Or: Why the 19th century was Jane Eyre bathed in oysters and Viagra

FIRST, THE PLUG; my debut novel, A Plague of Murder, contains a fair bit of sex and sexual tension between certain characters. Indeed, a number of female characters are positively liberal when it comes to their sexuality.

“But Mr Averon!” I hear you groan already. “The Victorians were prim and proper. Women especially, were sexually repressed by their male overlords, forced to rely on abstinence (whenever they weren’t pregnant) as the only sure means of contraception.”

My dear, naive reader, allow me to make the case that just like us, the Victorians were in fact stark raving, sex mad fiends. The women every bit as much as the most red-blooded of men.

SO WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE? Quite simply, a piece of it is in the contemporary sources for one of my favourite true-crime whodunits. It’s an event from the time period that should be made into a movie, or better yet, a Netflix limited series. It is the affair of Madeleine Smith and Emile L’Angelier.

For those unacquainted, I’ll give a brief background. She was the daughter of a prominent Glasgow architect, he was a working class drifter from the Channel Islands. Bored with the local women, he arrived in mainland Britain, and by 1855, had made it to Scotland. Back then, Glasgow was a much wealthier, more vibrant place than it is today, and a chance meeting on the street brought these two future lovers in, uh…rather close contact.

What followed was a tale of forbidden love and secret trysts behind the back of an overly-protective father. There were liaisons through bedroom windows and late night romps aided by mutual acquaintances. She was around twenty, he was at least thirty.

Like the vast majority of illicit affairs, theirs did not end well. By March of 1857, Emile was found dead with a stomach full of arsenic, and Madeleine seen as the prime suspect. She had, after all, bought a tub of arsenic only days previous to the murder.

What followed was a charade of court justice; Madeleine wasn’t found guilty of Emile’s murder, but neither was she found wholly innocent. Essentially, there was insufficient evidence, and the crime remains unsolved. I’ll probably go into the murder itself in another piece of writing. For now, I want to focus on something I haven’t seen any other historian tackle in this famous case.

And that is the societal norms unveiled in the mountain of written correspondence that was shared (and miraculously survives) between these two star-crossed lovers. There are reams and reams of these letters, which I have been fortunate enough to look at the contents of. And they are eye-opening.

Many historians and web sleuths have pointed to these letters as evidence of poor Madeleine being stuck in a toxic relationship with a low-class chancer who was only using her to climb up the greasy social pole of Victorian hierarchy. But I believe that is a shallow view of their true value. When read together in order, you can almost see the script of a period drama unfolding before your eyes. It reveals a sexually liberated young woman who comes to know exactly what she is doing with the ambitious Emile.

First thing’s first; Madeleine was from a wealthy family. Wealth was all she had ever known. Her days were spent shopping on affluent high-streets, indulging in local gossip, attending ballroom dances, and even visiting her father’s holiday home in the country (complaining bitterly of the cold all the while).

At some point in her and Emile’s liaisons, she lost her virginity.

I did not expect the pleasure of seeing you last evening, of being fondled by you…

Madeleine Smith

And her correspondence becomes ever more ardent; she calls him her husband, he calls her his wife.

Beloved, if we did wrong last night, it was in the excitement of our love…Oh if we could have remained, never more to be parted…after what has passed I cannot be the wife of any other… I did not bleed in the least last night, but I had a good deal of pain during the night…

Madeleine Smith

And she goes on to play the role of the loving, supplicant wife in her letters, willing to do whatever her husband commands. It may seem shocking to us in the twenty first century, but this was utterly normal behaviour in Victorian Britain, especially for middle class women.

I shall be all you could wish. You shall love me and I shall obey you…

Madeleine Smith

And true to his own role as ‘husband’, Emile begins (or at least tries to assert) his dominance over Madeleine. In a surviving letter that he wrote back to her after their first time, he blames Madeleine for her feminine charms, and for not resisting his advances the previous night.

Why Mimi did you give way after your promises, my pet, it is a pity…we did wrong, God forgive us for it. Mimi we have loved blindly…

Emile L’Angelier

Again, this blaming of the woman for her natural place as a sexual object was completely normal for the time. Emile takes zero responsibility for his role in the affair. It is obvious from their correspondence that he instigated the sexual encounter, but they are both accepting that it is her fault for essentially giving in. The self-flagellation in his words is typical of the Christian shame at having succumbed to their base desires. Yet I think there is something more to it, as shown in the quotation below.

…if you disappoint me in information and I have cause to reproach you of it you will have no-one to blame but yourself…I do not understand my pet your not bleeding, for every woman having her virginity must bleed. You must have done so some other time…

Emile L’Angelier

In the above quote, you can practically hear the doubt in Emile’s voice as he scribbles away at his bureau. Modern understanding of a woman’s biology was very much in its infancy back then, and any maiden whose hymen was not intact was seen to be promiscuous and therefore less valuable to a marriage. Indeed, today in twenty first century Britain, the barbaric practice of ‘virginity restoration’ is still performed on young women before marriage to ensure they have that first bleed on their wedding night. So this is a regressive notion that is still perpetuated across the western world.

But back to Emile, you can tell what thoughts are going through his head after his first night with Madeleine; if she was so easy with me, who else might she have been easy with before me? He goes on to demand she tell him when she has her period, to allay his concern over potential complications from their ‘moment of weakness.’ This may seem shocking to us for a man to demand this of any woman. But remember – they are playing pretend at being husband and wife. And in Victorian Britain, the husband controls the wife in every way. This is in keeping with vast troves of Victorian correspondence where the husbands ask for very intimate specifics from their wives. At this point, they are essentially property.

In the same letter, Emile pushes Madeleine to confront her parents, throw caution to the wind, demand that they are allowed to wed despite his lowly status. He even resorts to that old ally; jealousy. He mentions another woman he has met, and speaks of her refinement and intelligence, doubtless hoping this will spur Madeleine to act.

Clearly, their relationship has all the hallmarks of being very toxic, even at this early stage. But act she does, this time entreating her mother. Yet the parents remain steadfast in their resolve for her to have nothing to do with Emile. Skipping ahead, there is the inevitable back and forth between the couple. They blow hot, they blow cold, then blow hot once more.

My love burns for you. It increases daily. Oh to be with you this night. But I fear I would ask you to love me and that would not do. No, we must not till we are married. It is hard to restrain one’s passions…

Madeleine Smith

It continues in this vein until another man comes on the scene, a man whom her father arranges for her to be engaged to; William Minnoch. Minnoch is a respectable gentleman of means, a man who gives her expensive gifts, takes her out to concerts and spends many an evening in her company.

In one of her letters to Emile, Madeleine’s mask slips. She references Minnoch by his first name, then crosses it out to replace it with the more formal surname. But the damage is done. It is now Emile who becomes jealous, and in a matter of days, Madeleine’s letters to him go from this…

Oh what charming walks we shall have, and our evenings we shall spend happily, and oh! Our nights we shall spend in pleasure loving each other dearest love…

Madeleine Smith

to this…

…for some time back you must have noticed a coolness in my notes. My love for you has ceased and that is why I was cool…I might have gone on and become your wife – but I could not have loved you…

Madeleine Smith

She no longer refers to him as her husband. She no longer calls herself stupid, or weak. She demands he returns her letters. And she confesses that she has been leading him on for many months, promising him with her hand in marriage, seemingly uncaring of his lack of means. Now she sticks the dagger in. She has previously told Emile of how her mother was aware of their ‘engagement’ and intention to wed. In reality, her mother and father were not even aware she was still courting Emile behind their backs following their strict instruction.

Their dangerous game of pretend was exactly that – pretend. And now it has come full circle. Like most illicit affairs, it is the end that brings the downfall. Emile threatens Madeleine. In his impetuous fury, he tells her he will inform her father of what has been going on, he will share her scandalous letters, he will destroy Madeleine’s and Minnoch’s engagement…

For God’s sake, do not bring your once-loved Mimi into open shame…Emile, my father’s wrath would kill me…I am humble before you and crave your mercy…I shall be ruined, who would trust me? Shame would be my lot…

Madeleine Smith

But Emile does not back down. He keeps up with his spiteful threats, and this fateful decision begins a brief chain of events that sees Madeleine purchase a significant amount of arsenic from a pharmacy. She goes to see her Emile, to placate him in an attempt to get her damning letters back. Once more, she briefly returns to professing her flowery affections to him, and very tellingly, she writes to him after he falls desperately ill, informing him she will visit his lodgings once more, to give him food and drink, to nurse him.

Soon after, Emile is found dead with a stomach full of arsenic.

The subsequent investigation and retrieval of the letters that Emile never destroyed certainly could – and has – filled many books, arguing whether Madeleine was guilty of murder (she certainly had a motive in silencing Emile, after all). But what fascinates me is the level of subtle control Madeleine exerted in her relationship with the hapless labourer. More than once, she denied him sex during a tryst, and as her letters to Minnoch grew ever more passionate, her written affections to Emile cooled.

Equally striking is how she was able to turn on the head of a pin in her writings. She goes from a sweet supplicant to a confident and mature woman, decidedly in control of her destiny. Seeing her earlier letters, it’s hard not to smile at how she fills them with exciting descriptions of her attendance at concerts, and her dances on the arm of another man, surely knowing the effect it would have on her lower class lover.

More careless, she wears jewellery in his presence, bought for her by Minnoch. When questioned, she denies it completely. It makes one wonder why she would do such a thing until you realise that she is an upper-middle class woman with plenty of time on her hands. Often bored, she sees Emile as an exciting, handsome, older man. He has a different accent, an exotic, French name. He has seen a great deal more of the world than she, and makes empty promises of far-flung travel to distant places.

In short, he is a distraction. At the very most, he is practice for the more grown-up future she has promised with Minnoch. It’s a future she warmed to with ever greater ardour. Or at least it was until it all came crashing down with Emile’s suspicious death.

When you see that letters such as Madeleine’s were being written up and down Britain behind the backs of unknowing husbands and doting fathers, you begin to see that it’s not so much a woman’s sex that determines the level of control she might retain in any relationship. It is her class. Just like today, a person’s class in society correlates with the sexual opportunities they have. That’s not to say women didn’t have a rather terrible time in the 19th century, because they did. It just wasn’t the wall to wall, prim and proper, subservient society we may look upon it as. There was a broiling turbulence beneath the surface.

Women were learning more about how to control their fertility all the time. Pamphlets detailing birth control were being shared between church pews, and the birth rate dropped massively after 1880 as this knowledge began to take effect. These tough, strong-minded women were, bit by bit, taking back their freedom and finding liberation. Both in the bedroom, and outside it.