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Original poster

"Making love" in the 1930s.

33 replies

SquishySquirmy · 30/12/2021 23:30

When did the term "making love" start meaning what it does today?
I am sure I have read classic literature where the term is used but doesn't seem to refer to sex - it seems to mean something more like courting or even heavy flattery.
But I am currently reading a book written and set in the 1930s which uses this term. Does anyone know what this term would typically mean to readers in the 1930s?
It's annoying me because in the context it could mean either, but obviously completely changes the meaning of the scene!

OP posts:
TheYearOfSmallThings · 30/12/2021 23:34

Good question, I've wondered this too but never had the gumption to ask.

clary · 30/12/2021 23:34

Lord Peter Wimsey talks about "making love rather nicely" in Strong Poison in 1930. He's definitely talking about sex.

Mr Elton suddenly starts making love to Emma in the carriage in 1817 or so - certainly not sex.

So I've given you 100 years to play with there Grin

MaryGubbins · 30/12/2021 23:36

Black and white movies, Cary Grant era etc it means snogging I think.

Ormally · 30/12/2021 23:36

I remember it in Pygmalion, it comes into an Eliza monologue twice. The first time it looks as if it has its modern, slightly more raunchy meaning, although this could be with modern eyes, and the second, it doesn't:
www.thoughtco.com/eliza-doolittles-final-monologues-from-pygmalion-2713650

Yes, I think its former meaning was to seduce with words - to the point of a romantic 'intoxication' but not automatically with sex on the side.

ColdTattyWaitingForSummer · 30/12/2021 23:38

I’ve seen it used in historical fiction to mean kissing / petting but not actual sex. Good question though on how the phrase has changed over time.

Karwomannghia · 30/12/2021 23:39

How strange! Yesterday I was watching a star is born with Judy garland and I think she says making love and it seemed from the context it meant flirting flattering etc

clary · 30/12/2021 23:40

Maybe LPW is a bit of a sexy outlier there?

clary · 30/12/2021 23:41

I mean since so many people have 1930s examples of it meaning kissing or even just flirting.

TheYearOfSmallThings · 30/12/2021 23:41

I understand the historical meaning to be something akin to pitching woo.

OkPedro · 30/12/2021 23:43

Awww this reminds me of my lovely Nana 🥰
She would say if you were sitting close to someone "don't go making love to him" had nothing to do with sex

Starcaller · 30/12/2021 23:43

I don't know but it amuses me to no end when someone starts passionately 'making love' to someone mid-scene in older novels. Coupled with characters 'ejaculating'. Dr Watson loved a good ejaculation.

Original poster
SquishySquirmy · 30/12/2021 23:44

Thanks. clary that book is a really helpful point of reference actually, I hadn't heard of it before but it sounds quite similar in tone to the one I'm reading.

So possibly by the 1930s, both meanings of the term might be known? It could be interpreted both ways?

OP posts:
CamsPaisleyCuffs · 30/12/2021 23:49

In the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, Mary exclaims "He's making violent love to me, Mother." (Mother is in a different room and there's not a chance Geroge Bailey was sexually assaulting Mary).

"Making love" was used to describe merely romance or courting. In fact George though "a little passionate necking" to be rather risqué".

clary · 30/12/2021 23:55

@CamsPaisleyCuffs

In the 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, Mary exclaims "He's making violent love to me, Mother." (Mother is in a different room and there's not a chance Geroge Bailey was sexually assaulting Mary).

"Making love" was used to describe merely romance or courting. In fact George though "a little passionate necking" to be rather risqué".

Ooh yes good shout. George is doing nothing much except blather, but even if Mary was telling the truth, yes it wouldn't have been much more than a kiss and perhaps not even that.
clary · 30/12/2021 23:56

@SquishySquirmy

Thanks. clary that book is a really helpful point of reference actually, I hadn't heard of it before but it sounds quite similar in tone to the one I'm reading.

So possibly by the 1930s, both meanings of the term might be known? It could be interpreted both ways?

So jealous that you've not read the LPW books. They have many MN fans Grin
BarrowInFurnessRailwayStation · 30/12/2021 23:59

I think it means being involved in amorous advances.

Original poster
SquishySquirmy · 31/12/2021 00:07

Thanks all.

Clary I will add the LPW books to my list!
Btw, as far as you can remember does he definitely use the term "making love" in the book? I know that the term "free love" was understood to include sex (Percy Shelley etc), but wasn't sure about "making".
I suspect that in the book I'm reading the writer may be being deliberately ambiguous, even if the innuendo would not be picked up by every 1930s reader.

OP posts:
PerkingFaintly · 31/12/2021 00:08

Yet in Busman's Honeymoon, Lord Peter Wimsey says Crutchley has "been making love to the poor little wretch," where it most definitely refers to courting and emphatically not to a sexual relationship!

(Trying to avoid spoilers here!)

SirVixofVixHall · 31/12/2021 00:09

I was watching a 1946 film this week where making love means kissing etc but not sex.

clary · 31/12/2021 00:17

@PerkingFaintly

Yet in Busman's Honeymoon, Lord Peter Wimsey says Crutchley has "been making love to the poor little wretch," where it most definitely refers to courting and emphatically not to a sexual relationship!

(Trying to avoid spoilers here!)

Yep that's true. But he definitely says "I'm told I make love rather nicely" to Harriet and he is talking about sex without doubt. He's trying to persuade her to marry him by telling of his sexual prowess which apparently is notable (Viennese opera singer).

Maybe my example tho is very specific, and making love to mean courting, or declaring you love someone, was clearly very much still in use in 1930s-40s. Busman's honeymoon is 1935 I think?

Thickasmincepie · 31/12/2021 00:18

I bet it was the 60s. No one had sex until the 60s.

You could always judge a class by their reactions to lady macbeth having 'given suck' and Watson 's "ejaculations" and, way back, the old mother in yeats' poem who would "get on her knees and blow".

justasking111 · 31/12/2021 00:21

Remember Harry Nilsson singing making whoopee on an album. Liked that inference

PerkingFaintly · 31/12/2021 00:22

Yes, I certainly understood the Strong Poison usage to refer to sex.

So one author, two rather different meanings!

TheYearOfSmallThings · 31/12/2021 00:30

I risked googling it and got this:

Our modern sense seems to have arisen as slang around the beginning of the twentieth century. The best examples I have for this are in two D H Lawrence books, Sons and Lovers of 1913 and Lady Chatterley’s Lover of 1928. But Lawrence’s books were regarded as obscenely scandalous at the time and he was well ahead of accepted public word usage in this respect. Miss Powell would not have known it.

The evidence suggests, though, that in the following two decades the phrase did steadily shift towards a description of the most intimate physicality. By the 1940s, it was common to find it in novels in the sense we now know it. It’s in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four of 1949, for example: “When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything.” However, there’s plenty of evidence that the older sense persisted into the 1960s in some places and among some groups, especially older people.

PolkadotsAndMoonbeams · 31/12/2021 00:31

"Mind If I Make Love to You" was written for High Society in 1956, and that fits the romance definition more, with maybe a gentle nod/wink to sex in the last verse. I'd guess they were used in parallel for quite a while.