Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/20

14 for centuries and prevented any real knowledge of feminine sexuality have been washed away.

We have been through a sexual revolution of major proportions. In the course of that revolution we have learned, through science, not hearsay, the real facts. We know now that woman has the same need for passion, the same capacity for sexual response that man has. We know that, down to the last detail, she is the equal and fitting companion for all his possible raptures, can know with her entire body and mind and can share in vivid companionship the delighted storms of sexual love that in the recent past were considered to be exclusively his province.

Few, however, realize how recent and how revolutionary this view of womankind actually is. The image of Victorian woman, that sexually frozen, emotionally withdrawn vestal virgin, has faded quickly from our minds. It is important, for many reasons, to recall her, however, if only briefly. She dominated our whole view of womankind up to the beginning of the 1920's. By taking a quick look at her we can see how far we have come in so short a time. And we can see why the prospect for love has, in our time, brightened so considerably.

The prevailing attitude toward woman and her sexuality throughout the nineteenth century and up to the end of World War I was that sex, as we understand it today, did not exist for her. This belief was held by virtually everybody, and it is nowhere more clearly stated than by the medical authorities of that era. Thus Acton, a leading medical specialist in the functions of reproduction, whose views were widely influential, wrote: "The majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind." He also stated that people who believed differently were making "a vile aspersion" against women. Two other doctors of the time agreed completely (and