Exploring the impact of American fears surrounding the violence of the French Revolution, this book reveals how these anxieties catalyzed significant social movements, including antislavery, antiwar, and public education initiatives. Cleves delves into the connections between historical events and the evolution of American social consciousness, highlighting the transformative effects of revolutionary turmoil on domestic policies and societal values.
The sexual exploitation of children by adults has a long, fraught history. Yet how cultures have reacted to it is shaped by a range of forces, beliefs, and norms, like any other social phenomenon. Changes in how Anglo-American culture has understood intergenerational sex can be seen with startling clarity in the life of British writer Norman Douglas (1868–1952), who was a beloved and popular author, a friend of luminaries like Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, and D.H. Lawrence, and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t.U nspeakable approaches Douglas as neither monster nor literary hero, but as a man who participated in an exploitative sexual subculture that was tolerated in ways we may find hard to understand. Using letters, diaries, memoirs, police records, novels, and photographs—including sources by the children Douglas encountered—Cleves identifies the cultural practices that structured pedophilic behaviors in England, Italy, and other places Douglas favored. Her book delineates how approaches to adult-child sex have changed over time and offers insight into how society can confront similar scandals today, celebrity and otherwise.
The book explores how American anxieties surrounding the violence of the French Revolution catalyzed significant social movements, including antislavery, antiwar initiatives, and the push for public education. Cleves delves into the interconnectedness of these movements, illustrating how revolutionary fears shaped public discourse and policy in the United States, ultimately influencing the nation’s moral and political landscape.
