ABSTRACT
A male unconcern for the welfare of women lay in the nature of traditional marriage. The indifference of men to the physical welfare of women is most striking in regard to childbirth. A modern hypothesis might be that the sex was so satisfying that women were willing to overlook its disadvantages. The view that women need to have orgasm in order to conceive goes back to the second-century Greek physician Galen. The people who interest, however, are those vast numbers of married women from the popular classes who lived before the twentieth century. The main characteristic of the sexuality of traditional men is its ruthless impetuosity. A collection of sexual folksongs from pre-Christian Latvia gives some notion of the images traditional men had in mind as they cohabited with their wives. Some of the working-class English women, who responded, just before the First World War, to a Women's Co-operative Guild questionnaire, said they saw sex "only as a duty."
