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This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I. Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple's changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values. By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships. This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple's sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Making Love Sexual in the Edwardian Age.- Chapter 2: The Emotional Body: Religion and Male Friendship at Oxford.- Chapter 3: "Phallic Thumbs": Conceiving a New Eden.- Chapter 3: The Carnal Brother Body: Emotion, Interiority, and the Epistolary "Talking Cure".- Chapter 5: The Gendered Body: Marriage and a "home of my own".- Chapter 6: Purring Vaginas and Waggling Penises: Sexting World War I.- Chapter 7: The Maternal Body: Pregnancy, Child-Rearing, and Birth Control.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: "Are the Thumbs Still Wagging?": Gwyneth, Harry and the Psyche of an Age.- Bibliography.- Index.
About the author
Nancy Christie is Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Previous publications include
Engendering the State: Family, Work and Welfare in Canada (2000), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for best book in Canadian history in 2001, and
A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada (1996).
Michael Gauvreau is Professor of History at McMaster University, Canada. Previous publications include
The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution (2005), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize for best book in Canadian history in 2006, and
The Hand of God: Claude Ryan and the Fate of Canadian Liberalism, 1925-1971 (2017).
Summary
This book explores the courtship and marriage of Gwyneth Murray, an English woman, and a Canadian, Harry Logan, who wrote in the personae of their vagina (Dardanella) and penis (Peter) during World War I. Through an analysis of their extensive daily correspondence over nearly a decade, it uncovers the couple’s changing attitudes to the intersection of sexuality and religion, to marriage and childrearing, as they navigated the transition from Victorian to modern values. By focusing on first-person narratives, this book enriches our understanding of gender identities revealing how porous the boundaries remained between notions of 'heterosexual' and 'same-sex' friendships. This study offers an unprecedented perspective on one couple’s sexual practices, which included mutual masturbation and oral sex, and constitutes one of the most intensive examinations of female attitudes to sexual pleasure in an era of female emancipation.
Additional text
“Historians of gender, sexuality, and religion will find a great deal to interest them in this valuable volume.” (Mo Moulton, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 60 (1), January, 2021)
Report
"Historians of gender, sexuality, and religion will find a great deal to interest them in this valuable volume." (Mo Moulton, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 60 (1), January, 2021)
