Ruskin’s marriage was one of the most notorious of his day and his sexuality has been a subject of endless speculation by historians. Many have pointed out that Ruskin was unusually interested in pre-pubescent girls and was obsessed with one particular ten-year old, Rose La Touche. Therefore, some have suggested that Ruskin’s citation of pubic hair and menstruation as objects of his disgust are evidence that he was a paedophile. Others have pinned his lack of interest in sexuality to the fact he was an awkward, scholarly man raised by zealously religious parents and, like many great Victorians, was a misogynistic, arrogant, self-absorbed workaholic. A similar debate has raged around Lewis Carroll and his relationship with Alice Lidell, and out of both debates historians have pointed to the intense romanticisation of innocence which was a common facet of the Late-Victorian aesthetic. There are many more theories: perhaps it was all just a debilitating anxiety, expressed in the long bouts of depression he suffered from and, ultimately, in the debilitating mental illness which finally consumed him at the end of his life.

There is no consensus on how to interpret Ruskin’s peculiar sexuality. Victorians did not leave enough evidence of their intimate relationships around for us to piece together a coherent and ultimately satisfying narrative about many of them. But just because Victorian social mores were prudish and the frank discussion of one’s sexual desires was frowned upon does not mean that all Victorian men were as bizarre in the sexual relations as Ruskin, and indeed the fact that it was such an interesting case in its own day is a testament to this fact. The old ‘repressive hypothesis’, the idea that Victorians had absorbed these prudish attitudes were severely frigid about sex has been largely disproved. Michel Foucault famously argued that the Victorian era was one of great debate and scientific theorisation of human sexuality, one which bordered upon obsession. The kind of perverse fascination with cases like Ruskin’s and - more famously - Oscar Wilde’s speaks to this.

Your question was about what was ‘common’ for Victorian men, but in reality there are an infinite number of diverse sexual stories which we can tell from the period, from openly gay men like Edward Carpenter or closeted ones like J.A. Symonds using Walt Whitman to understand their ‘manly’ desires to social purity feminists like Josephine Butler condemning the double standard of the Contagious Diseases Acts for treating prostitutes like medical objects instead of punishing sailors for procuring them. There are more peculiar stores, like the father of sensationalist journalism W.T. Stead’s ‘Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’, in which he proved how easy it was for London men to procure underage female prostitutes by procuring one himself, and proudly retelling his story with melodramatic emphasis in the pages of the Pall Mall Gazette. If you have any doubt that intimate knowledge of the female body did not exist among upper class men in the nineteenth century, I would recommend reading the memoir My Secret Life, and although its obsessive and extreme prose perhaps opens up more questions than it solves.

Just like today, it is impossible to tell just one story about Victorian sexuality because human sexual experiences are incredibly diverse. Just like we understand our current desires in the language and culture of our time, the Victorians understood theirs in the context of their peculiar ideas about religion, morality, science and ‘civilised’ social behaviour.

Repulsion by female anatomy was rare in the Victorian era. So rare, in fact, that it’s unlikely even John Ruskin experienced it in the way described. Recent biographers have disputed the long-accepted account of his wedding night, which was first promoted by Mary Lutyens in her 1960s biographies of Ruskin, his wife, and the Pre-Raphaelite circle and since amplified by a number of fictional works about the relationship between Gray and Ruskin, including at least one opera and four plays.

A recent book by Robert Brownell examines an alternative explanation for the marriage’s non-consummation. Brownell argues convincingly that the risk of bankruptcy pushed the Gray family to offer the charming and beautiful Effie’s hand to the wealthy Ruskin, as a large settlement from the marriage would ease the family’s financial predicament. Ruskin, despite his physical attraction to Effie, learned of this arrangement before their wedding night, and he was so disgusted by this deceit that he refused to perform (though the pair did sleep naked in each other’s arms).

With time, the mismatch of the couple’s personalities became clear. Ruskin was devoted to his writing, while Gray preferred society. During the period they spent in Venice while Ruskin did research for what became The Stones of Venice (published in three volumes between 1851 and 1853), the two lived separate lives. Following six years without wedded bliss, during which Gray fell in love with the painter John Everett Millais, a formal separation was in the cards.

But at the time, divorce was arduous, expensive, and exceedingly rare, and it came with unwanted publicity. Ruskin sought to avoid the legal tribulations of a divorce, instead seeking an annulment. As with divorce, annulment required a cause, such as bigamy, incest, or adultery. Fearing scandal, Gray produced the results of a medical examination attesting her “intactness”. This meant the blame would have to lie with Ruskin, who was accused of impotence.

Ruskin, for his part, was understandably dismayed by this implication. Still, in order to get the annulment he desired, he was unable to challenge the accusation in court. By leaving the country during the legal proceedings, he was able to avoid affirming or denying the assertion. The court granted the couple the annulment they sought, but at a cost. Ruskin’s reputation would be forever damaged by the disclosures, resulting in 150 years of false accusations ranging from misogyny to pedophilia to generalized perversity.

SOURCES:

Brownell, Robert. Marriage of Inconvenience: John Ruskin, Effie Gray, John Everett Millais and the surprising truth about the most notorious marriage of the nineteenth century. London: Pallas Athene, 2013.

Hewison, Robert. John Ruskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

I just want to make explicit something that may not be explicit in the other answers:

Biographer Mary Lutyens devised the theory John Ruskin was so turned off by Effie Gray's pubic hair that he could not consummate the marriage and included it in her 1967 book Millais and the Ruskins. It was Lutyens' attempt to solve a mystery that had puzzled many: what was the disgust at Gray's "person" both recounted that rendered Ruskin unwilling to consummate the marriage and led to her successful annulment suit? Lutyens said it was Ruskin's inability to deal with the discovery Gray had pubic hair. It is one of those stories that it so fascinating and so powerfully confirms what we want to believe that it gets repeated over and over. "Wow, those Victorian men were so book-wise and world-foolish! This one famous critic couldn't even do it with his hot model wife because he expected her to be like a Greek statue down there and her pubes freaked him out!" So it easily becomes the dominant explanation of the failed marriage, a key to popular understanding of Ruskin, and can show up in the movie Effie Gray (2014) almost as an in-joke.

But we don't know that's what happened. We don't know that at all. Contrary to what the OP suggests, Ruskin did not "elaborate" that pubic hair and menstruation had been unknown to him or that his knowledge of the female body was based on artistic depictions. That is all [meaning the pubic hair part] Lutyens' theory: the author elaborated the evidence in this way. Lutyens surmised the references to Gray's "person" in connection with non-consummation meant there was something about her naked body that did not appeal to him. She also surmised Ruskin's only knowledge of the female form would have been from paintings and statutes, so he would have believed that the hairless and bloodless forms were beautiful and normal. When confronted with the reality of Gray's body, including pubic hair, he believed there was something wrong with her--that she was "uniquely disfigured" as Lutyens puts it.

Robert Brownell in Marriage of Inconvenience (2013) points out the great amount of work "person" is doing in Lutyens' theory. If we do not assume it means Gray's naked body but instead her character (as Brownell thinks) then the letter reads quite differently. Brownell also points out the couple agreed to delay consummation until Gray was 25, ostensibly because he did not want her to go through a pregnancy alone. (After Gray's marriage to Ruskin was annulled, she married John Everett Millais and bore 8 children in 13 years.)

Matthew Sweet pointed out rather harshly in Inventing the Victorians (2001) that Ruskin was not that innocent and Lutyens should have known better. Ruskin's correspondence with his parents revealed he had seen pictures of naked women while he was a student. Sweet's book is directed at demolishing the stereotype of the prudish Victorian, of which the story of Ruskin's inability to deal with women's bodies is a prime example. This evidence suggests Sweet had models of the female body other than fine art and casts doubt upon Lutyens' theory.

Further throwing into question the theory Ruskin was disgusted by Gray's body are his mentions in correspondence and hers in testimony that they slept naked in each other's arms. It is hard to square that with the idea Ruskin found Gray's body repulsive. Indeed, Ruskin's letters to Gray reflect pleasure in their physical intimacy. Here is an excerpt from a letter he sent her while they were apart:

Do you know, pet, it seems almost a dream to me that we have been married: I look forward to meeting you: and to your next bridal night: and to the time when I shall again draw your dress from your snowy shoulders: and lean my cheek upon them, as if you were still my betrothed only: and I had never held you in my arms. God bless you, my dearest.

If we did not know this was a letter from John Ruskin to Effie Gray who notoriously never consummated their marriage, I think we'd naturally assume this was a letter from a horny husband who was looking forward to the next time he could get his wife's clothes off.

So the pubic hair theory just seems to have very little support. It is catchy, granted, but just not borne out by the evidence we have of just this one marriage. And of course this was a singular case: as far as we can tell, 19th century Britain was not full of men who just couldn't when they saw their brides naked.

EDITED TO CLAIRIFY.