Frenzied and Fallen Females: Women and Sexual Dishonor in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Abstract

Frenzied and Fallen Females: Women and Sexual Dishonor in the Nineteenth-Century United States Robert M. Ireland Nineteenth-century American legalists invented an unwritten law that forgave men and women who kUled to avenge sexual dishonor. In part because of the male domination of the legal system, female defendants found it more difficult than males to gain acquittals under this law, and the reputation of women suffered. The law tolerated a double standard of sexuahty and reinforced the negative stereotype of the nineteenth-century woman. Nonetheless, women, espedaUy feminists, generaUy supported the use of the law by females. Observers, particularly women, justified the unwritten law as an appropriate response to an epidemic of male fibertinism which they aUeged was preying on thousands of innocent, often unmarried women, and leaving them seduced, abandoned, disgraced, and sometimes pregnant. Because of the percdved epidemic and outrage over its specific inddents that sometimes resulted in appUcation of the unwritten law, lawmakers in the late nindeenth century began reforming the written law in an attempt to curtaü Ubertinism. IronicaUy, as these efforts of legal reform evolved, soddal assumptions that excused the female appUcation of the unwritten law began to erode and with them the unwritten law and its utilization. Nindeenth-century American women, espedaUy those who were young and unmarried, carried a great sexual burden. On the one hand they were supposed to be models of chastity, whüe on the other they were preyed upon by increasing numbers of men eager for pre-marital or extra-marital sexual relations. The need for them to marry to survive economicaUy and sodaUy and the reaUties of their sexual drives (as opposed to their theoreticaUy restrained sexuaUty), coupled with the presence of an abundance of male sexual adventurers, meant that certain of them would become involved in pre-marital sexual Uaisons that would result in pregnancy, abandonment, and sodetal ostradsm. Until sometime in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, women were regarded by those who thought, wrote, and spoke about such matters as sexuaUy passionate, even more so than men. The so-caUed "Curse of Eve" theory was still popular, holding that just as Eve had brought original sin into the world by seducing Adam, women initiated illicit sexual encounters more frequently than men and spread vice and Ucentiousness throughout sodety. For a variety of reasons, including the theories of social © 1992 Journal of Women-s History, Vol. 3 No. 3 (Winter) 96 Journal of Women's History Winter critics of Anglo-American sodety, repubUcan apologists, and Protestant theologians, American sodal theorists transformed nindeenth-century women into sexuaUy restrained guardians of repubUcan moraUty and virtue. Whüe this change improved the theoretical image of American women, it also created new responsibUities for them. They, more than ever, needed to establish and maintain successful marriages which would preserve the famüy; the famüy more than ever was regarded as the foundation of American sodety. Above aU, women needed to avoid pre-marital sexual encounters, which if they became pubUc knowledge, would likely result in permanent sodal disgrace. The nineteenth-century or Victorian code demanded sexual purity on the part of women.1 Although nindeenth-century social theorists regarded working-class women as more sexuaUy passionate than middle-dass women, they nonetheless held them tö the same standards of condud. It was often difficult for working-class women to abide by the rules of proper courtship and sexuaUty, and a number of them faüed to do so. Observers blamed this faUure on an epidemic of male Ubertinism that they said was sweeping the nation's dties, an accusation that persisted throughout much of the nineteenth century. Although those observers may have exaggerated and simplified the reasons why growing numbers of working-dass women "feU" from sodal respedabUity, the problem that prompted their anguish to some degree did exist and for a variety of reasons. More and more young men and women moved from farms to dties to take advantage of greater economic and social opportunities. In order to obtain a measure of economic security, the men postponed marriage but not sexual intercourse. The young women, often separated from their famUies or, at the least, unchaperoned, experienced...