Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Heartthrobs

Episode Date: November 15, 2022

What makes a heartthrob? Is he brooding, flamboyant or a bad boy? And what qualities translate to sex symbol status in society?Which men have made the hearts of young (heterosexual) women flutter over the centuries? And why?Today, Carol Dyhouse joins Kate to talk about the history of famous men who have lit women’s hearts on fire.*WARNING There are adult themes and naughty words in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Anisha Deva.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bit twixters. It's that time again. It's time that we sit down together and talk absolute historical smut and filth. And before we do that, I have to give you your fair do's warning. Fair do's. You've been warned.

This is an adult podcast with adult themes in an adult nature from an adult presenter who can't stop swearing. So anyway, there you go. Fair do's, you've been warned. You knew what you were getting yourself in for before you continued with this absolute filth. Lord Byron, Mr Darcy, Heathcliff, Rochester, Rudolph Valentino, James Dean, Carrie Grant,

Christian Gray, Idris Elber. That's just a personal one. But who was your first male celebrity crush? David Seaman, the goalie for the England football team. I was just mesmerised by his long, thick ponytail. The name that comes to my mind who I thought was gorgeous was Rock Hudson. Just about everybody else, everybody else, every other female in the world loved Rock Hudson.

It was Will Smith because he looked buffing men in black. Harry Lineca, for reasons that I still can't explain. Asking the questions, what is it about certain men that has made them go from, Yes, you're a very good looking guy to heartthrob territory. And what is it about these men? And we are talking particularly about men today that made them so, so dreamy for so many over the years.

Well, today, betwixt the sheets, we're going to find out why everyone wants them to get betwixt their sheets. We're going to try and get to the delicious bottom of it. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect. copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the button.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, with me, Kate Lester. Here's a question. What makes a man attractive? From Casanova to Elvis to Harry Styles, what qualities have been equated to sexiness throughout history? And I'm not just talking about a good-looking guy here. I'm talking about what is it that kicks it up a notch into the realm of the heartthrob. The guys who have women throwing knickers at them, ideally on stage, not in a weather spoons, that's very out of order.

But what is it that turns someone from just a good-looking guy into heartthrob material? Well, today I am talking to Carol Dyehouse, who has been unpicking why certain men have had the power to make women. Women swoon. Fans at the ready, everyone. Let's do it. Hello to Carol Dyehouse. Welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. Thank you, Kate. It's a great pleasure to join you today. I am really thrilled to be talking to you about this because we are talking about heart throbs. It's such a fascinating history when you stop and you think, well, what is a heart throb exactly? Like, what does that even mean? What do you have to do to

become a heart throb? And who were the first? Well, the question about who is the first, I mean, I'm likely to answer in terms of how far back I went in time thinking about this issue of hot tops. And I suppose I look for people, for men, I should say at the beginning, I was interested in heterosexuality, although an awareness of gay issues actually impacts on that, and maybe we could come around to that later. But I was primarily interested in women lusting in big numbers or having very big romantic hits. on men. So in part, communication shapes that. You know, we don't really know what happened, but I thought perhaps the first obvious, I mean, Byron and List, which were the early ones, lists the piano player. I mean, it said that women used to collect the butts of his smoked cigars and push them down their cleavages or have nothing.

They didn't. No, they didn't. They kind of went completely weak at the needs. is over list, but Byron, of course, is classic. He still exerts quite an effect on the imagination today, doesn't he? Absolutely, absolutely. I'd invite into my fantasy dinner party, mostly because I'd be hoping to sleep with him. Well, there'd be nobody else there. It would just be me and Byron, that'd be it. I mean, you know, the word Byronic implies that he's still with us, really. We still talk about Byronic heroes, but he's not the most of, when you think about it,

you know, people often point out he was pudgy and lay. You know, it's not obvious why he was so adored. No. But the scale of it is extraordinary, the fact that women in Victorian times where they were supposed to be shrinking violence and fairly modest, would ask to meet him under the bushes in Green Park. We know this because many of the letters remain,

as does the hair collection. Do you know about the hair collection? Please tell people about the hair collection. It's one of my favourite historical facts. Well, rather horribly, he collected. hair from all the women he slept with. Not had hair. Well, all sorts of hair.

Braids, curls, the old ringlet, bits of the other stuff, wrapped up in what is now yellowing paper and labelled in his handwriting. I did try and find out where this collection had gone. It used to be housed in Albemarle Street, in the John Murray editorial offices. You know, when John Murray, the publisher, had those offices, the hair collection was there. I think now it's gone to Scotland, but I did get some sort of cringy replies

when I rang up. What did they say? Oh, I can't remember it so while back. I think somebody said, uh, yeah. I think we do have that. How do you even start that conversation? I never got around to going up to Edinburgh,

who asked to see by. her own's hair collection. I read somewhere that he would send clippings of his dog back to women that wrote to him, or is that a myth? I don't know. I haven't read that. It's a grin, isn't it, as a thought. I don't know why I fancy him, because he's clearly a jerk.

Yeah, absolutely. Why? Are you sure you do? I don't know, but that's the thing there, isn't it? This kind of archetypal, why do women like a bad boy? What is it about the bad boy? And then I feel like a bad feminist. I'm just like, why am I attracted to art?

arseholes, even historical assholes. Like, in your research, have you managed to find any kind of answer to that? Not me personally, but what is it about the bad boy? One way in is to think that you fancy a construct rather than a person, i.e. you project a lot of your own desire. True. On to the person that you are obsessing over. So quite often you have to ask what the man represents that the woman is repressing within

herself. There's also the social mores of the time and the extent to which you are permitted to express desire as a woman. What kind of context that can be possible in. But I still think it's extraordinary that women did write to him. I mean, I'm not making up the bit about letters asking to meet under the bushes in Green Park. You know, we know that women threw themselves at him. So you do wonder, and maybe there's a perversity in it. Well, there's obviously a perversity in it.

I mean, the fact that, you know, you want something you can't have. other people want it, you think you perhaps want it, the more people that want it, the more that you feel you're losing out. I mean, Byron himself wrote bits of poetry, which made it quite clear that he was aware that women were projecting fantasies onto him and that he didn't always measure up to them. I mean, he was intelligent enough to see that. Wow. It's kind of like a mass hysteria, wasn't it, with Byron? And it's even stranger when you consider that they probably wouldn't have known what he looked like. There was no social media. They'd just read his poems and about him in the newspapers

and we're offering to have sex and under a bush? Yeah. Well, we're not quite sure. I mean, I don't know how much people would have thought about having sex. I mean, it was a romantic encounter. Oh, it was romantic.

Oh, so that's me, lower in the tone. Swooning and throbbing would be the words, I'd imagine. That's just me trying to shag by and under a bush. Spoiling it for anybody. What does that? He did he make of all this then? What did he write about it? He did write poetry showing that he was completely aware that women were projecting onto him.

And he was ambivalent about it. He moaned. He winged about being the magnet for so many desires. But equally, he liked it. I mean, look at the way he dressed. I mean, some of the portraits where he's wearing Albanian dress. I mean, I went to some length to look at the clothes, just because I like clothes. But he really fancied himself in those gorgeous silks and brigades and things. So there's that. But there's also the way. that actually he had a feminine side, and that also appealed to women. I mean, you could talk for ages on why Byron was such a heartthrob.

I mean, his interesting clothes, his awareness of things, was also attractive to women. But the dark brooding stuff, there's a vein of that all the way through the history of heartthrobs. Do you think as well it's because he had a reputation for sex? Is that something he found in other heartthrobs? They sort of have to have started the conversation around sex, almost like that creates a permission base for people, women in particular, to talk to him. Depends how you define sex, you know, and I know that sounds silly, but it really does. I mean, when you think of girl hysteria over boy bands, I mean, I've thought about that

because I originally thought of subtitling hearts robs from Byron to boy bands. When you think about boy bands, I mean, often adolescent girls, it's often said hysteria. The hysteria is a kind of trying out, isn't it? and the security in numbers. So the fact that you go with your girlfriends to swoon and yell and throb and so on in pop concert provides a kind of safety and isn't necessarily about what you might think of as raw sex. It's more about practice feelings than raw sex, isn't it? I mean, if you swoon going back in time over Donny Osmond or, you know, One Direction or Elvis the pelvis.

Yes. I mean, the very act of going and swooning and sign. is not necessarily about wanting to go to bed with these guys, but more about practising heterosexuality in a safe environment. That's fascinating. Because, yeah, I suppose you're right. It is a safe space because they're probably not going to have sex with them by the end of it, but they get to sort of engage in this, I didn't know what you'd call it.

Like when you look at the old footage of the girls screaming at the Beatles and at Elvis to the point where they can't hear the music, it is a kind of mania that they're experiencing. Yes, but it's a practicing of your own feelings of desire. and are trying out about what you want, isn't it, at some level? Is there any male equivalent of this? Has there ever been like teenage boys going and screaming a female pop style like this? That's a really good question.

I don't think I could answer that. I think that would require another sort of book. And I mean, that did raise the question about if I reverse the genders, whether you could write that kind of book about men's historical desire for women. I mean, I think that would be a fascinating subject, but the subject I'd taken on was already to be. It's massive. I became aware of that.

But I wanted to do it because I'm interested in the extent to which culture shapes desire. And I wanted to know whether, you know, objects of desire through female lives. Well, first of all, I wanted to look at that because, as I'm sure you're aware, second wave feminism was much influenced by art critic John Burgers' dictum, which was that men look at women and women look at themselves through the eyes of men, so that women are sex objects and they see themselves through the eyes of men, which I thought removed their subjectivity. And I also thought it was crazy because I remember being at school and talking to girls about who we fancied, you know. And once I started getting interested in men,

which took me a while, because I like horses better. I like my ponies. I was very aware that we did talk about men as sex objects. And it was just that that couldn't come into the open. So I I thought, let's reverse Burgess Dictum and look at whether women fancying men and whether there's a historical pattern in their objects of desire. And that's what I wanted to find out in writing heartthrobs, really. It's fascinating, isn't it? Because we hear so much about the male gaze. And there's this kind of narrative that the female gaze is mysterious and misunderstood

or it's not existing. And it tends to crop up in weird places, I find. Like women find things that you wouldn't necessarily think sexy as sexy. Like, I don't know if you've seen on TikTok recently. There's a very short clip of two actresses from the new House of Dragons sketch, and one of them is kind of androgynous, and she's just talking about a drink that she likes, and she just says, it's a Nogroni Spagliato with Prosecco in it, but she kind of leans forward and says to the other woman, and all of social media's blown up with these young women going, am I a lesbian? That just really turned me on. And it was

like a real, like, what was it about that that made a load of women going? Oh, hello. Like when Mr Darcy walked out of the lake, like a soggy man, why is that sexy? All right. The question about women finding things sexy that, you know, surprises often men, that goes back because, I mean, one of the most all-time massive heart throbs in history was Rudolph Valentino. True. And he illustrates that absolutely to a tea because men could not understand why women liked Valentino. know. And I think I should say it's hard to trace patterns of female desire in a big way until the technology allows you and until women become consumers in their own right. And there are kind of

three stages in women becoming consumers in their own right. And then we can trace something of their desires and passions through their consuming habits. And that happened when they started to read romance in big numbers at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. And you have the founding of Mills and Boone in the 20th century. And we started. to realise what women want through what they're paying for. Right. The next stage is cinema and that's where Valentino makes this enormous hit because men are saying this is not a sexy man.

I mean, particularly in America, you know the sexy man is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant and that is through male eyes. Men have a very clear idea at that stage about what they think of as manly and when they see women fainting and going crazy over Valentino, they can't make it out at all because to them. Men dismissed him as a pink powder puff who used makeup and danced like a snake on the floor. They thought he was Arab, which he wasn't, he was Italian, but because he acted in the shake, this famous film over which women palpitated in large numbers. But men got very aggressive because they thought women were perverse for fancying Valentino. I mean, eventually the culture

accommodated that. And, you know, you find people try to emulate Valentino, men using the canes and slicking the hair back. They even produced a brand of condoms in America called shake condoms. No, they didn't. Yeah, I mean, shake condoms traded on the reputation of Valentino for sexiness, you know, this whole shake obsession. Wow. That comes in at that time. When women express their desires through their consumption habits, it's not what men expect. Has the heartthrob shifted throughout? As it? As it? As it? As it. As a. As it. As a. It's not. It's, there have been a constant that you've found in all of them? Or does the heart fraud change from area to area depending on what women want? Yeah, both. I'm a historian, so I'm kind of professionally

invested in finding changes. You know, if I thought things didn't change, I doubt whether I'd be a historian, it would invalidate history? We'd all be out of a job, wouldn't we? Just be like, that's that then. But clearly they do. I mean, you can't imagine, say, Victorian missus, you know, in the home, sort of doing their bits of needlework and going visiting with their mum's. It's hard. to imagine them fancying, you know, just in Beaver or something like that, isn't it? So they wouldn't know what to make a Harry Stiles, would they? No, they wouldn't. I mean, clearly, there are threads of continuity, yes, but they do change.

The key that I concluded, the kinds of men that women fancy resides in women's social position at any particular moment in history. For instance, there are some obvious things, like in the days of empire at the end of the 19th century, women often fancied imperial adventurers. And the literature is full of sort of solid-jawed imperial adventurous in white pith helmets. You rescue women from natives. They're not exactly ideologically correct these fantasies. I mean, think of Tarzan and so on, you know. No, it's true. It's not nice to think you're having a racist sexual fantasy. So you can see that that fits in with empire. You can see that at times of crisis soldiers become sexy. You can see that when air travel happens, R-A-F pilots,

in their gorgeous sort of grey blue jackets with the silver wings were mega heart throbs. You know, it was said that if you wore those badges and went into a pub, everybody would buy you drinks and the women would look at you lovingly, you know. But there are things that are harder to understand. Why, for instance, if you look at romance fiction after the Second World War, the biggest category is doctors. It's nurses marrying doctors and romance around doctors. That wouldn't have happened in Victorian times, partly because there wasn't an NHS and doctors were, you know, they didn't have the social status that they had later on.

In a lot of Victorian novels, the doctors are rather iffy in social class terms. Yes, they are. You know, think of Middle March. Think of Emma Bovary. Dr Jackal and Mr. Hyde. Yeah, they're kind of dodgy. And they're not upper class, definitely. But by the 1950s, you know, it's Dr. Kildare, it's Emergency Ward 10.

there were just dozens and dozens and dozens. Mills and Boone couldn't find enough authors who would do doctor nurse romances in the 50s. Now, why is that? Partly because the NHS is getting going and there are more, doctors are more visible. But it's partly because there was the back to the home movement after the Second World War, which didn't actually last, but it was there for a while. And women's opportunities were still very limited. So they were looking for providers, a male provider. A doctor was a good male provider. You can sort of see why women went for certain kinds of men at certain times in history. And it varies according to their social position so that once women can pay their own way, they can go for sexy ne'er-do-wells so long as they don't

lose their money to them. Or they can go for pretty boy sexy types, you know, but not if you want a provider. Wow. I think you have to look at women's life chance. at any particular historical era, and then see what decisions they were making in terms of their life chances. You see, it was often said of universities in the post-war world that women just went there to find husbands. And the feminist in me, when that was first said, thought, sod this, you know, that's not on. But then when you think about it, they did. Because it was a much more rational decision to find a man who was going places than to try to go places on your own when the labour market was so limited. if you see what you mean. I'm really fascinated with where we are right now when it comes to

women being able to earn their own money and because we seem to be entering not uncharted territory but like the idea that a woman doesn't need a man in this culture in this time and doesn't need him as in financially need him. That seems to be quite new. Like even when my mum got a credit card, she couldn't get a credit card without her husband or a father co-signing for it. it. So women couldn't have money the same way that men did. Going back a bit further, they couldn't earn the same money, going back a bit further, they couldn't go to university. So throughout history, women have needed a man and now we're not quite equal yet, but we have the ability to, like, I live by myself, I pay my own way, I bought my own place, I've got a job, that is quite new. And then

it kind of puts in a position of, well, then what do I need a man for? I don't need him. Well, that is the question that I think it's worth asking in any particular historical era. What did the women of that time want when they wanted a man for life? Yeah, a man for life, not just for Christmas. You go back to the post-second World War period and women were feeling they were left on the shelf if they weren't married by 21. And that's when you get the explosion of comics like Jackie, Valentine. Roxy, Marilyn, date.

I mean, a huge explosion in the 50s just after the Second World War of comics, girls' papers, which are almost all about how to get a man before you're 21 and ruined. We've lost it. If you're not married by 21, and the age of marriage goes right down

after the Second World War, right down. Really? Women were marrying younger and younger, and that caused quite a lot of social problems. You know, there was all the running way to Gretna Green if your parents didn't approve if you mind. But they're having their desire shaped by the culture. They know that the job situation is bad. I mean, three quarters of girls are still leaving school at 14, 15. You haven't got the raising of the school leaving

age to 16. The job situation is not there for them yet. I mean, the labour market is still terribly limited. So it was rational to try and get married young. But you're quite right. When that changes, things change massively. And we seem to be having a bit of a, I don't want to say a backlash, but there's definitely a kind of movement amongst certain extreme crazy voices about like men need to be more masculine, take control of their women. This is a weird throwback. Well, it is a throwback, isn't it? I've always thought that feminism was about making women stronger and more independent and able to support themselves and about allowing men to be more sensitive and to not try and build up this kind of outer coat of impenetrable, you know,

stoicism and masculinity. So for me, my kind of feminism is about allowing much more latitude in gender terms. I couldn't agree more. But you'll always get people going on. And war complicates things, doesn't it? Absolutely. How did war complicate things in your research when it comes to heartthrobs? Well, as I said earlier, I think, you know, there's more idealisation of soldiers I mean, if you go back to Jane Austen's period, it's in pride and prejudice, isn't it? The troops in Brighton get a mention, women going crazy when they see the red coats and hear them.

And then that happened in the First World War was something called carkey fever. Yes. When women were supposed to kind of go out and, you know, how like cats on heat, as soon as Carkey came into town, then there's consternation because in the Second World War they go for the Americans,

because the American male has chewing them I love that our better teeth than the Englishman. I love that our sexual desire has been swayed by chewing gum. And there's all that stuff about busting your virtue for nylon stockings. I would be one of them, I think. That's terrible, isn't it? I'll be back with Carol after a short break. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit.

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I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. So if we take it sort of right up to the modern day of who are the heartthrobs today, I suppose it's not quite modern, but if we think of something like 50 Shades of Grey, because that has created all manner of ripples in academia, and especially in feminist studies.

It's not really to get into whether or not it's a good or a bad book, but there's this main character, Christian Gray, who's a billionaire at 27 for a start off. 27-year-old I know we're doing beer bongs in the park, but he's a billionaire, and he's into dominance and the sadomasochism, and he's very dominating and he's very forceful, and he kind of takes over this main character, Anastasia's life, and women just went mental for it. And then there was loads of reaction to it, of other people going,

I just don't understand this, how can people find this attractive? And I've always been fascinated as to what is that? Like, what was that? With this, that's the heartthrob thing again, isn't it? But with a made-up character? Well, it's a really well-worn fantasy, isn't it? I mean, I remember there was a journalist in the telegraph. I can't remember, but she described 50 Shades of Grey as Mr. Darcy with nipple clumps.

Yeah, I mean, the theme is really like Pride and Prejudice. You have this aloof, damaged man with loads of money. That's really important. I mean, we remember Lizzie Bennett falls for Mr. Darcy. Basically, she thinks he's an arrogant shit, but then she falls to him when she's at the gates of his house and she sees just how big, amazing it is. Oh, maybe I made a mistake.

You know, look at his heart. Barbara Cartland used to call it marrying Park Gates. You know, a woman has succeeded if she married Park Gates. Strong. I like that. Anyway, Mr. Darcy with nipple clamps. Yes. I mean, I did wonder. I read it, of course, because I had two writing the book.

Yeah, his red room of pain. There's a red room in one of the Bronteer books. It's Janeair. Yes. She has to go into the red room. I used to think, who cleanses? Good pain. What does the cleaner think about?

Christian Gray's red room of pain. They'd be paid very well, I think. It's a fantasy. The fantasy is mousy little girl. What's her name? I was trying to think, is it Anna? Anastasia Steele. Yeah, I mean, she doesn't even have a laptop for Christ's sake.

He buys her a laptop. And she's a virgin. And she's a virgin, yeah. And suddenly this ostensibly powerful guy with private jets falls to this, you know, we're told she's attracted, but she hasn't even got a laptop. I mean, what is this about? But it's recognisably like Lizzie Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, who has nothing. You know, she has nothing and she's not brilliant looking.

Remember these are female fantasies. I mean, they're written by Jane Austen and E.L. James. The female fantasy is, you know, no matter how poor you are, no matter how lacking you are in gorgeousness or anything, some massively mega rich bloke with a curling lip and part land to lust over is going to emerge also like Mr Darcy, you know, is going to have a really good body and he's going to fall for you and nobody else. I mean, it's bollocks. kind of is, isn't it? I'm rather disappointed. Like, I've been walking around biting my lip like Anastasia does in 50 Shades of Grey for a while, and so far no billionaires have bitten. I've been actually biting my top lips, so I look a bit like a piranha. So that might be absolutely to do with it. I heard 50 Shades of Gray described as being that it's not sex porn,

it's capitalist porn. I thought maybe that's it because like the ostentatious, maybe it's the provider thing again. Yeah. And the fact that you don't have to make any decisions. I mean, some of those early romances, I had great fun reading romance fiction to write heart jobs. And one of the things that was wonderful was, as I say, I live in Brighton. There used to be, it's unfortunately closed down, a secondhand paperback bookshop called Two Way Books, which sold historical romances. The old couple that owned it eventually retired. And when they retired, their children sold off all the stock, which was massive. And they were several deep on the shelf. So it was like romance archaeology.

You started with the black lace and the more up-to-date historical romance. And the further back you got on the shelves, you know, you got into the very sweet and innocent 1970s kinds of romance, which had titles like separate bedrooms or, you know, a winter love story or stuff like that. And I mean, it's extraordinary how they become so much more explicit. But there are continuities. One of the early very popular romance writers was a woman called Betty Neils, who wrote hospital romances, really. The male heart-told figures in all her books are very rich Dutch doctors with extraordinary names. Dutch doctors?

They are always Dutch. Right, okay. The heroines usually start off as nurses, not very attractive, no resources. And of course, the rich Dutch doctors fall for them. But they seem to solve in their future. they think that finding a rich enough protective male solves the future for them. That removes the worry. I mean, it kind of does.

I'd say that, and then I know that kind of makes me a bad feminist. But if somebody turned up with a billion pounds, you're just like, hello, I think you're quite sexy, would not like make everything much better. That's terrible, isn't it? But it's true. But would you give up all the interests that you have and all your research, I don't want to answer that question, Carol. No, no, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't. I definitely wouldn't. One of the things that I want to ask you is there seems to be a long fantasy of men, I want to say dominating women, but the woman kind of becomes quite, I just submissive. I wouldn't say that Elizabeth Bennett was submissive, but the man becomes like this invading force who kind of doesn't take no for an answer.

and like steamrolled past her objections, injects himself into her life, solves everything. And it kind of plays with this sort of no means yes, really, sort of trope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that? Well, I mean, I had to spend a lot of time thinking about that, and it's hugely controversial, as you know, in feminist circles. And going back in history, there's been some massive fights about it. There was a massive controversy between Molly Parkin and Violet Winspere about this,

because Violet, who was a working class woman who didn't marry and wrote very popular romance fiction in late 60s and 70s, said that she liked her men big, strong and protective. They had to be the kind of man who was capable of rape. And Molly Parkin went... Oh, hell fire. Yeah, she went crazy about that and denounced Violet Winspirits. The days of early feminism and that kind of thing could not be said.

But Violet was terribly upset and felt that this had been contemptuous of her. I think what you have to think about is that she didn't mean that they would rape. She meant that they had to be powerful. It's a fantasy. And I think the key thing about a fantasy is you're in control of it. So women reading stories about all powerful men who overwhelm them or overcome them. There are lots of things to be said. Firstly, it relieves them of the responsibility of having to take the initiative

in a culture where taking the initiative is not possible for women. or humiliating for them in some way. They're kind of socialised out of it. But secondly, a fantasy is something that you are in control of. So it's not like, you know, rape is about hate and violence. Yeah. Non-consensual stuff. A fantasy is quite different.

You're in control of the fantasy. You can shop the book. Can't not consent your own fantasy, can you? So I think we just have to make a distinction between fantasy and reality and who is in control. Yeah. And that's what I would say over and over again. In a fantasy, if a woman is consuming a fantasy, she is in control, you know.

That's the difference. But it did cause terrible trouble, this idea of men overwhelming women, in the fiction of the 1970s. And I've stopped reading it now. I've finished the book. So I don't really know whether all-powerful men are still acceptable in romance fiction today. I mean, it moves very fast. It does, doesn't it?

I mean, the shake theme went on for A. Ages, ages and ages. And, you know, you get some extraordinary titles. I have to look up this one. But, I mean, my daughter, who's also a historian, found a book for me, I think just after I'd finished writing, called the Playboy Shakespeare's Virgin Stable Girl. Jesus Christ. A novel by Sharon Kendrick.

That says so much, doesn't it? The Playboy Shakespeare, Virgin, Stable Girl. It's got everything. virginity, power, sex, exoticism, eroticism, horses. Horses. Horses. I teach a class on medieval literature, and one of the things that I'm always interested in is there's a whole subgenre of modern Viking erotica that is written by women

that does exactly what you'd imagine. It's a great big strapping guy with a six-pack, and it's all things like this poor Anglo-Saxon milkmaid has been kidnapped by this terrible Viking. And that's, it's sort of doing the same thing, isn't it? It's that power dynamic that makes people very uncomfortable, but is still incredibly popular. Well, maybe it's still quite hard for women to own their own sexuality. I mean, we assume that it's not. And compared with the past, it's not.

But, I mean, a lot of the stuff I was looking at was pre-Marie Stokes. And Mary Stokes was vilified for actually talking about women's subjective sexual desires and so on. and, you know, for telling men off for not listening to them. But, you know, maybe it's still harder for younger women to own their sexuality. I mean, some people would say that the ubiquity of internet porn now has made it even harder because, not because of porn per se, but because it's masculine-dominated porn. So it's harder to find spaces to understand women's desires sexually. I don't know because, as I say, I stopped writing the book and I can't move on somewhere else.

There's a lot of attention around when women have these kind of fantasies. I think they're called in psychiatric sort of literature and research ravishment fantasies. For the reason that you just said there is that we don't call them rape because it's not, because it's in your head. You've created this. You're always consenting to what is in your head. And I've done a little bit of reading around that.

And one of the things I thought was really interesting is a lot of focus is given to women who have these fantasies. But being dominated is also a hugely common fantasy for men. So it's not that like just women thinking of this. stuff. Yes, I mean, that really intrigued me in another book that I wrote, which is called Girl Trouble, which started off with a discussion of the white slave trade, because that was such a big issue, what was called the white slave trade in early 20th century Britain, and which coincides, and I think not coincidentally, with suffragism and the suffragettes demanding the vote and so on.

And there was huge discussion of the so-called white slave trade, and it was always, I mean, there's some very, very porno accounts, you know, which are really ostensibly condemning it, but really luxuriant in the details. A lot of them have very upfront illustrations. I mean, I remember one about white slave trade, which had a little girl cowering and a female madam and a man with a whip and a top hat, you know, and all that. And I thought, that is actually the image in people's minds. But when I got down to looking at the Metropolitan Police Archives and the actual nitty-gritty historical stuff, it was completely wrong because it wasn't about men whipping women. It was about men wanting women to whip them. That is such a popular fantasy. Always has been,

always will be. There's many, many men out there who want to be dominated as well. Whatever you do in the bedroom, whatever you do in your own brain, as long as it's not hurting another human being without their consent. Yeah, well, yeah. I'd have to think. You have to think about that one. Maybe I'm just projecting onto you now. Tell me I'm not weird, Carol.

But the business about Hartshelps, I mean, you know, the key thing is what you said about what women wanted at any particular time and their life chances at any particular moment. Because in a book that I did after Hartstallops, when I was looking at bigger patterns of love between men and women and how those had changed, I mean, even more kind of crazy.

big subject, but one of the things that really intrigued me was the study that was done by two women academics in the 50s at Birkbeck College, and they asked six-form, well, sort of older adolescents still at school, how they saw their futures. And they were completely unprepared for what the girls said they wanted and how they envisaged their futures. And the girls had all, because it was the post-wall period when I said girls were marrying younger and younger, the girls all wanted to be married by the time they were 21. They all wanted to have children. But what the researchers didn't bargain on was the girls all then at a fantasy level killed their husbands off.

Oh my God. They said that they could imagine their husbands either suddenly got ill or they perished in road accidents. And then they started quite happily talking about what they were going to do with the rest of their lives. And the researchers, I mean, there were two, you know, reputable researchers. as Thelma Vanessa and Joyce Joseph. And they said it's almost as if widowhood was an ambition. That's the goal. Yeah, they were very, very shot by this.

But the only way I could think about it was that the women were marrying because they wanted a house, they wanted security, they wanted children. They probably did love because, you know, somebody who gratifies those wishes, you're going to feel loving towards. But they didn't have a model of kind of companionship that would go be. beyond that, once that had been achieved, you know, it didn't go any further. So there was this odd thing that without conferring with each other, time and time again when they repeated this experiment and distributed the questionnaire, the girls killed their husbands off.

Oh my. Has anyone redone that experiment? Do we know what our current sixth farmers are planning? Well, that'd be really good, wouldn't it, to do that. People have done similar things. I mean, Sue Sharp, who was a sociologist who wrote a book called something. like just a girl or like a girl in the 70s and then did a follow-up with school children later, found that the girls had shifted their aspirations considerably. The latest study showed that they did expect to be earning, the early study they just wanted to marry and have children. The later study showed them becoming more independent-minded. If I was younger and had more time, you could do a study through time called, you know, Girls Changing Aspirations in 20th century

Britain. That'd be fascinating. I mean, a bit of that I do in the next book, you know, the one I've just done, which is after heart trubs called Love Lives. Our final question for you, Carol, who are the heart throbs today and why do you think they are appealing? Where are we up to with the heartthrob? Because they're still there, aren't they? Oh, yes. Do you mean yours or mine or everybody's just in general? Like, you know, who are we throwing our knickers out today? Oh, you can answer that as well as I can. Harry Styles, got to be up there. Yeah, Harry Stiles, because also he models a much broader notion of masculinity,

but that's been happening a long time. I mean, David Beckham does. Yes. And so on. I mean, a much less toxic kind of masculinity. So I think, yes, people like that are more likely to be heart-throbs. But I'm not sure that the old lantern-jawed alpha-male caveman type would have such a purchase today. And I think that's a good thing.

I think that is a very good thing. Oh, Carol, you've been amazing to talk to it. And if people want to find out more about you, where can they find you? If they want to throw their knickers at you, where can they find you? I don't think that's going to happen. But I'd be delighted if they got interested in my books. So perhaps you could, you know, the book Heartthrops, which we've obviously been discussing at, which is subtitled, The History of Women and Desire.

And my more recent book, which has a wonderfully glittery cover. Oh, it does. Which is called Love Lives, from Cinderella to Frozen. Amazing. Are you on social media or are you wiser than that? And not really. There are enough podcasts and reviews and books on Amazon for people to. Go and get the book. Oh, Carol, thank you so much for talking me today. You've been an absolute treat. It's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. I thank you so much to Carol for joining me. And if you like what you've heard, if your pulse has been racing,

please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcast. Join me again betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal and society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by epidemic sounds. A quick voice note to edit that episode. Very early on, I'm talking about the actor Emma Darcy, and I didn't know that they are non-binary, and I incorrectly used the pronoun she and refer to them as an actress, which I shouldn't have done. But I didn't know. I was thinking very quickly, and I was just remembering a TikTok that I'd seen them in, but it's still good to call these things out, point them out and correct them whenever you can.