warning: sex, menstruation and muddled thought

I am reading "Sex in Georgian England" by AD Harvey. No, I am not researching sex scenes for a lurid novel. I am revisiting a thought I had a couple of months ago about when the cultural transition to modern science actually took place, and it struck me that attitudes to women's bodies might be key.

Harvey has well over a chapter on women's bodies and the various opinions thereof in Georgian England. Occasionally Harvey is frustrating, because he has not firmly sorted out what the main attitudes to women's bodies and sex were in any time previous to the seventeenth century, so he misses out on some very obvious legacies. It also means I can't sort out which aspects of the attitudes are influenced by Puritan tendencies and which aspects come from an extension of Marian notions. Did that last sentence sound as obscure as I suspect it does? What I was trying to say is that the eighteenth century notion of chaste women might come either from sixteenth/seventeenth century religious notions (which I would need to investigate, since Harvey just makes the statement about how things were viewed in his sources and doesn't question how those views got there) or it might be a Medieval legacy of women as capable of being perfect but never actually so (the Marian thing). Harvey comments specifically that there is a view of women as wonderful till they get interested in sex and tempted by men and stuff. Either way (or any other way) as far as I can see the whole notion of perfectiblity and chastity is religious/Christian. This means I am chasing a furphy with this one set of views: those awful nineteenth century views of women may not belong to the development of modern science at all, but might belong to a kind of religious underlay that influenced it through influencing the people who developed science. If that makes sense. In my mind is a nice picture of a cultural dynamic but the words seem to confuse it.

Where Harvey was more useful was in the medical descriptions of women's bodies. Lots of remnants of the stuff I have read about the Middle Ages, and those remnants lasted right to the end of the eighteenth century. And now I have been given clues, I can follow them. Seeing women as sexual beings seems to be a derivative of how the balance of humours in the body were seen in the Middle Ages (and much earlier - pace cassiphone - I realise that the views didn't originate in the Middle Ages). More than that, menstruation was definitely still seen as a rather foul cleansing and the idea that women needed to purge themselves monthly to maintain a balanced and healthy body is definitely something one encounters in Medieval medical thought. There is even a mention by one of Harvey's sources that women's bodies are more sickly than men's, which brings to mind Albertus Magnus' peevish comment that women ought to die younger than men.

One thing I am becoming more and more certain of. The 'revival' of the Middle Ages in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was drawing on threads that had never been entirely lost. This explains some of their popular appeal: the culture of the Middle Ages was still part of the culture that was reviving it. Lots of lovely resonances when people read about it. More importantly, the Ptolemaic world view didn't disappear before the late eighteenth century at the earliest, regardless of the scientific advances. It influenced medicine and views of women's bodies and even sexuality.

All these thoughts are, alas, from a paucity of evidence. Not enough to stand up to academic scrutiny. Watch this space: I think I might be revisiting the ideas again next time I get flu and can't focus on the things I am supposed to be doing.

Jewish Christmas Pudding

The Jewish Christmas Pudding has officially been sampled and I remembered I promised to update certain people on how it was. It is great. Not like any other Christmas pud. I have tasted, but definitely totally yummy. I was trying to describe it to the family and all I could think of was "It tastes like it belongs in the Polack family." Which it has for about a century, off and on. Obviously our tastes buds are trained to certain flavours. It was odd when I had my first taste. I got that feeling of visiting an elderly but favourite relative that you get when your tastebuds remind you of your childhood. I would *not* have expected it from a Christmas pudding recipe, given my strict Jewish upbringing.

Did I give the recipe last time I talked about it? If I didn't tell me and I will. I ate it with the non-sugar sauce recipe (she had one with sugar and one without). Whip cream and keep adding rum till you like the flavour. I really, really like that sauce, and yes, I used lashings of rum.

Thanks to my Jewish culture class the family recipe for Tia Maria has been unearthed. My Auntie Joan's secret recipe. This was the Auntie Joan who taught me how to make fruit liqueurs. This one I can do alone, or I can do with friends - depends on your need for Tia Maria and depends whether it is historical enough for fellow inquirers into our culinary past. I suspect as a recipe it is only about forty years old, actually. It is very good, though: I remember it from my childhood. It will make a change from fruit liqueurs, too, since this cherry season doesn't look promising for the cherries I need to make cherry brandy.

And that is my food update.