Did sex begin in 1963?

One of the themes of Ian McEwan’s new novel, On Chesil Beach, is that sexuality before the 1960s was a tormented affair. The novella is about a pair of newly-weds, Edward and Florence, and their agonisingly shy wedding night in 1962. Because both are so bashful and repressed, and both sexually ignorant virgins, the wedding night is an appalling flop. The couple are quite unable to communicate, either emotionally or in body language.

Speaking about the storyline, McEwan claimed that this was the way things were for so many people before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which is generally set at 1963, in accordance with Philip Larkin’s famous poem referring to that dateline, (and harmonising with the Beatles’ First LP.)

Disastrous wedding nights are the stuff of legend, and even horror. Jean-Paul Sartre recalls in his autobiography of provincial France in the early 1900s, a local story of a bride whose neck was broken on her wedding night, so great was the violence with which the bridegroom approached the consummation of the nuptials.

My mother spoke of women in her family whose “wedding nights”, so to speak, did not occur until three nights after the wedding day, so shy were both partners in the bedroom. Yet, the very fact that Mamma thought this three-day delay rather comical revealed, unconsciously, that she did not think it normal.

I daresay some of his readers will agree with Ian McEwan’s claim – that the wedding night, before the sexual revolution and when most partners were virgins – could be quite simply awful. But many will not. Because this is the essential truth about all human conduct: individuals differ. Human beings are a hugely diverse species. Their conduct ranges over a vast spectrum, in every department of life. There are people so honest that they would remit a €5 note, found on the pavement, to the poor box: there are persons so dishonest they would rob every charity in the land. And in between lies every other gradation of reflex.

The same applies in the conduct of sexuality. It is principally disposition rather than date which determines sexual behaviour, on wedding nights or elsewhere. Behavioural response is more to do with the innate personality than with whether it is 1962, 1862 or 1562 – since we can find letters, poems and erotica from all such dates which more than spell out the enthusiasm of sexual response among some individuals, men and women.

One of the most sensuous poets of the Renaissance period was a Frenchwoman, Louise Labé, whose appetite for love transmits itself unambiguously across the centuries. And Queen Victoria had a rapturous wedding night in 1840: “most gratifying”, she wrote (if a little “bewildering”.)

Yes, one big change happened in the early 1960s: the contraceptive Pill – appearing in 1961 – spread not only the pharmacology, but the idea, that pregnancy need not follow sexual congress. Those who criticised it said this was an irresponsible break with Nature’s law that events have consequences, and they had a point. But those who praised it, said that it removed a fear that many women – many legitimately married wives – had of repeated pregnancies, and they won the argument. And it is very probable that the removal of this fear freed many a bride to respond more warmly to the joys of conjugality.

And yet, more than forty-five years later, the world is still awash with individuals who harbour various sexual and psycho-sexual problems; there is more work than ever for counsellors addressing sexual dysfunction, and more call than ever for pharmacological assistance in sexuality, from Viagra to testosterone patches for women with low libidos. Also awash with people trying to having babies…

So the sexual revolution didn’t solve everything, and never could, because people continue being individuals, with different individual problems and diverse individual needs. In any case, life in general is a bit like a Rubik’s cube: you solve one bit of the puzzle and then you find another part consequently unaligned.

I find it strange that Ian McEwan should generalise about people as he has done, by making generalised claims about 1962 wedding nights. One of the most rewarding conversations I ever had with Edna O’Brien was in a discussion of social generalisations: generalisations, she said, were for sociologists. But the novelist dealt with the individual: the novelist couldn’t generalise. How right she is. McEwan’s Florence and Edward were wretched in their 1962 repressions, but many others were not, and it takes all sorts to make a world.

Irish Independent Magazine. 14 April 2007.