A Less Strict Victorian Era?

I was recntly (via the Hall of Infamy) reading a Dure thread about Queen Victoria in a bikini. While utterly ridiculous and ASB, there were some inteeligent responses, which got me thinking:

The Georgian Period, all in all, was fairly decadent, which is often forgotten amongst the strict rules of Victorian society. So, lets say that something happens in, say, the mid-1820s that pushes Britain towards a more relaxed social code (i.e more Regency). Is this possible? If so, how? Could it have liberalised societal standards in the long term (i.e, present day standards in the 1940s or 50s)?
 
Maybe without French revolution and Napoleonic war ( with a Costitutional monarchy in French from late XVIII century) ,the culturals and socials trend in XIX century are more close to the illuministic (and libertine) XVIII century.
 
From all I've read the Victorian period was not as conservative as we usually consider it. I would have to say that I really didn't know how colourful (as in spectrum of colours) or full of colour the era was until I had see the movie Topsy-Turvey. Also, at least in the US, I think the American concept of the age is askewed more by seeing it thru the eyes of those writers of the Gilded Age. There were a few situations where the Victorians were more liberal than we are today.

How the Victorians are portrayed is often far different they how they were.
 
The problem is that during the late 18th century, at least in France, the public was beginning to expect a certain attitude from their royal family; gone were the days of Louis XV and his numerous mistresses, they expected a more homegrown monarchy, akin to the British Royal Family. If anything, the Georgian period of the 1820s seemed to be a fluke -- George III himself was fairly conservative, didn't have mistresses, rather family oriented, curtailed his daughters (hence why most ended up unmarried); it was his sons who were going out causing all kinds of trouble.

Initially Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI garnered a lot of sympathy and popular support. They were young, popular, and they seemed to be genuinely concerned about the French people. Louis XVI wasn't going about with mistresses and Marie-Antoinette was concerned with her children after they were born. I'm not sure you can avoid the crisis of the French Revolution without a pre-1700 POD (as many of the economic problems were laid during the War of the Spanish Succession), but assuming France manages to remain a monarchy and reform it's self, I'm not sure this would translate into a more liberal society. One might argue the Napoleonic Wars spawned a reactionary society, but I don't think that's the case.
 
Read Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, especially vol. 1.

The Victorians were quite perverted, but in a way that would baffle a modern. For example: well-heeled husbands were reluctant to have spontaneous sex with their wives, because "wives were the mother of his children." So a man would have frequent sex with prostitutes instead. Ironically, he'd bring STD's home to his wife instead of having spontaneous and safer sex within a consensual and monogamous relationship. From a Christian standpoint, adultery was preferable to having sex with a wife-mother figure. Freud certainly had fertile grounds for his theories.
 
I believe there was a real disconnect between the public and private face of Victorian Sexuality.
The same kind of disconnect there is today between Public and Private, Racial and Sexual Humor.
Whe all know the N [and other racial/sexist] Jokes, but while whe will tell them in Private to Selected Friends, whe prudishly deny telling them in Public.

Maybe there is something in Human Psyche that requires this Disconnect, and will find some area [or two*] of Human activity to appear.

*[ I also see this developing in a prudish attitude to the beginning /end of Human Life, with General talk about Childbirth or Death, being not socially acceptable.]
 
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