Cheerful Naughtiness

Loretta reports:

Several people sent me links to Alan Elsner’s Huffington Post trashing romance novels (Oh, gee, that’s a novel take on the subject). In addition to the numerous comments from romance readers, Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches wrote a response.

The Romance = Trash or Romance = Porn equation is nothing new, but these posts and Susan’s Pepys excerpts and my post about Boswell’s sexual adventures got me thinking about “dirty” books and pictures.

The Victorians made sex amazingly dirty. Their predecessors were much more matter- of-fact about it (there were exceptions, yes; there always are). For me Thomas Rowlandson captures the spirit of the late 18th and 19th centuries, before people got all sick and twisted about sex. (I am not sure we’ve got over that yet.)

Susan and I have often remarked on how cheerful the people are in Rowlandson’s naughty pictures. Take a look. Oh, go on. Force yourself. Even the dirty old men, while ugly, aren’t creepy. Some of them are kind of sweet.

And some of them, with or without dirty old men, are kind of romantic, don't you think?