h, how difficult it is to have my characters give one another advice pre-Freud!

So, I firmly believe (heh, I said firmly–that tells you what kind of mood I’m in) that one of the ways that lust shades towards love has a great deal to do with ego. I don’t buy–never have–that unrequited lust is a wonderful basis for love, because most people like having their egos stroked too much. I mean, it’s really hot when someone you find attractive wants you. In some ways, it validates not only your sexual desire, but your sexual worth.

I think this is doubly true for men. There’s this trope that some guys out there don’t care about anything except their own release. I’m sure it’s true for some guys. But the vast majority of men that I’m aware of desperately want their partners to get off. It’s partly because they’re good guys; it’s partly because the big-O is a wonderful inducement to get a girl in bed again. But it’s also partly because it makes the guy feel like such a stud-muffin. Hell yeah, he thinks. I’m good in bed. No guy wants to think that he’s bad in bed.

And yet when a Regency character tries to express this sentiment, she can’t say “stroke his ego” because “ego” didn’t have the modern meaning until Freud came along and turned our understanding of ourselves on our ears.

I’ve also come across references to “green sickness” which is apparently a wasting disease that only afflicted virgins. Virginitis, if you will, the female equivalent of blue balls. Apparently, it’s a disease that cropped up mid-16th century and disappeared in the early 1900s. I’d never heard of it.

And that leads me to another thought. I read in the New York Times the other day that a team has been searching for examples of repressed memory in literature, and hasn’t been able to find any proof that the concept existed before the 1782. The team argues–and I am not trying to take sides here, just report what others have said–that repressed memory is a cultural creation, and it’s not real.

All this makes me think: Our understanding of our own brains–of what makes us tick–is by necessity bounded by our time period. In writing historicals, do I strive for verisimilitude? Or do I import modern sensibilities and understandings, so that the books are more appealing to modern readers? Personally, I tend towards modernism. I try to write heroines who have more modern sensibilities. They’re sex-positive along with love-positive. They think about egos, even if they use the words “conceit” and pride” instead. I know that this is anachronistic, but it doesn’t bother me one bit. After all, I like writing the Regency period because it comes at the beginning of some immense cultural changes. Why not have my heroines be harbingers of that change?

So what about you? Do you find it jarring if heroines have more “modern” sensibilities? Do you care? Or do you prefer having modern heroines in historical settings?