Prude

“ But there is one circumstance which did not altogether develop itself at the meeting, that we feel compelled to notice. Society, from experience, knows that the prude is the loudest and severest advocate of virtue ”

“ A married woman who declines the polite services of all gentlemen, except her husband and near relatives, is a prude, with false scruples of propriety and delicacy. Let her legal partner complain—he is cried out upon as a despot, and you can trust the sweet angel of an abused wife to elude his vigilance—violence, she terms it—for the future, without altering her conduct in aught else. ”

“ What else can the prude anticipate, or reasonably require, than that she be an object of reproach, if not of ridicule, for obstinately adhering to a manner that must result in her perpetual singleness of life? ”

“ There are points about that sort of experience—especially the attitude of the inexperienced—which makes the prude’s attitude to the whole broad question ridiculous. Another generation will regard ours as we do the Victorians—my shade will grind its spirit teeth to hear them laugh. ”

“ I do not admire a prude, but I do think that no woman has a right to make the first advances, and, if she does so, she certainly must be prepared to take the consequences. But let me earnestly beg you, to spend this season of affliction in schooling your own heart against this and future temptations, and hasten to vindicate your character to yourself, and to him. ”

“ But when you are addressed by a person of real merit, who is worthy your esteem and may justly demand your respect, let him be treated with honor, frankness and sincerity. It is the part of a prude, to affect a shyness, reserve, and indifference, foreign to the heart. Innocence and virtue will rise superior to such little arts, and indulge no wish which needs disguise.
“Still more unworthy are the insidious and deluding wiles of the coquette. How disgusting must this character appear to persons of sentiment and integrity! how unbecoming the delicacy and dignity of an uncorrupted female! ”

“ She has elected to keep out of all our amusements, we can spare her company in this. If the young prude finds satisfaction in holding aloof, for God’s sake let her do so. She disapproves of so many things we do and say, ’tis very like she would disapprove of this. ”

“ This fact depends on convention, and sometimes on the absence or perversion of sexual feelings. Brought up to prudery, sometimes to an absurd extent as in England, these women lose their natural feeling and often suffer from the excitation, indignation, and perpetual fright, which result from it. The exaggerations of prudery, moreover, easily lead to opposite excesses, or else degenerate into hypocrisy. The prude is ashamed of the most natural things, and undergoes continual torment. ”

“ And then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallation with a ditch. Every prude puts on an air of repugnance ”

“ I suspect there is not a more inveterate lover of pleasure than a well-matured prude; great prudery generally argues a more than usual warmth of constitution. The wearer of prudery, being conscious there is much to hide, falls into the extreme of reserve, whereas a naturally-disposed person is not troubled with any forbidden temptations, and appears lively and sprightly without fear of incurring severe observations.
The rage for German plays still continues. ”

“ If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life, cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy of thought and speech with regard to elementary facts of human nature, then I say that this is most emphatically a fault in the right direction, and I have no desire to see its prevalence diminish. On the whole, it is the latter meaning which certain foreigners have in mind when they speak of English prudery—at all events, as exhibited by women; it being, not so much an imputation on chastity, as a charge of conceited foolishness. ”

“ When to be prude, and when coquette;
Yet, wanting skill and power to choose,
Their only pride is to refuse.
But, when a goddess would bestow
Her love on some bright youth below,
Round all the earth she casts her eyes ”

“ The longer we live, the more our experience widens; the less prone are we to judge our neighbor's conduct, to question the world's wisdom: wherever an accumulation of small defences is found, whether surrounding the prude's virtue or the man of the world's respectability, there, be sure, it is needed. ”

“ It is always in your power to avoid these. No man, but a brute or a fool, will insult a woman with conversation which he sees gives her pain; nor will he dare to do it, if she resent the injury with a becoming spirit.—There is a dignity in conscious virtue which is able to awe the most shameless and abandoned of men.
You will be reproached perhaps with prudery. By prudery is usually meant an affectation of delicacy. Now I do not wish you to affect delicacy ”

“ And more than one voice rises in earnestness. And all that women say to the heart that has once chosen the evil path, is considered prudery, or ignorance, or perhaps, a feebleness of nature which exempts from similar temptations. ”

“ The reason the live world has always hated prudes is that it's forever being stumbled on by them. Your prude clutches Irving to the small of his back and cries, 'This alone is beauty!' But any man with two eyes looks and answers, 'You are wrong ”

“ A prude would have had cheap scruples about compromising herself by taking a man in her arms. Not a vulgar person, who would have required the stranger to be properly recommended by somebody who came over in the Mayflower, before she helped him. ”

“ From false notions of delicacy, with a prudery as astonishing as it is criminal, the parents and guardians of boys refrain from all allusion to the subject, while in their hearts they must realize the imminence of the danger. ”

“ An openness of manner in the relations of the sexes is very charming, but a little more, and it is boldness, or, if it relates to bodily habits, indecency. A modest behavior is charming, but too much modesty is prudery. ”

“ And women, who are sometimes insensible to flattery and endearments, are never so to disdain and wounds inflicted on their vanity. And those who were the most infatuated with "primosity," that exquisite word created by the Pitts to characterise the solemn, stiff, bashful spirit of Cant, and which might have deserved the definition which Pope gave of prudery:
What is prudery? ”

“ Nay, then, my Lord, 'tis time for me to observe the laws of prudence.
Lord Town. I wish I could see an instance of it.
Lady Town. You shall have one this moment, my Lord; for I think, when a man begins to lose his temper at home; if a woman has any prudence, why——she'll go abroad 'till he comes to himself again. ”

“ On sexual matters generally, as far as I can make out, the tendency, even among the higher castes, is to be outspoken, and there is little of that prudery which among us is only after all a modern growth. ”

“ Once more, to the pure all things are pure, as well as all persons. That which is natural lies not in things, but in the minds of men. There is a difference between prudery and modesty. Prudery detects wrong where no wrong is ”

“ This, we think, should be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments. ”

“ I could take forcible possession of you as I could of any other woman. But what in another woman is prudery, or petty fear, or stupidity, is in you strength and womanly determination. The mist that divided us is dispersed ”

“ Can one be surprised at the force of a habit, the slightest infractions of which are punished with such atrocious shame? As to the utility of modesty, it is the mother of love. As to the mechanism of the feeling, nothing is simpler. The mind is absorbed in feeling shame instead of being occupied with desire. Desires are forbidden, and desires lead to actions. It is evident that every tender and proud woman—and these two things, being cause and effect, naturally go together—must contract habits of coldness which the people whom she disconcerts call prudery. ”

“ And she added, that though her behaviour to him might not be sufficiently prudent, measured by the custom of her sex, yet that she would prove more true than many whose prudence was dissembling, and their modesty artificial cunning. ”

“ If we wish to contend with sexual perversions acquired at an early age, or the precocious development of an unhealthy sexual appetite, this is not to be effected by prudery or vague moral preaching, but by affection and frankness. In this case, evasive replies, combined with so-called strict morals, only lead to estrangement, dissimulation and hypocrisy, and the result is often irreparable. ”

“ Will their contemplation injure us? Shall we become by habit more lenient to vice, and less averse to its shame? or shall we, as some say, be only more charitable to others, and less hypocritical ourselves? I sadly fear that, in losing what many call “our affected prudery,” we lose the best safeguard of virtue. It was, at the least, the “livery of honour,” and we shewed ourselves not ashamed to wear it. And yet there are those who will talk to you—ay, and talk courageously—of the domestic LIFE OP ITALY! ”

“ The young members of the same [159] society rejoice that prudery is going out of fashion, that gossip is likely to be replaced by the higher kind of intercourse which is introduced by strangers, and by an extension of knowledge and interests: they even decide that domestic morals are purer from the general enlargement and occupation of mind which has succeeded to the ennui and selfishness in which licentiousness often originates. ”

“ Our present concern is simply to point out that prudery, again, is largely responsible for the continuance of these evils at a time when we have so much precise knowledge regarding their nature and the possibility of their prevention. Medical science cannot make distinctions between one disease and another, nor between one sin and another, as prudery does. ”

“ It is that the means of our education, other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious. Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously, prudery protests. ”

“ I heard the officer repeating his remark about Darwin to another prude (square-browed: lifeless, combed-back hair, slow eyes, and an altogether suggestiveness of "shoulder arms") just behind us. My own particular prude seemed for some time (that is, till I grew dreamy and inattentive) to have eyes, and I should say a good many tongues, for me only: then she carried me off, tripping over her spasmodic train, to her dear, dear friend Mrs. ”

“ You can never mention any assembly you were lately in, but one asks you with a rigid, the other with a sprightly air, 'Pray, what men were there?' As for prudes, it must be confessed, that there are several of them, who, like hypocrites, by long practice of a false part, become sincere ”

“ The peculiarity of prudery is to station the more sentries the less the fortress is menaced. ”

“ We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman. You've got to learn to behave like a duchess. ”

“ The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels in proportion as the fortress is the less menaced. ”

“ He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. ”

“ The spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. The true prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world. ”

“ There were a thousand chances to one against her meeting anybody, but one could never tell, and she always paid for her rare indiscretions by a violent reaction of prudence. ”

“ They smile and laugh, and even chuckle with delight, when the intrigue of double-dealing has ensnared its victim—when the lewd debauchee ogles his mistress, and by some sudden spring seizes her by surprise—when virtue is made to look ridiculous by the tenderness of her scruples—when the doctrines and precepts of our holy religion are caricatured by the profane witling of the stage—and when vice, disgusting and appalling vice, speaks out its profanity, or acts its part with the adroitness of consummate villainy. ”

“ A duty for a woman to submit to such a relation, when her own soul not only does not sanction, but loathes it! A duty in a woman thus to lay her health, her self-respect, and her very womanhood, on the altar of legalized sensualism! A duty to become a prostitute,—a mere tool 39of her husband’s gratification! It is a horrid mockery! As well talk to her of her duty to cut her throat! No man, but a sensualist, could ever accept the surrender of a woman’s person in such relation, when he knows it is made without any call in her own nature, and merely to satisfy his passion. ”

“ I deny that the so-called prudishness and the avoidance of nasty subjects in the last generation has ever blinded any substantial number of girls or boys to the wickedness of vice or made them easier victims of temptations. ”