Frank discussion about sex and the 16th century under the read more, you have been warned.
Another thing I worried was a bit of wishful thinking in WBRR is whether Robert would have any real idea about a) how to go down on a woman and b) what a clit is and what it does lmao.
And I don’t mean that in a “he’s an arrogant man who doesn’t care about a woman’s pleasure” way, I mean literally was the information available to him/wider society at this point in time?
As it turns out - probably! I’ve been reading Kate Lister’s book A Curious History of Sex and it was known by the Middle Ages that the clit could provide sexual pleasure for women - particularly important since it was also thought that a woman had to reach orgasm in order to conceive:
“But at least Avicenna recognised the clitoris’s function in pleasure and advises men to the rub ‘area between the anus and the vulva. For this is the seat of pleasure.’18 Thankfully, Avicenna’s work was highly influential throughout medieval Europe and advice on stimulating ‘the seat of pleasure’ is found in a number of later texts, such as William of Saliceto’s Summa Conservationis et Curationis (1285) and Arnold of Villanova’s De Regimen Santitatis (c.1311).”
And by the Renaissance, they were becoming even more explicit about it:
“And more than this, the Renaissance anatomists emphasised the clitoris’s role in sex and pleasure. Colombo wrote that his discovery ‘is the principal seat of women’s enjoyment in intercourse; so that if you not only rub it with your penis, but even touch it with your little finger, the pleasure causes their seed to flow forth in all directions, swifter than the wind.”
And this, of course, is just official medical thought. This is not even taking into account personal experiences, gossip, word of mouth (ie Robert’s line in WBRR “I have many brothers and brothers talk”) and - you know - women actually telling the men in their lives what feels good for them.
What they’ve got working against them, of course, is the weight of religious shame and guilt, condemning sexual acts that are not purely for procreation (but even here there’s a grey area as it was thought that women’s pleasure was necessary for conception), plus the condemnation of doctors and philosophers of antiquity:
“Orally pleasuring the clitoris was considered obscene. When cunnilingus is spoken about in Classical literature it is generally regarded as something repugnant, indulged in only by lesbians and weak men whose erection had failed them. So much so that many Greek insults involved accusing someone of ‘dining at the Y’ (1963). The Greek playwright Aristophanes (446–386 BC) mentions cunnilingus several times to point to a character’s moral failings. His character Ariphrades appears in several plays as the ‘inventor’ of oral sex: ‘he gloats in vice, is not merely a dissolute man and utterly debauched, but he actually invented a new form of vice; for he pollutes his tongue with abominable pleasures’.9”
So, bringing this back to my situation with WBRR!Robert I think I can confidently say that he would have likely been informed at the very least. I would even say with some cheek that he might have gleefully ignored the Greek and Roman's poor opinion of cunnilingus - accordingly to his childhood tutor, Roger Ascham, he never set much store in classical rhetoric anyway.
Whether the real Robert was as gung ho for the practice of pleasuring a woman as I’ve written him is pure speculation, but I hope for Elizabeth’s sake (not to mention Amy, Douglas and Lettice) that he was lmao … Leicesters’s Commonwealth certainly painted him as a voracious lover so, where there’s smoke … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
