by A woman’s thoughts on desire in Victorian and modern times
The interesting thing about 1900s literature is how much it’s actually about sex. Not explicitly, obviously, but underneath the surface. All those novels about frustrated desire and repression and the gap between public morality and private behavior.
Reading them now, I’m struck by how little has actually changed. We’re just more explicit about it. We’ve got access to actual sex in real-time through our phones. But the same dynamics persist. The same desire. The same fear. The same gap between what we say and what we actually do.
I was thinking about this while reading Irish literature that deals with sexuality and desire. About how the authors understood that sex is political. That desire is political. That who you sleep with and how you sleep with them is connected to power and society and survival.
That understanding seems to have been lost. Now sex is just another consumer experience. Another thing to optimize. Another way to perform yourself for social media.
But underneath all that, the old dynamics remain. The hunger. The fear. The power imbalances. The fundamental human need for connection. Those things haven’t changed and probably never will.
