² The definition of what constitutes sexuality is currently under debate. Some analysts stress the biological basis of the experience, focusing on organic and neurological response; others, more committed to a psychoanalytic perspective, stress the role of fantasy—originating in childhood—in eliciting these responses. As the recent work of Michel Foucault suggests, however, both positions presuppose that “sex” as a category of human experience can be isolated and is uniform throughout history. We agree with Foucault's contention that the concept of what activities and sensations are “sexual” is historically determined and hence part of a changing discourse. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1Google Scholar: An Introduction, tr. Robert, Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).Google Scholar

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⁴ The classic works are Masters, William H. and Johnson, Virginia E., Human Sexual Response (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966)Google Scholar; and Human Sexual Inadequacy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970).Google Scholar

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¹¹ Personal communication, June, 1979.

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¹³ Keesing, Roger M., Kin Groups and Social Structure (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), chapter 7.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Rapp, Rayna, unpublished field notes, Provence (France), 1969, 1970, 1971–72.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Davis, , “Ghosts”, pp. 102–03.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Classic essays on incest prohibitions are found in Grabum, Nelson, ed., Readings in Kinship and Social Structure (New York: Harper and Row, 1971)Google Scholar, chapter 14; Fox, Robin, Kinship and Marriage (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1967)Google Scholar, chapter 2. Levi-Strauss' most famous work, Elementary Structures of Kinship, trs. Bell, James H., von Sturmer, John R., and Needham, Rodney (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969) is founded on this question.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Tilly, Louise and Scott, Joan, Women, Work and Family (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), p. 26Google Scholar; Berkner, Lutz K., “Recent Research on the History of the Family in Western Europe”, Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (08, 1973): 395–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), chapter 2.Google Scholar

²⁰ Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 44, 46–48.Google Scholar

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²⁴ Stone, , Family, Sex and Marriage, pp. 615–616.Google Scholar

²⁵ Goody, Jack, Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 63.Google Scholar

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²⁹ Interesting speculations on generational power relations in handicraft families appear in Medick, Hans, “The Proto-Industrial Family Economy”, Social History 1, no. 3 (10, 1976): 291–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gillis, John, “Resort to Common-Law Marriage in England and Wales, 1700–1850”, unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar

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³¹ Gillis, John R., Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770-Present (New York and London: Academic Press, 1974), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

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³³ Ibid., chapters 2, 3, and 4.

³⁴ Davis, Natalie Zemon, “The Reasons of Misrule”, in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 97–123, 104–05Google Scholar; Flandrin, Jean-Louis, Les amours paysannes (xvi^e xix^e siècle) (Paris: Editions Gallimard/Julliard, 1975), pp. 142–43Google Scholar; and Families in Former Times, pp. 34–35.Google Scholar

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⁴² Knight, Patricia, “Women and Abortion in Victorian and Edwardian England”, History Workshop 4 (Autumn, 1977): 57–69, 58–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴⁴ See Davies, Margaret L., ed., Maternity, Letters from Working Women, reprint ed. (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 1978), p. 56.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Gillis, John R., “Servants, Sexual Relations, and the Risks of Illegitimacy in London, 1801–1900”, Feminist Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring, 1979): 142–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McBride, Theresa M., The Domestic Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1976), chapter 6.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ SirPollock, Frederick and Maitland, Frederick William, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vols., 2d ed. reissue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968): 2Google Scholar, chapter 6; Goodsell, Willystine, A History of Marriage and the Family, rev. ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1934)Google Scholar; McGregor, O. R., Divorce in England. A Centenary Study (London: Heinemann, 1957).Google Scholar

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⁵³ Gillis, “Domestic Service and Sexual Relations in Nineteenth Century London”, paper presented at International Conference in Women's History, University of Maryland, November, 1977.

⁵⁴ Flandrin, , “Repression and Change”, p. 204.Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ This view is implicit in Weeks, Coming Out; it is the hypothesis which Gayle Rubin is currently investigating in her research on the evolution to homosexual communities in twentieth-century Europe and America (personal communication, December, 1979).

⁵⁹ Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York: Academic Press, 1977).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Tilly, and Scott, , Women, Work and Family, pp. 93–96Google Scholar. See also: Lees, Lynn H., Exiles of Erin. Irish Migration in Victorian London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979)Google Scholar for a discussion of changes in ages of marriage of rural Irish who migrated to London at the time of the famine; and Tilly, Louise A., “The Family Wage Economy of a French Textile City: Roubaix, 1872–1906”, Journal of Family History 4, no. 4 (Winter, 1979): 381–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶³ Snorter's, “Female Emancipation, Birth Control and Fertility in European History” [American Historical Review 78, no. 3 (06, 1973): 605–40]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, opened a debate on the sources of Europe's high birth and illegitimacy-rates in the era of early industrialization. On illegitimacy, the weight of scholarship supports the view that the urban migration of young women made them especially vulnerable to illegitimate pregnancies. See Tilly, Louise A., Scott, Joan W., and Cohen, Miriam, “Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6, no. 3 (Winter, 1976): 447–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; De Pauw, Jacques, “Amour illégitime et société à Nantes au xviii^e siècle”, Annales E.S.C., 27 (1972): 1155–82Google Scholar; Lottin, Alain, “Naissances illégitimes et filles-mères à Lille au xviii^e siècle”, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 17 (04 1970): 278–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fairchilds, Cissie, “Female Sexual Attitudes and the Rise of Illegitimacy: A Case Study”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, no. 4 (Spring, 1978): 627–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Michel Frey suggests that Paris women in the mid-nineteenth century living as “concubines” wanted to change their relationships into legitimate marriages, and that marriages were least likely to take place between couples with the lowest paying employment. See “Du manage et du concubinage dans les classes populaires a Paris 1846–1847”, Annales, E.S.C. 33, no. 4 (07–08 1978): 803–25.Google Scholar

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⁶⁶ Ibid., p. 89.

⁶⁷ Davidoff, Leonore, “Mastered for Life: Servant and Wife in Victorian and Edwardian England”, Journal of Social History 8 (Summer, 1974): 404–28, 413–14.Google Scholar

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