Sex life in England
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| Sex life in England |
From the forward
The pattern of sexual life in England has been a miniature reproduction of the historical Western attitude to sex throughout the last thousand years. At times, the current of sexuality has been submerged by a rising clamour of politics or by a transition of the economic structure.
At other times, the force of sexual behaviour has been thwarted and twisted into perverted channels by the curious psychology of the English people, only to break through to a stronger and truer expression.
The value of this, Dr Iwan Bloch's greatest work, lies not only in the hitherto inaccessible material he was brought together but also in the interpretation we are forced to give to that material. Inevitably, we are led to the conclusion that the cyclical attempts at repressing this very human need result always in periods of debauchery and profligacy, to perversions and aberrations alien to the human spirit. Periods such as the Restoration and the Regency were caused not by the innate immorality of man, as the reformers would have us believe, but by the unnatural attempts of these reformers to eradicate that which is most human from humanity.
The strong historical sense of the Western man of today enables him to gain knowledge and understanding from the errors of the past. Until late, there has been a tendency to glorify such periods as the Puritan and Victorian as the prosperous result of moral living and proper behaviour.
The resultant plunges of the people of the follow- ing periods into carnality and vice were not seen to have resulted from the stifling restraints imposed by the Puritan mind. The great discoveries of Freud and his successors were needed to open our eyes to the psychological truths. Using these new technics provided by the psychologists
Dr Bloch has, as with a surgeon's scalpel, opened the sex life of England to modern eyes, scientifically probing into the darker recesses of history to show that the determinants of periods of dissoluteness were the prudery and smugness of such years as the England of Victoria. The evils of censorship, of Mrs Grundyism, caused normal sexual behaviour to turn into channels of perversity.
The longer, the more powerful the period of restraint, the fiercer and wilder the resultant explosion. Today, with the factual knowledge presented to us by such workers as Dr Bloch, we realize that sex is a necessary part of normal life, and, as such, cannot be repressed or curbed for long. Past behaviour and customs become clearer as Dr Bloch unfolds a truthful picture of the sexual life of bygone generations.
The modern presumption that the post-war period was the first time that man had broken off the restraining shackles of convention and sex was suddenly discovered, is shown to be false. The truth of Solomon's dictum cannot be denied. Nothing is new — it has only been forgotten. Every fact cited by Dr. Bloch is confirmed by the writings of the period, every thesis drawn is sustained by historical fact. This work is vitally important to every lawyer, every sociologist, every person interested in the accurate and clarifying depiction of the follies and aberrations of mankind. Dr Bloch has, with the deft touch of an artist and a scientist, made the dead past come magnificently alive.
Download 14 MB - Iwan Bloch died in 1922 so this book illustrates earlier time