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Authors: Stefan Zweig
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where the wooden partition marking off the ladies’ pool was not full of so-called knotholes through which a peeping Tom might look. Whole industries flourished in secret—industries that have now disappeared because morals and manners are more natural—in particular the trade in nude photographs offered for sale under the counter in bars to adolescent boys. Or the pornographic literature sous le manteau— since serious literature was bound to be idealistic and cautious—which consisted of books of the very worst sort, printed on poor-quality paper, badly written, and yet sure to sell well, like the ‘titillating’ magazines of a kind no longer available today, or not in such a repulsive and lecherous form.As well as the court theatre, which paid homage to the ideals of the time with its noble sentiments and snow-white purity, there were theatres and cabarets with programmes entirely comprising the smuttiest of dirty jokes. What was suppressed found outlets everywhere, found ways around obstacles, ways out of difficulties. So ultimately the generation that was prudishly denied any sexual enlightenment, any form of easy social encounter with the opposite sex, was a thousand times more erotically obsessed than young people today, who have so much more freedom in love. Forbidden fruit excites a craving, only what is forbidden stimulates desire, and the less the eyes saw and the ears heard the more minds dreamt. The less air, light and sun was allowed to fall on the body, the more heated did the senses become. To sum up, the social pressure put on us as young people, instead of improving our morals, merely made us embittered and distrustful of those in authority. From the first day of our sexual awakening we instinctively felt that this dishonest morality, with its silence and concealment, wanted to take from us something that was rightfully ours in our youth, and was sacrificing our desire for honesty to a convention that had long ago ceased to have any real meaning.
However, the morality of this society, which on the one hand tacitly assumed the existence of sexuality running its natural course, but on the other would not publicly acknowledge it at any price, was in fact doubly mendacious. For while it turned a blind eye to young men and even, winking the other eye, encouraged them to ‘sow their wild oats’, as the jargon of the time jocularly put it, society closed both eyes in alarm and pretended to be blind when faced with women. Even convention had to admit tacitly that a man felt and must be allowed to feel certain urges. But to admit honestly that a woman was also subject to them, that for its eternal purposes creation required the feminine as well as the masculine principle, would have offended against the whole concept of women as sacred beings. Before Freud,it was an accepted axiom that a woman had no physical desires until they were aroused in her by a man, although of course that was officially permitted only in marriage. However, as the air of Vienna in particular was full of dangerously infectious eroticism even in that age of morality, a girl of good family had to live in an entirely sterilised atmosphere from her birth to the day when she went to the bridal altar. Young girls were not left alone for a moment, for their own protection. Girls had governesses whose duty it was to make sure that they did not—God forbid!—take a step outside the front door of their homes unescorted; they were taken to school, to their dancing classes and music lessons, and then collected again. Every book they read was checked, and above all young girls were kept constantly occupied in case they indulged in any dangerous ideas. They had to practise the piano, do some singing and drawing; they had to learn foreign languages and the history of art and literature; they were educated, indeed over-educated. But while the idea was to make them as educated and socially well brought up as possible, at the same time great care was
However, the morality of this society, which on the one hand tacitly assumed the existence of sexuality running its natural course, but on the other would not publicly acknowledge it at any price, was in fact doubly mendacious. For while it turned a blind eye to young men and even, winking the other eye, encouraged them to ‘sow their wild oats’, as the jargon of the time jocularly put it, society closed both eyes in alarm and pretended to be blind when faced with women. Even convention had to admit tacitly that a man felt and must be allowed to feel certain urges. But to admit honestly that a woman was also subject to them, that for its eternal purposes creation required the feminine as well as the masculine principle, would have offended against the whole concept of women as sacred beings. Before Freud,it was an accepted axiom that a woman had no physical desires until they were aroused in her by a man, although of course that was officially permitted only in marriage. However, as the air of Vienna in particular was full of dangerously infectious eroticism even in that age of morality, a girl of good family had to live in an entirely sterilised atmosphere from her birth to the day when she went to the bridal altar. Young girls were not left alone for a moment, for their own protection. Girls had governesses whose duty it was to make sure that they did not—God forbid!—take a step outside the front door of their homes unescorted; they were taken to school, to their dancing classes and music lessons, and then collected again. Every book they read was checked, and above all young girls were kept constantly occupied in case they indulged in any dangerous ideas. They had to practise the piano, do some singing and drawing; they had to learn foreign languages and the history of art and literature; they were educated, indeed over-educated. But while the idea was to make them as educated and socially well brought up as possible, at the same time great care was
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