00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is
00:00:14.260Anne Foster, and this season we've been looking at revolutions, the American Revolution,
00:00:18.640Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution. And in so doing, we've been really looking
00:00:23.160at the people who lived in those times and what their lives were like. That's what we
00:00:27.360like to do on this podcast a lot is not just to look at the big famous names of people and the,
00:00:32.660you know, the wars they fought or whatever, but like, what was it like to be a person and to live
00:00:36.160in these times and places? And part of what we've come across in several episodes is sexual
00:00:41.620relationships between the people who are fighting the French revolution, the people who are in the
00:00:47.140Haitian revolution and the American revolution and all the interactions that people in all those
00:00:52.240places had with each other. And it just got me thinking about, well, just things like
00:00:58.460contraception and same-sex relationships. And what was it like to be a person and to live in
00:01:04.220this time? What was sex ed like for somebody who's living during the French Revolution or in that
00:01:08.140era? And luckily for all of us, Alexandra Vasti is here to the rescue. So Alexandra is the author
00:01:14.500of Regency romance novels. She's also, she's done so much research for these novels and just in her
00:01:21.260own non-novel writing life. She teaches literature at a university. So like the history of literature
00:01:27.340is something she knows a lot about. And she has written a post and I'll link to it in the show
00:01:32.100notes for this episode called Regency Sex Ed, which is so fascinating and so interesting and
00:01:37.760sort of inspired by some of the plot lines on the TV show Bridgerton. And she knows so much
00:01:43.120about this topic and the Regency period, if you don't know, it's like the Jane Austen time period.
00:01:48.680it's like the Bridgerton time period. It's the early 1800s, basically, is the understanding of
00:01:53.960this time. So it's just after the French Revolution. So there's a lot of overlap between
00:01:58.160what was happening in the French Revolution and the time period of the Regency in the terms of
00:02:03.060social mores and sex ed and just what books are people reading and how are people learning about
00:02:08.640the clitoris and all this kinds of stuff. So it's a fascinating discussion that I was able to record
00:02:14.280with Alexandra. And so I hope you really enjoy this discussion with Alexandra Vasty about
00:02:18.420the sex lives of Regency people. So I'm joined today by Alexandra Vasti, author of Regency
00:02:31.420romance novels, and also a historian. And we're here to talk about where those two things intersect,
00:02:36.840which is basically sex ed for the Regency era. Yes, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to talk
00:02:44.400about this. I love when I have the opportunities to kind of combine my academic side and also to
00:02:51.900talk about the books when I get to be like Professor Alexandra Vasti. So I'm very excited
00:02:58.720and delighted to be here. Although I will say I'm a literature PhD. I do a lot of literary history,
00:03:05.860but I'm not a historian. I really am like a book reader, a scholar of books.
00:03:12.120So a history, a scholar of books, and you've done a lot of research, obviously, for your books. So a history enthusiast. That's how I describe myself as well.
00:03:22.160I guess I just want to clarify also for the listeners, because we're doing a series right now about the French Revolution. And I just want to clarify. So what you're going to be talking about is like Regency, which is kind of the decade after when the French Revolution was, but things didn't change that much.
00:03:37.400what we're talking about. It's not like, it's not in our modern era. It's not like, you know,
00:03:43.120the difference between the 1980s and the 1990s. It's like things changed slowly, especially for
00:03:48.500like lower class people. Yeah. I always think that's sort of interesting though, because I
00:03:53.020think sometimes we can kind of like flatten out history a little bit and be like, oh yes,
00:03:56.020everything in the 1800s. But actually there's quite vast differences between like 1804 and 1884.
00:04:02.020And I definitely see that a lot with historical romance because people often say, oh, they sort of treat them all the same or sort of imagine that they were all the same or that what would have been on people's minds or happening in 1884 is the same thing as a regency, which is definitely not true.
00:04:20.060So, so yeah, I mean, I think that we'll, we'll see a lot of the same books were very popular, you know, in the period, but definitely there are, there are definitely differences as well. And, you know, from, from France and England and the U.S., all of those things, we see, we definitely see differences there too.
00:04:37.640Definitely. Definitely. So first, can you explain, I mean, you have this historical
00:04:43.600interest just from your own personal work and then from your books also. So explain the concept
00:04:49.460of the library that is in your books. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So my trilogy of novels is called
00:04:57.980the Belfort's Library Trilogy, and it is centered around this sort of notion that I had of my main
00:05:04.920character, this is a fictional library, it's not real, of her starting this secret circulating
00:05:10.760library for the purpose of sex education for women. So the way that this came up is that this
00:05:17.860was not like my first idea for the series. I really am like, as a writer of novels, I really
00:05:23.760start with the characters and kind of what the characters' interests and problems and conflict
00:05:28.600and, you know, how, how they're going to get through the book. Um, so I had this idea of this
00:05:34.000female main character, my heroine as kind of a fixer, right? Like she, she's sort of a busy
00:05:40.960body. She's like always in people's business and she's, she's sort of fixing things and handling0.99
00:05:44.280things. And I wanted her to have a deep, dark secret, uh, or else the book would be quite short,
00:05:50.120you know, 40 feet is long and they get married at the end. Um, so, so I started thinking about
00:05:54.640this character and thinking about her society and what she would see in the world around her that
00:06:00.160she wanted to fix, that she wanted to change. And I was also thinking about things that were
00:06:06.860happening in the world around me when I was writing this book, and I was thinking a lot
00:06:09.420about book banning. So this was 2021, where we really start to see this big resurgence of
00:06:14.160book banning in schools, which obviously things haven't really changed in any positive way in
00:06:20.0802025. But I was thinking about information access and specifically information, uh, access about sex
00:06:25.980and sexuality and about bodies and gender and how that's used as a tool for control, right? Like if
00:06:30.960we can keep that information from people, we can control them better. Um, and so obviously that's
00:06:35.980very alive, uh, in the 18th and 19th centuries as well. So I had this idea that she would start
00:06:40.700this library. Um, it's like a well-known public library, but has the secret stock of sex ed books,
00:06:47.680um, for women. Uh, and, and that was sort of her way of, of tackling the problem of sex education1.00
00:06:53.380in the period. So then, because, you know, I'm a literary historian, I was like, you know what I
00:06:57.860need to do is fill this library with like real books, right? Like what books would she actually
00:07:03.880have stocked her library with, um, you know, in, in 1815. So that was kind of the genesis of the
00:07:09.800idea for the library. And, and I really had a good time, uh, stocking her library and filling
00:07:16.120it with all of these books that really existed in the period. It's interesting because I have my
00:07:21.540nonfiction book is coming out next year, Rebel of the Regency, The Scandalous Saga of Carolina
00:07:26.440Brunswick, Britain's Uncrowned Queen. And one of the things that I dove into for my research for
00:07:32.200that as well was looking at contraception and what would this woman have known about sex?
00:07:40.840And this is because, well, her story involves this, but also because she's apparently having a lot of lovers.0.98
00:07:47.740And I was like, well, she's having a lot of lovers.
00:07:49.780Then either she's having a lot of children or she was doing something to prevent having a lot of children.
00:07:54.660And what were those things? And let me just research this a little bit.
00:07:58.160But then also this is coming in, your books as well are in a post-Bridgerton on Netflix world where there's kind of,
00:08:05.880And even the first season of that, there's this kind of way that there's a lot of people learn about history. The average person, not you and me, but the average person who just kind of like watches Bridgerton sometimes, reads novels sometimes like, wow, that's what history was like, I guess.
00:08:24.180okay so just assuming that like oh this is true wow women didn't know about sex until their wedding
00:08:29.600night what a shocking way to live I guess that's how history was and it's like oh was it like that
00:08:36.560that makes for a dramatic interesting um fictional tv show but like what the research you're finding0.75
00:08:42.460it's like there was these were books that people that existed like women didn't necessarily like
00:08:47.500tell tell me about your thoughts about that those plot lines on Bridgerton yeah yeah um it does make
00:10:11.640And it's true in the 19th century, right?
00:10:13.780So could there have been women who were like absolutely astonished by their, you know, whatever, like, you know, consumptory experiences?
00:10:22.760Sure. But there's no there's nothing to suggest that that was the norm.
00:10:27.320Right. And I think that because we do see that in these kind of popular television shows, it tends to get flattened or to be thought of like, oh, that's the norm.
00:10:36.220But if we look at texts from the period, like, even one thing that I think is really helpful is to look at books that were published, like, as contemporary novels in the period, and what did those characters know about sex and sexuality?
00:10:52.440They totally understood, like, even unmarried women understood, like, the consequences of having sex, that that would lead to a baby, that, you know, that this was a thing that happened and how that all worked.0.62
00:11:04.480it was definitely far more the norm to know what sex was and how sex worked and that sex led to a
00:11:12.120baby than to not know that. Actually, that's such a funny point. I hadn't related that to like,
00:11:18.320what about people today? And I'll just tell you an anecdote that occurred to me. So I have a friend
00:11:23.000who, um, she's an OBGYN and, you know, sometimes she will share just interesting things that
00:11:28.280happened to her in her practice. And there was a patient who I think was, I think was a teenager,
00:11:33.360or a pregnant teenager and they were talking about like her delivery plan and stuff and the
00:11:37.920and then it became apparent by the girl's reactions to some of what they were saying
00:11:42.220that she thought that babies were born out the belly button like a pregnant a pregnant person
00:11:48.420who was like in a quite advanced stage of pregnancy and they're talking about her birth
00:11:52.020plan and she's just like why are you talking about this and it's just like how do you think
00:11:55.380the baby is going to emerge from your body and she thought the belly button expanded and the baby
00:11:58.980just comes out. Right. And not the norm, but it's, it's totally feasible. I mean, I, we did0.99
00:12:06.180fertility treatments for our children and it is sort of a well-known thing that in reproductive
00:12:10.840endocrinology, one of the things they ask you is like, but how are you having sex? Like you
00:12:16.120got pregnant, but like, let's confirm the, the, the, right. Because some people don't know. And
00:12:22.180they go to the infertility doctor because they've been, you know, thinking that they're, that they're
00:12:27.240having procreative sex and aren't uh so yeah it is it is but again just like today that that's
00:12:34.260feasible it's possible it's the thing that could happen but it definitely wouldn't be the norm like
00:12:38.600it's not everybody yeah right or even common right so jane austen um you know we see plenty
00:12:44.520of characters who are who are having you know unmarried sex in jane austen she doesn't necessarily
00:12:49.720say that on the page but it's quite clear right like pride and prejudice the the reason that this
00:12:55.360this sort of so dramatic when we have the elopement with Wickham is that they're living
00:13:01.180in sin together and they're not married. She even says, you know, Elizabeth Bennett says like,
00:13:06.680oh, well, for such a purpose as this, she could see why her sister's charms would be
00:13:11.060sufficient. Like he doesn't want to marry her, but he does want to have sex with her.0.99
00:13:15.680Right. We also see like in Jane Austen's letters to her sister, she talks about0.93
00:13:19.920a cousin who, you know, was intimate with her husband prior to marriage. And she says they
00:13:26.860get married. And she says to her sister, she's glad she doesn't have a congratulatory letter to
00:13:31.920write. Meaning she's glad that the cousin didn't get pregnant, right? Jane Austen, who is an
00:13:37.100unmarried woman, you know, of genteel birth, her dad is a vicar, right? Like she knows what sex is0.93
00:13:43.820and how it works and the whole process of it. That would have been the norm. And she's definitely1.00
00:13:48.660expecting her readers to understand and to know what she's saying and what she's getting at
00:13:54.120when these characters are having sex in the books. I think the Bridgerton thing,
00:13:59.620like I just, it's such a popular show. So like a lot of people watch that and a lot of people
00:14:04.220who I've talked to are like, wow, you know, isn't it so sad in the past there wasn't sex
00:14:08.480that women didn't know this. And it's part of this sort of trend that I see over and over again
00:14:11.820that I'm sure I'm guilty of as well, of people just sort of assuming that people in the past
00:14:16.080were unintelligent and uninformed and we are so much better now like where it's like no we're all0.95
00:14:23.180it's people are exactly the same like it's not that people used to be so dumb and now we're so0.86
00:14:29.760smart but it's kind of like it's the same thing you know like on Downton Abbey or something where0.58
00:14:33.540they're all like a telephone what and everyone's just like oh no like electricity like it makes
00:14:39.500us feel good to see people in the past be like silly but it's that doesn't mean that everyone
00:14:45.640in the past was, was less informed than us. Absolutely. It definitely makes us feel better
00:14:52.080to think like, oh, we've progressed as a species. And then, you know, like we look at you're like,
00:14:55.960oh, perhaps not actually. And I, and I do think there is a lot of like flattening of the historical
00:15:02.060past. So I, I always blame everything on the Victorians. They're like my, we do too.
00:15:06.740Yes. All right. Yeah. So, so in the Victorian period, we do see a lot of pushback against
00:15:40.100And I just think that that Victorian ideal has kind of got this chokehold on people's understanding of the past that like, oh, that's how, you know, everyone was like, the whole past was all the Victorian period. And I don't understand why that is. And I think it's really harmful, actually, to think that the historical past was this like repressed, puritanical, you know, hyper-Victorian, like we can't talk about anything. We can't be frank about sexuality.
00:16:07.140uh i think it was harmful in the victorian period and i think it's harmful uh today
00:16:11.040yeah and just talking about the differences um between country to country as well like in the
00:16:18.200research that i was doing it's kind of like well this is happening in england and then what i've
00:16:21.800been looking at this season on the podcast french revolution in france and stuff it's like a couple
00:16:26.580weeks ago i had an episode where a guest was on we were talking about this american guy i don't
00:16:31.360know if you've heard of him gouverneur morris he was like one of the founding fathers and he went
00:16:35.660to France and he was like, he was like a kind of like ladies man in America. And he went to France
00:16:40.420and he was like, Oh my God, like, this is like, everything's up a notch. Like he went there. And
00:16:44.980the first thing they said was like, how many lovers do you have? And he's just like, ah,
00:16:48.880like the, just the sexual mores were different from country to country. Like, have you come
00:16:54.240across that like France versus England just in your own research? Oh, absolutely. So many of the
00:16:59.660books that, um, that I have in, in the library. Uh, so the real books in my fictional library and
00:17:06.400my books are French. We're French. And you know, it's sort of funny because there, I think part of
00:17:11.980it was like publishing laws and obscenity laws were different as well. So these things could
00:17:15.420get published in French more easily. But if you look at the translation dates, they are getting
00:17:19.660translated to English, like within months. People are like, Oh, you know, who's going to like that?
00:17:24.320Those like dorky prudish English people, they're not going to produce it, but Oh,
00:17:28.700we can translate it and we can sell, you know, thousands of copies because they're going to want0.93
00:17:33.120it. So a lot of the books, um, the, the sort of explicitly erotic books, uh, are definitely
00:17:38.760French in origin, uh, and then get translated into English and sell for a long time in English as
00:17:44.520well. Yeah. And just in terms of what I'm trying, I forget if I read this in your article or in
00:17:48.820something else that I was researching, but just in terms of like contraception and stuff, like it
00:17:53.400was like there's stores that you can like buy these things and there's kind of like code words
00:17:58.140where you can buy them. But I think it was much people go to France to get them and bring them
00:18:01.340back to England and stuff like that. I think I read that. Well, there's also a... So condoms were
00:18:08.960used in use. They were specifically used in the period to prevent pregnancy. We don't have germ
00:18:16.400theory yet. So there's maybe sort of a sense that like, oh, if you use a condom, that seems
00:18:20.700generally to help you. There wasn't a really clear sense of like, oh, this can be used to prevent
00:18:24.660disease like it's really very much about preventing pregnancy but it didn't prevent disease because
00:18:28.520they were made of like sheep intestines they could be made of right things that that allowed
00:18:32.620you know bacteria to go through anyway right so so anyway but condoms were absolutely in use um
00:18:39.220and there's this a lot of times when they're referenced um we see them being called like a
00:18:46.400french device um they were i don't know the word off the top of my head but they were called gloves
00:18:51.040um and they but they would use the french word for the glove but you know we see a lot of things
00:18:58.460even in in in england and in french where if it's like a little scandalous they'll be like oh this
00:19:03.440was a this belonged to this other tradition and we didn't invent this it was the you know libidinous
00:19:08.600french who who created this this device um but you know french kissing we call it french kissing
00:19:13.740but originally or not originally but one of the very early references to it in french they call
00:19:18.560it florentine kissing it was like oh it was a little bit different who invented this this sexy
00:19:25.080sort of way of kissing right so i i do think that part of it yes um you know is that that attitudes
00:19:30.960were a little bit more open um in france and other places in europe but also there was a sense
00:19:35.820that like oh we could just blame it on those um you know lewd uh gallics and and not have to take0.98
00:19:42.340responsibility for it. But yes, I'm very interested in talking about contraception1.00
00:19:46.620and how it was popularized and discussed in the period because I think that's super interesting.
00:19:54.560I think it's also like, that's another thing that, well, part of it is the novel. There's
00:19:59.640so many books, like, you know, in your book, there's this library of real books, like so
00:20:03.560many books existed. And now a daze when you see this section of like classics, it's kind of like
00:20:10.080Charles Dickens Jane Austen it's kind of like these are the authors who like survived through
00:20:16.060till now but it's like but back then there was so many books and we just don't know about them
00:20:20.320so it's kind of like Jane Austen was not the only person writing books in the regency era
00:20:24.620but they're kind of the only her and like Mary Shelley like a few other people like those are
00:20:28.520the ones that are still kind of like studied and thought about but there was so many books and so
00:20:32.740it's also like that sort of flattening out to be like well that was the only novel anyone had to
00:20:37.040read. It's like, no, there's so many books that people are reading. And so stuff about
00:20:40.700contraception, I think like a really popular genre of book in this era and in the 18th century
00:20:48.980and in the early 19th century was like courtesans memoirs, like the memoirs of a, we did some
00:20:55.620episodes about this Irish brothel owner called Peg Plunkett and like her diaries, like she lays
00:21:00.420it all out. Like she's just saying everything that happened. So people who were not courtesans0.65
00:21:04.700or people who did not visit courtesans like to read these just to be like to learn like the
00:21:08.500titillating stories but also there'd be stuff in there about contraception right oh my gosh yes
00:21:14.060everything you just said is like my deep deep special interest uh so i will try not to lecture
00:21:20.480for too long no please go ahead so all right so my when i'm i'm sitting down i'm gonna like i'm
00:21:28.100gonna i'm gonna think about this library that i'm that i'm creating i'm gonna use real books
00:21:31.740And I'm thinking, what books would she use?
00:21:35.460And I write down, I'm sort of like taking notes.
00:21:37.360And I'm like, well, she's going to use memoirs, right?
00:21:38.900She's going to use like all these, you know, sexy memoirs that were very popular.
00:21:42.480Like she's going to use medical books, right?
00:27:02.000So that starts in as the epistolary form.
00:27:04.360So when we first start seeing novels there, that epistolary framing is almost ubiquitous, right? Because otherwise, why would you be writing down the story of what this guy did and what this guy said? You have to frame it as like, oh, I'm writing a letter to my friend. So the epistolary form is just inherent to many, most, almost all early novels.
00:27:24.040But yeah, I think it's so, so interesting. And also a lot of these books are absolutely written
00:27:30.940as kind of like a warning text. We see a lot of that kind of moral panic over like what could
00:27:39.720happen to women. But the line between warning and something that's designed to arouse or titillate0.89
00:27:46.180is very thin also, right? I particularly, and I guess probably just because I'm a romance novelist,
00:27:53.540I tend to be like extra fond of the ones that aren't warnings but that are just like and this
00:27:59.120is great you know I'm gonna teach you about this thing um School of Venus she describes it as the0.95
00:28:04.780many ways of fucking she's like I'm gonna teach you about the many ways of fucking because it's0.96
00:28:09.820gonna make your life so much better and you're and you're gonna have a really happy marriage0.98
00:28:12.880because of that but so one um erotic novel that that's like unbelievably famous that you can't
00:28:19.000to talk about the period without talking about is Fanny Hill. So Fanny Hill is one of the few
00:28:24.800that's written in English that they didn't have to steal from the French. And it's written by
00:28:30.240John Cleland and it was first published in 1748. And so Fanny Hill, it's framed as her kind of
00:28:39.280memoirs. So this idea of like framing something as memoirs, sometimes they were real, sometimes
00:28:44.340are fake. So there was, there was a sort of device that like, oh, I discovered this woman's
00:28:49.200letters in a drawer where she talks about her, her experiences. And, and now I'm, I'm so scandalized
00:28:55.600that I'm forced to publish this. So you all can be scandalized too. And so, you know, so anyway,
00:29:01.180so it's, it's written as sort of these, these fictional memoirs of Fanny Hill, a woman of
00:29:06.340pleasure. So she's a sex worker in the 18th century. And she, she falls in love with one of
00:29:13.100her clients and then she they they are separated through the you know disasters of life um she has0.99
00:29:19.480this like sexy career and then they get back together and then they live happily ever after
00:29:23.200it's quite charming actually the the experiences but fanny hill is also written as um you know
00:29:29.800it's it's like here's how she learned about sex so that sexual awakening or that sexual discovery
00:29:35.720is very, very much present in that as well.
00:29:41.440So she goes to this house of pleasure intentionally,1.00
00:29:44.840like she intends to become a sex worker.1.00
00:29:47.000She's initiated into the ways of sex1.00
00:29:49.600through the other female sex workers1.00
00:29:52.600who, you know, quite hands-on teaching experience.
00:29:58.800So all of the first sex scenes in the book
00:31:53.540every woman he was like is it great you know he's he wanted to sell some books also um so he goes
00:31:59.280through and talks about the different types of contraception um he was a big proponent of the
00:32:04.680sponge um he was he he thought sponges were the way um and they were very popular uh in the period
00:32:13.220as a form of contraception so this is like i'm gonna presume and you can crack me some sort of
00:32:19.040sea sponge based on technology and that would just be a thing that would like absorb the semen
00:32:24.500is that right yeah absolutely you'd put it up there the semen would it would form a physical0.99
00:32:29.660barrier um people would soak them in things that they thought would be like a spermicide also so
00:32:35.120you could soak your sponge in vinegar and then you know um insert it yeah um also fun you could
00:32:42.040go into a shop and there would be like a clock um and each you know hour was like a different
00:32:48.940form of contraception and you would turn the hand of the clock to the one you wanted. And then the
00:32:54.940clerk would like pass it out to you. Love it. Yeah. You could kind of like pretend that you
00:33:00.160had not really, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So anyway, so, um, so he really liked the sponge.
00:33:05.740He was a big proponent of the sponge. He thought that that was good. Um, he thought it was the
00:33:10.040most effective. Uh, he, in the book, he's like, I don't know, but people say that you can't even
00:33:16.780feel it when he's like not that i've ever partaken myself um so but also he talks about condoms um
00:33:25.900as well uh he talks about withdrawal um you know as a way of preventing pregnancy again we there's
00:33:33.480really no sense of like diseases or germs or germ theory so yeah because people didn't know anything
00:33:38.580they're just like here's some leeches like everything's cool like yeah i mean we just
00:33:42.000don't know about germs yeah right so they're that's not available to them um he also talks
00:33:47.340about that's really funny um in the book he's like so a lot of people believe that you can
00:33:52.380ejaculate away inside but not up by the womb he's like he's like but you know he's like you can
00:34:02.160decide for yourself but he's like but to me the notion that you can really tell if you're by the
00:34:08.420womb or not he's like is is that clear he's like so i i'm just gonna say that's not the one i would
00:34:15.280recommend so apparently that was like an extant theory that you could ejaculate but not like by
00:34:19.820the womb just direct yeah okay just shoot it elsewhere yeah no i don't think it was
00:34:25.220the other thing that is reading that that um carlyle talks about in the book is that he's
00:34:29.880like we don't totally know how conception works um which is interesting too right because there's
00:34:35.540There's obviously a lot of physical evidence, but the, you know, sex cells and, you know, different types of cellular meiosis and mitosis is not something that people are clear on in any way.
00:34:49.080So we've got, you know, thousands of years of physical evidence that like doing this thing results in babies, but not a really strong sense of how exactly it works.
00:34:56.780So we're really kind of feeling it out as you go for how contraception could be handled.
00:35:01.800Well, and this makes me think about something else that we haven't yet talked, like my season
00:35:05.880of this podcast, we've been looking at all these revolutions and like, we're leading up to a
00:35:09.900discussion of Marie Antoinette and her life. But like, just to get into like some Marie Antoinette
00:35:13.780spoilers, like she and her husband did not have children for several years. And it was really
00:35:19.280stressful for her and for like the country of France, because it's just like, why are they not
00:35:23.200eventually, eventually they do conceive, like there was sort of like intervention, her brother,
00:35:29.000like so I think part of it was just like what method were they using or what the physiology
00:35:34.520of her husband was maybe like they had to use a different method but it's just if you have these
00:35:37.920two teenagers and they don't know what they're doing like you were saying people going to the
00:35:41.920fertility doctor or some people going to my friend who's the who's the doctor sometimes like
00:35:46.120yeah we're having trouble conceiving and she's like are you having sex like this and they're
00:35:48.940like what like like like the Featherington sisters they're like I would never have thought
00:35:53.760to have done that you know so like there are people who just don't know yeah so
00:35:58.600there's a book called Aristotle's Masterpiece. And Aristotle's Masterpiece was first published
00:36:05.060in, I want to say, 1648, 1600s. And it purports to be a medical textbook about conception,
00:36:16.820how to conceive, pregnancy, labor, things like that. And this book, Aristotle, so Aristotle,
00:36:25.680people thought like Aristotle was sort of both like he, he was very knowledgeable and this is,
00:36:29.960Oh, this is classical. So it's, you know, it makes it, it sort of gives it this ethos of,
00:36:34.080of, of accuracy, but also like there was this association of Aristotle with like sexy stuff.
00:36:38.760Like a lot of sexy stuff gets like the Aristotle stamp. So anyway, Aristotle's masterpiece. Um,
00:36:44.120when I was first researching this, I was doing, uh, I was, I was looking up academic articles
00:36:49.900about Aristotle's masterpiece and I kept finding them about James Joyce's Ulysses. And I was like,
00:36:54.580what the hell? Like, I was like, is this a different book? Like that book, you know,
00:36:58.160was published in 1922. No, Aristotle's masterpiece is like the biggest seller for 300 years. People
00:37:07.700were, were this book with like the book. Um, so it's published anonymously and obviously like
00:37:13.480copyright, um, is not copyrighted in 1648. We don't really have that. So, so printers would
00:37:19.040be like, Oh, this is a good book. I'm going to print it too. And like print their own version
00:37:22.820of it. So it gets for literally 300 years, this book is like the preeminent book on, on, you know,
00:37:30.400procreation and conception. Um, and it gets constantly edited and changed and new things
00:37:36.160are added. Um, I've seen some really interesting articles about Aristotle's masterpiece. They're
00:37:40.460like, what, what do we learn about people's ideas of sex? If we compare the 1648 version versus the
00:37:46.4601748 version versus the 1848 version, because, you know, things really change vastly. Some of
00:37:54.380the versions of it are very much focused on like learning and, and kind of, this is the most that
00:38:02.200we know. They're more scientific. And some of them are more kind of like a warning, right? They're
00:38:06.540like, oh, this is what can happen if things go wrong. There's a lot of sense of like, kind of
00:38:13.280the, the secrets of the woman's body. And like, how do we, how can we ever learn her secrets?
00:38:20.580So there's a lot of discussion of, of like the clitoris and how it works and how is it important?0.66
00:38:25.900Is it not important? Does it play a role in procreation? We don't know. Here's what we
00:38:29.920can observe. There's a ton of discussion of virginity. Even in, even in 1648, you know,0.94
00:38:37.920it's very clear in the book that like the hymen doesn't necessarily mean anything right so they're
00:38:44.680like you know it the hymen it may exist it may not exist they're like maybe that there's one
00:38:51.720part of it that's like the humors can eat it away if you have bad humors your hymen can just vanish
00:38:56.400um but there's also a big part of it that's like how to fake a hymen so right so so this idea of
00:39:02.840the hymen was quite you know it could be serious business it could be used in in courts um in the
00:39:08.080court of law if you're if you've you know a woman was was examined and found to have a hymen or not
00:39:13.160have a hymen that could be used in court so there's a lot of discussion of like how do you fake it if
00:39:17.820you need if you're about to get married and you're very worried that your husband is gonna think
00:39:21.300you're not a virgin like how can you create a fake hymen can i say that is that is still a thing
00:39:27.640my, my friend, the doctor has had patients who are from like very conservative, um, cultural
00:39:35.100groups who ask if like, could you sign it? Like they asked my friend, like, can you sign a
00:39:39.440certificate saying like my hymen is intact even when it's not. And she's just like, I don't,
00:39:44.560I don't do that. I've, that's not a doctor's note that I will provide for you, but there's,
00:39:48.500yeah. And there's people who put insert like blood filled balloons and like, she's, she's0.98
00:39:53.060learned about all these things that people do because like in some cultures, like it's really
00:39:56.580mandatory, that there's this like, I'm breaking moment. So that's interesting that, yeah,
00:40:02.140people were doing that then people are still doing that now.
00:40:04.940And right, and it's, it's kind of bonkers, too, that in 1648, the people writing this book are
00:40:13.220like, and even if it doesn't exist, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. And now it's 2020.
00:40:19.500Right. And yet still this myth persists somehow.
00:40:23.540And now for a quick advertising break.
00:40:27.240Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
00:40:32.300Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,
00:40:37.220the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,
01:00:47.280Um, sort of while they're trapped are forced to kind of confront, you know, the sexiness
01:00:53.160underlying the, the hatred as you do in a Roman's novel.
01:00:57.300And so because they are novelists, I got to really indulge in myself in talking about the novels that they would have read that would have formed them as writers and that would have been available to them in thinking about their sexuality, right?
01:01:15.800So, as I mentioned, Fanny Hill was really popular.
01:01:21.860It's definitely a book that they would have heard of if not read, although, of course, I have them read it.
01:01:28.240And like I said, the first few sex scenes in that book are all between women.0.76
01:01:33.500And it's really presented in 1748 as like that's totally normal.
01:01:40.640So, um, there is a character, uh, who the first character that, um, kind of instructs Fanny in the ways of, um, sex is they're in bed together and they're, you know, she's, she's, she's showing, you know, Fanny how everything works and she gets like very aroused.
01:01:59.720And she like kind of has Fanny bring her to completion.
01:02:04.600And then there's a little discussion of this character's sexuality.
01:02:08.400And Fanny says it wasn't that she preferred women necessarily, although in my experiences, I did meet some women who did.0.74
01:02:16.760It was just that she liked sex and she could be aroused by whoever she was with.
01:02:22.220And I'm like, oh, you know, like 1748.
01:02:26.340this is just presented as like one of various ways of, of have existing in the world as a
01:02:33.740sexual being and having this outlook on sexuality and different, different sexual, what we would
01:02:41.040today call sexual orientations are presented in the book. They're not really considered
01:02:44.980shameful or shocking. There's like sort of one part is sort of played for comedy, which is that
01:02:50.080one of the women from their brothel likes to dress up as, as a man. That's like part of her0.95
01:02:56.240gender presentation and so she then a man thinking she is a man a man who prefers men
01:03:03.540hits on her and they go off together and then he's like quite upset actually to discover what's
01:03:09.220like underneath her her clothing um and but it's presented sort of like for comedic effect that he's
01:03:14.080just like okay well i guess fine sure we'll go at it but it's very funny that this you know what we
01:03:18.380might consider like a traditional heteronormative pairing is like this disappointment you know he's
01:03:23.460like, fine, I guess, I guess I'll do it this way. Um, so yeah, so it's, it's just, we see this much
01:03:32.440less judgmental attitude, um, than I think most 2025 readers would expect to see in a text written
01:03:39.840in 1748. Um, we do see kind of increasingly more pushback, um, against, uh, homosexuality as we get
01:03:48.420into the 19th century and especially, especially into the Victorian period because the Victorians
01:03:52.120or the villains as always um but there's a lot of discussion of it so like um there were so one
01:03:59.780thing that I think is always interesting to share is that in England sex between women was never
01:04:04.040criminalized um that was not there it was like I was like but what are they doing like they're
01:04:10.780they're not doing it you know they're not they're not doing anything uh right it's that thing where0.96
01:04:16.180It's just like, well, if there's not a penis, then that's not sex, I guess.0.99
01:04:41.100And the judge is like, but what are they doing in the bed?
01:04:44.840he's like i just want to know more about what's happening he like can't conceive of like what
01:04:50.960could be going on there um so sex between women was never criminalized um although sex between
01:04:55.520men was um and we see occasional you know kind of that would be like a big news story that like
01:05:00.880someone was was tried for this and um you know whatever and and we see a lot of people talking
01:05:06.420about it in real life about should this be illegal and we see a lot of people pushing back
01:05:11.460at the time saying there's one like really charming it's like the the diaries of just
01:05:16.300like this random farmer um and it's a really interesting uh historical document because
01:05:21.080we a lot of times we only have access to kind of like the upper class and kind of what their
01:05:25.740thoughts on things were but so this diary is one of our few like ways of accessing people from the
01:05:31.620working class and so this farmer his i think i want to say it's like 1810 maybe he says something
01:05:38.280like, if God gave them this desire, then surely it can't be immoral. And it's just really lovely.
01:05:44.840And like, again, like that is 1810, right? Like this is not some thing that happened yesterday.
01:05:51.440And I think people often are really not aware of the actual historical realities of the period,
01:05:57.600which is not this, you know, homophobic thing, even that we see later in the Victorian period.
01:06:03.020Well, I think also part of this whole discussion is that marriage at that time, like French Revolution time, Regency era, is very much about like alliances and real estate and bank accounts.
01:06:17.460It wasn't, especially in like the higher classes you get, like it was never about like love and like you had sex so you would have children so they could inherit the real estate and the money.
01:06:26.320so it's like if especially in france like so it's like yeah so you have lovers but like you
01:06:30.800have your husband and then that's who's the father of your children so if a wife if a woman married
01:06:36.300to a man is having a sexual affair with another woman it's like well she's not gonna conceive a0.50
01:06:41.460child so kind of like who cares right like that's not gonna threaten the lineage yeah right it's it
01:06:49.440is very much non-threatening in that way there's like a kind of um well-known political cartoon
01:06:55.660that I also referenced in Ladies in Heating,
01:06:57.800where there's these two women kissing in the park.0.99
01:07:01.300They're like sort of entangled on a bench
01:11:02.520Queen Charlotte actually persuaded George to give them like a royal pension that they lived on because they were such an interesting sort of celebrity couple.
01:11:12.580So basically one of the women was sort of from this like upper class family.
01:11:16.940She was the daughter of an Irish earl.
01:11:19.600So the family was like, you need to get married.
01:18:07.980thank you so much this sort of the tradition of the pun title is still alive and well in historical
01:18:15.920romance um and that makes me very happy because nothing I like more than a little wordplay
01:18:19.640but yeah so ladies and hating comes out in September it can be pre-ordered I'm just
01:18:23.580looking you have a website alexandervasty.com all the links are there as well and where can
01:18:27.860people follow you are you yeah I will not blame you if you're not online but if you are where are
01:18:32.660If you like sort of goofy historical facts, queer literary history, things like that, I do make a lot of little silly videos on the internet, on Instagram or TikTok. You can follow me. I just did one recently about historical slang for breasts. Someone asked me, someone said Redhead read titties in a historical romance and was like, would they have said titties? So I have a video recently about historical words for breasts.
01:19:00.100that's very pertinent to listeners of this podcast because we often talk about um titties out
01:19:07.640behavior the answer is almost certainly yes although they would not have probably spelled
01:19:14.780it titties um but yes that would definitely have been available and legible i will just mention we
01:19:21.220you know this has been a long discussion but i do find it also interesting that uh
01:19:26.060the french revolution if you think about like marie antoinette and like how she dressed like
01:19:29.940the big the huge dresses and stuff and then the sudden pivot into the like region z the sort of
01:19:36.120like the draping the grecian sort of dresses like and some of those were so sexy like completely
01:19:42.640see-through dresses like they were having like cotton muslin people like wet themselves down0.73
01:19:46.560so you could see their nipples like this was like sexuality was like not hidden away in this time
01:19:53.640period absolutely the dresses were just i'm like oh my i didn't i have heard that the the dampening
01:20:04.200the dresses is like a what wasn't real like this kind of historical myth i don't know historical
01:20:09.120fashion is not my area of expertise in any way although i will say i have heard that that is
01:20:13.800it was like in political cartoons and kind of like satirizing like this new like way too sexy
01:20:19.800revealing yeah i think it might have been like a couple of famous courtesan type people maybe went
01:20:26.240to one party dressed like that once and it's just like everyone's doing it this is what everyone's
01:20:30.480up to but even the fact that they did that was like okay okay this is not the like victorian
01:20:36.340era this is something different anyway thank you so much for this conversation i was so much
01:20:41.600looking forward to it and this this was so fun thank you so much for having me this is truly
01:24:13.600Transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malek.
01:24:17.660You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as $1 a month at patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer.
01:24:27.080Vulgar History merchandise is available at vulgarhistory.com slash store for Americans and for everyone else at vulgarhistory.redbubble.com.
01:24:36.280Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod and get in touch with me via email at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.
01:24:46.500Legendary stories, awe-inspiring sound, and endless adventure.
01:24:52.400Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.
01:24:57.080Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale
01:25:02.300The paranormal mysteries of liminal London