ENGLISH 126D: Victorian Sex (lecture)

Taught by: Claire Jarvis

Fall Quarter, 2009-2010

MWF 11:00-11:50, Room: 90-92Q

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How can we make sense of a culture of extraordinary sexual repression that nevertheless seemed fully preoccupied with sex?  This lecture examines the depictions of sex in Victorian literary and cultural texts, including poems, novels, essays and diaries.  Topics will include attitudes towards sex beyond marriage (premarital, bigamous and adulterous sex), sexual purity, contemporaneous uses of fetish,  cross-class sexuality, homosexual sex, and sex's relationship to consciousness.  


Authors include Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Michael Field, Hannah Cullwick, Arthur Munby, Walter, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde.

This course fulfills the following Major Requirements:

  • Topic: Gender & Sexuality
  • Brit. Lit. 1750-1900 or Am. Lit. before 1900