Reading Review
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Course of Study:
(HSY204) History of Sex and Sexuality
Title of work:
Intimate matters; a history of sexuality in America, Third edition. (2012)
Section:
Chapter 2 Family life and the regulation of deviance pp. 15–38
Author/editor of work:
D’Emilio, John.; Freedman, Estelle B.
Author of section:
John D’Emilio, Freedman Estelle B.
Name of Publisher:
The University of Chicago Press
I
14 INTIMATE MATTERS
brought more severe penalties than similar acts between whites. The law did
not yet forbid interracial marriage, which seems to have been tolerated during
the early years of settlement. Only after slavery became entrenched during the
late seventeenth century did southern legislatures ban marriage between blacks
and whites. Illicit unions persisted, however; mulattoes accounted for over
one-fifth of the children born out of wedlock in Virginia at the tum of the
century.2′
By the early eighteenth century, white demographic and social patterns in
New England and the Chesapeake were converging in ways that influenced
sexual life in the colonies. By 1700, a sex ratio of approximately three men to
two women made family formation easier in the Chesapeake, while the decline
of white indentured servitude removed other obstacles to early marriage. For
both reasons, reproductive rates increased. White married women in the Ches-
apeake, as in New England, now raised seven or eight children.2 By the
mid-eighteenth century, the Afro-American population began to reproduce
itself too. Lower mortality, higher birth rates, and the evolution of an Afro-
American family structure all contributed to this process. As sex ratios evened
out, it became easier to marry, and slaves tended to form stable, monogamous
unions. In addition, breastfeeding practices came to resemble the one- to
two-year European pattern, rather than the longer African custom, thus en-
couraging more frequent conception and higher fertility. By the end of the
eighteenth century, married Afro-American women in the Chesapeake region
bore an average of six children.2′ Meanwhile, New England communities lost
some of the characteristics that had produced an excess of order. As small
towns grew in population and grown children moved further away from
parental homes, community control over sexuality became less effective. As
early as the 1680s, Puritan clergy lamented the decline in godly living and
church membership. By the early eighteenth century, New England churches
echoed with jeremiads that fornication, “a shameful sin,” was “much increas-
ing among us, to the great dishonor of Godde. ” 2
Two significant regional distinctions persisted, however, as the colonies
matured in the eighteenth century. First, New Englanders remained more
vigorous in their efforts to regulate individual morality than did their neigh-
bors in the southern or middle colonies. Second, the slave system, along with
the sexual tensions surrounding interracial unions, clearly differentiated the
southern colonies, foreshadowing an even greater divergence in sexual systems
in the next century. Regional differences notwithstanding, by the early eigh-
teenth century, sexual practice and sexual meaning were clearly situated
within marriage, and the goal of sexuality was procreation.
I
(:
L
CHAPTER 2
Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance
IN 1650, young Samuel Terry of Springfield, Massachusetts distressed his
neighbors when, during the Sabbath sermon, he stood outside the meeting-
house “chafing his yard to provoak lust.” Several lashes on the back may have
dissuaded him from masturbating in public again, but in 1661 Samuel Terry
endured another punishment for sexual misconduct. Now married, his bride
of five months gave birth to their first child, clear evidence that the pair had
indulged in premarital intercourse. A four-pound fine was not the last Terry
would pay for defying the moral standards of his community. In 1673 the court
fined Terry and eight other men who had performed an “immodest and
beastly” play. Despite this history of sexual offenses, however, a sinner like
Samuel Terry could command respect among his peers. Terry not only served
as a town constable, but, in addition, the court entrusted him with the custody
of another man’s infant son.’ In short, as long as he accepted punishment for
his transgressions, Samuel Terry remained a citizen in good standing.
The case of Samuel Terry allows us to refine the stereotype of the American
colonists as prudish, ascetic, and antisexual. This view has enjoyed so much
popularity in modem America that the term puritanical has come to mean
sexually repressive. Not all colonists were Puritans, those nonconforming,
largely middle-class English men and women who attempted to establish a
community of saints in seventeenth-century New England. Members of the
Anglican and Quaker churches, and migrants from the Netherlands, Ger-
many, and northern Ireland settled in the southern and middle colonies,
especially during the eighteenth century. Even among the Puritans and their
Yankee descendants, sexuality exhibited more complexity than modem as-
sumptions about their repressiveness suggest.
An accurate portrait of sexuality in the colonial era both incorporates and
16 INTIMATE MATTERS
challenges the puritanical stereotype. Early Americans did indeed pay close
attention to the sexual behavior of individuals, as the case of Samuel Terry and
numerous church and court records confirm. They did so, however, not in
order to squelch sexual expression, but rather to channel it into what they
considered to be its proper setting and purpose: as a duty and a joy within
marriage, and for the purpose of procreation. Both religious beliefs and eco-
nomic interests supported this family-centered sexual system. A close look at
sexuality in colonial America reveals that, despite gender differences in the
meaning of sexuality, for both women and men the organizing principle of
sexual relations was reproduction. An examination of, first, the family and,
second, the treatment of deviance illustrates the main contours of this repro-
ductive matrix from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries.
Sexuality in the Family Life Cycle
Despite initial regional variations, the family quickly became the central
economic unit in every American colony. As in other preindustrial societies,
the family both produced and consumed almost all goods and services. Repro-
duction and production went hand in hand, for family survival in an agricul-
tural economy depended on the labor of children, both in the fields and in the
household. Moreover, English inheritance practices supported parental au-
thority, for fathers bequeathed to their sons the land that was necessary for
establishing new families. For all of these reasons, colonial laws and customs
strongly supported family formation. New England colonies forbade “solitary
living” in order to insure that everyone resided within a family, either their
own or, as in the case of servants and apprentices, in another household. Even
in colonies without such laws, economic survival demanded family living.
Thus the life of the individual was integrally connected with that of the family.
To understand the meaning and practice of sexuality in colonial America,
then, we look first at the life cycle of the individual within the family, beginning
with attempts to socialize children to channel sexual desire toward marriage,
and turning next to the experiences of courtship, marriage, and childbearing.
A young person growing up in colonial America learned about sexuality
from two primary sources: observation within the family and moral instruction
from parent and church. A small minority of colonists were also exposed to
medical advice literature published in London and reprinted in America dur-
ing the eighteenth century. Although these various sources of information
might conflict on specific points, overall they transmitted the expectation that
sexuality within marriage, aimed toward reproduction, would become a part
of normal adult life.
Childhood observation of sexual activity is common in agricultural soci-
Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 17
eties, and all regions remained agricultural throughout the colonial period.
“Procreation was everywhere, in the barnyard as well as in the house,” one
historian has written of seventeenth-century New England. 2 Colonial laws
against bestiality, and scattered prosecutions for buggery with farm animals,
attest to one influence of the barnyard. In Connecticut, for example, a man
confessed to having had sexual relations with a variety of animals since the age
often; Massachusetts executed several teenage boys for buggery. Sexual rela-
tions with animals required harsh punishment, for colonists believed that these
unions could have reproductive consequences. The mating of humans and
animals, they feared, would produce monstrous offspring. For this reason,
colonists insisted on punishing not only the man but also the beast, who might
bear such monsters. Thus William Hacketts, “found in buggery with a cow,
upon the Lord’s day,” had to witness the execution of the cow before his own
hanging took place. Sixteen-year-old Thomas Grazer of Plymouth confessed
to buggery “with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a
turkey.” The court ordered a lineup of sheep at which Grazer identified his
sexual partners, who were “killed before his face,” and then “he himself was
executed. ” 1 Although executions were rare, sexual observation or experimen-
tation with animals was no doubt as widespread in colonial America as in other
agricultural societies.
Children also learned about sex in the home. The small size of colonial
dwellings allowed children quite early in their lives to hear or see sexual
activity among adults. Although curtains might isolate the parental bed, all
family members commonly slept in the same room, especially during winters,
when a single fireplace provided the heat. Thus a four-year-old girl reported
to a servant that she saw a man “lay on the bed with her mamma,” and heard
him instruct the mother to “lay up higher.” Furthermore, the practice of
sharing beds exposed some young people to adult sexuality. In one home, three
adults and a child were sleeping together when one of the men unbuttoned his
breeches and had “carnal knowledge” with a female bedmate. One woman got
into bed with her children, and when a man joined them, her daughter recalled,
the mother instructed the children to “lie further or else shee would kick us
out of bed.” Even couples who sought greater privacy had difficulty finding
it, for loosely constructed houses allowed neighbors and kin to observe what
happened behind closed doors.
Whatever they observed, children learned early on that sexual behavior
ought to be limited to marriage. The harsh language directed at those who
defied this model provided one kind of moral lesson. Neighbors cursed women
with epithets such as whore, adulteress, slut, or “brasen-faced bawd.” While
women’s illicit sexual relations evoked scorn, for men the equivalent slander
was to be accused of cuckoldry, that is, ignorance or tolerance of a wife’s
18 INTIMATE MATTERS
infidelity. For example, a Massachusetts woman hurled a slanderous comment
at a couple, claiming that “the wife was a whore and that shee had severall
children by other men, and that Cuckoldlay old Rogue her husband owned
[acknowledged] them.” In an extreme insult, a Maryland man declared that
“Mis [Alice] Hatches Cunt would make Souse Enough for all the doogs in the
Toune.” In at least one instance, a man was ridiculed for monitoring too
closely the sexual morality of women. In 1664, after an investigation into a
morals case near the town of Concord, Massachusetts, neighbors posted a
satiric verse outside the meetinghouse charging “cunstable” Thomas Pinion of
unseemly behavior. To keep Pinion from prying further, one verse read: “If
natures purll bag does burn / Then quickly send for they pinion. / If sick
though art and like to die/ Get pinon to fuck thee quickly.”‘ Such scornful
or satiric speech encouraged youth and adults alike to limit sexuality to the
marriage bed.
Formal moral teaching confirmed what popular speech implied. Clergy
and lawmakers warned that sex ought to be limited to marriage and aimed at
procreation rather than mere physical gratification. Ministers throughout the
colonies invoked biblical injunctions against extramarital and nonprocreative
sexual acts, while colonial statutes in both New England and the Chesapeake
outlawed fornication, rape, sodomy, adultery, and sometimes incest, prescrib-
ing corporal or capital punishment, fines, and, in some cases, banishment for
sexual transgressors. Together these moral authorities attempted to socialize
youth to channel sexual desires toward marriage.
The best-known of the colonial authorities, the New England Puritan
clergy, were extremists among Protestants on issues of church doctrine and
sexual morality. These ministers left abundant evidence that they considered
sexuality itself “uncleane,” and lust a danger to body and soul. Spiritual
leaders such as Thomas Shephard and Cotton Mather advised youth and
adults alike to avoid sexual stimulation and to control the desires that “lie
lurking in thy heart.” As Mather wrote, extramarital sexuality would
“bloodily Disturb the Frame of our Bodies, and Exhaust and Poison the
Spirits, in our Bodies, until an Incurable Consumption at last, shall cut us
down, Out of Time.” Puritan clergy emphasized marriage as the only suitable
outlet for sexual desire and warned against both masturbation and premarital
sex. Their ideas reflected age-old gender distinctions about proper sexual
behavior. To young women they directed a particular message about the
importance of chastity. According to Mather, it was scandalous for a woman
to exhibit “sensual lusts, wantonness and impurity, boldness and. rudeness, in
Look, Word or Gesture.” New England ministers chastised women for wear-
ing immodest dress and blamed them for enticing men into sexual sin.’ Men,
considered more rational and better able to control their passions than women,
le
L_
.
1
L’r.e and the Regulation of Deviance
Fam1y v
19
ed with warnings to resist their carnal desires by concentrating on
were ra1s
their Jove of God. . . .
Puritan clergy, however, were not the only moral authonttes m e~rly
A
a youths growing up in the middle colonies or the Chesapeake might
menc. . .. ch
be exposed to the religious advice of Quaker and ~nghcan mm1sters or at o-
lic priests. Equally important, both secular advice and the model of adults
d them influenced the sexual values of the young. Although all adults aroun .
eed on an ideal of marital, reproductive sex, some penmtted greater accept-
agr . .. IA.
ance of sexual desire than did the early Puntans. Descnbmg ear y m~ncan
childrearing practices, historian Philip Greven identified three categones of
Protestant “temperaments,” each of which had a different attitude toward
sexuality. Unlike Puritan “evangelicals,” who emphasized the suppression of
l st “moderate Protestants” placed less emphasis on sexual control. Thus
J:h~ Adams acknowledged to his children that he was “ofan amorous disposi-
tion,” even as he assured them that he had sired no illegitimate offspring. A
third temperament allowed the open expression of sexual desires and approx-
imated the European libertine ideal, represented by three young rakes who
frequented New York coffeehouses and indulged in a “g_ood deal of polite
smutt then went out whoring.” This ”genteel” model, which appeared more
frequently after 1740, characterized many upper-class southern men, such as
William Byrd of Virginia, whose diary recorded numerous sexual conquests.
Even though church and court in this region upheld the ideal of marital,
reproductive sexuality, young white males of the planter class learned that they
did not necessarily have to exert sexual control around female servants and
slaves.’
Although church and court remained the most important sources of sexual
standards, in the eighteenth century a limited medical advice literature ap-
peared in America. It is impossible to know whether these books about repro-
duction and sexuality were read by youth, but if so, young men were far more
likely than young women to have access to them, for women’s literacy rates
lagged behind those of men. Only a few gynecological or marital advice texts
could be found in early America, including The Oeconomy of Love ( 1736) and
The Art of Preserving Health (1744), both reprinted from British editions. The
eighteenth-century anti-masturbation tract Onania had only two or three
editions in America.’
Aristotle’s Masterpiece, first published in London in 1684, did become
highly popuar in America. Largely a compendium of reproductive lore, Aris-
totle’s Masterpiece also contained a prescriptive message about sexuality. It
repeated early modern English beliefs that sexual pleasure for both male and
female was not only desirable but also necessary for conception. That repro-
duction was the primary goal of sexuality recurred as a theme throughout its
20 INTIMATE MATTERS
various editions. Offering no information about contraception, the book
stressed means to insure conception. It admonished couples to chain the
imagination to melodious airs, rather than to sadness, during intercourse, and
to avoid withdrawal too soon after “they have done what nature requires,” lest
they lose “the fruit of the labor.” Moreover, the language of Aristotle’s Master-
piece underscored the association of pleasure and procreation. Thus an expla-
nation of sexual desire stated that “nature has implanted in every creature a
mutual desire of copulation, for the increase and propagation of its kind. ” 9
It is difficult to know to what extent colonial youth internalized either
religious or medical views about sexuality. Most personal testimony about
youthful sexual feelings comes from Puritan clergy, who were most likely to
have left introspective written accounts and to have accepted the evangelical
view that emphasized the suppression of lust. In their diaries, young Puritan
men recorded their efforts to contain the desires that rose up in them and to
subordinate sexual desire to the love of God. Michael Wigglesworth’s diary
recounted his dismay over frequent “unresistable torments of carnal lusts”-
masturbation and seminal emissions-that were provoked when he read,
dreamed, or felt “fond affection” for his pupils at Harvard College. He prayed
to God to deliver him from his lusts: “The last night some filthiness in a vile
dream escaped me for which I loathe myself and desire to abase myself before
my God.” Only marriage, Wigglesworth concluded, could save him from
temptation. Similarly, Cotton Mather prayed and fasted for fear that as “a
Young Man in my single Estate” he might fall into “lascivious violations of
the Seventh Commandment.” Although no such personal accounts exist for
young women, one kind of evidence, conversion narratives recorded during the
religious revivals of the mid-eighteenth century, suggests that New England
women who joined the church accepted the evangelical view of sexuality.
Women, even more than men, interpreted their past sinfulness in sexual terms.
References to improper dress signified mere wastefulness in men’s narratives
but represented “Harlotry” in women’s accounts. 10
Not all young people were as devout as the clergy and the newly converted.
Court records attest to the sexual escapades of those youths who, rather than
struggling against their lusts in private, attempted to express them in public.
Recall Samuel Terry of Springfield, whose first sexual offense involved public
masturbation. Similarly, a group of “sundrie youthes” in New Haven “com-
mitted much wickedness in a filthy corrupting way one with another”-so
filthy, in fact, that the court refused to record the acts. In Middlesex County,
Massachusetts, a “girl and youth” partied until two in the morning one
Thanksgiving by singing dirty songs. Harvard students often engaged in
“youthful lusts, speculative wantonness and secret filthiness,” according to
Thomas Shepard, Jr., who warned his son that “there are and will be such in
Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 21
every scholastic society, for the most part, as will teach you how to be filthy.”
One group of Harvard students, for example, spent their evenings drinking,
singing, and dancing with Negroes and maids, for which several were fined or
whipped. Furthermore, servants in all colonies defied proscriptions on
remarital sex. Indentured servant Elizabeth Starkey committed fornication
~nd adultery in Virginia. In Massachusetts, a female servant confessed to
fornicating with two men “when all in the house were in bed” and a black maid
and servant held secret rendezvous in the attic of the home in which she
worked.”
For those young people who accepted the primacy of marital sexuality,
courtship provided a transitional period in which they might begin to express
their sexual desires. In the colonial system of courtship, parents did not ar-
range marriages. Nonetheless, parental opinion played a large role in the
selection or approval of a future spouse, for as long as sons expected to inherit
land from their fathers, they tended to heed parental advice. Furthermore,
although a young man courted the daughter, he proposed marriage to her
parents. According to a popular British advice book available in the colonies,
“Children are so much the goods, the possessions of their Parents, that they
cannot without a kind of theft, give away themselves without the allowance
of those that have the right in them.” Thus, for example, William Byrd of
Virginia spoke first to Lucy Parkes’s father about marrying her, and in turn
Byrd threatened to disown his own daughter if she married a particular gentle-
man who did not meet with his approval. 12
Within the confines of parental approval, formal courtship between young
men and women took place unhampered by the supervision of a chaperon but
often in public view. In New England, courtship included visits by a young
man to a young woman’s home or meetings after church. In the Chesapeake,
within the planter class, family connections played an important role in intro-
ducing couples. Young people met at social affairs such as barbecues, dances,
and, in the late eighteenth century, elaborate balls. When a couple did form,
their choice rested largely upon a sense of compatibility rather than on notions
of romantic love. Couples hoped to develop loving relationships, and courtship
gave them an opportunity to begin the process.”
That courting couples sought to explore their sexual desires is clear from
their efforts to circumvent community surveillance. During warm weather a
couple might wander off into the barn or fields in search of the privacy
unobtainable in small colonial homes. According to one moralist, during
harvest time, with its abundant opportunities for outdoor meetings, New
England youth were filled “with folly and lewdness.” In 1644, a New England
couple left a party but were soon “seen upon the ground together, a little from
the house.” The cold winters necessitated greater ingenuity. One daring young
22 INTIMATE MATTERS
man crept through the window of his beloved’s home, only to wind up in court
charged with “incivility and immodesty” for courting without her parents’
consent. Some young men tried to exploit opportunities for premarital sexual
encounters. After three years of courting Elizabeth Gary of Maryland, Robert
Hawood cornered her in a garden and forced her “to yield to lie with him”
in an attempt to ruin her for any man but himself. 14
In the eighteenth century, and probably earlier, courting couples in New
England and the middle colonies had the opportunity for physical intimacy
with parental approval through the custom of bundling. This practice, which
had antecedents among Welsh, Dutch, and German peasants, allowed a couple
to spend the night together in bed as long as they remained fully clothed or,
in some cases, kept a “bundling board” between them. Bundling served the
needs of suitors who traveled long distances and called in small houses that
offered neither privacy nor much heat. Parents and youth shared the expecta-
tion that sexual intercourse would not take place, but if it did, and pregnancy
resulted, the couple would certainly marry.”
The treatment of premarital pregnancy suggests that, as in England, en-
gagement might include the right to have sexual intercourse. As one young
woman explained, “He promised marriage or I never would have yielded.” As
long as a couple’s sexual relations were channeled toward marriage, colonial
society could forgive them. Although church and civil authorities officially
condemned fornication and prosecuted offenders, they showed greater le-
niency toward betrothed couples. In addition, in both New England and the
Chesapeake, those who had sex and then married could remain respectable
members of the community as long as they participated in the rituals of
punishment affirming that marriage provided the only appropriate locus for
sexual relations. 16
Fornication carried heavy penalties, including fines, whipping, or both. In
Maryland, where laws were less likely to be enforced, unmarried couples who
had sex could receive up to twenty lashes and be fined as much as five hundred
pounds of tobacco. In Plymouth Colony, civil penalties for fornication in-
cluded a ten-pound fine-reduced to only fifty shillings for a betrothed cou-
ple-several lashes on the back, or both. Throughout New England, a fine of
nine lashes awaited both parents of a child born too soon after marriage. Thus,
when Lawrence Clenton and Mary Woodin of Massachusetts confessed to
fornication, he was sentenced to be severely whipped and fined forty shiUings
plus court fees, and she too received a whipping and a fine. 17
Prenuptial pregnancy rates varied by region and over time. The high rates
of up to thirty percent of all brides for the mid-seventeenth-century Chesa-
peake declined in the eighteenth century, while the low ten-percent rate of
early New England rose significantly during the same period. There is little
Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance 23
d
for the middle colonies, but in one eighteenth-century community, Ger-
~ . d .
mantown, Pennsylvania, one-fourth of all first _births occurred u~ er mne
months after marriage, a pattern that reflected m part the premantal preg-
ancy rates in the settlers’ German homeland.”
n Through confession and repentance, colonial society offered a means of
!earing the stigma associated with premarital pregnancy. In New England,
:ouples whom the church court found guilty of fornication had to repent
ublicly before their child could be baptized. They stood before their congrega-
~on, confessed to premarital sex, and often wept, as did a Plymouth woman
who in I 689 “manifested much sorrow and heavyness by words and tears.”
Having confessed, and if truly repentant, sinners were welcomed back into
good standing in the church. Even in Maryland, where there was less church
discipline, marriage and repentance could reduce the punishment. In 1663, for
example, Thomas Hynson, Jr., came into court “very sorrowfull” for having
committed fornication with Ann Gaine. Since Hynson had “now made her his
Lawfull Wife,” the magistrate ordered no fine or whipping, but merely sus-
pended him from sitting in the county court for a year and a day. His wife,
Ann, later appeared in court, as ordered. For “submissively tendering her selfe
… and Acknowlidgeing her faulte with Extreame Sorrow,” the court remitted
her punishment.” That Thomas Hynson, Jr., could resume his seat at the
county court after a year and a day reflects the ease with which Chesapeake
society reintegrated sinners. Similarly, New Englanders accepted the penitent
fully. Like Samuel Terry, who became a Springfield town constable, New
England men convicted of fornication later served as town clerks, selectmen,
and even as representatives to the General Court. Women convicted of fornica-
tion could marry and join the church.2 In contrast, those who refused to
undergo public confession could be excommunicated from their congregation.
Whatever ambivalence colonists had toward premarital sexual relations,
they agreed that husbands and wives ought to have sex. For New England
Puritans, conjugal union was a duty; if unfulfilled, the neglected spouse might
be tempted to commit adultery. So important was marital sex that a bride
could leave a marriage if her husband proved to be impotent. At least one
church excommunicated a husband because he denied conjugal relations to his
wife for two years. Sexual attraction was valued within marriage only in
moderation, however, and sexual intercourse as an act necessary to propagate
the family. The Puritans admonished married couples not to allow their affec-
tions for one another to compete with their love for God. Cotton Mather
warned of the “Inexpressible Uncleannesses in the married State,” including
“Inordinate Affection.” Michael Wigglesworth decided to marry as a way of
channeling his lusts, but then feared that his conjugal relations were excessive.
24 INTIMATE MATTERS
“Lord, forgive my intemperance in the use of marriage,” he prayed.” Some
authorities believed that too-frequent marital sex could be physically danger-
ous as well as impious, warning that “satiaty gluts the Womb and renders it
unfit for its office.””
In spite of these fears of sexual excess, affectionate and even passionate
relations developed between husbands and wives. The Puritan Edward Taylor
valued spiritual union with his savior over physical union in marriage, yet he
wrote of his relationship with his wife as “the True-Love knot, more Sweet
than Spice.” Similarly, John Winthrop wrote to his “sweet wife,” Margaret,
that her “love is such to me and so great is the bond between us.” “I Kisse
and love Thee,” he closed, “with the Kindest affection.” The correspondence
between married couples in the southern colonies included expressions of
affection and desire. “How is it possible for me to live without my only Joy
& comfort?” wrote the southerner Thomas Jones to his wife, Elizabeth, in
1728. Margaret Parlor wrote to her husband that she longed to go to bed with
him, while Theodore Bland, Jr., assured his “dearest Patsy” that on his return
she would feel her “husband’s lips flowing with love and affection warmth. ” 23
Explicit discussions of physical relations in marriage were much less com-
mon than references to affection, and so we have few clues about the nature
of marital sex. Mary Knight of Massachusetts threw some light on the subject
when she forgave her lover for having climaxed too soon. “That is no strange
thing,” she said, “for my Husband has done so often when he has been gone
a few Nights.” 24 Her admission suggests both an ideal of mutual pleasure and
the difficulty of achieving it. We know that couples sometimes had sex during
pregnancy, for women cautioned their husbands to be gentle at such times. The
Virginian William Byrd had sex with his wife, Lucy, during her frequent
pregnancies, even in the later months. Byrd’s “secret diary” provides a rare,
though probably atypical, record of marital intimacy among southe
