Just now, whilst writing one of the Victorian chapters of my novel, I had an odd experience. I had just positioned my hero in an arm chair, his would-be lady-love standing beside him, when I found myself writing the following sentence: He wrapped his arm around her as he spoke, so that she couldn't move her legs to reach the carafe.
As I read the sentence over I felt a frisson of absolutely genuine horror and thought to myself, Good heavens! What kind of a book is this? You can't go mentioning a woman's...lower limbs...just like that! It's positively obscene! A moment later I came to myself and remembered that twenty-first century folk are used to the idea of women having legs, even to the point of accepting that nineteenth century women had them too, and that my lewd reference was unlikely to cause widespread offence.
I waver between two possible conclusions. On the one hand I may, deep down, be much more seriously repressed than anyone ever knew. On the other hand (and this is obviously my preferred option) maybe, for approximately two seconds of my life, I was mysteriously transmogrified into an actual, real-life Victorian writer with an actual, real-life horror of...you know...female perambulatory equipment.
