Hi all! A trusted beta reader raised a question for me about characters in my historical novel manuscript who refer to having sex as "making love." My story is set in the 1760s in Savoy, a mostly francophone area that today is the French Alps but used to be part of its own separate country along with Northern Italy. My reader said she reads a lot of historical fiction set in this era and has never seen sex referred to in this way in other historical novels, as "making love." I'd like to get the thoughts of other readers and writers of historical fiction on this. In my novel scene where it comes up, the main character has been packed off by her not-so-nice father to become a courtesan, although it's not what she want to be. She has met a man who she expects will treat her as the courtesan she is supposed to be, but he hasn't tried to have sex with her. So she asks him point blanc whether he means to "make love" to her or not. Would you use this phrasing? If not, what alternatives might be better? Have you seen other historical or period fiction that used this? Does it make a difference that it's a francophone setting, but I'm writing in English, so I'm effectively "translating" the characters' dialogue and trying to keep a little French flavor to it?
"Making Love" in 18th-century Europe?
- Thread starter AudreyInDC
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The term "making love" meant something different in that era to what it does in ours--so yes, as a reader of historical fiction, it would be jarring.
(For an example, see Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Bennet refers to Mr. Wickham--"He is as fine a fellow,'' said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of the house, "as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all."
(For an example, see Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Bennet refers to Mr. Wickham--"He is as fine a fellow,'' said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of the house, "as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all."
The earliest citation of "making love" as a phrase meaning to have sex is 1927, and it wasn't till several decades later that the sex meaning became primary. In the 19c and earlier, it always meant courtship/flirtation, not physical relations.
In French the same shift in meaning apparently occurred in the 17c. So if you were writing in French you'd be fine with this usage.
But since you're writing in English, although it's certainly possible to argue the case as a French-inflected translation, it's definitely an English-language anachronism, and one that many readers are likely to be aware of. So I recommend avoiding it.
In French the same shift in meaning apparently occurred in the 17c. So if you were writing in French you'd be fine with this usage.
But since you're writing in English, although it's certainly possible to argue the case as a French-inflected translation, it's definitely an English-language anachronism, and one that many readers are likely to be aware of. So I recommend avoiding it.
I was writing exactly what the others have said, and then I was interrupted by my actual day job, and I reloaded the page to see it's been expertly taken care of already. 
I just wanted to add that while I have seen sources from the 40s and 50s that use "make love" with an explicit sexual meaning, there's a also a 1954 Jo Stafford hit "Make Love to Me!", suggesting that even as late as the 50s, mainstream usage of the phrase (in the US) was still leaning toward the non-sexual meaning. I do suspect the song was a bit of a double-entendre, though, interpretable with a wink. "Take me in your lovin' arms, and squeeze me tight / Put me in a mood so I can dream all night / Everybody's sleeping so it's quite all right / Come a little closer / Make love to me." (All of this is just expanding on what benbenberi already said about when the sexual usage was introduced and when it became primary.)
As for suggestions for what your character should say instead: Maybe "do you mean to take me" or "do you mean to have me" would do the job?
I just wanted to add that while I have seen sources from the 40s and 50s that use "make love" with an explicit sexual meaning, there's a also a 1954 Jo Stafford hit "Make Love to Me!", suggesting that even as late as the 50s, mainstream usage of the phrase (in the US) was still leaning toward the non-sexual meaning. I do suspect the song was a bit of a double-entendre, though, interpretable with a wink. "Take me in your lovin' arms, and squeeze me tight / Put me in a mood so I can dream all night / Everybody's sleeping so it's quite all right / Come a little closer / Make love to me." (All of this is just expanding on what benbenberi already said about when the sexual usage was introduced and when it became primary.)
As for suggestions for what your character should say instead: Maybe "do you mean to take me" or "do you mean to have me" would do the job?
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If you keep the French flavour, it existed in French and it is OK.
You might see this too for other opportunities
https://www.bustle.com/articles/695...ause-you-could-stand-to-have-your-corn-ground
Not mentioned here, but I like also "amourous congress".
You might see this too for other opportunities
https://www.bustle.com/articles/695...ause-you-could-stand-to-have-your-corn-ground
Not mentioned here, but I like also "amourous congress".
The ones in the article and amourous congress are all hilarious! Thank you for that. Although if I change the wording, I'm definitely looking for something fairly plainspoken and straightforward to reflect the fact that my character intends to be blunt and call a spade a spade, so to speak. (Though I'm sure plenty of gardening metaphors could be used in comical ways ...)
Well, how coarse is this female character? Because the eff word does have a literal meaning. Perhaps "are you going to take me?" or something like that would work. It's not quite as coarse but is pretty clear.
The plain and straightforward "Are you going to fuck me?" also has the benefit of being not at all an anachronism.
Haha, she is a nice girl who would never say fuck! I decided to keep "making love" for the scene, because it would likely have worked in French, where my research suggests it could be used with a little ambiguity to mean to flatter and flirt with someone with the hope of possibly charming them into bed with you, or for the end result of ending up in bed together. Since she is trying to suss out his intentions, it was kind of a genteel ambiguity where it would have worked either way ... Here was a good online dictionary I found for French with a lot of examples of usage from classic authors:
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/amour
And Littré also gives examples: https://www.littre.org/definition/amour
Incidentally, my reader also flagged as problematic where I had characters using the word "pregnant" in dialogue, when circumlocutions would likely have been used in English like "in a family way" or "with child" or "expecting." Interestingly, I discovered from the internet that another common English euphemism for pregnant was the French word "enceinte," which is what I would have pictured the characters using in the original French. So I changed pregnant to enceinte in my text, although I'm not totally sure once I got to thinking about it that enceinte would actually have been used ... it seems like "grossesse" ("largneess") was a common way of referring to pregnancy, so terms like "large with child" in English might be more reflective of the euphemistic way people would refer to these things ...
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/amour
And Littré also gives examples: https://www.littre.org/definition/amour
Incidentally, my reader also flagged as problematic where I had characters using the word "pregnant" in dialogue, when circumlocutions would likely have been used in English like "in a family way" or "with child" or "expecting." Interestingly, I discovered from the internet that another common English euphemism for pregnant was the French word "enceinte," which is what I would have pictured the characters using in the original French. So I changed pregnant to enceinte in my text, although I'm not totally sure once I got to thinking about it that enceinte would actually have been used ... it seems like "grossesse" ("largneess") was a common way of referring to pregnancy, so terms like "large with child" in English might be more reflective of the euphemistic way people would refer to these things ...
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"Making love" in that era just meant romancing, courting in general. Now, modern historical fiction might use the term to mean sex, but actual period language wouldn't. Period language, if trying to not just say something obscene, would tend to use some Euphuistic metaphor, like "the acts of Venus" or often just try really hard to convey it without directly saying anything. http://timeglider.com/timeline/962856e2d593150e might also have some useful info (just search by year.)
If you want to go the British translation route, Hulu's Harlots is set in your same period but in the red-light district of London. Being prostitutes, they stick to the coarser terms but there is period slang mixed in - for example, "quim" as the equivalent of pussy. The show references Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, a guidebook for men with reviews of the sex workers. It's in the public domain: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42075
Erato, thanks for the link. I couldn't find search by year but that's on my tablet. I'm glad they have definitions. I found the charming term "honeyfungle" in my period but infuriatingly it refers to child molestation.
Erato, thanks for the link. I couldn't find search by year but that's on my tablet. I'm glad they have definitions. I found the charming term "honeyfungle" in my period but infuriatingly it refers to child molestation.
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One of the Miss Silver mysteries from the 1940s has a young man proclaim to a woman he wanted to impress that he'd never made love to the girl who was raised as his father's ward, even though she was quite the looker. From a few decades on, readers huffed "Well, I would HOPE NOT!"
He merely meant he'd never even flirted with her.
He merely meant he'd never even flirted with her.
Thanks for the great links! I think I've got to go back and re-read some racy French texts of the 1800s in English translation and see how it's handled there (Therese Philosophe and Dangerous Liaisons come to mind ...)
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