Seduction: A History From the Enlightenment to the Present - Hardcover

A fascinating exploration of the shifting cultural mores surrounding the art of courtship, told through the lives of remarkable women and men throughout history.

In 1848 in New York, seduction―defined then as the “use of arts, persuasions, or wiles to overcome the resistance of the female who is not disposed, of her own volition, to step aside from the path of virtue”―became a crime. While one generation of feminists had fought for this protection for women, the laws would be dismantled in the 1930s by another wave of feminists who saw that “protection” as patronizing and restricting of women’s sexual freedom.

These contradictory viewpoints reveal the Western world’s prickly relationship with seduction, a topic that has been frightening and fascinating us as far back as we can imagine. How have the cultural mores of heterosexual courtship shifted over the course of history, and how have they stayed the same? How have generations of women reacted to the thrill, freedom, or threat presented in the figure of the masculine seducer―the Byrons and Casanovas―and the direly unequal consequences for women―and among women, depending on race and class―in the game of pursuing and being pursued?

In Seduction, Clement Knox argues that the western world’s preoccupation with seduction narratives truly begins with the Enlightenment, when human actions came to be recognized as a battle between reason and passion―rather than sin and virtue. He examines how seduction narratives have dramatized the question of human agency and its limits across modern history, through the lives of remarkable women and men from Samuel Richardson to Chris Kraus. Along the way, he uncovers many figures that are largely forgotten and uncelebrated today―many feminists before we had the word “feminist,” political and legal change-makers before women could appear in parliament or advocate for themselves in court.

And yet even as women’s rights and freedoms have advanced remarkably over the course of this history, the same cultural and legal conversations keep repeating in the sphere of seduction, as we remain utterly perplexed by how to decipher the fine line between free decision and coercion.