202
STEVEN MARCUS
ceedings are loose and associative rather than rigorous and sequential;
and one of its chief impulses is to confirm what is already held as
belief rather than to adapt belief to new and probably disturbing
knowledge. And as we shall see it shares all these qualities in common
with pornography itself. No doubt most people think this way
about most things most of the time- that is to say, a good deal of
our thinking consists of fantasy cast in the form of opinion or assertion;
or, in another context, such thinking has the characteristics of what
sociologists call "ideology." Furthermore, no subject has had anything
like the power to elicit such prepared responses as the subject of
sexuality.
On the other hand, the Victorian era is very likely the earliest
period in history for which such a study is easily possible. There is,
in the first place, the question of the availability and extensiveness
of published material. Then there is the fact that pornography and
especially pornographic writing became an industry during
thiS
time–
following, as
it
still tends to do, the course of development traced by
the novel. In addition, the scientific spirit of the age found major
expression in advances in the biological sciences and in medicine; and
this,
coupled with the strong social and reforming temper of the times
made for a situation in which considerable public discussion of sexual
matters took place. Like ourselves, the Victorians were inclined to
regard important issues as "problems." Behind this attitude, of course,
is an assumption that "problems" are there to be "solved" .and have a
"solution"; conversely, one suspects that
if
so many things are held in
the mind as problems, a certain problematical quality will be given to
the whole. Sex has always been a problem in human civilization, but
not until some time during the nineteenth century, I think, did there
emerge as part of the general educated consciousness the formulation
that it might in fact be problematical- it is an idea that forms part
of our inheritance. I can think of no more instructive illustration of
these manifold tendencies, attitudes, contradictions and confusions
than the writings of William Acton.
Though his name has long-since been forgotten, Acton was some–
thing of a figure in
his
own time. In
his
virtues he was a truly repre–
sentative Victorian: earnest, morally austere yet liberally inclined,
sincere, open-minded, possessed by the belief that it was his duty to
work toward the alleviation of the endless human misery and suffering
