ABSTRACT
Slave women’s sexual behaviour occupied a prominent role in pro- and antislavery writings. This role should first be seen within the light of the natural decrease of the slave population. It was argued by both defenders and opponents of slavery that slave women contracted venereal diseases in their sexual relations with white and slave men which made them incapable of conceiving or carrying a child full-term, and that they also easily aborted their offspring. And second, within a context of changing ideas about sexuality in metropolitan society. While permissible sex remained confined to the married, procreative couple, different norms of male and female sexual behaviour emerged, which were first directed at middle-class men and women. 1 In the eighteenth century, men were attributed with excessive sexual desires and manhood was defined primarily through sexual potency. After the turn of the century, it was still assumed that men were naturally endowed with a strong and potentially dangerous sex drive but it was no longer seen as a force beyond their control, and they were increasingly urged to control and ration their sexual passion. Advice literature directed at young men told them, for instance, to abstain from masturbation. Adultery was regarded as an inappropriate way for middle-class men to accommodate their sexual desires but was condoned if it was committed with either a woman without a family or a lower-class woman because this limited the risk of introducing illegitimate offspring into the middle-class family. 2
