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cbtok -> RE: victorian play (9/11/2007 6:50:19 AM)
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I suppose Victorian play is as much an historical appreciation as anything.
Women tended to wear black. After all, Queen Victoria was in perpetual mourning for her husband who died young. Attitudes towards sexuality were so restrained that women would become hysterical, would faint, would be "indisposed" and would pretend illness to cover any pretense to desire. Womens fashions were all about controlling the physical form. Corsetry was in a heyday and the way one demonstrated one's wealth was to create fashions that used more and more of rare material.
In pretty much any country, only men had rights to own property. Women had no voice in politics as they didn't vote. Men were expected to run things. Industrialization was at its height. This was the age of building bigger and new ways were found to keep bigger things standing.
Men were expected to satisfy themselves with prostitutes, as sexual urges were to be kept away from their bedchamber. People drank a lot more then than they do now but our understanding of clean water was limited to clarification. Beer was considered better for you, as it didn't get you sick like water could. We didn't know that the process of boiling the water to make beer (or tea or coffee) caused it to be sanitized.
Manners were primary. A woman could not talk to anyone of the opposite gender to whom she had not been properly introduced. So brothers, cousins and husbands were employed to allow them to widen their social circle. Many upper-class marriages were arranged. While dalliances (male, of course) with "the help" were to be expected (we're all sinners, you know) on occasion, women of good breeding were kept on a pedestal of frustration. Small wonder the vibrator (as a medical treatment to be administered only under a doctor's supervision) and psychoanalysis got their start in this era.
Were I a dominant man and interested in orgasm control of a submissive woman, I'd take a great deal of interest in this type of play. Women were certainly so sexually-frustrated in this era it's a wonder there weren't riots in the streets (oh, that's right -- women of good breeding didn't do these kinds of things).
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