Sex
“Deprived of youth’s traditional agency of sexual education, the peer group, German middle-class boys and girls found their stage of dependency an extraordinarily lonely, disturbing experience” (Taylor 59).
"In the nineteenth-century childhood sexuality came to be considered a social evil and not merely an individual problem, a threat to the policy as a whole requiring harsh measures if necessary to eradicate it" (History 270). The issue of childhood sexuality was attacked from every angle: within the family, church, school, and even the government, albeit indirectly. Proper, respectable society centered on order and normalcy over chaos and abnormality, with childhood sexuality definitely belonging in the latter category. The control of childhood sexuality and sexuality overall "is socially constructed as a complex transmission-point of power-relations between men and women, old and young, teachers and pupils, administration and population” (Boa 167). One way in which sex and power intermingle in Spring Awakening is through sexual knowledge. The children are controlled through their lack of sexual knowledge; teachers and parents think that if children do not know about sex, they cannot partake in it. However, "the conspiracy of adults and their institutions to prohibit child sexuality may even have produced unusual examples of sexual precocity and prowess" (History 280). Many children, such as Melchior, find out about sex anyway, and then share their knowledge with others. Even if children gained power by finding out about sex, teachers and parents could still hold that against them because knowledge of sexual activity or the activity itself was a call for punishment. Furthermore, men typically knew more about sex than women, perpetuating men's power over women. Men went so far as to deny women entry to medical school to restrict their knowledge of sex and reproduction.
The adult obsession with suppressing sexuality established itself in various ways throughout Germany. While the government may never have passed laws to restrict sexuality in children, "state schools were certainly used in the crusade against it" (History 277). It was believed that "the subordination of body and mind to military discipline was supposed to control sexual passions" (Mosse 233). Physical education was increased in schools, and sports rose in popularity as an "effort to stamp out child sexuality" (History 278). Boys and girls were separated after elementary school, and even close relationships between males were suspiciously examined. Ideally, male and female characteristics were strictly divided and people behaved with "courtesy, civility, and knightly grace" (Mosse 227). Parents stepped in when children were not behaving as they should, even to the extreme of parents invading children's "innermost thoughts and most intimate actions" (History 275). Parents had no choice but to control their children by withholding sexual knowledge and enforcing strict discipline, as "lewdness and immorality were seen as threats to middle class life and the public everywhere" (History 277). Parental intervention was seen as a way to protect children as it was a generally held belief that the expression of childhood sexuality "led to insanity, criminality, and decadence" (History 270).
Adolescents, however, had another plan in mind. They "sought to rediscover their bodies and to liberate themselves from shamefulness" by experiencing "everything life had to offer, escaping boredom and tasting the forbidden fruit" (Mosse 233-4). In fact, for some teens "sexuality became a shorthand for revolt, and youth proposed to tear down all barriers of respectability" (Mosse 234). Basically, children yearned for information, exploration, and the freedom to express themselves in their restrictive world of loneliness and longing.
The Guilty Ones
While merely discussing sex for the characters in Spring Awakening was taboo, it is difficult to imagine that anything remotely kinky goes on in their sex lives, but Elizabeth Boa, author of The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion, goes so far as to suggest that the characters are involved in sado-masochism. She says:
Pleasure is associated with pain, sexual arousal with dominance and servility, guilt and punishment. Sado-masochism may take several forms. It may remain an unconscious pattern of behavior, as with Martha and her father; or it may become semi-conscious role-playing which finally becomes painful as with Wendla and Melchior; or it may turn into a fully conscious game, pleasurable if dangerous, as in Ilse’s adventures. (Boa 42)
The characters may or not be aware of the game they are playing, but danger and guilt is associated with their sexual endeavors nevertheless. She goes on to say that the “adult morality of shame, guilt, and punishment turns the fairy-tales into nightmares” (Boa 44). It does indeed. Wendla and Moritz's love-making is a kind of fairy-tale for them compared to the strict discipline and lack of interaction between sexes that they experience on a daily basis. However, their dream world turns to nightmare when their relationship is discovered by the adults, placing Moritz in a reformatory and Wendla in a grave.
Any kind of sexual activity outside of the marriage bed was considered inappropriate and immoral. People who indulged in these scandalous activities were "without moral sense and civic responsibility, but their very souls were thought to be incapable of spirituality" (Mosse 224). It was generally believed that an excess of sexuality resulted in a weak and unhealthy physicality and a diseased personality. Men became weak and effeminate, but women's physical transition due to pregnancy was even more pronounced, causing "a double morality operates to ensure that unseen male guilt is offloaded onto the visibly guilty: women are guiltier than men. In competitive bourgeois society men have greater freedom of action and higher social status than women: men are superior to women” (Boa 41).
Menstruation
Just as children were not told about sex, they were not told about menstruation either. When young girls got their first periods, they were often shocked, afraid, or embarrassed. Even once a girl had begun menstruating, she was not informed about what it meant in terms of her fertility. Even in the case that a girl received some idea of what menstruation was from her mother, it was still a strange experience. As one young girl reflected on her mother's revelation, she said, “I remember her telling, at the time I was fourteen, that I…about menstruating, and that was the hardest thing she ever did in her life, I think, to tell me about it” (Osterud 56). Even doctors were unsure of exactly what menstruation was. According to the book The Sexual Organism, and its Healthful Management, published in 1862, "Just what causes this secretion nobody knows" (Jackson 221). While some doctors were beginning to connect that menstruation and fertility were linked together, others feared that if a girl did not regularly get her period, she was in medical danger. In fact, it was believed that precocious masturbation would keep a girl from getting her first period, and after that excessive amounts of sex (i.e. prostitution) or masturbation could cause a cease in menstruation altogether.
Pregnancy
"During the first trimester your body undergoes many changes. Hormonal changes affect almost every organ system in your body. These changes can trigger symptoms even in the very first weeks of pregnancy. Your period stopping is a clear sign that you are pregnant. Other changes may include:
Preschoolers of today and teenagers during the late 19th century have very similar levels of knowledge in the lack of understanding as to where babies come from. In a study that was conducted in 1992, preschool children believed that a baby was created in a shop, hospital, someone’s tummy, or in heaven. Babies could be manufactured from parts by someone in a shop or the “digestive fallacy” of the mother by eating components from which to make the baby in her stomach. Many children believed in the agricultural model of a seed being planted in the mother or an egg is placed inside her to incubate. By age eleven some children believed that parents somehow get sperm and eggs together to create babies and thought a “miniature baby is folded up inside a sperm or egg and that the other gamete triggers the development” (2). Children growing up during the late 19th century did not have a thorough understanding of sexual intercourse or the functions of the sex organs.
Other thoughts from children about where babies came from include:
Sources:
Boa, Elizabeth. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Print.
“Children’s Ideas about Reproduction and Inheritance.” Leeds National Curriculum Science Support Project 1992: 1-11. Web. 15. Oct. 2014.
Fishman, Sterling. "The History of Childhood Sexuality." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982): 269-83. JSTOR. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
Jackson, James C. The Sexual Organism, and its Healthy Management. Boston: B. L. Emerson, 1862. Print.
“Kids confused about where babies come from.” The Day [New London] 26 Feb. 1976: 14. Google News Archive Search. Google. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Mosse, George L. "Nationalism and Respectability: Normal and Abnormal Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982): 221-46. JSTOR. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
Osterud, Grey. "It's Very Little I Know About The Facts Of Life To This Day": Speaking About The Silence Surrounding Sex." Frontiers: A Journal Of Women Studies 35.1 (2014): 43-72. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Aug. 2014.
"Stages of Preganancy." Women's Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2014.
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the German Sonderweg." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. Web. 17 Aug. 2014.
The adult obsession with suppressing sexuality established itself in various ways throughout Germany. While the government may never have passed laws to restrict sexuality in children, "state schools were certainly used in the crusade against it" (History 277). It was believed that "the subordination of body and mind to military discipline was supposed to control sexual passions" (Mosse 233). Physical education was increased in schools, and sports rose in popularity as an "effort to stamp out child sexuality" (History 278). Boys and girls were separated after elementary school, and even close relationships between males were suspiciously examined. Ideally, male and female characteristics were strictly divided and people behaved with "courtesy, civility, and knightly grace" (Mosse 227). Parents stepped in when children were not behaving as they should, even to the extreme of parents invading children's "innermost thoughts and most intimate actions" (History 275). Parents had no choice but to control their children by withholding sexual knowledge and enforcing strict discipline, as "lewdness and immorality were seen as threats to middle class life and the public everywhere" (History 277). Parental intervention was seen as a way to protect children as it was a generally held belief that the expression of childhood sexuality "led to insanity, criminality, and decadence" (History 270).
Adolescents, however, had another plan in mind. They "sought to rediscover their bodies and to liberate themselves from shamefulness" by experiencing "everything life had to offer, escaping boredom and tasting the forbidden fruit" (Mosse 233-4). In fact, for some teens "sexuality became a shorthand for revolt, and youth proposed to tear down all barriers of respectability" (Mosse 234). Basically, children yearned for information, exploration, and the freedom to express themselves in their restrictive world of loneliness and longing.
The Guilty Ones
While merely discussing sex for the characters in Spring Awakening was taboo, it is difficult to imagine that anything remotely kinky goes on in their sex lives, but Elizabeth Boa, author of The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion, goes so far as to suggest that the characters are involved in sado-masochism. She says:
Pleasure is associated with pain, sexual arousal with dominance and servility, guilt and punishment. Sado-masochism may take several forms. It may remain an unconscious pattern of behavior, as with Martha and her father; or it may become semi-conscious role-playing which finally becomes painful as with Wendla and Melchior; or it may turn into a fully conscious game, pleasurable if dangerous, as in Ilse’s adventures. (Boa 42)
The characters may or not be aware of the game they are playing, but danger and guilt is associated with their sexual endeavors nevertheless. She goes on to say that the “adult morality of shame, guilt, and punishment turns the fairy-tales into nightmares” (Boa 44). It does indeed. Wendla and Moritz's love-making is a kind of fairy-tale for them compared to the strict discipline and lack of interaction between sexes that they experience on a daily basis. However, their dream world turns to nightmare when their relationship is discovered by the adults, placing Moritz in a reformatory and Wendla in a grave.
Any kind of sexual activity outside of the marriage bed was considered inappropriate and immoral. People who indulged in these scandalous activities were "without moral sense and civic responsibility, but their very souls were thought to be incapable of spirituality" (Mosse 224). It was generally believed that an excess of sexuality resulted in a weak and unhealthy physicality and a diseased personality. Men became weak and effeminate, but women's physical transition due to pregnancy was even more pronounced, causing "a double morality operates to ensure that unseen male guilt is offloaded onto the visibly guilty: women are guiltier than men. In competitive bourgeois society men have greater freedom of action and higher social status than women: men are superior to women” (Boa 41).
Menstruation
Just as children were not told about sex, they were not told about menstruation either. When young girls got their first periods, they were often shocked, afraid, or embarrassed. Even once a girl had begun menstruating, she was not informed about what it meant in terms of her fertility. Even in the case that a girl received some idea of what menstruation was from her mother, it was still a strange experience. As one young girl reflected on her mother's revelation, she said, “I remember her telling, at the time I was fourteen, that I…about menstruating, and that was the hardest thing she ever did in her life, I think, to tell me about it” (Osterud 56). Even doctors were unsure of exactly what menstruation was. According to the book The Sexual Organism, and its Healthful Management, published in 1862, "Just what causes this secretion nobody knows" (Jackson 221). While some doctors were beginning to connect that menstruation and fertility were linked together, others feared that if a girl did not regularly get her period, she was in medical danger. In fact, it was believed that precocious masturbation would keep a girl from getting her first period, and after that excessive amounts of sex (i.e. prostitution) or masturbation could cause a cease in menstruation altogether.
Pregnancy
"During the first trimester your body undergoes many changes. Hormonal changes affect almost every organ system in your body. These changes can trigger symptoms even in the very first weeks of pregnancy. Your period stopping is a clear sign that you are pregnant. Other changes may include:
- Extreme tiredness
- Tender, swollen breasts. Your nipples might also stick out.
- Upset stomach with or without throwing up (morning sickness)
- Cravings or distaste for certain foods
- Mood swings
- Constipation (trouble having bowel movements)
- Need to pass urine more often
- Headache
- Heartburn
- Weight gain or loss" (Stages)
Preschoolers of today and teenagers during the late 19th century have very similar levels of knowledge in the lack of understanding as to where babies come from. In a study that was conducted in 1992, preschool children believed that a baby was created in a shop, hospital, someone’s tummy, or in heaven. Babies could be manufactured from parts by someone in a shop or the “digestive fallacy” of the mother by eating components from which to make the baby in her stomach. Many children believed in the agricultural model of a seed being planted in the mother or an egg is placed inside her to incubate. By age eleven some children believed that parents somehow get sperm and eggs together to create babies and thought a “miniature baby is folded up inside a sperm or egg and that the other gamete triggers the development” (2). Children growing up during the late 19th century did not have a thorough understanding of sexual intercourse or the functions of the sex organs.
Other thoughts from children about where babies came from include:
- holding hands
- kissing for long periods of time
- hugging and other physical touch
- babies were “just made”
- came from animals
- “God’s place” offered babies for parents to take
- buying babies at the baby store
- the stork
Sources:
Boa, Elizabeth. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Print.
“Children’s Ideas about Reproduction and Inheritance.” Leeds National Curriculum Science Support Project 1992: 1-11. Web. 15. Oct. 2014.
Fishman, Sterling. "The History of Childhood Sexuality." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982): 269-83. JSTOR. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
Jackson, James C. The Sexual Organism, and its Healthy Management. Boston: B. L. Emerson, 1862. Print.
“Kids confused about where babies come from.” The Day [New London] 26 Feb. 1976: 14. Google News Archive Search. Google. Web. 15 Oct. 2014.
Mosse, George L. "Nationalism and Respectability: Normal and Abnormal Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century." Journal of Contemporary History 17.2 (1982): 221-46. JSTOR. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
Osterud, Grey. "It's Very Little I Know About The Facts Of Life To This Day": Speaking About The Silence Surrounding Sex." Frontiers: A Journal Of Women Studies 35.1 (2014): 43-72. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Aug. 2014.
"Stages of Preganancy." Women's Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2014.
Taylor, Tom. "Images of Youth and Family in Wilhelmine Germany: Toward a Reconsideration of the German Sonderweg." German Studies Review 15 (1992): 55-73. Web. 17 Aug. 2014.