Sex and the Married Girl: Heterosexual Marriage and the Body in Postwar Canada

During the 1950s and early 1960s, sex was a major concern to social authorities in Canada. Sex and the Married Girl explores how medical professionals and church leaders used married heterosexual female sexuality as a lever to rebuild the Canadian family and state. Heather Stanley's book uses oral life histories of women to demonstrate that this was a time of simultaneous sexual and gender quiescence and change.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 01 November 2022
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Sex was a major concern to social authorities in the immediate postwar era. Though they are often remembered with nostalgia as a sexually simpler time, the 1950s and early 1960s were incredibly sexually productive years. Sex and the Married Girl examines how two interrelated and dominant groups in Canada – medical professionals and church leaders – used married heterosexual female sexuality as a lever to rebuild the Canadian family and the state itself. Using embodied historical methodologies, the book examines not only discourses around sex but also how those discourses could influence the actual experience of sex for married women. Heather Stanley draws upon extensive oral life histories of women who lived, married, and had sex during this liminal social period to demonstrate that this was a time of simultaneous sexual and gender quiescence and change.

Sex was a major concern to social authorities in the immediate postwar era. Though they are often remembered with nostalgia as a sexually simpler time, the 1950s and early 1960s were incredibly sexually productive years. Sex and the Married Girl examines how two interrelated and dominant groups in Canada – medical professionals and church leaders – used married heterosexual female sexuality as a lever to rebuild the Canadian family and the state itself. Using embodied historical methodologies, the book examines not only discourses around sex but also how those discourses could influence the actual experience of sex for married women. Heather Stanley draws upon extensive oral life histories of women who lived, married, and had sex during this liminal social period to demonstrate that this was a time of simultaneous sexual and gender quiescence and change.

Weight: 368g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487521141