Becoming Montaigne 5: Lukewarmth
When the wife of the Roman Emperor Aelius Verus complains to him about his extramarital affairs, he explains that he has the affairs for reasons of conscience, since marriage is a bond of honor and dignity, not wanton lust. Picture the look on the face of the Emperor's wife as he explains this to her.
Montaigne chooses the above anecdote to liven up his tepid defence of room-temperature marital sex.
“These immodest caresses to which the first ardor incites us in the games of love are not only indecent towards our wives but damaging to them,” says Montaigne. “Let them learn immodesty by other hands than mine! I have never practised in these matters other than what arises from a natural and simple education.”
By “a natural and simple education,” Montaigne presumably means witnessing barnyard sex. The ways and means of most mammals are surprisingly informative to a student of human reproduction. The first real gap in the history of sex education occurs in that long period after people start to abandon farm life for the towns and cities, and before the invention of internet porn.
I grow up toward the end of that long interlude. Home and school provide nothing for me in the way of sex education. At some point I come across a grainy photograph in a textbook of a man and woman lying on a bed in a state of “physical love”. The woman is lying on her back with her legs akimbo and folded at the knees. The man seems to have fallen asleep face-down on top of her. The woman may also be asleep, judging from her closed eyes and slightly open mouth.
A couple of years after that, a schoolmate passes me a dog-eared copy of Since You Ask Me, a 1961 book for teenagers by influencer Ann Landers. In reply to one young reader’s question, Ann Landers says, “Of course sex is natural. So is eating. But would you sit down at the dinner table and pull the leg off a turkey or scoop up the mashed potatoes with your hands? Would you grab the fresh rolls off a bakery counter and stuff them into your mouth? Of course not, because civilized people are expected to control their natural instincts. This distinguishes men from beasts.”
Montaigne on marital sex is in remarkable accord with Ann Landers. To him, marriage is a devout bond. The physical pleasures associated with it ought to be restrained and even solemn. Montaigne's understanding of women, drawn from the culturally embedded opinion of untold generations of fellow men who understand just as little, is formal and brittle. His understanding of women is a kind of traditional gender headdress that he dons when the occasion warrants. The rest of the time the headdress and other ceremonial male regalia are stored away.
In this case, his gender headdress tells Montaigne that the key to marital harmony is to moderate the physical pleasures of it. Let marital sex be a husbandly chore, like checking the batteries in the household smoke detectors, though perhaps a bit more frequent. Let it transpire with due regard for the dignity of one’s wife, who is the mother of one’s children, the grandmother of one’s children’s children, the great-aunt of one’s sister’s children’s children, and so on. A wife sails through life alongside your ship and you must always request permission to board. Let it be undertaken with all the pomp and protocol of seafaring nations meeting in international waters.
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