Instruction and Advice for the Young Bride
magine you’re a young woman in the late 1800s getting ready for your wedding. What would it have been like? What would you be thinking as you prepare for your wedding day? Advice booklets and books can provide us with information. Here are some excerpts from an 1894 booklet for young brides.
To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life.
On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life. On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.
At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten:
GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.
Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency. Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife’s best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.
Imagine sitting down and reading this as you prepare for your wedding day. What are your thoughts? If you are a man, what do you think your future wife might be thinking? Do you think men and women enjoyed a healthy sex life during the Victorian Age?
Source: Smythers, 1894.
ple, whaling kept the men at sea for months. The women took over the island’s businesses, and prestige was granted to those who managed to make the money grow while their husbands were away (V. L. Bullough, 1973). Still, women were generally expected to tend to their domain of the home and children.
Sexuality was also a bit freer, and courting youth would wander into barns or look for high crops in the field to obscure their necking and groping. There was also a custom called bundling, in which young couples were allowed to share a bed as long as they were clothed, wrapped in sheets or bags, or had a wooden “bundling board” between them. The large number of premarital pregnancies suggests that couples found ways to get around their bundling impediments, but in most such cases, the couple would quickly marry (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988).
The United States: Freedom—and Slavery—in the New World
After the Revolutionary War, the church’s power began to diminish in the United States, and this led to more liberal sexual conduct. This liberalization, along with the continuing slave influx from Africa, had powerful effects on our culture’s developing sexuality.