We have been through a sexual revolution of major proportions. In the course of that revolution we have learned, through science, not hearsay, the real facts. We know now that woman has the same need for passion, the same capacity for sexual response that man has. We know that, down to the last detail, she is the equal and fitting companion for all his possible raptures, can know with her entire body and mind and can share in vivid companionship the delighted storms of sexual love that in the recent past were considered to be exclusively his province. Few, however, realize how recent and how revolutionary this view of womankind actually is. The image of Victorian woman, that sexually frozen, emotionally withdrawn vestal virgin, has faded quickly from our minds. It is important, for many reasons, to recall her, however, if only briefly. She dominated our whole view of womankind up to the beginning of the 1920’s. By taking a quick look at her we can see how far we have come in so short a time. And we can see why the prospect for love has, in our time, brightened so considerably. The prevailing attitude toward woman and her sexuality throughout the nineteenth century and up to the end of World War I was that sex, as we understand it today, did not exist for her. This belief was held by virtually everybody, and it is nowhere more clearly stated than by the medical authorities of that era. Thus Acton, a leading medical specialist in the functions of reproduction, whose views were widely influential, wrote: “The majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.” He also stated that people who believed differently were making “a vile aspersion” against women. Two other doctors of the time agreed completely (and presumably after checking their facts). Fehling held that any appearance of sexual feeling in a young girl in love was “pathological.” And Windschied stated that if a female showed any innate or spontaneous sexual attributes “there is abnormality.” These men were not crackpots. They were reputable and distinguished. This was the “scientific” view of the matter, and it was shared by most people, men and women alike. It throws into clear relief the potentialities of the present. Woman’s new and revolutionary self-awareness, her knowledge gained in the past thirty-odd years that without guilt or inhibition she may function in an atmosphere of total equality with men and eager acceptance by them, makes the past seem like a nightmare. It is as though man and woman had emerged from a long, long journey through a dreary jungle full of fear and shame to the verge of a paradisal valley where they actually may live, as in the fairy tales, happily ever after.