Bridgerton and the Surprisingly Robust History of Regency-Era Sex Ed

A scene in Netflix's Bridgerton season 3 sparked a discussion about female sex education in the 19th century. Historian and romance novelist Alexandra Vasti investigated, finding that while records of upper-class women's sex ed are scarce, popular novels, sex manuals like Aristotle's Masterpiece and Every Woman's Book, and sex worker memoirs reveal a surprising level of sexual knowledge among women. Vasti's novel, Ne'er Duke Well, features a fictional library secretly supplying women with sex education texts, highlighting the fight for access to sexual information. This contrasts sharply with current restrictions on sex education in some US states, illustrating the ongoing struggle for control over women's sexual knowledge, then and now.