Think of it this way. Your character, as nice a guy as he is, wouldn't even hesitate to kill a man who did certain things to his little sister. He lived in that sort of time, when being nice and Christian simply didn't mean what people think it means today. And, if you want to give him that sort of integrity, he wouldn't hesitate to kill himself before doing those things to someone else's little sister.

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Yes, I realize it's necessary to write about people different than myself...

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Oliver, you are something else!

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How did you make the post with all the quotes from other posts?

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If you ever want to see how someone did something in a post, click on the edit button (the pencil and paper) as if you were trying to edit it. You won't be able to actually edit the post, obviously, because you don't have that person's password, but you'll be able to see precisely what she did to get the effect you're looking at. Good stuff.

By the way, this post has a bunch of good tips in it -- to which I just added these. Guess I should have done that earlier, but there it is...

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To be clear: sex itself wasn't bad (that idea's actually a heresy in the Catholic Church), as shown by the fact that people often had larger families then, but it had its place.

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Thanks, I didn't know the Catholic Church's position on this. My church teaches that the Catholic Church views sex as a "necessary evil," not a good. If this is not the Catholic Church's position, either the Catholic Church's position has changed, or my church has got it wrong. So the clergy who take vows of celibacy do so for other reasons, not because sex is viewed as evil?

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_You_ don't need to think that way; but until you understand that people did, I don't think you'll understand why "sex=cool and liberated / no-sex=uncool and repressed" equations don't work. You'll continue to project your own biases onto the time you're writing about.

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They aren't my biases, they are my insecurities based on OTHER people's biases which are pronounced enough to become part of the culture. What's more, my insecurities just got a great big boost from having it confirmed in the last few months that I have a unique brain configuration making me see things differently from well over 99% of people living on this planet. THIS is what's "keeping me from getting laid"--PERIOD. I AM CONVINCED OF THIS! I am not, REPEAT NOT, gay, frigid, religious fanatic, or man-hating radical feminist, and I'm not even ugly, so that limits possible explanations!

As far as actual relationships I've about given up but I am EXTREMELY WORRIED ABOUT MY WRITING due to the fact of being so very different from other people. If I am really *that* different, can I understand people enough to write about them, or is anything of interest to me going to be of enough interest to enough other people to even bother? Yet, look at someone like J. M. Barrie who some actual very VITAL physical and psychological differences. Okay, he was never going to write about sex--or want to. But he did write things that had meaning for many other people.

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Which doesn't mean it won't sell -- Lord knows we've seen some travesties of historical misunderstanding out there -- but it won't be right.

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Actually, I am out to be the anti-John Jakes, but it won't do simply to write about people who happen to behave differently than his characters. I have to BLOW THEM OUT OF THE WATER, DAMMIT! To do this I need proper ammunition.

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The Gnostics and Manichees (and their variants) believed that the world was created by the Bad God of the Old Testament, and that everything made of matter was inherently evil; sex, being linked to procreation, was also evil. Only the Christ of the New Testament was good, and wholly spiritual; his body was an illusion.

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THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! Sorry, couldn't resist that, and had to get it out of my system. A lady I knew worked in a nursing home where an old lady patient regularly yelled that phrase. Now, having done a bit of reading on the crusades, I had an idea what Albigenses were. She had to look it up! And her question was: why in the world was an elderly nursing home patient in the American midwest worrying about attacking Albigenses?

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Gnosticism and Manicheism were heresies. Augustine fought specifically against them.

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Well, the pope led a couple of crusades against them. Much as burning people at the stake isn't really nice, it's just as well these ideas no longer thrive, not that they would anyway in today's hedonistic climate.

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(There's also some irony in that post, in that Catholics are stereotypically known for their guilt, and Protestants tend not to be.)

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That is darn ironic, as Catholics regularly confess their sins, which you'd think would be a good way of dumping them, rather than just brooding over them indefinitely. Maybe Protestants don't brood, just figure Jesus has their sins all bought and paid for, so why worry? Both kind of dangerous positions, really! A Catholic figures, well, it doesn't matter what I do because I can get pardoned for it, a Protestant, well, it doesn't matter because God forgives me--so why not do what I want? I guess I'm looking to write about a person who expects high standards of HIMSELF--and needs to have REASONS and rationale for holding the standards that he does, and what he considers right and wrong. I know fear of disease is a biggie, but can you write a whole book where one of a person's major motivations is not getting sick?

Nowadays they have abstinence support groups. Back then, I suppose there were no such things as social standards "expected" people in the "right" areas of society to remain virgins until marriage.

Celibacy of priests was instituted for multiple purposes: because of the superiority of virginity to marriage; because of the ability of the unmarried priest to be free to serve his congregation rather than a wife and children; and, much later, to avoid inheritance issues with respect to "sees", or parishes. But it is only a practice, not a dogma; the Pope could theoretically eliminate it. It is also specifically Roman Catholic. There are churches "in communion with" the Roman Catholic Church, acknowledging the Pope as leader (with reciprocal acknowledgements by the Pope) without using the same traditions, rites, and so on; and some of these churches have no prohibition against married priests. The Eastern Orthodox have married priests, and although they are not in communion with Rome, the married priests does not form a barrier to reconciliation.

That's probably more than you wanted to know, but there it is. Get me started...

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As far as actual relationships I've about given up but I am EXTREMELY WORRIED ABOUT MY WRITING due to the fact of being so very different from other people.

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I wouldn't worry that much. I don't know how you're different from other people, or which other people you're different from, but if you're really that different then you've got a built-in stereotype breaker: just make the character think like you do!

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THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING! THE ALBIGENSES ARE COMING!

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Okay, that's either really weird or really funny. Not sure which yet...

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> Gnosticism and Manicheism were heresies. Augustine fought specifically against them.

Well, the pope led a couple of crusades against them. Much as burning people at the stake isn't really nice, it's just as well these ideas no longer thrive, not that they would anyway in today's hedonistic climate.

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When there were actual battles against heretics, it was generally because they were perceived as a threat to the social order, not the spiritual one. They may have been blessed by the Pope, but they were called for and run by the temporal power. If you read the history of the Albigenses, for example, you see that people like St. Dominic tried to evangelize the Albigenses first -- the goal is to save soul, not kill them -- and only when territories got out of control politically did the troops start marching.

My history isn't perfect, so don't trust me on it, but from what I've been able to read, there's a lot more to European history than people tend to see on cursory examination.

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Maybe Protestants don't brood, just figure Jesus has their sins all bought and paid for, so why worry?

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I was talking stereotypes, not people -- you'll find all types in all denominations. People are still people. But for stereotypes, Jews have mothers, Catholics have Priests, Protestants have only their direct personal relationship with Jesus.

That said, yes, I've been accused, by virtue of being Catholic, of not believing that Christ died once and for all. The attitude of those Christians was "once saved, always saved." And yes, it can be a dangerous position for them to hold.

And yes, Confession, abused, can be as bad. From my perspective, it has the benefit of requiring you to acknowledge what you've done wrong to another person -- you can't sweep it under the rug -- and that person assigns you a penance that is generally supposed to help you keep from doing such things again.

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I guess I'm looking to write about a person who expects high standards of HIMSELF--and needs to have REASONS and rationale for holding the standards that he does, and what he considers right and wrong.

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I think you can write that person as almost any type of character, Catholic, Protestant, Atheist, or anything else. The Catholic who expects high standards of himself doesn't go to confession to eliminate guilt -- he does it because he knows he's gone below his standard, and he avails himself of the sacrament for support to live up to his ideals. The Protestant might latch onto Jesus's statement, "Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect". The Atheist might see himself as the latest product of evolution, with an obligation to ensure that the earth continues to move in the right direction instead of enduring catastrophes and having to start over (not that that fits your current story).

People of all stripes hold themselves to high standards. I don't think you need to explain it so much as just show it.

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"Heresy" is what one side in a religious argument calls the other side.

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I prefer Hilaire Belloc's definition, which you can find given and discussed in his book, _The Great Heresies_, here:

"Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein."

More to the point, Belloc is right to focus on "the introduction of a novel denial" of some existing scheme, but there is no need for the scheme to be complete and self-supporting, or for it to be substantially dislocated by the denial. The existing scheme need only be orthodox.

To learn everything that there is to be known about UBB codes enabled on this board (and a few that aren't), click on the *UBB Code is ON link next to the text entry box on the "Reply to Topic" page. A little below that there is a link to the Smilies Legend.

Becoming an actual writer will make you different from 99% of the population at large. That's okay, because the percentage of people who actually read for pleasure on a regular basis is pretty small as well. Which brings us closer to the point. If your audience is receptive to reading a book about some antebellum fellow who believes (despite not being a Catholic) that sex outside of marriage would merely be disgusting and wrong, much like how we would consider sex with small children, then they are not going to have a problem with the character on that basis. That's what everyone here has been telling you.

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I wouldn't worry that much. I don't know how you're different from other people, or which other people you're different from, but if you're really that different then you've got a built-in stereotype breaker: just make the character think like you do!

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He may well agree with me on some points, but my basis for thinking he doesn't think like me is that he doesn't have the same condition I have. So I worry, well, what does he think and why? That's why I ask so many questions--to see how my character agrees with or differs from normal people and their accepted standard.

Survivor, good point on requiring context to determine what heresy is. Relative to Christianity, no form of Buddhism is a heresy; relative to the Buddha's teachings, no doubt there are Buddhist heresies (though I'm not in a position to know).

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Even if you have a condition, you might be able to have the character think like you without having to explain why he thinks as he does. For one thing, lots of people have had "conditions" (loosely defined as "things they can't control that make them different from most other people") over the centuries. My father, for example, was borderline autistic, but nobody diagnosed that in those days.

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Geez, I'd never guess you were related to anyone like that. (lol)

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That depends on what you mean by "available".

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I mean, nowadays men have women practically attacking them to the point where they give in just because they get tired of fighting them off,

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Anyway, as RN and ww indicate, this isn't something that happens to all men, and there's never been an age of this world where it didn't happen to some men. The difference is that in some ages it was perfectly acceptable for someone to reject such an advance obliquely and that severely limited the options of the aggressor. The point is that when everyone has greater freedom from undesireable sexual overtures, there is a lot more time to spend on negotiating desired matches that will lead to permanant relationships. In other words, socially accepted sex was more available, as well as being rather more discrete.

If your character is a "good prospect", then he'll be likely to seriously court a young lady he likes. One of the things he'll probably like about her is her chaste demeanor, which at the time was (interestingly and not entirely inappropriately) referred to as "virtue". I say it's not entirely inappropriate to call it "virtue" because I think that having sex with any guy who happens to come along is distinctly unmanly

Anyhow, I've set up several problems for myself with this particular story. Might as well keep them all in the same thread. Not only is my character living in a time and place requiring a lot of research for me (I've visited Chicago, but not lived there and certainly not in 1860) but he is a very good-looking and generally smooth, cool sorta character. (Again, a way I can scarcely imagine being.) If I were writing about a guy who looks like Woody Allen I wouldn't even raise these questions, but--
--he is attractive to the opposite sex
--they are attractive to him
--he has enough social skills to interact with them fairly well.

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quote:That depends on what you mean by "available".

I mean, nowadays men have women practically attacking them to the point where they give in just because they get tired of fighting them off, whereas back then if a woman solicited a man for sex, she was either looking to make money, way desperate, or both.

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"Who are these women, and where can I find them?"

Courtship was much easier back in a day when most of the troublesome details were handled by third parties...man, when's the last time that someone tried to set me up with her daughter? I must be getting old or something. Anyway, I'll point out that being too popular with the ladies would be a strike against your character back when marriage was the primary focus of courtship. That is, he wouldn't want to be popular with "the opposite sex", he'd want to make himself acceptable to a specific girl and her family. Particularly her father, though if he were smart he'd realize that impressing her mother was a very good idea.

Every single romantic interaction with a different female would have to be considered a failure, at a couple of different levels. For one thing, his lack of exclusivity would be a serious mark against him for any other prospect. And if he was serious about a girl in the past but didn't marry her, then he must have been dumped, right? Either that or his first pick turned out to be so horrible that he dumped her, which doesn't exactly count as "success in dating" either.

You might give this guy an outstanding reason that he hasn't ever been drawn into a match, despite his being attractive. He could be "married to the sea" or something like that (okay, not particularly likely in Chicago, but hey). In other words, he could be the kind of guy that isn't looking. Because if he was looking, and he's all that attractive, he'd be hooked up fairly quickly. Of course, that's a good way to give us some extra tension in the story, if he's already basically affianced. And since the competitive aspect would be worked out by third parties in that day, he'd probably be matched pretty well.

If you're talking about simple social interaction, like at events and such, then it's enough to have him be polite.

Does this solve the issue a little *too* easily? It's not a romance book or about a guy looking to get hooked up. Just wondering if readers will wonder, if he's so damn attractive, and doesn't have major serious personality flaws, why aren't the women hitting on him? I do have to have them hit on him a little, or something, as a third-party means of getting it across that he is so outrageously gorgeous--it certainly wouldn't do to either have him looking in the mirror, or have other guys making such remarks, as a way of ascertaining this.

Of course, my big problem with all my writing is obsessing about the things I don't know, or "might get wrong," rather than what I do know and feel is right about it.

Thus, if you didn't want to get married, all you had to do was avoid the attention of older female relatives with genetic agendas. There were serious drawbacks to this system, mostly for those young women who didn't have good chaperones to find them a fiance. But that was the system.

On the subject of heresy, I'll throw in a plug for the book "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton.
It's pretty damned good, even though G.K. (a catholic) consigns protestants (specifically Calvinists) to the pit of eternal damnation. At least he's intellectually honest about the implications of his belief in orthodoxy, unlike the effete prevarications of other catholics I know, who insist that the catholic church constitutes the only body of Christ, but at the same time lack the courage to admit the logically compelled collorary that protestants like me are therefore not part of the body of Christ. G.K. ain't afraid to follow his ideas to their logical endpoint, and for that I admire him.

And humans do lie about stuff. Call it false memories if you will.

Culture is highly variable. My own ancestors on both sides had all sort of marriage arrangments. If you were writing about 19th century Chinese petty nobility...but you aren't. But the personal histories of early Mormons were probably more illuminating. Establishing the practice of plural marriage took great effort. It wasn't easy to get upstanding men to accept it...often it was far easier to get upstanding women to embrace the concept. These guys were not looking for chances to get extra helpings. Of course there was a highly selective oversight process in place, generally the kind of man who would be looking for license would not be permitted to exercise it through these marriages, which had to be authorized by the Church. But while they may not have been representative in a statistical sense of a general population, they did represent the confrontation of an established sexual morality with a non-monogamous practice.

The resistance was not superficial. These men had lived fundamentally monogamous lives, they were not ready to accept anything else. Nor were they readily able to maintain the practice in secrecy, rumours of polygamy were abroad before anyone actually entered a plural marriage. The lesson is clear. Not only were upstanding men of their previous cultural affiliation not eager to explore past the bounds of monogamy, they were not easily able to do so secretly. Taking them as a sample, it seems abundently clear that a lot of antebellum Americans were not getting any on the side.

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I can't think of anyone who thinks Superman is a wimp.

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yeah his clothes make him a wimp and so do those green rocks... long live batman!

Assuming there were only about three ways sex outside of marriage was "available" in the given time and place:

--Guy is so desperate he seeks the services of prostitutes.

--Has an affair with a "kept woman" not of his class or whatever.

--Desperate older woman pulls a "Mrs. Robinson" on him, and no, sorry, I don't know names and numbers of these women!

So my problem is, when he gets to the war, and a group of guys is going out whoring and invites him to go along, certainly he says, "No, thank you," but what is he THINKING?

As he's not a religious freak, I'm pretty sure he's NOT thinking, "I would, but God's gonna burn me if I do."

If he's *not* thinking, "Geez, I really want to," is he a total wimp?

If he's thinking, "The only reason I don't is fear of sexually transmitted disease," is he sensible or just shallow?

If he's thinking, "You guys are sorry losers, reckless, etc., to suggest such a thing," is he an insufferable prig? (I have to make it clear he is NOT!)

I would barely be able to register the concept that it was supposed to be "sexual activity". It's POO!, would be my reaction. Yes, I know that there are individuals who claim to derive some kind of sexual satisfaction from eating poo or watching others do so, but it's sort of like the hot wax right on the genitals thing...I've heard of it, but that doesn't mean I really believe it.

Of course "actual sex" should be fundamentally different. Even if he's disgusted by the thought of a prostitute, I'd think that his instincts would have some say in the matter should he be confronted with a reasonably healthy woman offering sexual gratification. He might still feel horrified, but he'd probably feel tempted. There's also the question of whether he's an officer or not. If you're talking about the Civil War, they were handing out commissions to pretty much anybody who had any higher education at all. It would be very...demeaning to visit the same prostitutes as the enlisted men. Even among the enlisted men, the volunteers would probably feel distinct shame about patronizing the same whores as the draftees. Also, units were drawn from localities, so you would know the other men from back home...it wouldn't be very anonymous. It took years for the war to change the rules as much as it did, and it didn't change the existing society so much as affect the moral culture of the frontier.

If he went to fight somewhere in Europe (for some fool reason), it would be very different. It would take a serious attachment to definite moral principles to resist the various influences he'd encounter, whether as a junior officer or enlisted (and traveling to Europe to enlist would make him one hell of a damnfool, besides). The class structure meant that prostitution was far more common, and even rape was considered a normal part of pretty much any investment of a populated area, the question was whether you restricted rape to the servent classes and left the upper class women alone.

Also, you need to consider what kind of loner he is. Is he somebody that simply doesn't enjoy ordinary companionship that much? That would tend to immunize him against peer pressure, and it would make him less likely to seek out sexual gratification from common women. Those two factors combine powerfully in the event, he might really not be interested in having sex even if a healthy young female was presented. On the other hand, perhaps he's out of step with conventional morality...no, I think you already foreclosed that option.

He goes to the Civil War only because he's interested in the issues at stake and feels it's his duty to be there--not because he gets off on shooting people or thinks he'll be away from family influences and more able to do things he wouldn't at home.

So this is why it can be true that an awful lot of women are desperate to get with guys AND many guys are lonely. All the women want the dude with a peacock's tail. While they don't like to compete for competitions sake, they do absorb what this "peacock's tail" is from their friends.

Is understanding all these permutations of catholic this-and-that really essential to this character?

Has you're question at the start been answered? If not, then, as you well know there are plenty of mormons on this site and it's not uncommon nor considered unmanly to be a virgin at the time of marriage. To that last point the opposite applies, you know the old saying 'only those who resist temptation know it's real power'.

So in the mind of some religious men, the preservation of virtue -- whatever that virtue may be -- in the face of temptation, opposition or trial, is a mark of true manhood.

That idea is an important one. The old 'he who rules his tongue is greater than he who takes a city' scenario.

PS: It seems this character is guided by his assurance of the correctness of his inner vision rather than by external pressures. This is a fantastic insight into what most men would consider true manhood. Though now considered schmaltzy the sentiment in Rudyard Kipling's If is what I am alluding to.
this 'standing fast' quality. The ability to weather the tumult and emerge undiminished.

I know you probably a well aware of this poem, but here's a link anyway if you're interested in a genuine late Victorian take on manhood. IF.

PPS: In my opinion in the above scenario he would just be thinking, 'That's wrong.' or 'I'm not like that.' and try not to think about it at all after that. The worst trial a man like this can face is having a companion who has morals just as high as his own and whom the MC holds in high regard, but who then chooses to ignore those standards and knows exactly what arguments to produce in order to undermine the MC's objections.

I don't know if that last paragraph makes sense.

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PPS: In my opinion in the above scenario he would just be thinking, 'That's wrong.' or 'I'm not like that.' and try not to think about it at all after that. The worst trial a man like this can face is having a companion who has morals just as high as his own and whom the MC holds in high regard, but who then chooses to ignore those standards and knows exactly what arguments to produce in order to undermine the MC's objections.

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Yes, that is relevant and exactly the situation he is facing. If the person closest to him was supporting his ideals, he wouldn't have such a struggle. But neither is this person trying to make "converts" to the "dark side"--just justify his own actions. Very confusing for the main character with all the equivocating!

--He is under 18 (five months to be exact) when the war breaks out. You had to be over 18 to even (legally) join, and, remember, everyone thought the war would be over in a month. I doubt he even went into combat until his 18th birthday--may have been in training, in the home guard or whatever--then extremely unlikely someone at that age even with a perfect record would become an officer right away.