Is Kate a Virgin in Bridgerton Season 2?

I have heard lots of people asking this question about Kate, so I wanted to address it.

First, I was wondering what made people think in the first place that she wasn’t, especially since “virgin,” at the time, would be the default mode of most unmarried female characters. The ones I hear most often are when she talks to Lady Danbury in episode one and says she too old to be thinking of men or marriage. Some see this as evidence that at a time when she was younger, she was thinking of it. Others think her prickliness against the marriage mart for herself shows some evidence of a previous heartbreak, and some kind of nebulous way that because she’s 26, she has obviously had a lover.

Suffice it to say, these arguments do not convince me.

We don't for sure the answer to this question as it’s never explicitly stated, but if we look at who Kate is, what she says, and the way she behaves, I think the picture is clear. First off, I think we can simply discount her age as a factor. It’s not like nowadays when just by simply being in the world for more than a quarter century, most people have probably had sex. At that time, a young woman, regardless of her age, would have to tie herself in metaphorical knots to take a lover and lie to the people she cares about, not to mention it would be incredibly dangerous with risks of disease and pregnancy. She would have to have, in her mind, very good reason, or in some way be cajoled, seduced, or drawn into it. And it would still be VERY dangerous. Were young women of the time having sex out of wedlock? Some of them, sure. But they were fiercely guarded, and the idea that all they were worth was their virtue was pretty well drilled into them from a very early age. So it would have to be a very compelling reason for her to have made that choice, and I don’t think we see evidence of that.

Anthony's "the things I could teach you" indicates that he probably thinks her inexperienced in general, and I think assumes she’s a virgin. But Anthony isn’t exactly the authority here, despite all of his experience, so it’s not exactly taking his word as gospel. Still, it is one piece of the puzzle. If also, in the course of their own experiences in the gazebo, he found out she wasn’t a virgin, he might not quite have stumbled over himself so bad in the proposal trying to make it about obligation. It likely would have been a lot clearer to the both of them that it was a choice he was making because he wanted to, not because he had to, if she wasn’t a virgin before Anthony “deflowered” her.

The character evidence we do see for the idea that Kate is a virgin is manifold, however, including her saying she would not consider herself until her sister and mom were taken care of. It would be completely out of character if she was off having romantic liaisons. Her shocked flashbacks to their sex also feel like shock at the act itself, not just who she did it with, though that is of course an aspect. Moreover, while this certainly doesn’t make it for sure, in the book she's definitely a virgin, so that’s just one more tick in that column.

I'd be all for it if she wasn't, and I’m definitely rooting for some of our girls not to be, but I think it would need to be mentioned for me to believe that. Otherwise, the default certainly for the time would be that she'd never had that kind of intimacy before.

But the biggest reason, I think, is knowing that Kate doesn’t trust anyone. This isn’t something where she doesn’t trust a man anymore because she got burned, but a deep, pathological need to control her circumstances that she can’t let go of until she goes through what she does with Anthony. There is also the clear role she plays as the high-achieving, problem-solving, family and duty focused eldest daughter. This is familiar in a lot of cultures, but, from my understanding, particularly in Indian and other Asian cultures. I cannot imagine her stepping “out of line” so much as to have sex with someone. Her journey over the course of the season is so much about being able to let go, to do something for herself, that it would undermine her journey for her not to be a virgin. If she’d made those choices before, it would be a different journey, and one no less powerful, interesting, or valuable, just one that would have different elements and background than we see depicted.

How important is this question, really? Well, socially, we put way too much emphasis on female virginity. We’re culturally kind of obsessed with it. We simultaneously over and under discuss it. It’s in every story, purity becomes a central theme and means of control. It’s fetishized and made into a joke, it’s required and also frowned upon. And yet, we have very few discussions about what it actually “is” and what it means, that it’s not some seal over your vagina that keeps things fresh until it’s popped. It’s not a physical state but a social construct. Fuck, WOMEN don’t even know how their own bodies work, let alone how to find pleasure or not to define their worth by something that’s essentially made up anyway. So, it is important in the sense that sex is a big deal; it’s not nothing, and we should empower women to be able to know what is going on with their bodies and have the truth about what virginity is and what it’s not. But it isn’t a big deal in that when a woman chooses to have sex, she doesn’t “lose” a damn thing.

So, is Kate a virgin? Yeah, I think so. But I think this gives us a great opportunity, as so many things in Bridgerton do, to discuss what that means for us as a culture and why we care so much, not just in the context of the 1800s, but in our current times as well.