1. Analysts of Victorian sexuality are numerous. Among the most recent are Walters, Ronald, Primers for Prudery (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Charles E., “Sexuality, Class and Role,” American Quarterly, 25 (05 1973), 131–53CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Barker-Benfield, C. J., The Horrors of the Half-known Life: Male Attitudes Toward Women and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Harper & Row, 1976)Google Scholar; Fee, Elizabeth, “Psychology, Sexuality and Social Control in Victorian England,”Google Scholar paper presented at 1976 AHA convention. Perhaps the two most famous contemporary studies are Marcus, Stephen, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-nineteenth-Century England (New York: Basic Books, 1966)Google Scholar, and Caminos, Peter, “Late-Victorian Sexual Repression and the Social System,” International Review of Social History, Vol. 8 (1963).Google Scholar

2. I define as the founders of the male-purity movement in America Sylvester Graham, William Alcott, S. B. Woodward, O. S. and L. N. Fowler, and R. S. Trail. The contrast between the male moral reformers and the female moral reform movement of the same period is striking. The women were concerned with the double standard, prostitution, seduction of young girls in a rapidly urbanizing world, and nonsexual expressions of male power. They sought ways of curtailing male autonomy and familial power and also ways of creating institutional and emotional ties between women otherwise isolated in new agrarian and commercial communities. See Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “Beauty, the Beast and the Militant Woman: A Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” American Quarterly, 22 (1971), 562–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is virtually no commonality of interest between the two.

3. Among the advocates of individualism I would include such disparate bedfellows as the Transcendentalist intellectuals (Emerson and Hawthorne), the Anti-Masons, political and economic exponents of individualism traditionally associated with the Jacksonian Democrats, and revivalistic religion exemplified in frontier revivals and the theological statements of Charles G. Finney. I would see Horace Bushnell, many of the New England educational reformers, and urban Evangelical and public-health reformers, among others, as ideologically and emotionally allied with the sex reformers in a loose—and unarticulated—manner.

4. I have drawn these conclusions from my study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century medical literature on sexuality. For a classic example of the eighteenth century's prescription, see Aristotle's Master-Piece, or, the Secrets of Nature (London: 1797)Google Scholar. This volume, originally appearing in the seventeenth century, was printed at least twenty-seven times in the United States between 1766 and 1831. See Bealle, Otho L. Jr., “Aristotle's Master-Piece in America: A Landmark in the Folk Lore of Medicine,” William and Mary Quarterly, 20 (1963), 207–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Demos, John, “Families in Colonial Bristol, Rhode Island,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 25 (01 1968), 40–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Nissenbaum, Stephen, “The New Chastity in America, 1830–1840,”Google Scholar unpublished manuscript, 1975.

7. It is important to differentiate between the schools of medical opinion in nineteenth-century America. The nineteenth-century medical profession, especially on the question of sexual behavior, was far from a monolithic unit. Certain physicians who can be designated as the Evangelical School (see Rosenberg, 's study “Sexuality, Class and Role”Google Scholar)—William Acton and Dio Lewis, among others—did adopt much of the regimen advocated by the male moral reformers, couching it in both religious and moral terms. Women physicians, especially in the period 1860–1900, tended to espouse similar attitudes concerning the danger of sexual intercourse. They saw sex as dangerous to women and children but not to men. See Blackwell, Elizabeth, The Human Element in Sex…, 3d ed. (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1884)Google Scholar, and Stockham, Alice B., Karezza, Ethics of Marriage (Chicago: Stockham, 1900)Google Scholar. Other physicians, such as Wesley Grindel and George Hollick and a host of others, doctors who advertised abortifacients, birth-control devices, and cures for venereal disease, took a latitudinal attitude toward sexuality. See Grindel, Wesley, New Medical Revelations (Philadelphia: 1857)Google Scholar; Grindle, H. D., The Female Sexual System or Ladies' Medical Guide (New York: 1864)Google Scholar; Earl, William, The System or the Ladies' Medical Guide (New York: 1858)Google Scholar; Hollick, Frederick, The Male Generative Organis in Health and Disease … 120 ed. (New York: Strong, n.d.).Google Scholar

8. Hare, E. H., “Masturbatory Insanity: The History of an Idea,” Journal of Mental Science, Vol. 108 (1962)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Concepts of masturbatory insanity seem to have been adopted in this country from such European authorities as S. A. Tissot, Leopold Deslandes, and C. F. Lallemand, and not indigenous American creations.

9. For biographical information see the sketches (Ernest Sutherland Bales on O. S. Fowler, Herbert Thorns on William A. Alcott, MWG on Sylvester Graham) in Johnson, Allen and Malone, Dumas, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931)Google Scholar. For later studies see Nissenbaum, Stephen, “Careful Love: Sylvester Graham and the Emergence of Victorian Sexual Theory in America, 1830–1840,” unpublished dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1968Google Scholar; and Kett, Joseph, Adolescence in America (New York: Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar. For information about the communities from which the moral reformers came, see Cross, , Burned Over DistrictGoogle Scholar, and Orcutt, Samuel, History of Wolcott (Waterbury, Conn., 1874)Google Scholar, and Alcorn, Robert Hayden, The Biography of a Town, Suffield, Connecticut, 1870–1970 (Suffield, Conn.: privately published, 1970).Google Scholar

10. For a survey of recent literature on the eighteenth century see Henretta, James, The Evolution of American Society, 1700–1815: An Interdisciplinary Analysis (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973)Google Scholar. Key studies for understanding the transitions society underwent during the period include Greven, Philip, “Historical Demography and Colonial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 24 (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bushman, Richard L., From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967).Google Scholar

11. Henretta, James, “Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston,” William and Mary Quarterly, 22 (1965), 75–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 35 (01 1978), 3–32.Google Scholar

12. From the point of view of individual psychodynamics, young men experienced a far more dependent adolescence at the very time they prepared for a more autonomous adulthood. I am describing structured psychic discontinuity.

13. Children's books in the 1790s began to comment on stressed relations between fathers and sons—while still emphasizing the father's, not the mother's, role as principal child-rearer. They also commented upon the unusual and distressing nature of having an adolescent son living at home. See, for instance, Vice in Its Proper Share … (Worcester, Mass.: Isaiah Thomas, 1789)Google Scholar, which describes the plight of parents whose son has been expelled from school and from his apprenticeship: “His parents, therefore, were under the disagreeable necessity of keeping him at home; but [having] little or nothing … to do, he soon fell into bad company [and] became a thoughtless and unhappy wanderer.”

14. Katz, Michael, “Presidential Address Presented to the History of Education Society, Harvard University, November, 1976,”Google Scholar and idem, “Rise of the Institutional State,” unpublished manuscript.

15. Feldberg, Michael, “Urbanization as a Cause of Violence: Philadelphia as a Case Test,” Davis, Allan F. and Haller, Mark H., eds., The Peoples of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 53–69Google Scholar; Laurie, Bruce, “Fire Companies and Gangs in Southwark: The 1840's,” op. cit., pp. 71–87Google Scholar; Blumin, Stuart, “Residential Mobility Within the Nineteenth-Century City,” op. cit., pp. 37–51Google Scholar; and Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, Religion and the Rise of the American City (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971), Chaps. 6 and 8.Google Scholar

16. Bercovitch, Sacvan, “Why the Puritans Won the American Revolution,” Massachusetts Review 17 (Winter 1976), 597–630.Google Scholar

17. Graham, Sylvester, Lectures to Young Men on Chastity, 3d ed. (Boston: Light & Stearns, 1837)Google Scholar; S[amuel]. Woodward, B., Hints for the Young in Relation to the Health of Mind and Body (Boston: Light, 1838)Google Scholar; Alcott, William A., The Young Man's Guide (Boston: Marvin, 1833)Google Scholar; and idem, Physiology of Marriage (Boston: Dinsmoor, 1866).Google Scholar

18. Nissenbaum, , “The New Chastity” (note 6 above).Google Scholar

19. O[rson]. S[quire]. Fowler, Amativeness, or the Evils and Remedies of Excessive and Perverted Sexuality (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1856), p. 48Google Scholar, and Newman, J. B., Philosophy of Generation: Its A buses with Their Causes, Prevention and Cure (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1856), p. 56.Google Scholar

20. Graham, , Lectures, pp. 77–79Google Scholar, and Alcott, , Physiology, pp. 67–68, 72–74.Google Scholar

21. Woodward, , Hints, p. 5Google Scholar, and Graham, , Lectures, pp. 91–92.Google Scholar

22. Fowler, , Amativeness, p. 34Google Scholar, and Trall, R. T., Home-Treatment for Sexual Abuses: A Practical Treatise (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1856), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

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24. Graham, , Lectures, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

25. Fowler, , A mativeness, p. 60Google Scholar; idem.Love and Parentage (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1844), p. 36Google Scholar; Alcott, , Physiology, p. 66Google Scholar; and Graham, , Lectures, p. 54.Google Scholar

26. Rosch, D., Chronic Diseases (New York: Fowlers & Wells, 1856), pp. 16–18Google Scholar, and Alcott, , Physiology, pp. 115–25;Google Scholar

27. Graham, , Lectures, pp. 37, 67–71Google Scholar, and Alcott, , Physiology, pp. 18, 149.Google Scholar

28. Graham, , Lectures, p. 38Google Scholar, and Fowler, O. S., The Family (note 1 above), pp. 13–14Google Scholar. See Fowler's comments: “Human nature has its social and sexual department and laws. … These laws establish a love science over this part, the same as mathematical laws establish a mathematical science; because each is equally a part and parcel of Nature, and of course each governed by its specific natural laws. … These laws institute a right, and, by converse, a wrong, in both its general principles, and throughout all its details. … Every item of concord is the necessary consequence of this obedience; and all discord, of their violation.” Fowler, O. S., The Family, p. 13Google Scholar. See especially Graham, , Lectures, p. 39n.Google Scholar

29. Alcott, William A., The Young Wife (Boston: Waite, Pierce, 1846)Google Scholar; idem, Young Man's Guide, pp. 56, 58, 263–305Google Scholar; Fowler, O. S., Love and Parentage, pp. 67–68Google Scholar; and Woodward, , Hints for Young, p. 8.Google Scholar

30. Graham, , Lectures, pp. 11, 27–29Google Scholar, and Alcott, , Physiology, pp. 9–11, 13–16.Google Scholar

31. Graham, , Lectures.Google Scholar

32. Douglas, Mary, Natural Symbols (New York: Vintage, 1970), Chap. 1 and pp. 111, 114, 124–25.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 98, 99, 191. See also Turner, Victor, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 19–47.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., pp. 28, 29–47.

35. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966), p. 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Turner, , Forest, pp. 93–111Google Scholar, and Van Gennep, A., The Rites of Passage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960).Google Scholar

37. Douglas's use of “marginal” appears somewhat different from Turner's use of “liminal.” “Danger lies in marginal states. … To behave antisocially is the proper expression of their marginal position. To have been in the margins is to have been in contact with danger, to have been at the source of power. … Dirt, obscenity and lawlessness are as relevant symbolically to the rites of seclusion as other ritual expressions of their condition.” Douglas, , Purity and Danger, pp. 97, 99Google Scholar. “First consider beliefs about persons in a marginal state. These are people who are somehow left out of the patterning of society, who are placeless. They may be doing nothing morally wrong, but their status is indefinable. Take for example the unborn child. Its present position is ambiguous, its future equally. … It is often treated as both vulnerable and dangerous,” ibid., p. 95. This, I argue, is parallel to the treatment of young men.

38. Trall, , Home-TreatmentGoogle Scholar, Introduction and Chap. 1, and Woodward, , Hints, pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

39. Alcott, , Young Man's Guide, p. 19Google Scholar, and idem, Physiology, pp. 69, 72.Google Scholar

40. Ibid., p. 77.

41. Graham, , Lectures, p. 63.Google Scholar

42. Calhoun, George R., Report of the Consulting Surgeon on Spermatorrhoea or Sexual Weakness, Impotence, the Vice of Onanism, Masturbation, or Self-Abuse … (Philadelphia: Howard, 1858), p. 5Google Scholar; Trall, , Home-Treatment (note 22 above), pp. 41–43Google Scholar; Fowler, , Amativeness (note 9 above), pp. 14–15, 17Google Scholar; and Graham, , Lectures, pp. 20, 63Google Scholar. When women began to attend academies and colleges in increasing numbers (especially beginning in the 1870s), similar arguments were made concerning the danger of education to women's health and morals. A very direct connection was made between disease and role change. Again we have an example of male adolescents treated in a way similar to the special treatment of women—especially when role change is an issue. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll and Rosenberg, Charles, “The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Women's Role in 19th-century America,” Journal of American History, 60 (1973), 332–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Fowler, , Amativeness, p. 13Google Scholar, and Graham, , Lectures, p. 82.Google Scholar

44. The related themes of youthful assaults upon authority, of adolescent autonomy, of the need for surveillance and restriction consequently run through the moral reformers' jeremiads. Personal supervision had to replace organized ritual as the guardian of order. Parents had actively to control their sons—control that took the form of sexual repression. Upon such repression rested the security of the social order. “It would be well to … imbue the mind with the laudable sense of fear which should invariably accompany an infringement of the law. Fear is an essential element in controlling this class, which has many, very many members.” Newman, J. B., in Philosophy of GenerationGoogle Scholar (note 19 above), urged an even more rigid surveillance. Children were dangerous. Nothing they did ought to go unobserved.

They should never be left alone much, and in large boarding schools, a dim light burning in an extensive sleeping room, so, that, without disturbing their slumbers, nothing may be performed unseen. In the bath and privy an equal scrutiny should be observed, and, when other means fail, some authors recommend the pupil sleeping in the teacher's bed [Newman, , Philosophy of Generation, pp. 48–54].Google Scholar

See also Howe, Joseph, Excessive Venery (New York: 1883), pp. 22, 65–66Google Scholar; Woodward, , Hints for the Young, p. 8Google Scholar; and Graham, , Lectures, pp. 82–83Google Scholar. Fowler, as usual, expressed the reformers' concern in graphic and flamboyant terms: “And being a common enemy, it can be extirpated only by community of effort. Single hands can do but little. Nothing but combined, concentrated, and long continued exertion, can avert the widespread and insidious contagion.” Fowler, O. S., Amativeness, pp. 19–20Google Scholar. A strong parallel exists between Howe's language and the terms used in the treatment of women's hysterics. Both were seen as outside male patriarchal control; both were role deviations. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “The Hysterical Woman: Some Reflections on Sex Roles and Role Conflict in 19th Century America,” Social Research (Winter 1972).Google Scholar

45. Graham, , Lectures, pp. 16–17, 20.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 59.

47. Alcott, , Young Man's Guide, pp. 70–73.Google Scholar

48. Fowler, , Love and Parentage (note 25 above), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar; Trall, , Home-Treatment, pp. 25–26Google Scholar; and Woodward, , Hints, p. 7.Google Scholar

49. Cornell, William, Hints to Youth on the Preservation of Health, or How to Avoid Diseases That Destroy Both Body and Mind (Boston: Laken, 1872), p. 8Google Scholar, and Rosch, , Chronic Diseases (note 26 above), pp. 22, 27.Google Scholar

50. Report on Spermatorrhoea, pp. 8, 6.Google Scholar

51. Douglas, , Purity and Danger (note 35 above), p. 132Google Scholar; see also Chap. 8, “Internal Lines,” for a full discussion.

52. Ibid., p. 132.

53. Alcott, , Physiology (note 17 above), pp. 89n., 92, 88–96Google Scholar; Fowler, , Love and Parentage, p. xiiGoogle Scholar; and idem, Amativeness, pp. 26–27, 21.Google Scholar