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Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, Introduction: "We Other Victorians" (Partial)
For a long time, the story goes, we supported a Victorian regime, and we continue to be dominated by it even today. Thus the image of the imperial prude is emblazoned on our restrained, mute, and hypocritical sexuality. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain fr ankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much conceal ment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the coarse, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the nineteenth century. It was a time of direct gestures, shameless discourse, and open transgressions, when anatomies were shown and intermin gled at will, and knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies "made a display of themselv es." But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bou...
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