3-057-484 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Graph by Dr Marie Stopes showing fluctuations in the supposed level of female sexual desire, c1918. Illustration from the final draft of her "Married Love". The papers of Dr Stopes reflect her campaign to encourage greater frankness in sexual matters and increase awareness of birth control methods. This is one of the illustrations from the final draft of her best selling book, "Married Love", published in 1918. It shows the level of 'spontaneous desire' in a woman over a period of two months and was intended to illustrate one of Dr Stopes central themes, that the female sex drive was not as constant as that of a male. 'Level of potential desire. Days of the moon-month. Calendar days (differing in each case). Shaded portion represents menstrual flow. To Publisher. This must on no account be touched up or re-drawn, but must be reproduced by direct process. Reduce the least needed to fill page'. Stopes' ideas about eugenics were controversial: according to some she was 'an elitist, an idealist, interested in creating a society in which only the best and beautiful should survive'.