“Are the Thumbs Still Wagging?”: Gwyneth, Harry and the Psyche of an Age

In this epilogue/conclusion we demonstrate how, by the mid-1920s, sex no longer served as the obvious glue of Gwyneth’s and Harry’s marriage, when motherhood and Harry’s continued desire for male friendships produced new conflicts. In a wider sense, we use select episodes of marital breakdown to conclude that the Edwardian ideal of sexual love as a primal element of both conjugal happiness and social progress did not necessarily lead in a linear fashion to the sexual revolution of the 1960s. We suggest that the hyper-individualism of the Edwardians was replaced during the 1930s with a new priority upon the collective and at the same time romantic love was redefined as chaste and spiritual.