Adolescent Sexuality and Social Identity in French and German Lower-Class Autobiography

Abstract

Although sexuality has become a subject of interest to historians, sexuality among the lower classes has too often served as a ‘natural’ foil for the more explicitly historicized sexuality of the propertied classes. This study of the adolescent sexual experiences portrayed in nineteenth-century European workers' autobiographies suggests important variations in popular sexuality that followed the contours of gender, chronology, and milieu. Moreover, the sexual identity that was established in adolescence was linked to other aspects of social identity and life trajectory.