Main Character's Sex Life, Major Problems!

Redfox said:

Having sex with the person you're going to marry is a whole different thing to casual sex - I think the latter would indeed have been incredibly rare before the Pill became widely available.

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True--and that's what I find unrealistic in so many supposedly realistic historical novels. Several other things occurred in the 1940s which led directly to the state of things today. One, the obvious that men during wartime enjoyed certain freedoms not tolerated in peacetime small towns. Two, around the end of the 1930s-beginning of the 1940s, penicillin became available, and people thought "anything they could catch" could easily be cured by a pill or a shot. This continued till the 1980s when herpes and AIDS came out. And three, Dr. Kinsey's report. There is some evidence (I don't want to go into debating the truth of this, but worth mentioning) that Kinsey got most of his information from men in prison, mostly from one child molestor, and a lot of the rest from people either jailed for sexual offenses, learned certain behaviors in prison, or both. He presented the stories they told as things that "most normal people" do. At which there was a great outcry of, "What have I been missing?" and a vast segment of society went in for practices previously the preserve of "perverts."

Keep in mind that living memory goes back no further than about the 1930s. Anyone old enough to remember farther are dropping like flies. Now figure that many of those novels to which I object were written in the 1970s by people who did a lot of partying in the 1940s-1960s, or wish they had, and you can form an idea.

Redfox said:

Nor do I think your readers are going to think your hero stupid for not frequenting brothels, especially - as you have pointed - nowadays when STDs are much more on people's radar then they were when I was young (back in the 1980s ).

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If you want to know my object...well, I'd like to know that myself. *Sigh.* First, I'd like to write about a character I understand, not necessarily one just like me, but the further they get into even thought patterns, let alone behavior, I can neither understand NOR relate to NOR condone, the more problem I have with it. Second, for some reason I really really REALLY want to see how possible it is to write about someone who has motive and opportunity to be promiscuous--of course, absence of choice would be absence of conflict, or different kind of conflict anyway--and is able to turn them down and not be a loser. I'm more interested in someone doing the right thing and perhaps even longing or regretting what he had not done, than doing the wrong thing and regretting what he had, if that works.

Of course I realize this subject is handled differently in different families and different cultures and to people in some cultures this would make no sense whatsoever.

Sohia Rose said:

You might want to try Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson.

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Sohia Rose said:

You might want to read this one just to get a sense of male characters during that time, The Blue Hotel: http://www.4literature.net/Stephen_Crane/Blue_Hotel/

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Wow, those do sound interesting. I have read "Kidnapped" and "David Balfour" by Robert Louis Stevenson, excellent examples of a very chivalrous masculine character, but not exactly of the type I am trying to write. This guy has more of an edge.

Sohia Rose said:

I just want to share some of my classroom discussion with you about Charlotte Temple.

She was young, about 14 or 15 years old. And she got “sweet-talked” by this older man who said that if she came with him, he’d marry her. She went with him and he never married her. She eventually had a baby out of wedlock, even though she came from a good Christian family.

In my class, a lot of students put the responsibility on her: “It was her fault. She should have known better.” But see, to me, she was the “child” (even though girls married at that age). He was the adult. He knew what he was doing and he did it anyway. The shame that she’d have to face didn’t stop him. He wanted one thing, a girl to manipulate, in every way that he could. I blame him.

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Sounds like our college classroom discussion of "Moll Flanders." MAN, did those students rip into her! "Why couldn't she live decent?" This was not specifying whether they were objecting to her thieving, prostitution, child abandonment, bigamy (more or less--dumping and remarrying without being sure all former husbands were deceased) or just the whole thing! Only one person dissented, a man of 50 or 60 years old, who said, "I'm surprised you don't see Moll Flanders as a victim." No one spoke up or agreed with him, but as the class filed out the teacher told this man he didn't think he could get late 20th Century American kids of the age and means to attend college to see an 18th Century English girl as a victim no matter what her station in life. They were just too trained into seeing people as independent and self-defining. And what did Shakespeare say in "Hamlet"--"make their ignorance their wantonness"?--meaning girls should have some responsibility for what kinda line they fall for--though you can see why young girls were so closely chaperoned as they don't always show sense.

Sohia Rose said:

But I got the sense that during the 19th Century, women were the bearers of purity. Men could be who they were. For example, when the saloons started popping up, men could go, but women could not. It was unbecoming of a real lady. And any woman with self-respect wouldn’t be seen in a place like that. So what did that make men who showed up? “Real men.”

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Yes, I recently read "David Copperfield" and I got the sense that was the deal with Little Em'ly. She was not just a victim of Steerforth--she let worldly vanity lead her into dropping the ball on being what a woman should.

Sohia Rose said:

In my opinion, women today are still the bearers of purity. I do not accept this responsibility. It’s too heavy.

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Different rules definitely apply. Just heard, for the second time, and well worth hearing twice, a "This American Life" story by a woman who, as a young reporter, covered a tour with George Burns. When George recited an extremely off-color poem, she didn't know how to react--laugh too much, she would be slutgirl, not enough and she'd be seen as a killjoy--and I can relate to this not being a problem or not the same kind of problem with a man. Of course, it depends on the man. One of my favorite stories was of Ulysses S. Grant, when a man said, "Seeing there are no ladies present--" he was going to say something off-color, when Grant said, "No, but there are gentlemen present." Several off-color stories circulated about Grant himself, all proven untrue or at least never proven to be true and no good evidence for them. He seems to have been an extremely quality person.

I'm striving really hard to define the seemingly contradictory qualities of my main character. He is an extremely self-contained loner who doesn't shrink from confrontation (in fact rather welcomes it) and is never shy (to the point that I'd say mostly a people person.) Definitely I see him as very respectful to women and not accepting of nonsense from people of either gender. Possibly tricked but never willingly manipulated, and mostly pretty savvy and intelligent. To really get to him (to go against his conscience or better judgement) a woman would have to catch him in a vulnerable position (wanting to "prove" his manhood or like that--if this was a means to that then) or appeal to his sympathies at a time when he was isolated from family and close friends. Otherwise I don't see a woman really getting to him unless he was genuinely in love--he is, if nothing else, too self-protective for that. I've already seen I can't force this character into anything wrong for him. I just want to get the whole thing right. For some reason I feel something awful will happen if I get a vital part of this wrong.

Thanks for the cheers. What I CAN tell you about the story:

--It's been tormenting me for three decades so I decided to WRITE IT ALREADY!

--I don't trust my instincts on anything. I am just more hung up on saying too little, too much, or the wrong thing on the matter of the character's sex life than on just about any other subject--almost as if a person could have a "wrong" opinion and I would be "discovered" to be "wrong." In a larger sense, I worry about this regarding the whole book, not just one aspect of it.

I think I'm dealing with a very well-meaning but somewhat confused character and have just FINALLY (about time) struck on what is really bothering him. It is similar to what was bothering Huckleberry Finn, but not the same thing. How can a person feel so crummy for doing what should be right, much worse than others feel for doing what should be wrong? That seems to be the whole essence of the matter right there. He can't just seem to make up his mind to "do as he's told" and "leave it be," but he can't come up with anything better either, despite being both a rather impulsive and decisive person.

Excellent advice, of which I just received another piece. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and this ain't even near broke!

Of course, the attitude to behavior, which had to have been judged by its perceived effects on society, is a big factor. As for the conflict of the main dilemma, I think I've figured out how to proceed. Thanks for the input.

Seriously, I would like to know when loss of virginity became a rite of passage for males and that one was not really considered grown up until it happened. I am GUESSING American popular culture starting in the 1920s, but that's just a guess. Not saying stuff didn't happen before then, just wondering when it became the expected "norm." And, of course, I am always interested in people's real life experiences or even feelings and opinions should they care to share them.

Right. The last thing you want is a main character who comes across as either a libertine OR a prig, so it's hard to know how to write these parts when the subject comes up, even if he was perfectly certain in himself of his own decisions.

Yeah...you're getting at the main problem, here...I'm having trouble writing realistically about a naturally spirited but not irresponsible person of that time, without making the character too repressed or too bold. Also having problems that with many (it seems like most!) people, actions go directly contrary to both commonsense (health and such issues) and morals (as taught/understood in society). And wondering if in Victorian times, people practiced any better what they preached, or were they simply more hypocritical and messed-up about it? Remember how "Social Darwinism," which like many popular beliefs is directly contrary to Christianity, was accepted in some quarters in the 19th Century? That, all being fair in love and war, it was fine to ruin a rival in the name of "survival of the fittest"? It seems that in many quarters such attitudes would apply to sex as well. That if someone wanted something they could not easily come by honestly, it was better to acquire it dishonestly than to end up left out and left behind? I'm not talking about a character who is asexual or at all averse to it, very much the opposite, just someone who is all for it and trying to establish an acceptable context. (Obviously, the current generation is literally called upon to reinvent the wheel, as previous social structures have vanished.)

Yes, I have been worried, especially of male readers saying this book was obviously written by a woman as any real man would just do it and not worry about the possible significance, meaning, or consequences of his actions. Now, if I thought these guys were completely and utterly full of it, I wouldn't have a problem. The problem is this: the essence of life is risk, and we're talking a character living on the edge of reckless/daredevil, but without being criminally negligent--someone in a top Civil War cavalry unit, not exactly a desk job. And, I want to be realistic. We know extramarital sex happened even back in Victorian times, but some very popular historical novels have handled it way too casually for my taste and go so far as to strain belief. I just don't want to go so far as to strain the other way. One of the most annoying things is when a character appears judgemental...yet in life you don't want to be so NON-judgemental as to not even have strong opinions about what's important.

Of course, the ultimate cop out would be if the guy was in love BEFORE he went to the war and decided to save himself for that particular woman...but guess what, he's very young when he goes to the war and that doesn't work for my plot, in fact, it would remove a lot of the tension. (I've read a couple of Civil War novels where the main character was actually married or engaged and it didn't stop him. Didn't exactly increase my sympathy to the character.) And it's obvious some guys don't get any because they lack the looks, personality, and self-confidence, but those are not my main character's problems. The more I've talked, the more the problem has begun to clear up and I'm feeling more okay about it. Thanks for the input.

The thing to do, I guess, is establish a social context and relate acceptability or lack of it in that context. Society has gone through a long period--40 to 50 years--where it was simply considered anti-social not to have sex at young ages. If a person did not do it by age 18, married or unmarried, gay, straight, bi, or asexual, they were simply weird, unwanted, and unaccepted in society. People tried forcing others into it with peer pressure to justify their own actions. Now enough negative consequences have come about that there's starting to be a backlash. Soon Victorian times won't seem so strange to young people of the current generation, as they would a generation or two ago.