Sex in the ‘Downton Abbey’ Era

Fans of the popular television series Downton Abbey will enjoy The Bolter author Frances Osborne’s article about the sexual mores of the Edwardian Era. Men and women in “the good old days” didn’t behave as we are often let to believe. Although divorce was uncommon and created quite a scandal, sex out of wedlock was neither uncommon nor particularly scandalous. Among the social elite, adultery was an institution governed by its own strict rules. The double standard was alive and well: men could divorce their wives for adultery, while women did not have the same recourse unless their husbands’ cheating was accompanied by cruelty or abandonment.Read the entire article here: Sex in the Downton Abbey Era