In Mary's personal letters....

[LincolnToddFan]

(08-05-2014 01:56 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-05-2014 12:49 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Sexual relations were just something that polite society did not discuss until well into the 20th century. Ladies may have made reference to it and female woes in the privacy of their parlor among close female friends and relatives and made slight, discreet mention in letters to such friends and relatives, but I don't think that would be the norm. IMO, and I haven't read his book (and won't), Mr. Tripp is taking buttons of innuendo and making a frock coat out of them.

Laurie, in her biography of Mary, Jean Baker is in total agreement. She wrote, "Like most females of her time and class, she took pains to keep her private concerns private, discussing sex only in connection with reproduction and then mainly when talking to women and doctors. Even in a letter she wrote some years later to a close female friend she referred to an injury she had sustained during Tad's birth as "a disease of a womanly nature." But then she crossed out this obscure reference as if the mere mention of such matters were indecent."

Once again, Ms. Baker seems to assume that there was an injury on the basis of Mary's statement (crossed out) that she suffered from a disease. Why? It's very frustrating.

As far as men in the delivery room, I agree with Laurie. Most men and women would not dream of insisting on having the husband up close and personal during such an intense, messy ordeal. The delivery room was an exclusively female domain. In some cultures it still is.

I am going to sound terribly old-fashioned and uptight, but if I'd been a woman going through labor and delivery I would not want my husband anywhere near me!

Mary's recollections of looking up after her ordeal to see AL bending over her with love and concern on his face struck me as very sweet and poignant.