Uncovering the nature of marital sex in the past is difficult as few people leave a written record of their sexual activity. A study of over one hundred upper-class couples’ letters across a two-hundred year period found no explicit references to sex, although sharing a bed—or more commonly bemoaning the absence of a spouse from bed—was a common metaphor to denote intimacy across the century. This metaphor could act as a double-entendre. John Erskine, Earl of Mar wrote to his wife in 1704 that, “since you have delay’d takeing another bedfellow since I came away til noe [now] put it of[f] but two days longer and you’ll have one that loves you better than any you can get.” While this might have innocently referred to the common practice of bed-sharing during the period, it was also a nod towards the potential for sexual satisfaction that his wife could have found elsewhere and with him. As a common metaphor for intimacy, not sharing a bed conversely indicated the breakdown of a marriage. In 1696, George, Duke of Gordon argued during his divorce proceedings that it was clear his wife Elizabeth intended to desert him as previous to her leaving “she withdrew hir selfe totallie from his bed and buird.” Marital sex denoted reconciliation and forgiveness and many defendants argued that having sex was evidence that their spouse had forgiven their transgression. The diarist, James Boswell’s wife regularly punished his infidelities by refusing to have sex or share a bed with him.
The physical act of touching and caressing was a marker of marital intimacy. Numerous divorce cases compared the behaviour of adulterers to that of husband and wife, providing insight into sexual behaviour in marriage: “I have in short used her alse familiarly as her husband could.” Evidence of such intimacy included walking together arm in arm, stroking, caressing, embracing, flirting, spending time alone and receiving gifts. Grissell McDonald was seen “permitting him to kiss her mouth, neck and breast at severall times, Receiving tokens from him such as rings” and “they would sitt publickly in a roume upon two chairs, the said John Balff his thighs being at the time betwixt the defenders thighs and he having his hand under her petticoats, and his arme about her neck, and mutually embraceing one another.” Couples engaged in a variety of sexual positions, most commonly with men on top, but also standing up and on their side. The number of children produced by elite women—which often ranged into double-digits—also indicated that couples continued to have sex throughout their married lives. Wives were expected to be sexually welcoming to their husbands. In marriage annulment suits for male impotency, women, such as Maureen Miller, often emphasised that while “bedding with him she did frequently kiss & imbrace him and did all that in modesty she could to allure him to the dutie of ane husband,” “nor did she ever resist him” and “did never hinder him to put his hands to any part of her body that might alure him.”
Marital sex was expected to be enjoyable. James Boswell made notes such as “Wife wonderfully good” or “It was a renovation of felicity” when recording his bedroom antics. Evidence of women’s enjoyment of sex is harder to find, but their willingness to engage in extra-marital sex indicates that they too desired sex. In the first half of the eighteenth century, descriptions of sexually-assertive women were common. Simeon Bardou, when testifying against his mistress in 1719, noted she: “Imbraced me in her arms and took my hand and putt it on her naked belly and told me that she could give me no plainer demonstration of her love than that she would allow me all the freedom I could desire . . . I was prevailed upon to have carnal dealings with her” and “She came often there to me, yea she came so frequently that I caused deny my self to her.” Isobell Anderson was even more sexually aggressive: “she haveing gone into a house in Dalkeith where she found a certain man lying in naked bed she most impudently put her hands below the cloaths and took hold of him by the privey Members and by a great oath expressed herself that was a lusty loom indeed or a braw pennyworth for a woman.” She also informed her husband that he “could expect no better treatment than be cuckolded,” a common symptom of a lack of female sexual fulfilment.
Later in the century, new models of chastity began to affect both understandings of female sexual behaviour and women’s enjoyment of sex. Women were described in a more passive manner, even when committing adultery. Descriptions of Margaret Porterfield’s extra-marital activity included: “Graham put his hands about the Defenders neck and kiss her several times without any resistance being made by the Defender.” The most sexually assertive role Margaret got was touching Graham’s face and arm at inappropriate times. Women were not just viewed as sexually passive; the adoption of such ideas affected women’s sexual behaviour—sometimes to a significant extent. Henry Campbell blamed his adultery on his wife’s frigidity, noting that “when he went to bed with the Pursuer on the night of their marriage she refused to allow him any communication with her and had herself wrapped up and swaddled with different cloaths and bandages to prevent him . . . nor would she ever permit the Pursuers embraces except after a violent struggle.” In return, Mary responded that his use of prostitutes meant that he did not “relishe the reluctance with which the Pursuers youth and innocence made her admit the first embraces of a Husband,” but even after years of marriage, “it has ever been looked on as the most beautiful circumstance attending married Love that a seeming reluctance should still be found on the part of the Female.” The increasing expectation of chastity on the part of wives influenced not just social attitudes, but the marital bed.
Further Reading
Katie Barclay, ‘Sex and the Scottish Self in the Long-Eighteenth Century, in Jodi Campbell, Elizabeth Ewan and Heather Parker (eds.), Shaping Scottish Identity: Family, Nation and the World Beyond, Guelph Series in Scottish Studies (Guelph, Forthcoming 2011).
Katie Barclay, Love Intimacy and Power: Marriage and Patriarchy in Scotland, 1650-1850 (Manchester UP, 2011).
Katie Barclay has been enjoying the glorious weather of the last few weeks. She is a historian at Queen’s University, Belfast.
