Bad Examples: Children, Servants, and Masturbation in Nineteenth-Century France

Abstract

This article examines a corpus of nineteenth-century French instructional texts offering guidance to bourgeois readers on the training and governance of domestic servants, and focuses on how these texts construct the relationship between servants and children in such a way as to sexualize both. Operating within a broadly Foucauldian paradigm, the article considers how masturbation appears as the ultimate symbol of sexual knowledge in the period. Like much of the contemporaneous medical writing previously examined by Michel Foucault and Thomas Laqueur, the instructional literature understands infantile masturbation as indicative of the contagious spread of sexual knowledge within the bourgeois home, the abject agent of which was often taken to be the servant, whose "bad example" was thought to have a corrupting effect on ignorant infants. Yet the interest of these texts lies in their simultaneous advancement of another, contradictory argument: servants, they suggest, are themselves impressionable, childlike innocents who are corrupted by the example of their degenerate bourgeois employers. In a significant deviation from the more familiar patterns of thought considered by Foucault, then, these texts ultimately elaborate a worldview in which the transmission of sexual knowledge by (bad) example is multi-directional and inescapable, and in which sexual "corruption" -that is, sexuality as such -appears as a fundamental part of the human condition. This in turn is related to an underlying ideological difference between this instructional literature and the better-known medical discourse: while the latter is pointedly secular and positivist, the former is Catholic in outlook, and consequently sceptical as to the value and even the possibility of scientific knowledge. As such, these texts represent an important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century ideas on sexuality. Bad Examples: Children, Servants, and Masturbation in Nineteenth-Century France Andrew J. Counter Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge Be it in the interest of Rousseauian frankness or in pursuit of a succès de scandale, André Gide opens his autobiography, Si le grain ne meurt (1926), with a particularly provocative scene of child's play. The year is around 1874, and a five-year-old André and his little friend of the same age are hiding under a table covered with a tablecloth. Their activity is a cause of concern for André's nursemaid: 'What are you up to under there?' my nurse would call out.'Nothing; we're playing.' And then we would make a great noise with our playthings, which we had taken along for the sake of appearances [pour la frime]. 1 The word-choice of the nursemaid's enquiry, "Qu'est-ce que vous fabriquez là-dessous ?", suggests that the boys may be engaged in some form of pernicious yet purposeful work.André's response, meanwhile, is to assert on the contrary an absence of activity -the boys are doing "nothing" -which is apparently synonymous with play -"we're playing". Yet that play is, we quickly learn, a sham; the toys t...

The Textbook Masturbator: A Renegotiated Discourse in Official Swedish Sex-Education Guidelines and Textbooks, circa 1945–2000

“…During the nineteenth century and the earlier decades of the twentieth century, a common perception of masturbation was that it posed a significant risk, especially for the young. 14 This was also Freud's opinion, a fact that helped to spread this misconception widely. Freud eventually changed his mind on masturbation, stating that perhaps it was not the cause of mental illness, but rather the other way around: a neurotic person was more prone to masturbating.…”

Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality

“…These results converge with historical and ethnographic evidence that, in various cultural contexts, overindulgence in food or sex is condemned as causing uncooperative behaviors through the erosion of self-control. Scholars have argued that moral panics over masturbation in Victorian England emerged from the fear that excessive sexual activity “could, and probably would, lead to habits of indulgence in sensual pleasure and thus cause the erosion of self-control” (Hunt, 1998, p. 589; Seidman, 1990). Masturbation, or too frequent marital sexuality, were denounced as a vice which excites…the strongest and most uncontrollable propensities of animal nature [i.e., sexual impulses]: these are rendered more active by indulgence, while the power of restraint is lessened by it in a tenfold degree…Controlled by sensual urges the individual loses self-control and social purpose.…”

Discourses of female masturbation in human sexuality textbooks

“…One largely influential text that many researchers have discussed was an anonymous piece titled Onania: or The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, which was published in the early 18 th century (Hare, 1962;Hunt, 1998;Stolberg, 2000). Although the author primarily discussed male masturbation, and the physiological and moral repercussions of this religiously sinful behaviour, they do recognize that masturbation is a behaviour performed by both the male and female sex (Hare, 1962, pg.…”

“…Within this text, the term "onania" was introduced as an often negatively connotated synonym for masturbation and self-abuse (Hare, 1962). Another large contribution to the Western societal views on masturbation in the 18 th century was the work by Samuel Tissot in his piece called Onanism, or a Treatise upon the Disorders produced by Masturbation (Hare, 1962;Garlick, 2012;Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 2002;Hunt, 1998;Stolberg, 2000). Whereas the previous text, Onania; or The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, can be characterized by its theological focus of sinful actions and self-pollution, Tissot's piece offers the additional layer of medical discourse to further emphasize the negative repercussions of masturbation (Hare, 1962;Garlick, 2012;Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 2002;Hunt, 1998;Stolberg, 2000).…”

“…Another large contribution to the Western societal views on masturbation in the 18 th century was the work by Samuel Tissot in his piece called Onanism, or a Treatise upon the Disorders produced by Masturbation (Hare, 1962;Garlick, 2012;Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 2002;Hunt, 1998;Stolberg, 2000). Whereas the previous text, Onania; or The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, can be characterized by its theological focus of sinful actions and self-pollution, Tissot's piece offers the additional layer of medical discourse to further emphasize the negative repercussions of masturbation (Hare, 1962;Garlick, 2012;Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 2002;Hunt, 1998;Stolberg, 2000). Together, these beliefs largely contributed to the anti-masturbation movement, aligned with the Temperance movements, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Garlick, 2012, p. 308).…”