Article ID: CBB965755183

‘Elderly years cause a Total dispaire of Conception’: Old Age, Sex and Infertility in Early Modern England (2016)

unapi

Although the history of old age has been studied in much greater detail in recent years, the subject of sexuality in old age remains relatively under-explored. This article examines early modern ideas about old bodies and sex in relation to fertility, to argue that because old bodies were understood as either infertile (post-menopausal women) or sub-fertile (old men) they were therefore characterised as unsuitable, undesirable and inappropriate sexual partners. Perceptions of old bodies, their sexual abilities, desirability and behaviour were remarkably consistent from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century. The ridiculing of old men and women's sexual behaviour that permeated contemporary culture in stories, ballads and jokes, alongside medical literature that characterised old bodies as sexually unappetising as well as unreproductive, carried the message that sexual activity was not for the old, and in large part because they were infertile.

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Authors & Contributors
Carlo Gelmetti
Oren-Magidor, Daphna
Vita Fortunati
Lawrence P. Reynolds
James Rupert Fletcher
Giulia Cavaliere
Concepts
Sexuality
Medicine
Reproduction
Human physiology
Human body
Sexual behavior
Time Periods
17th century
16th century
Early modern
18th century
Renaissance
15th century
Places
England
Italy
Great Britain
United Kingdom
France
Europe
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