll post about it and there'll be like dozens of vitriolic comments about like how
01:14:25.240dare you go woke and like what and she's still there she's just still plugging away posting on
01:14:33.280media it's very heroic um of her and of the show to continue on in the face of this just absolutely
01:14:41.360a mean and b wrong the responses to this to this future sapphic storyline
01:14:49.840well and also just in terms of bridgerton which is like already we don't turn to bridgerton for
01:14:57.300historical accuracy like when we're looking at the like for instance like queen charlotte what
01:15:04.500if she was like known and understood and accepted as a black woman where it's like her whole
01:15:09.320heritage i did a whole episode about that but it's like whatever her heritage was she was not
01:15:12.900historically seen as a black person she did not move in the world as a black person that is not
01:15:17.360the story but bridgerton is like but what if she was so already it's like historically
01:15:20.740like inventive so to be like bridgerton how dare you have sapphic people where it's like well we
01:15:27.020don't turn to bridgerton for accuracy actually like they're playing billy eilish songs at the
01:15:31.420ball like this is not it are we are we are we turning to them for accuracy oh we're not at all
01:15:38.460great yes i i totally agree with you although i do feel that then that somehow bleeds into this
01:15:45.560idea that that sapphic romance couldn't be historically accurate which of course as we've
01:15:51.180just shown is, is not in any way, um, the truth. So I, I, I'm, I'm wary of that particular line
01:15:59.340of discussion of the show. Yeah. Well, it just, it's, I can't even imagine for someone who's like
01:16:05.300been in the Regency world fiction world for so long, like what Bridgerton, what the phenomenon
01:16:11.440of that has meant for how complicated this makes. Yeah. Complicated. Complicated. Exactly. Yeah.
01:16:19.060Because on the one hand, you can be like, for people who don't know, for me, like, because I'm reading this book about the Regency, I'm like, people are like, oh, the Regency, like people who don't know. I'm like, oh, well, you know, Bridgerton. I was like, oh, yeah, well, I know Bridgerton. Like, it's such an easy way to explain the time period. So I appreciate that.
01:16:32.500I also say that all the time. Yes. Right. When I'm like talking to people about what I write and I'm like, well, you know, like Bridgerton. And they're like, oh, yeah, Bridgerton. It's just become like a complete shorthand for, you know, when you might have said Jane Austen. Now you can say Bridgerton.
01:16:49.060and people people know it's pretty incredible um for all the fandom stuff it has created it has
01:16:58.240it's also been i mean i absolutely love the show and i i certainly think it is available to critique
01:17:03.640and i have critiqued it myself uh but i also love it yeah it's it's just so and everything we started
01:17:10.980off a conversation with bridgerton we're ending with bridgerton but kind of like that that's the
01:17:14.920elephant in the room when you're talking about regency anything these days well and especially
01:17:19.760i think it's especially relevant to the things that we've been talking about which are a sex ed
01:17:23.520um and women and women's sexuality um and lesbian relationships so really uh it all comes back to
01:17:30.360which i think is great exactly so remind everybody again so your newest book is coming out but you
01:17:36.360have other books that are already out so just like let everybody know so they can they can get your
01:17:40.140books. Yes, I have quite a few books out now. This trilogy that we've been talking about is
01:17:46.000the Belvoir's Library Trilogy. The first one is called Ne'er Duke Well, and it came out last July.
01:17:52.400The second in the trilogy is called Earl Crush. It came out in January. And then the third one,
01:17:56.820which is the sapphic one that we've been talking about, is called Ladies and Hating,
01:17:59.980and it's out in September. Your titles are amazing. Oh, thank you.
01:18:02.620I love your titles. Thank you so much. The tradition of the pun title is still alive and
01:18:08.920well in historical romance. Um, and that makes me very happy because nothing I like more than a
01:18:12.600little wordplay. But yeah, so ladies in hating comes out in September. It can be pre-ordered.0.55
01:18:16.880I'm just looking, you have a website, alexandervasty.com. All the links are there as well.
01:18:20.840And where can people follow you? Are you, you know, if you're not online, but if you are,
01:18:25.900where are you? If you'd like, uh, sort of goofy historical facts, queer literary history,1.00
01:18:31.620things like that. I do make a lot of little silly videos on the internet, um, on Instagram or1.00
01:18:36.880TikTok, you can follow me. I just did one recently about words, historical slang for breasts.
01:18:42.960Someone asked me, someone said Redhead read titties in a historical romance and was like,0.98
01:18:47.220would they have said titties? So, so I have a video recently about historical words for breasts.0.98
01:18:54.700That's very pertinent to listeners of this podcast because we often talk about0.86