In the English upper/upper-middle class in the Edwardian era, was it really expected that young unmarried men would sow their wild oats w married women?
I love Agatha Christie’s autobiography & some things in it make me curious as they don’t fit w received views of the Edwardian period. She notes that young men ofc expected women to be celibate before marriage, but were expected to sow their wild oats, just w ‘little friends that no one was supposed to know about’ (courtesans) or married women.
I'm familiar with the Victorian courtesan culture, which I assume overspilled into the Edwardian era, & I know traditionally aristocrats were theoretically at least OK w affairs as long as the wife had had a son first & was discreet. But I'm still shocked that it was taken for granted young men would get experience w married women. Didn't they worry that one day it could be their wife cheating on them w a single young lothario?
For context, Christie’s father was from a wealthy New York family & they were at the centre of the upper-class social scene in Torquay.
Are you guys aware of any other evidence suggesting this was a widely condoned practice? Or was Torquay unusual for some reason?
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I can’t speak to how widespread it was, but I can say that Agatha Christie’s book was hardly the only one to suggest it. In Vita Sackville-West’s novel The Edwardians (published in 1930, but drawing heavily on Sackville-West’s own reflections from growing up in the late Edwardian era), young men are shown to be not only expected but encouraged to have affairs with married women of their own class. The main character, Sebastian, is a young man who has recently left Oxford, and starts an affair with Sylvia Roehampton, a friend of his mother’s. His mother (Lucy), far from disapproving, actually encourages this:
>She (Lady Roehampton) was seen everywhere with him, and though some people said it was a pity, Lucy did not altogether agree; Sylvia would teach the boy a lot, and meanwhile she kept him from less desirable entanglements (pg. 98)
because she feels it will keep him from developing serious designs on any unsuitable unmarried ladies, who she then might have to deal with as a daughter-in-law.
Her reaction is:
>But she was amused, not dismayed. For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur (pg 99)
Now, Lucy isn’t the most scrupulous person herself, but Leonard Anquetil also sees Sebastians affair as being predictable (he disapproves, although more for how banal and predictable it is than for more overtly moral reasons) for someone of his social class and age.
Sackville- West is critiquing the lifestyle of the Edwardian era (although she had numerous affairs herself), and drawing from her own remembrances of what she saw around her at the time. How common it was would be hard to say (it isn’t like most people were publicly announcing these affairs), but I think between her, other writers like Christie, and the scandals that *did* make it out into the papers, we can say that it did happen, although the frequency would be hard to pinpoint.