The Victorians chose to be serious about something we treat rather lightly, and the way they expressed their seriousness was not to talk openly about sex, just as part of our way is the very reverse. But these “ways” of being serious are mere conventions. The fact behind them remains constant.

I think, too, there is another common error: of equating a high degree of sexual ignorance with a low degree of sexual pleasure.[…] A much more interesting ratio is between the desire and the ability to fulfill it. Here again we may believe we come off much better than our great-grandparents. But the desire is conditioned by the frequency it is evoked: our world spends a vast amount of its time inviting us to copulate, while our reality is as busy in frustrating us. We are not so frustrated as the Victorians? Perhaps. But if you can only enjoy one apple a day, there’s a great deal to be said against living in an orchard of the wretched things; you might even find apples sweeter if you were allowed only one a week.

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)