Prudery

“ I should like to know how many of these rigid moralists, who are so shocked with their middle-class prudery, that they dare not mention the name syphilis, or when they bring themselves to speak of it do so with expressions of every sort of disgust, and treat its victims as criminals, have never run the risk of contracting it themselves? ”

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

“ 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 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing could have been done more conducive to the growth of the evil. It brought in and developed the reign of false modesty, of prudery. Concealment is not cure. This evil craves darkness rather than light, and thrives upon silence and secrecy. A Turkish missionary wrote me some years ago that in his country where women must appear with their faces completely covered, the grossest immoralities were practiced by wives, undetected, in the very presence of their own husbands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He cannot fail to remark these frank manifestations of sexuality, though the subtle and perverse refinements of the town would escape his notice. I know that in the countries of exaggerated prudery there is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes inclined to think, than in less hypocritical countries. ”

“ These savage women win hearts by their frank and open manners and naïve gaiety. Mixing freely from [Pg 10] earliest childhood with the other sex, they have none of the prudery of Hindoos and Mussulmans, who have been brought up in strict seclusion; a prudery which at moments gives place to unclean talk, and is full of suggested obscenities. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Which is beauty? Irving's placid pictures of light, or Hawthorne's dark portrayals of the varying soul of man?" He turned to Lewis. "What's your idea of a prude?"
"A prude," stammered Lewis—"why a prude's a person with an exaggerated idea of modesty, isn't it?"
"Bah!" said Leighton, "you are as flat as a dictionary. A prude is a far more active evil than that. A prude, my boy, is one who has but a single eye, and that in the back of his head, and who keeps his blind face set toward nature. ”

“ She paused and gazed about the room wearily. "If to be a prude," she resumed, "is to be conscious of the desire and the intention to be an honest woman, then, mother, I am a prude," her voice breaking a little. "And if one must be a prude to recoil from the hideous advances of a man like Langdon Jesse, then again I am a prude."
She had been unfairly placed on the defensive. She had not meant to wound. But, while her words cut her mother like the impact of thongs, they did not arouse within her a sense of the humiliation of her position. ”

“ MOLL.
That’s not I yet!
PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.
WIDDOW.
Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!
PYE.
Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.
MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I’d rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb? ”

“ But it is to be hoped that this example will be sufficient to deter all others from the commission of any such foul and unnatural crimes: for which, if they should escape the shame and ruin which they so well deserve in this world, they will be most certain of meeting with their full punishment in the next: for unnatural affections are equally vicious and equally detestable in both sexes, nay, if modesty be the peculiar characteristick of the fair sex, it is in them most shocking and odious to prostitute and debase it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Behold, I will deliver you into the hand of them whom you hate, into the hand of them from whom your soul is alienated; 23:29 and they shall deal with you in hatred, and shall take away all your labor, and shall leave you naked and bare; and the nakedness of your prostitution shall be uncovered, both your lewdness and your prostitution. 23:30 These things shall be done to you, because you have played the prostitute after the nations, and because you are polluted with their idols. ”

“ It seems almost incredible that in some countries medical men who are not ashamed to throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when mention is made of anti-conceptional methods. This false modesty, created by custom and prejudice, waxes indignant at innocent things while it encourages the greatest infamies. ”

“ Women that follow such practices, by their looks offer themselves for prostitution. “For the light of the body is the eye,” says the Scripture, by which the interior illuminated by the shining light appears. Fornication in a woman is in the raising of the eyes. [725]
“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, and concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things’ sake cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience,” [726] cries the apostle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one familiar with mediaeval literature will, however, be inclined to accuse its authors of prudishness. Nevertheless, modern prudishness, as it prevails especially in England and the United States—our squeamish and shamefaced reluctance to recognize and deal frankly with the facts and problems of sex—is clearly an outgrowth of the mediaeval attitude which looked on sexual impulse as of evil origin and a sign of man's degradation. Modern psychologists have shown that prudishness is not always an indication of exceptional purity, but rather the reverse. ”

“ For the rest, to be dressed with a kind of brutal gaudiness, to be very thirsty and violently flushed, to laugh perpetually at everything and at nothing, to thoroughly enjoy, in short, a momentous occasion—all this is not, in simple persons of the more susceptible sex, an unpardonable crime. ”

“ And then she became dumb, and kissed me with the kisses she alone was able to give, and in comparison with which the caresses of any other woman were but an insipidity.
The constraint and the silence enhanced the furious tension of my nerves. Surprise, the joy of revenge, and, perhaps, a somewhat perverse jealousy inflamed my desires. The elastic firmness of her flesh and the supple violence of the movements wherewith she enveloped me demanded, promised, and deserved the most ardent caresses. ”

“ But how greatly ought the women to thank that their instinctive repugnance of Nature to such a prostitution of their persons, if they consider those tortures, which, by the listening to that same repugnance, may at once be saved to their modesty, and to their personal feeling. ”

“ Whenever in my travels I have seen a prostitute, I have had the same feelings of disgust, and when meeting men whom I knew to be licentious I would have as quickly taken a slimy toad in my hand as to have shaken hands with them. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Many prostitutes who take no pleasure in their unclean intimacies not only endure a disgusting life for the favor and means thus gained, but affect intense passion in their sexual contacts because they have learned that such exhibitions gratify men."
18. Husband's Brutality.—Husbands! It is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct—a deed which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and makes marriage, maternity and womanhood itself degrading and loathsome. ”

“ 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 ”

“ You will have a great treat, we shall shock the girl's modesty by stripping and exposing her, you win see how delightful the sight of her pretty form is added to the distressing sense of humiliation we will make her feel; the real lovers of the birch watch and enjoy all the expressions of the victim's face, and do all they can to increase the sense of degradation, as well as to inflict terrible and prolonged torture by skilful appliance of the rod, and placing the victim in most painful, distended positions to receive her chastisement. ”