Masturbation can also be seen as a form of women’s sexuality that has evolved since the Victorian era. Masturbation was seen as a moral disgrace and was shunned by the majority of society. It was blamed to be the causes of diseases such as heart disorders, cancer and hysteria. The editor of the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal, went so far as to say that even if masturbation wasn’t the cause of the diseases that the engaging in it would further the disease. According to the website, Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Circumcision, and Dr. Joseph Jones, a former president of the Louisiana State Board of Health, masturbation resulted in 'hopeless insanity.' This insanity could also be inherited from the offspring of a person that masturbated. As a result, many females thought to be masturbating were subject to a clitoridectomy, or removal of the clitoris. Although this was often a drastic measure and by no means the norm, it still shows the strict code of virtue imposed on sexuality in the Victorian age.

Source: http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/sexuality.shtml

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

- Gustave Flaubert, famous French writer, to his wife Louise Colet, on August 15, 1846.

For those who are more vegetable inclined, today we are going to learn a simple breakfast dish from 1864. The use of vegetables in the nineteenth century prior to standard refrigeration was always seasonal and based upon local crops. If asparagus was not in season, another vegetable could be employed, like a tomato, a squash, green beans, peas, or anything else. People cooking in the nineteenth century had to be experimental and willing to try different food combinations based on their limited resources. Wealthier people had more options because they could afford to bring in more foods from different regions of the country. Without standard refrigeration, however, spoiling was always an issue. It was like playing beat the clock with consuming the food before it was spoiled and wasted.

Here is the recipe from "On Cooking Vegetables" in American Recipes from 1864.


Take cold asparagus, and cut it the size of peas; break four or five eggs into a dish, and beat them with pepper, salt, and the asparagus. Then put it into a stew-pan with a spoonful of butter, set it on the fire, and stir it all the time till it thickens. Put it upon toasted bread in a hot dish.

Perhaps the most significant turning point in Queen Victoria's life was the death of Prince Albert in December 1861. His death sent Victoria into a deep depression, and she stayed in seclusion for many years, rarely appearing in public. She mourned him by wearing black for the remaining forty years of her life.

Albert's death came suddenly. In November 1861, he contracted typhoid fever. He lay sick in bed for several weeks, finally succumbing to the disease on December 14. He was only forty-two years old. Victoria was devastated. She wrote to her daughter Victoria shortly afterwards: "How I, who leant on him for all and everything—without whom I did nothing, moved not a finger, arranged not a print or photograph, didn't put on a gown or bonnet if he didn't approve it shall go on, to live, to move, to help myself in difficult moments?"

The Queen turned mourning into the chief concern of her existence the next several years. The Prince's rooms in their residences were maintained exactly as he had them when he was alive. Her servants were instructed to bring hot water into his dressing room every day as they had formerly done for his morning shave. She had statues made of him, displayed mementos of his around the royal palaces, and she spent most of her time secluded in Windsor Castle or in Balmoral up in Scotland, where she had formerly spent so many happy times with her husband.

After the first year, her mourning came to be viewed by many in Britain as obsessive, and public unease arose about the Queen's state of mind and the state of the monarchy generally. This unease was aggravated by Victoria's refusal to appear in public except on the rarest occasions. She made her first public appearance only on October 13, 1863, and then only to unveil a statue of Albert at Aberdeen, Scotland. She appeared publicly in London on June 21, 1864, riding out through the streets in an open carriage. She did not personally appear to open Parliament until the 1866 session, and then only reluctantly.

Source: http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/victoria/section5.rhtml

I took this bit of information from PBS.

Mummies were used as medicine?

Medical recipes list "mummy" as an ingredient. It was even taken straight. King Francis I of France, in fact, took a pinch of mummy every day with rhubarb. And who says what's worse, rhubarb or mummy? He believed that it would make him stronger and invincible, and would stop assassins from killing him.

Did this notion that mummies made good medicine lead to a lot of them being destroyed?

Hundreds and thousands of mummies were destroyed for medicine. Others were burned as kindling or wood, because there aren't that many trees in Egypt. There are 19th-century accounts of travelers who say, "Oh, it's unseasonably cold and we've run out of wood, so we have to throw a mummy on the fire."

Amazing. And the Victorians also had "unwrapping" parties, didn't they?

Mummies were considered very Gothic. And in the Victorian era, when anything neo-Gothic was cool, unwrapping mummies became very stylish. So people would bring back or buy mummies from Egypt and have unwrapping parties. We have invitations saying, "Come to Lord Longsberry's at 2 p.m., Piccadilly, for the unwrapping of a mummy from Thebes. Champagne and canapés to follow." A lot of mummies were destroyed in that way.

However, there were some people, such as a man called Thomas Pettigrew, who was later called Mummy Pettigrew. He was a trained medical doctor, and he did a lot of unwrappings to understand how mummies were made. In the 19th century, he published one of the first scholarly works on how mummies were produced.

Ballgowns, ca. 1860-1862.

Not enough female reenactors pay attention to their hair, so it is my goal to find ways to teach women to do their hair in a suitable manner. I have found a video on YouTube that teaches women how to do their hair in a Regency period updo. The Regency period was just prior to the early Victorian period. Some of you are getting into reenacting the War of 1812 and even Jane Austen-style living histories, so I thought I would change up my usual Civil War reenacting lessons and jump to the previous generation.

If you do not have long hair, consider using clip on extensions like the clip on extensions in this blog. Read that blog to understand why hair is very important in portraying nineteenth century women and why it should not be ignored in reenacting today.

Please do not use this style at a reenactment later than about 1825 because it won't be correct.