221
STEVEN MARCUS
great sexual excitement. The consequence
is
that sexual desire
in the male is somewhat diminished, and the act of coition takes
place but rarely. And, again, while women are suckling there
is usually such a call on the vital force made by the organs
secreting milk that sexual desire is almost annihilated. Now,
as all that we have read and heard tends to prove that a
reciprocity of desire is, to a great extent, necessary to excite
the male, we must not be surprised if we learn that excesses
in fertile married life are comparatively rare, and that sensual
feelings in the man become gradually sobered down.
This is a representative passage of Acton's thinking. In the first
sentence one can observe how belief or received opinion
is
offered in
the form of observation, an unadorned instance of "ideology"- that is,
of thought which is socially determined yet unconscious of its deter–
mination. The second sentence is a good example of the mode of
reasoning one can expect to find in writings of this sort. The "con–
sequence"
is
a consequence of nothing; or rather it
is
the consequence
of fantasy or wish-fulfillment, and the logic of the passage is the
logic of intellectual day-dream. It may be paraphrased in the state–
ment that the best way of reducing or extinguishing sexual desire is
to keep your wife pregnant. On the other hand, to the extent that
this passage represents a genuine belief we cannot discount its source
in attitudes or behavior or its reciprocal effect on them. Finally,
if
one
compares the tone and content of such a passage- and of this book
in general-with analogous ones in Acton's book on prostitution,
it
becomes clear that the earlier work is in point of humanity and
generosity of feeling superior. And this leads one to suggest that we
are confronted here by a disparity which is characteristic of the
Victorian period- that during this time the development of social
attitudes, of attitudes toward society and social problems, had out–
stripped the development of personal attitudes, of attitudes toward
personal problems or conflicts, and of inwardness in general. Taken
as a whole, the Victorian novel- as opposed to Romantic poetry on
the one hand and the modem novel on the other- may be regarded
as demonstrating a similar inequality.
Some pages further on, Acton recurs to women for the second
and last time. He has, he says, " taken pains to obtain and compare
