One of my favorite romance blogs is Risky Regencies, where they’re talking today about “The First Time,” i.e. the virginal heroine and how she is portrayed in historical romance.

Kate, the heroine of my current book, is my very first virginal heroine. Kate is a woman whose rampant curiosity nearly overwhelms the entire experience of her deflowering. So I find this topic particularly interesting, because they’re talking about what makes and breaks a “first” sex scene in historical romance (particularly Regencies).

Along a similar vein, I’ve been reading about women’s ideals of romance and maidenhood, and how they were viewed by writers in the 19th century. Here’s one opinion:

Madame St. Henry was as sweet and amiable a woman as I have ever known. She bore her husband’s ill-treatment as saints do their earthly injuries, and made him such a wife as all men desire but few deserve.

She had one–fault, shall I call it? No; it was a weakness: her sensibility of disposition was the grave of her happiness. In the days of her romantic maidenhood she had indulged this passion so fatal to the serenity of human life; so that when the blast of the world came she had no strength to resist it. She had formed an idea of the happiness of married life, such as all women of refined and sensible dispositions will form; and she was disappointed, as all such women assuredly will be.

So highly wrought had been her feelings that she found no fortitude within herself to sustain this cruel shock. Soon after having given birth to the subject of this memoir she died, and was perhaps glad to get to her grave.

—The London Magazine By John Scott, John Taylor, 1824

So much for romanticism, huh? Sigh…