So the absence of sexuality can be just as significant as its presence? You can see lots of evidence of sexual life in the plotting of Victorian novels. You also have the Havisham plot, with the absconding husband (or fiancé) Compeyson. So a central figure in the novel is a bastard. Molly, Jaggers’ servant, is Estella’s mother she had an illegitimate relationship with Magwitch. For example, think of Great Expectations, a novel which most people think of as quite homey and not particularly sexual. On the other hand, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Victorian novel that didn’t have some kind of illicit sexuality in it. But critics don’t work on his poetry much now, partly because it feels pedantic and didactic in terms of its sexual mores. At the time, he was very widely read and admired. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have had the popularity of people like Coventry Patmore, who we now know primarily as the poet connected with the idea of ‘ The Angel in the House’. Many people (especially middle-class people) were very invested in presenting a pious, chaste version of sexual life. On one hand, there’s a strong current of respectability in the nineteenth century. How did the Victorians think about intimacy and eroticism? It seems like the topic of sex in Victorian literature is rife with misconceptions. Foreign Policy & International Relations.
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