The sexual terrain of colonial and revolutionary Philadelphia -- A springboard to revolution : runaway wives and self-divorce -- The fruits of nonmarital unions : sex in the urban pleasure culture -- The pleasures and powers of reading : eroticization of popular print and discursive interpretations of sex -- Sex in the city in the age of democratic revolutions -- To be "free and independent" : sex among the revolutionary rabble -- Sex and the politics of gender in the age of revolution -- Normalizing sex in the nineteenth century : the assault on nonmarital sexuality -- Through our bodies : prostitution and the cultural reconstruction of nonmarital sexuality -- Through our souls : the benevolent reform of sexual transgressors -- Through our children : bastardy comes under attack
Summary:
"Placing sexual culture at the center of power relations in Revolutionary-era Philadelphia, Clare Lyons uncovers a world where runaway wives challenged their husbands' patriarchal rights and where serial and casual sexual relationships were commonplace. Reading popular representations of sex against actual behavior reveals the clash of meanings given to sex and illuminates struggles to recast sexuality in order to eliminate its subversive potential." "Lyons argues that attitudes and behaviors in Philadelphia echoed the broad intellectual transformations taking place in Britain and Western Europe. Sexuality became the vehicle for exploring currents of liberty, freedom, and individualism in the politics of everyday life among groups of early Americans typically excluded from formal systems of governance - women, African-Americans, and poor classes of whites. Men and women created a vibrant urban pleasure culture, including the eroticization of print culture, as eighteenth-century readers became fascinated with stories of bastardy, prostitution, seduction, and adultery."--Jacket.
