'Elderly years cause a total dispaire of conception': Old age, sex and infertility in early modern England

Abstract

Although the history of old age has been studied in much greater detail in recent years, the subjectofsexualityinoldageremainsrelatively under-explored. This article examinesearlymodernideas about old bodies and sex in relation to fertility, to argue that because old bodies were understood as either infertile (post-menopausal women) or sub-fertile (old men) they were therefore characterised as unsuitable, undesirable and inappropriate sexual partners. Perceptions of old bodies, their sexual abilities, desirability and behaviour were remarkably consistent from the sixteenth throughto the eighteenth century. The ridiculing of old men and women's sexual behaviour that permeated contemporary cultureinstories, ballads and jokes,alongside medical literaturethatcharacterised oldbodiesassexually unappetising as wellas unreproductive, carried the message that sexual activity was not for the old, and in large part because they were infertile.