This article charts the gradual sexualization of marriage in twentieth-century Greece, exploring both expert and lay ideas. First, through official writings and marital correspondence, it sketches the subtle transformation of the nineteenth-century ideal of conjugal love into a more sexualized emotion by the turn of the century. Then, it analyzes the writings of “sex experts” and the correspondence with their clients, showcasing how sexual pleasure became a priority within marriage after World War II. Lastly, the records of a postwar mental health service show that by the late 1970s, the consensus on the importance of mutual sexual satisfaction was being established.
Based on some forty duels that took place in Athens between 1870 and 1918, this article examines the different connotations middle-class dueling assumed in the political culture of the period. Drawing on newspaper articles, monographs, domestic codes of honor, legal texts, and published memoirs of duelists, it reveals the diversified character of male honor as value and emotion. Approaching dueling both as symbol and practice, the article argues that this ritualistic battle was imported to Greece against a background of fin de siècle political instability and passionate calls for territorial expansion and national integration. The duel gradually became a powerful way of influencing public opinion and the field of honor evolved into a theatrical stage for masculinity, emanating a distinct glamor: the glamor of a public figure who was prepared to lay down his life for his principles, his party, the proclamations he endorsed, and his “name.”
Review of Efi Kanner, <em>Έμφυλες κοινωνικές διεκδικήσεις από την Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία στην Ελλάδα και στη ν Τουρκία. Ο κόσμος μιας ελληνίδας χριστιανής δασκάλας </em>[Gendered social demands from the Ottoman Empire to Greece and Turkey: The world of a Greek Christian Female teacher], Athens: Papazisis, 2012. pp. 390
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