Bodies in Space: Reading Gender and Race in Context Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676, and: Sexual Revolution in Early America (review)

Who made the question "What counts as sex?" the subject of American cultural debate? Was it (a) Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky or (b) the Puritans? Richard Godbeer chooses b in his study of the intellectual, cultural, and social history of sex, which affirms that, from a "range of positions," early Americans recognized sex and its contested definitions as a crucial "social, economic, political, legal, moral, and religious issue" (10). Guided by the premise that British America was engaged in a "culture war, pitting different conceptions of sexual and marital etiquette against each other," the book traces the discrepancies between popular sexual beliefs, vocabulary, and practice and the oppositional stances and labels that authority figures used to condemn them in their campaign for reform (9). Godbeer carefully and wittily traces the moral and linguistic tensions that resulted as "'profane' settlers whose investment in moral rectitude was minimal" and a mobile colonial population coexisted with ministers and magistrates bent on enforcing a different sexual norm (9). Analyzing official documents and popular sources, including "sermons, theological treatises, governmental decrees, laws, judicial decisions, and didactic literature" (12), Godbeer concludes that neither popular nor official ideas about sex predominated at any one time, nor were popular and official ideas necessarily always opposed or consistent.

What counts as "sex" in Godbeer's work are "erotically charged interactions tending toward though not necessarily including genital orgasm" (11). This study makes clear from a historian's viewpoint that, yesterday or today, whether Americans recognize it or not, sex is not just about sex or love, and it is inseparable from cultural ideas about race, class, gender, and power. For early Americans, who had not yet come upon the modern notion of sexual orientation or sexuality as an important aspect of identity, sex acts were discrete "component[s] of spirituality, cultural identity, and social status" (11). Godbeer considers three areas of early American sexual history: the struggle over sexual morality, the ways that sex played into colonists' fears about the impact of the New World on "civilized" culture and behavior, and the relationships among sexual and political revolution in the late eighteenth century. Ultimately, Godbeer offers a fresh view of the "moral and cultural architecture" of early America and the American Revolution through his analysis of sexual mores and behavior.

Seventeenth-century New England Puritan authorities, anxious to preserve the reputation of the church and its members, concerned themselves with a wide range of sexual behaviors, including lewd talk, gossip, "obscene [or] uncivil carriages," dancing, premarital sex, and informal marriages. According to the authorities, unclean words and acts were equally dangerous to Puritan souls. Ministers and magistrates worked strenuously to define marriage legally and formally to a citizenry that had no consistent view of where marriage began and ended and viewed sexual intercourse between two individuals committed to marry as acceptable practice. Moreover, early New Englanders tended to interpret improper sexual talk and behavior in the context of an individual's broader social behavior and worth. That is, colonists were reluctant to complain about or prosecute untoward sexual behavior unless it became socially disruptive and outweighed other considerations of a person's social worth. Therefore, God-beer argues, if we are to understand Puritan attitudes toward sex, we must do so with the awareness of "hybrid" value systems and in the context of Puritan ideas about social relationships and hierarchies. The Puritan interpretation of sex hinged on many intersecting social, economic, cultural, and spiritual factors.

The gamut of possible interpretations of sexual words and acts extended to early American views of the body as well. Even as the body was a temple, a vessel for salvation, erotic pleasure was...