A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern.

  • Iwan Bloch
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of English sexual morals / by Ivan Bloch ; translated by William H. Forstern. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/700 (page 9)
    Finally, to these elements in the English national character which have been described so far, must be added one more, which at first sight appears almost contradictory—namely, that remarkable prudery and hypocrisy which permeated the whole of English life: that extreme puritanism which in this land of freedom and enlightenment made the people doubly difficult to understand. How can it be explained, this ' ultra-squeamishness this ' hyper-prudery ' which, according to one of their own countrymen, an authority on his people, the English of the last century possessed to such a pronoimced degree?1 On the one hand the Englishman carried his self-assurance and superiority with becoming gravity; but on the other hand, rightly aware of bis own nature, he feared that the manifestations of his inborn brutality and eccentricity might sap and endanger his national superiority and independence. So he found himself forced to cling with the greatest care to the outward forms of propriety and to watch over them in order that no one might dare to break this shell of social formality. This is the only psychological explanation of English prudery. It provided a counterbalance to those bad qualities: the hard schooling, to which the Englishman, naturally brutal and inclined to harmful eccentricity, had to submit in order to protect himself against their effects. For prudery and hypocrisy love only the surface veneer under which the darkest depravity may often lurk. I shall deal later with this connection between English hypocrisy and immorality after I have given one or two examples of prudery which appeared often in the strangest guise. ride forty miles in three hours, drink three bottles of wine and untie the girdles of three girls. The stake was fifty guineas, and the challenger won triumphantly. One man crawls all over England on hands and knees; another wagers that he will chalk every tree in St. James's Park, and so on. 1 Pisanus Fraxi, Index Librorum prohibitorum. London, 1877. P. xvii (cited in future as Index). [9]