tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1436417288060370638.post1699801439271717950..comments2024-01-29T03:20:32.291-05:00Comments on ...... SHARP ELVES SOCIETY ...... Jane Austen's Shadow Stories: Jane Austen & SEXArnie Perlsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01720424361279466002noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1436417288060370638.post-88574003444668068922017-02-12T12:50:26.860-05:002017-02-12T12:50:26.860-05:00Hi
I found the following regarding buggery in the ...Hi<br />I found the following regarding buggery in the British Navy suggesting that it was commonplace and that during Jane's writing years, hanging for sodomy was also:<br /><br />More pertinent to our subject is Arthur Gilbert’s “Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-1861,” Journal of Social History, 1976. Gilbert suggests there’s some basis to the belief that the Royal Navy’s traditions consisted of “rum, sodomy, and the lash” (a witticism often misattributed to Winston Churchill). While conceding that “it is impossible to judge the incidence of buggery in the military,” he goes on to quote one British officer as follows: “I have been stationed, as you know, in two or three ships….On the D—, homosexuality was rife, and one could see with his own eyes how it was going on between officers. I have been told that in some services (the Austrian and French, for instance), nobody ever remarks about it, taking such a thing as a natural proceeding: that may be so or not; but in any case, nobody was ‘shocked’ on board either the A— or the B—. There were half a dozen ties that we knew about.…To my knowledge, sodomy is a regular thing on ships that go on long cruises.”<br /><br />Still, Gilbert suggests, common is one thing, brazen is another. British naval buggery, however prevalent, was necessarily discreet: Sodomy was officially considered a grave offense, and punishment was harsh. Buggery “comyttid with mankynde or beaste” was first made a capital crime by Henry VIII in 1533; naval buggery was specifically made a hanging offense in 1627. In 1806 there were more hangings in England for sodomy than for murder. Punishment could be brutal even if you escaped the noose. A sailor convicted in 1757 of raping a boy received 500 lashes; in 1762 two seamen received 1,000 lashes each for consensual sex. That was an extreme case, but average lash counts for morals offenses were often double those for mutiny and desertion. Officers weren’t exempt: Capt. Henry Allen of the sloop Rattler was executed for sodomy in 1797, and Lieutenant William Berry was hanged in 1807 for buggering a boy. Conclusion: Whatever may have gone on beneath the poop deck, sex with boys at sea was never openly tolerated in the Royal Navy, let alone made a fixture of the officers’ mess.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07602898035266203261noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1436417288060370638.post-51775454902751737262016-07-09T11:50:38.696-04:002016-07-09T11:50:38.696-04:00As I mentioned in my first comment on one of your ...As I mentioned in my first comment on one of your posts, I came across your blog when a student found it in respond to my question about Lucy Steele's negative presentation in S&S. In the same course, another student drew my attention to this passage at the end of Chapter 6 of S&S (which I have not found in any of your posts, though I might well have missed it with an admittedly somewhat cursory search):<br /><br />On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of course every body differed, and every body was astonished at the opinion of the others.<br /><br />This term, I was becoming increasingly fascinated by Austen's irony as a matter not of saying one thing and meaning its opposite (the strict definition of irony) but as a matter of saying one thing in a deadpan way as a way of making fun of things. So the straightforward reading here (what I call the "eagerness of mind" reading, going back to the introduction of Elinor near the end of chapter 1) is that the characters are being silly when they spend ten minutes on a trivial issue.<br /><br />But a bit of "coolness of judgment" (another phrase from Elinor's introduction) points toward the possibility of taking the issue of resemblance seriously. To spell this out with my students, I used an expression from "Ulysses": "Paternity is a legal fiction." And since it is, and since legitimacy is an issue in S&S both explicitly (Eliza) and implicitly (marriage as a legal way to establish legitimacy and provide a foundation for inheritance law), this passage points toward the concerns you address in this post. Where there's so much concern for legitimacy, there will be a lot of concern about sex, after all, about its regulation, and about the terms of its regulation (including a critique of those terms).Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1436417288060370638.post-38245327810181369382013-01-16T20:57:51.523-05:002013-01-16T20:57:51.523-05:00Anonymous, thank you for your generous praise, wh...Anonymous, thank you for your generous praise, which is all the more satisfying because it is so nunanced and detailed---you and I are indeed on the same page about Jane Austen and sex in her writing. <br /><br />Please browse through my blog and let me know what your reactions are to some of my other posts as well.<br /><br />I'd also be happy to correspond further with you in email---mine is arnieperlstein@myacc.net, if you would, too.<br /><br />Cheers, ARNIEArnie Perlsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01720424361279466002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1436417288060370638.post-6141047360285443462013-01-16T16:10:42.816-05:002013-01-16T16:10:42.816-05:00Thank you for illuminating on the sexuality in Jan...Thank you for illuminating on the sexuality in Jane Austen's works, which I believe is central to her masterfully subtle novels. It seems people would love to think Austen could not be privy to the realities of sex since she was not married, which is itself a great irony. As an artist in the most delicate sense and a spinster with a heart for romance and reality, she absorbed every implication of sexuality in ways most conventionally comfortable people do not. She understood, perhaps better because she wasn't buffered by social mores, the many drives and repercussions played out in human sexuality. It is too common for readers to gloss over the passions resounding beneath the ironies and precisions of her novels. Her stories resonate because they mirror real life, which necessarily required her to explore the many variations of human sexuality. Thanks again for your work. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com