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Learn the real stories behind "prude" Victorians, the history of the vibrator, and why Victorians never smiled in photos. Host Justin Dodd (@juddtoday) breaks down some common myths and misconceptions about the Victorian Era Don't miss a video! Subscribe NOW: https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss?sub_confirmation=1 About Mental Floss: Mental Floss is where curious people come for trivia-tastic information. Mental Floss produces lists of fun facts, debunks common misconceptions, and tells untold stories from history, science, culture and more. Website: http://www.mentalfloss.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mental_floss Facebook: https://facebook.com/mentalflossmagazine Copyright Notice: This video and YouTube channel contain dialog, music, and images that are property of Mental Floss. You are authorized to share the video link and channel, and embed this video in your website or others as long as a link back to this YouTube Channel is provided. 2025 Mental Floss Misconceptions About the Victorian Era | Mental Floss https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss
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0:00
If there's one thing I know to be true, it's that there's nothing sexier than an exposed table leg
0:06
The curvy pieces of wood were so suggestive, so provocative, that upper-class Victorians kept them covered to hide the scandal's furnishings
0:14
Or so the story goes. Some Victorians might have covered their table legs, but only because they liked to accessorize their homes and wanted to protect their belongings from
0:22
dust and damage. Not because they were so prude that a bare piece of furniture could
0:26
corrupt their innocence. The notion of needing to cover table legs actually started as a quip
0:31
about Americans. A former British Navy captain named Frederick Marriott wrote about a brief
0:36
encounter he had with an American woman who chided him for even mentioning the word leg
0:41
in the presence of a lady. He poked fun at American culture by noting he once saw a piano
0:46
with his legs covered to protect women's purity. After British media picked up the story, the facts
0:51
became blurred, and the whole tale eventually snowballed into a rumor that it was the Victorian
0:56
themselves who were so scandalized by their own furniture that they had to keep it covered
1:01
Hi, I'm Justin Dodd. Welcome to Misconceptions. The sexiness of table legs is just one misconception
1:06
about the Victorian era I'll cover today, or uncover. Unless that makes you uncomfortable
1:12
then I will cover it. I don't know what to do here, so I'm just going to play the intro
1:16
The Victorians were inveterate prudes
1:27
The Victorians have a reputation for being overly prude and sex-averse, largely thanks to Queen Victoria's buttoned-up public image
1:35
But their art and literature says otherwise. Queen Victoria herself had an entire collection of nude paintings
1:41
She and her husband, Prince Albert, delighted in giving each other risque artwork as birthday gifts
1:46
According to her own diaries, Victoria was a pretty passionate lover. When writing about her wedding night, she said
1:53
She did not, as the saying goes, just lie back and think of England
2:10
And Victorian literature featured its fair share of eroticism. One particularly famous book was My Secret Life, which was filled with the man's vivid
2:17
accounts of his sexual adventures. There were even how-to books, one subtitled An Infallible Guide for Married and Single
2:24
Persons in Matters of the Utmost Importance to the Human Race, which was essentially the
2:29
Victorian version of Sex for Dummies. The book, which is filled with some pretty dubious advice and information, such as suggesting
2:35
married couples hoping to conceive a child should move to a colder climate, even encouraged
2:40
married couples to have passionate sex claiming that any children conceived would be most like the parent who had the most intense orgasm which I mean I Wow I finally understand the meaning of speechless
2:54
The vibrator was invented to help hysterical women. Speaking of orgasms, another common
2:59
misconception claims a Victorian doctor invented the vibrator to help hysterical women. According
3:05
to popular myth, doctors cured women of hysteria by manually bringing them to orgasm. One doctor
3:11
his hands tired from having to sexually stimulate so many women, created a vibrating device to make
3:16
his job easier. But there isn't much evidence to support the idea that Victorian doctors use
3:21
vibrators or masturbation at all for hysteria. A Victorian doctor is credited with inventing
3:27
the electric vibrator, but not for genital stimulation. Joseph Mortimer Granville came
3:32
up with the buzzing contraption in the 1880s. This first vibrator was basically an early version
3:37
of the muscle massage guns people use today. It could supposedly cure a whole assortment
3:42
of ailments like pain and spinal disease, but it was meant for men. Granville didn't
3:47
suggest using the vibrator on hysterical women, or any women at all. This whole myth
3:51
basically stems from a 1999 book, and the book's author has since said it was never
3:56
intended to be taken as a fact. Little tip for the author of that book from someone who works in the world of YouTube
4:01
the land of questionable facts. Don't assume people know you aren't being serious. Put
4:06
a disclaimer up, would ya? Prince Albert had a Prince Albert. According to legend, Prince Albert pierced his penis with what was then known as a dressing ring
4:17
He and other fashionable men would supposedly hook these rings to one side of their trousers
4:21
to prevent any unsightly bulging when they wore tight clothing. It's also said Prince Albert used the ring for hygienic purposes
4:29
However, there's no actual proof the prince consort ever had such a piercing
4:33
The origin of this legend remains unknown. One person who we do know helped spread it? Doug Malloy, a big piercing proponent in the
4:41
1960s and 1970s. Malloy printed the story in his pamphlet, Body and Genital Piercing
4:46
in brief, which, it should be said, contained more myth than fact, and the tale continued
4:50
to spread from there. Once again, guys, you can't go around spouting nonsense as facts
4:55
although I suppose if that rule had always been followed then this show would not exist
5:00
Never mind as you were. were humorless. In addition to supposedly being prude, it's often said that Victorians had no
5:07
sense of humor. But they were just as fond of a good joke as people are today. The magazine Punch
5:13
which was founded in 1841, was entirely dedicated to humor and satire. Newspapers, books, and the
5:19
theater all featured various jokes and puns. Some punny Victorian-era zingers to try out your next
5:24
open mic night include Who is the greatest chicken killer in Shakespeare Macbeth because he did murder most foul And what is the difference between a butcher and a flirt One kills to dress the other dresses to kill A big reason people think the Victorians
5:40
were so humorless is because their jokes didn't always age well. A lot of the content featured
5:44
in Punch, for example, may not make sense to those unfamiliar with the political events being
5:49
satirized. And some of the era's jokes were downright offensive, as they could have pretty
5:53
racist, sexist, or classist themes. When a lot of people think of serious Victorians
5:58
they think of the unsmiling people often found in photographs. There were some exceptions to
6:03
this stern rule. Photos of smiling Victorians, including Queen Victoria herself, exist in the
6:08
archives, but it is true that most photographs of the era show closed-lipped subjects
6:14
There are a few theories as to why. A common one is that in the 19th century
6:18
having your photo taken involved more than the quick click of a button. Posing for a daguerreotype in the 1830s meant a person had to be still for around a minute and a
6:26
half. That exposure time had shortened dramatically to under 10 seconds in the 1850s. As such
6:31
people didn't smile in pictures because it was difficult to hold the pose for a long stretch of
6:36
time. But by the late 19th century, exposure time had gotten pretty short and people still weren't
6:41
smiling. Which leads to another theory behind the somber stares. Early photography was similar to
6:46
painting, which also saw its subjects favoring grim looks over plastered grins
6:51
Back then, a big, toothy smile was more associated with lewdness and loudness
6:56
not traits the aristocrats wanted to portray in their portraits. Yet another theory proposes that
7:01
people didn't smile so they could hide their unattractive teeth. This idea has some critics
7:06
though. This was a time before widespread dental health care, so having a mouthful of gnarly teeth
7:11
was pretty normal and not something people felt the need to hide. One more note on Victorian-era photography and long exposure times. If you look at the right
7:19
or debatably wrong, sources online, you'll see a lot of images claiming to be post-mortem shots
7:25
that is, deceased subjects propped up for one last photo op. While this was a real practice
7:30
it wasn't nearly as widespread as some corners of the internet might have you believe. A lot of
7:35
those supposedly dead subjects are just standing really still to avoid a blurry image. I mean
7:40
you try to hold the same exact pose for 10 seconds and see if you don't end up with the case of
7:45
resting corpse face. Queen Victoria Embodied Priggishness Queen Victoria has a reputation as a particularly humorless monarch. After all, the quote
7:54
we are not amused, is attributed to her. According to one 1887 book, a group of people
7:59
were laughing and chatting when Victoria grimly proclaimed, we are not amused. But the most popular
8:05
legend claims she said it in response to a raunchy joke. Alternate versions of the story exist
8:09
but none come from a primary source. Each version is relayed as if the story had previously been passed on to the writer by someone else But it likely the queen never said that line at all In a 1976 interview her 93 granddaughter Princess Alice said Victoria herself told her she never said it
8:27
A lot of Queen Victoria's reputation as a somber, serious woman comes from the decades she spent
8:32
mourning Prince Albert's death. Albert died on December 14, 1861, at the age of 42. Albert's
8:38
untimely demise devastated Queen Victoria. She spent the next 40 years publicly and privately
8:44
mourning her late husband. One thing she didn't use while mourning her husband—glass tear
8:48
bottles. It's said that grieving Victorians would weep into these tear-catchers, and once
8:54
the pool of tears they collected had evaporated, their mourning period would end. People did
8:59
have an assortment of fancy little glasses and vials, but they used them to store perfume
9:04
This myth probably came about because some romantic past scholars found similar glass
9:08
bottles or lachrymatories in old Greek and Roman tombs and proposed they were used to
9:13
store tears. Modern tests, however, showed that even those ancient bottles were used
9:18
for scents. Queen Victoria was the first bride to wear white Queen Victoria has a long association with the color white. She did, after all, popularize
9:27
the white wedding dress. But she wasn't the first public figure to wear white on her wedding day
9:32
More than two decades before Victoria's wedding, there's an account of Princess
9:36
Charlotte's wedding dress, describing it as a slip of white and silver. And Victoria didn't
9:42
choose the color to showcase her purity, as many believe. White fabric was more expensive to
9:47
maintain and clean, so if anything, wearing white was a symbol of her social status. Back then
9:52
only the wealthy could afford to maintain pristine white clothing. According to one biographer
9:57
Victoria also chose white to better show off her gown's delicate lace
10:01
Corsets made women pass out onto fainting couches Corsets were pretty common throughout the Victorian era. They were not, however
10:09
the deadly torture devices often portrayed in period film pieces, though of course some people
10:13
did cause damage by cinching them too tight. But if a typical corset hurt the person wearing it
10:19
that simply meant that it hadn't been fitted right. Women also didn't need a whole flock
10:23
of assistants to facet them into a corset. They were often perfectly able to slip into the garment
10:28
themselves. Too tight corsets also didn't cause women to frequently faint. Contrary to popular
10:34
belief, women weren't constantly flopping onto fainting couches because their clothes were suffocating them. And back then, fainting couches weren't even a thing. That type of
10:43
furniture was called a daybed. Honestly, there are too many different pieces of furniture. You
10:48
get a good couch, that thing can be your daybed, your night bed, office chair, you name it
10:54
Oh god, I've been working from home for too long. That's all the misconceptions we have for you today. The Victorian era? Not as uptight as you
11:00
perhaps thought. Comment below what other time periods you'd like to see us cover in a future
11:05
episode, and I'll see you next time
#education