Victorian erotica
Sex was a main social topic, with progressive and enlightened thought pushing for sexual restriction and repression.
Sexual pleasure and desire beyond heterosexual marriage was labelled as deviant, considered to be sinful and sinister.
Sex was popular in entertainment, with much of Victorian theatre, art and literature including and expressing sexual and sensual themes.
[5] Historian Peter Webb writes that there are two categories of Victorian erotica: on the one hand the expressive writings of Oscar Wilde and Swinburne, and on the other hand the "coldly calculated indulgence in male fantasy" such as is found in The Memoirs of Dolly Morton, where women are depicted merely as sex objects.
[6] Art and literature provided Victorians with an avenue to express transgressive and repressed sexual desire.
[8][9] It is argued that some Victorian erotica rests on techniques of implication and allusion to sexual desires and activity,[10] such as in the works of Wilde, Dickens, and Field.
[2][3] Erotic plot lines and themes sought to shatter these expectations, crafting women as whores, prostitutes, and adulterers.
[12] Erotic images and narratives often portrayed these fallen women needing to be rescued from her vices, and to be reformed into the proper position in family life.
[12] The fallen woman is featured in much of Victorian erotic literature, including works by Thomas Hardy, Augustus Egg, and William Bell Scott.
[18] This novel is inspired by John Saul, an Irish male prostitute who was involved in a homosexual scandal in Dublin in 1884.
[18] The Phoenix of Sodom, written by Robert Holloway in 1813, is based on experiences from the famous The Vere Street Coterie.
[18] The Shaftesbury memorial by Alfred Gilbert caused moral scandal and outrage, as the sculpture was deemed subversive of heterosexual standards of the time.
The letters also include an explicit scene in which Blanche had to lie naked on her dorm bed, as an initiation into the school's "lesbian society".
[citation needed] Other Lesbian erotic works include The Nunnery Tales (1886), Astrid Cane (1891), and The Mysteries of Verbena House (1882).
[21] The Pearl: A Journal of Facetiae and Voluptuous Reading was a pornographic magazine published in London in the Victorian era.
