Love TimeLine
(Page 3 of 5)
November/December 1996
By Libby Stephens, Utne Reader
1518
RELATED CONTENT
Be My Surreal Valentine February 13, 2002 Issue By Kate Garsombke Be My Surreal Valentine, Mary An...
The Science of Love December 16, 2002 Issue By Nick Garafola, Utne Author Cary Parker asks the que...
Diana Balmori Founder, Balmori AssociatesUtne Reader visionaryNovember December 2009by Staff, Utne ...
Anger, saddness, and inner strife are all part of the personal--and global--process....
Jakob von Uexkull March April 1996 When this Swedish journalist and translator sold his collection ...
Ko-uta, short lyric songs of the geisha world, are compiled into a collection called the Kanginshu. When the government objects to their erotic content, composers make them more refined and indirect.
1536
John Calvin, head of Geneva's religious government, creates a code of morals that limits engagements to six weeks and prohibits revelry, minstrelsy, dancing, and tambourines at weddings. If the bride or groom arrive late, the wedding is canceled.
c. 1613
Don Juan comes to life in Tirso de Molina's play The Joker of Seville, perhaps the first artistic depiction of the legend of Don Juan.
c. 1625
While Puritan author William Gouge is advising wives to address their mates only as "Husband" and never as "sweet, sweeting, heart, sweetheart, love, joy, dear, duck, chick, or pigsnie,"--Thomas Morton sows wild oats on New England soil. The Englishman establishes "Merry Mount," a plantation where whites and Native Americans openly engage in sexual relations. Puritan Pilgrims, who believe only in marital sexuality, deport him three years later for reviving the erotic pagan May Day festival. Thirteen years later, Massachusetts demands that every town "dispose of all single persons," and Connecticut taxes bachelors 20 shillings a week.
1691
In Virginia, whites who marry or have sex with a "Negro, mulatto or Indian," are banished from the colony. By 1705 the ante has been upped to 6 months' imprisonment and a 10-pound fine.
1725
Giacomo Casanova, lover of life, is born in Venice. In his memoirs he writes of hundreds of mistresses--116 by name.
...
c.1750
As out-of-wedlock pregnancies increase, some New England towns attempt to prohibit "bundling"--a practice wherein courting couples are allowed to sleep together so long as they remained fully dressed and/or with a "bundling board" between them. Later in the century, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft makes the first full-on attack against restrictive marriage in her "Vindication of the Rights of Woman."
mid-1800s
The Victorian era enshrines middle-class prudery. In advertisements, ladies undergarments are folded--to keep the crotch a secret--and wives are expected to be passive during lovemaking. Even feeling desire is forbidden. But sexuality slowly seeps into the public sphere in the form of erotic literature like William Haynes' cheap, explicit novels.
1870
One hundred years before the much-discussed divorce boom of the Disco years, the women's rights movement is already influencing women to choose self-sufficiency over unhappy marriages. The divorce rate grows sixfold between 1870 and 1900.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 | 3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>