His button-scattering fervor allowed the heroine to enjoy sexual pleasure, but without having to explicitly agree to sexual acts, a stance that feminist scholars since then have tied to 1980s mores about women's erotic behavior.
One thing we Shakespeareans tend to forget (surprisingly, given our scholarly historical focus) is that sex -- its practices, its customs and conventions, and prevailing attitudes toward it -- is a function of the historical, cultural and social conditions of a given time and place.
What was considered fun to read in the 1980s isn't necessarily considered fun to read now, and thus the bodice-rippers of the '80s went the way of that decade's aggressive shoulder pads and crumpled leg warmers.
The United States of the 21st century is no longer in the same place when it comes to desire, women and the need to wreak havoc on apparel: In keeping with the times, my heroines tend to do their own button-scattering.
What I'm saying is that although eroticism is culturally, geographically and historically specific, we writers of historical romance sexualize history without regard for the specific epoch in which we set a novel.
No matter how historically accurate the details and language in our novels might be (and mine, in case you're wondering, are pretty accurate), we write sex from the point of view of our own contemporary attitudes and mores.
Sex would be hard to be historically precise about anyway: Who really knows what sex was like in 1600? Shagging (popular British slang as early as 1770) surely involved the same acts -- but who can say with certainty what emotions were involved?
