Victorian erotica

Victorian erotica is a genre of sexual art and literature which emerged in the Victorian era of 19th-century Britain. Victorian erotica emerged as a product of a Victorian sexual culture.^[1] The Victorian era was characterized by paradox of rigid morality and anti-sensualism, but also by an obsession with sex. Sex was a main social topic, with progressive and enlightened thought pushing for sexual restriction and repression.^[2] Overpopulation was a societal concern for the Victorians, thought to be the cause of famine, disease, and war.^[3] To curb the threats of overpopulation (especially of the poor) and to solve other social issues that were arising at the time, sex was socially regulated and controlled.^[1] New sexual categories emerged as a response, defining normal and abnormal sex.^[4] Heterosexual sex between married couples became the only form of sex socially and morally permissible. Sexual pleasure and desire beyond heterosexual marriage was labelled as deviant, considered to be sinful and sinister. Such deviant forms included masturbation, homosexuality, prostitution and pornography.^[1] Procreation was the primary goal of sex, removing it from the public, and placing it in the domestic.^[3] Yet, Victorian anti-sexual attitudes were contradictory of genuine Victorian life, with sex underlying much of the cultural practice. Sex was simultaneously repressed and proliferated. Sex was featured in medical manuals^[2] such as The Sexual Impulse by Havelock Ellis and Functions and Disorders of Reproductive Organs by William Acton, and in cultural magazines like The Penny Magazine and The Rambler. Sex was popular in entertainment, with much of Victorian theatre, art and literature including and expressing sexual and sensual themes.^[5]