Bless Me Father, I Have Sinned... But May I Write About It? Piety and Promiscuity in Practice

The fifth in a series: On religion and sex - in text.

The week before last I finished the third chapter of my thesis after a laborious hiatus: reading, reading, reading. If you cannot remember, or simply known nothing about my topic, you can read about it in my other blogs (wink). Incidentally, while reading, I stumbled upon an article posted by one of my lecturers about the scholarly addiction - ‘just one more source’. I must admit that I am 120% a procrastireader. There are never enough sources and anything could be relevant. Nevertheless, my third chapter found its restraint.

In April 1872, the domestic servant community of Dundee was the first in Britain to openly protest about the state of their industry and request the establishment of a trade union. The servants demanded a maximum 16 hour working day, a more practical uniform, a half-holiday weekly, every second Sunday to themselves and no more cooking on the Sabbath! The union was short lived and, by July, was all but forgotten. However, the commentary that surrounded this 'maidservants' insurrection' in a city with an extremely small domestic servant population (8% in comparison to 40-50% in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen) was striking.

The press focused on several positive and negative aspects of the servants' trade unionism, but opinions on serving cold food on a Sunday were clear. The Dundee Courier, Dundee Evening Telegraph and People’s Journal among other newspapers, published letters to the editor from ‘maids’ and ‘mistresses’ focusing on this demand as, primarily, an excuse for a day-off ‘stravaging’ and ‘love-making’ rather than an expression of piousness. The maids argued that they simply wanted time to themselves after their Sunday-morning in church - and found it insulting to God that they should have to fire up the ovens. Employers were decidedly suspicious of this innocence. They might have had a point, but hey, they deserved a chance to let their hair down! They worked hard enough! (biased historian alert)

This dialogue of piety versus promiscuity provided a segway to themes I have wanted to write on for weeks: sex and religion. Firstly, religion is a fascinating subject for me. I am not an atheist, an agnostic or an omnist... more a follower of the Grandmother-Willow-philosophy (karma's a killer, there is no such thing as coincidence, the hills have eyes... that sort of thing). However, I find the omnipresent impact religion can have on its practitioners very interesting. Secondly, sex (or lack thereof, in the case of chastity) interests everyone - no need to elaborate there.

In the pre-modern and modern periods, religion offered women an - albeit patriarchal and temporary - escape from the private realm. It represented an industry that included women and encouraged them to join ranks; to grow as both Children of God and members of a social community. For Anglo-American women, Christianity provided greater access to the public sphere: education, travel, mission work and, perhaps the most desirable feature, a passionate hobby for everyday life that did not involve cross-stitching!

Perspectives on women's sexuality were also in a state of flux between these two periods. Historians disagree with regards to the exact chronology, but there appears to have been a distinct shift from the pre-modern 'one-sex' and the modern 'two-sex' definitions of biology and sexuality. Concisely put, the one-sex model defined men and women's sexuality as comparable (genitalia were simply inverted versions of each other, though women were still inferior as their body was derived from man's). The two-sex model, however, changed everything. Women were no longer earthy beings, but fragile and alien creatures with weird and wonderful bodies that produced and secreted all sorts of horror and confusion for male doctors. Just think about the infamous diagnosis and treatment of female 'hysteria' and you can only imagine what was going through their heads..?

Women writers - especially of the nineteenth century - were often forced to censor or heavily curtail themes of women's sexuality in their writing as I discussed briefly in a previous post. But, what of the actual lives of these women (and women writers of earlier periods often heavily involved with religion) did they wrestle promiscuity over religiosity? What was at the front of their minds?

Anna Maria Mozzoni, Italian women's rights activist (sourced).

There are many interesting examples of ‘God's mysterious ways’ having an influence on women writers. I stumbled upon the strange case of Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) in the NEWW Women Writers database. A religious zealot for most of her life; in her 40s, Southcott began describing herself as a religious prophet. When she was 64 years old, she claimed to be pregnant with a divine incarnation, an infant named Shiloh. Southcott was unmarried and supposedly a virgin at the time, but several doctors confirmed the pregnancy. While in labour, she fell unconscious and died shortly afterwards. A New Messiah was not delivered, and during her post-mortem, it was discovered that there was no foetus inside her at all - only terribly swollen intestines. Her numerous followers still offered their unwavering support and fought for the publication of her writings posthumously. Was Southcott really a prophetess or an unfortunate woman who suffered from sepsis for two decades? I guess, we will never know.

Women writers with a strong connection to religion also revolted against its oft-regimental enforcement upon them. Anna Maria Mozzoni (1837-1920) was a writer, translator and activist of the pro-emancipation women's movement in Italy. She spoke out against the burden of Roman Catholicism on women, particularly the state of women's education. Sadly, she died long before Italian women received the vote in 1946. Almost two centuries earlier, another Italian writer, Petronilla Paolini Massimi (1663-1726), was married just before her tenth birthday to a 40-year-old nobleman. They were provided 'licence to wed' by Pope Clement X and had the first of three children when Massimi was 16. Needless to say, it was an unhappy union and, at 27, Massimi ran away to join a convent where she dedicated her life to poetry and to God. When she heard that her son was poorly, she tried to come back to the family, but was forbidden by her husband. After her son's death, she attempted to divorce him, but was denied by the Church. It was not until her husband's death in 1707 that Massimi was allowed to return to the family home to be reunited with her children. Her piousness was never in question (she was a nun after all), but surely her pseudo-paedophilic marriage, abandonment of her children and resistance against the State weighed on her mind?

Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene by Simeon Solomon, 1864 (sourced)

There were cases when the relationships of women writers with religion were of an implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, sexually nature. One example; the correspondence between Jewish-Italian poet, Sara Copia Sullam (1592-1641) and Catholic monk and writer, Ansaldo Cebà. The two shared an epistolary relationship for four years, in which time Cebà frequently asked Sullam to convert to Christianity and showered her with gifts. She was married and he was 27 years older. Nevertheless, their relationship was very intimate and Sullam confessed to Cebà that she kept one of his novels by her always... even in bed! Sappho (c. 630-570 BC), the Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, was another example of the melding of sex, religion and women's literature. Little is known about her life, but it is clear Sappho's poems were about 'love'. However, as her work has been revisited numerous times - from the Hellenic period to the time of women's suffrage - themes of sexual desire, homosexuality and romantic jealously have been identified as 'hidden between the lines' of Sappho's poetry.

Was it easier for women to acknowledge any conflicting sexually rebellious feelings they may have had through literature? Using personal and published correspondence as a sort of outlet secondary to confession? Coming back to my maids, in comparison to Sappho, how often were the opinions and expressions of women manipulated into something sexual that may or may not have been intended? How did each of these women see themselves: sexual beings or Children of God with the capacity to reproduce? Food for thought.

#History #AnnaMariaMozzoni #Sappho #JoannaSouthcott #PetronillaPaoliniMassimi #Religion #Promiscuity #Sexuality