Beneath the corsets and the finishing-school polish lay a striking silence: a young heiress might speak three languages yet be unable to name a single part of her own body, and that was very much the point. In this episode I trace how Western medicine went from treating female pleasure as essential to reproduction to declaring respectable women passionl…
Playback speed
×
Share post
Share post at current time
Share from 0:00
0:00
/
Paid episode
The full episode is only available to paid subscribers of Gilded Heiresses
Watch: What did Gilded Age women know about sex?
Hint: surprisingly little
Jun 23, 2026
∙ Paid
Gilded Heiresses
Exploring the real lives of American heiresses in the Gilded Age — the women who inspired HBO’s The Gilded Age.
Exploring the real lives of American heiresses in the Gilded Age — the women who inspired HBO’s The Gilded Age.Listen on
Substack App
Spotify
RSS Feed
Appears in episode
Recent Episodes












