Annie Besant’s sexual politics of marriage in Victorian England

Victorian sexuality has often been regarded as the epitome of prudery and chastity, as a reflection of a period which placed great emphasis on the control of sexuality and women’s body as way to maintain and ensure social and cultural control. Nonetheless, this modernist conceptualisation was gradua...

Full description

Autores:
Miquel-Baldellou, Marta
Tipo de recurso:
Article of journal
Fecha de publicación:
2009
Institución:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Repositorio:
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Idioma:
spa
OAI Identifier:
oai:repositorio.unal.edu.co:unal/55214
Acceso en línea:
https://repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/55214
http://bdigital.unal.edu.co/50533/
Palabra clave:
3 Ciencias sociales / Social sciences
Annie Besant
Victorian sexuality
Victorian sexualities
Marriage
Piety
Self-help
Sexualidad victoriana
Sexualidades victorianas
Matrimonio
Piedad
Autoayuda
Annie Besant
Familias
Rights
openAccess
License
Atribución-NoComercial 4.0 Internacional
Description
Summary:Victorian sexuality has often been regarded as the epitome of prudery and chastity, as a reflection of a period which placed great emphasis on the control of sexuality and women’s body as way to maintain and ensure social and cultural control. Nonetheless, this modernist conceptualisation was gradually left behind when mid-twentieth century historians and theorists looked back to the past to recover the complexity of a period of contrasts which both preached the ethics of prudery and virtuosity, while the overwhelming increase of population remained a plain fact. The aim of this essay is to reassess assumptions of Victorian sexualities through Annie Besant’s works and ideas as regards marriage policies in an attempt to shed light over contemporary Neo-Victorian conceptions of sexualities, thus restoring Besant’s position as a canonical figure at the end of nineteenth-century Victorian feminism.