Abstract
A favoured story of the French nineteenth century, retold in a range of genres from the literary to the medical, was that of the incompetent husband. In the early days of his marriage, so the story goes, especially on the occasion of the wedding night, the husband acted in such a maladroit and ill-considered way that his wife’s subsequent behaviour suffered drastic effects. Yet while the story was retold with great regularity over the course of the century, its significance came to be transformed. This chapter will attempt to trace that transformation, and demonstrate its import for the history of frigidity. The first thing to note is that the story of the incompetent husband did not initially have a place within the field of moral-and-physical medicine in which female impotence and frigidity were elaborated as topics. It was, so to speak, captured and reframed by that field, coming eventually to play an edifying role within it. For much of the nineteenth century, the husband’s incompetence typically took the form of a lack of guile. By his failure to perceive what was going on in his wife’s mind, by his failure to manipulate her effectively, he was likely to provoke her to deception and infidelity. During the last decades of the century, however, husbandly incompetence was conceived and recounted rather differently. It became a failure to induct the wife into womanhood, a failure to manage her sexuality that gave rise to pathologies such as frigidity.
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Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie du mariage, ou Méditations de philosophie éclectique sur le bonheur et le malheur conjugal (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, n.d. [1860?]), 1–2.
J. Morel de Rubempré, ‘Introduction philosophique, hygiénique et morale’, in Octave de Saint-Ernest, Physiologie de la première nuit des noces (Paris: Terry, 1842), v.
A. Reinvillier, Hygiène pratique des femmes. Guide médical pour toutes les époques de leur vie, suivi de quelques considérations sur les maladies des femmes (Paris: Bureaux du journal Le Médecin de la maison, 1854), 11.
Dr Jules Guyot, Bréviaire de l’amour expérimental. Méditations sur le mariage selon la physiologie du genre humain (Paris: Marpon & Flammarion, 1882), 102.
Dr Rauland, Le Livre des époux. Guide pour la guérison de l’impuissance, de la stérilité et de toutes les maladies des organes génitaux (Paris: Chez tous les principaux libraires, 1859), i–ii.
Ernest Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes, 5th edn (Paris: Librairie académique Didier, 1869), vi.
Dr P. Garnier, Le Mariage dans ses devoirs, ses rapports et ses effets conjugaux au point de vue légal, hygiénique, physiologique et moral. Traduction libre refondue, corrigée et augmentée de l’Higiene del matrimonio du Docteur F. Monlau (Paris: Garnier, 1879), ii–iv.
Dr Pierre Garnier, L’Impuissance physique et morale chez l’homme et la femme (Paris: Garnier, 1882), 358.
See, for example, Gyp and Hector Crémieux, Autour du mariage. Comédie en cinq actes (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1883), in which the event of sexual initiation is continually deferred by intrigue and comic misunderstanding.
Dr Ch. Montalban, La Petite Bible des jeunes époux (Paris: Marpon & Flammarion, 1885), 3.
J.-P. Dartigues, De l’amour expérimental ou des causes d’adultère chez la femme au XIXe siècle. Etude d’hygiène et d’économie sociale résultant de l’ignorance, du libertinage et des fraudes dans l’accomplissement des devoirs conjugaux (Versailles: Litzellmann, 1887), 144.
Dr Désormeaux, Le Mariage (Paris: Librairie P. Fort, L. Chaubard, Successeur, c. 1905).
Dr Désormeaux, L’Amour conjugal (Paris: Librairie P. Fort, L. Chaubard, Successeur, c. 1905).
Dr Eynon, Manuel de l’amour conjugal (Paris: F. Pierre, 1909).
Dr Rhazis, L’Initiation amoureuse ou l’art de se faire aimer et de plaire (Paris: de Porter, [1909]).
On the success of Venette’s work in England, see Roy Porter, ‘Spreading Carnal Knowledge or Selling Dirt Cheap? Nicolas Venette’s Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal in Eighteenth Century England’, Journal of European Studies, 14 (1984): 233–55.
Nicolas Venette, Tableau de l’amour conjugal (Paris: Paul Fort, 1903).
Dr Wolf, Bréviaire de l’amour dans le mariage, ou L’homme et la femme considérés dans l’état physiologique du mariage (Paris: Jean Fort, 1909).
We are following, or at least shadowing Krafft-Ebing’s distinction between perversity and perversion: ‘Perversion of the sexual instinct [...] is not to be conf[us]ed with perversity in the sexual act; since the latter may be induced by conditions other than psycho-pathological.’ Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct. A Medico-Forensic Study, trans. Franklin S. Klaf (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998), 53.
Honoré de Balzac, Physiologie du mariage ou Méditations de philosophie éclectique sur le bonheur et le malheur conjugal (Paris: Ollendorff, 1901).
Dr Jaf, L’Amoursecret (Paris: Offenstadt, 1903) carries as an epigraph on its title page the following quotation from Physiologie du mariage: ‘Skilfully grasping the nuances of pleasure, developing them, giving them new style and original expression, that is what constitutes the genius of the lover or the husband.’
Dr Riolan, Impuissance, frigidité, stérilité (Paris: Librairie Artistique et Médicale F. Pierre, 1909), 56.
Dr Désormeaux, L’Impuissance et la stérilité (Paris: Librairie P. Fort, L. Chaubard, Successeur, c. 1905), 38.
Dr Caufeynon, Histoire de la femme [1904], preface by Brigitte Lhomond (Paris: Côté-femmes, 1989), 136.
Janede la Vaudère, Le Sang (Paris: Ollendorff, 1898), 11.
René Maizeroy, Les Jeux de l’amour. Quelques gestes, quelques baisers... ; de la séduction; de la possession; du sacrifice; sur la rupture; sur le décor en amour; sur le mariage; et sur l’adultère (Paris: Nilsson, [1902?]), 264–6.
Maxime Formont, La Grande Amoureuse (Paris: Lemerre, 1904), 40.
[Joséphin] Péladan, Le Vice suprême, preface by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Editions du monde moderne, 1926), 69–70. First published 1884.
See Alison Moore, ‘The Invention of Sadism? The Limits of Neologisms in the History of Sexuality’, Sexualities 12 (2009): 489–505.
Eugène Delard, Le Désir: journal d’un mari (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1899), 35.
Victorien du Saussay, Rires, sang et voluptés. Roman d’aventures et d’amour (Paris: Bibliothèque du fin du siècle, n.d. [1901]), 243.
Charles Epheyre [Charles Richet], Possession (Paris: Ollendorff, 1887), 6.
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© 2011 Peter Cryle and Alison Moore
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Cryle, P., Moore, A. (2011). The Wedding Night. In: Frigidity. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337039_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230337039_6
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