Resumen de “They gave them a language”: Performing Sex Manuals through Literature
This workshop aims at fostering the knowledge of the history of sexuality and its impact on literature while promoting active methodologies. For this purpose, we will delve into the success of sex manuals, which codified the sexual, contraceptive and abortive discourses of the Interwar period, through the works of Marie Stopes, Stella Browne and Helena Wright.
Thus, we will offer a brief discussion of their main ideas to further assess its relevance in the novels of the 1930s written by women. The Corn King and the Spring Queen (Mitchison 1930), Voyage in the Dark (Rhys 1934) and The Weather in the Streets (Lehmann 1936) will be the chosen titles to briefly perform a reassessment of topics such as abortion, contraception and sexual freedom. Hence, we attempt to reassess the history of sexuality, its repercussion in literature and its current vitality.
