The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception 1800-1975 [Hardcover]

Hera Cook (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199252394 | ISBN-13: 978-0199252398 | Publication Date: March 11, 2004 | Edition: First Edition

Between 1800 and 1975, sexuality in the West was transformed. Hera Cook shows how the growing effectiveness of contraception gradually eroded the connection between sexuality and reproduction. The increasing control over fertility was crucial to the remaking of heterosexual physical sexual behaviour and had a massive impact on women's lives. Dr Cook charts how, why, and when attitudes towards sex changed from the repression of the nineteenth century to the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Cook's compelling and convincing conclusions will reshape our understanding of nineteenth and twentieth-century sexuality. It is a refreshing challenge and essential reading."--American Historical Review

About the Author

Hera Cook is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Sydney.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition edition (March 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199252394
• ISBN-13: 978-0199252398
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,444,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent study of sexuality from Victoria to the pill, August 19, 2004

By 

Robert Darby (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception 1800-1975 (Hardcover)

The Long sexual revolution is one of the best studies of Victorian and early twentieth century sexuality to appear in recent times. Dr Hera Cook, a young scholar at Sydney University, Australia, has carefully reviewed the old debate (ignited by Peter Gay's Education of the senses) about whether the Victorians really were sexually inhibited, or whether they just preferred not to talk about it. With a wealth of new evidence from diaries, surveys, letters and sex manuals, she shows convincingly that the older view is closer to the truth: that if Victorian women were meant to enjoy sex, they did not get very much. This was a matter of both lifestyle choices and the unavailability of safe, effective contraception. To enjoy the benefits of the Victorian economic miracle and fruits of Britain's world-wide trade, middle class couples had to limit the number of their offspring; to do this their main form of birth control was abstinence, and they thus paid a heavy price in sexual denial. Using indicators such as family size and illegitimacy rates, Cook shows that sexual repression reached its peak in the Edwardian era, relaxed slightly after the First World War, and broke down in the 1930s, when the possibility of contraception (particularly in the form of condoms) permitted the gradual decoupling of sex and reproduction - a process not complete, however, until the introduction of the pill in the 1960s. The long sexual revolution sheds a fresh and revealing light on many aspects of sexuality not covered in detail, such as prostitution, venereal disease and the well known Victorian efforts to suppress masturbation among children. It argues that this taboo was an important factor in the growth of sexual inhibition, since children must be allowed to explore and fondle their bodies if they are to acquire the skills and confidence they will need to give sexual pleasure to themselves and their partners later on. Dr Cook does not mention circumcision, but it is significant that the period of sexual repression she identifies coincides exactly with the Victorian vogue for circumcising boys, and her book thus complements such recent studies as David Gollaher's Circumcision: A history of the world's most controversial surgery. (...)