quotes many old writers concerning the important part played by
nude persons in ancient festivals, _Des Divinités Génératrices_,
Chapter XIV.)
Passek, a Polish officer who wrote an account of his campaigns,
admired the ladies of Denmark in 1658, but considered their
customs immodest. "Everyone sleeps naked as at birth, and none
consider it shameful to dress or undress before others. No
notice, even, is taken of the guest, and in the light one garment
is taken off after another, even the chemise is hung on the hook.
Then the door is bolted, the light blown out, and one goes to
bed. As we blamed their ways, saying that among us a woman would
not act so, even in the presence of her husband alone, they
replied that they knew nothing of such shame, and that there was
no need to be ashamed of limbs which God had created. Moreover,
to sleep without a shift was good, because, like the other
garments, it sufficiently served the body during the day. Also,
why take fleas and other insects to bed with one?
Although our
men teased them in various ways, they would not change their
habits." (Passek, _Denkwürdigkeiten_, German translation, p. 14.)
Until late in the seventeenth century, women in England, as well
as France, suffered much in childbirth from the ignorance and
superstition of incompetent midwives, owing to the prevailing
conceptions of modesty, which rendered it impossible (as it is
still, to some extent, in some semi-civilized lands) for male
physicians to attend them. Dr. Willoughby, of Derby, tells how,
in 1658, he had to creep into the chamber of a lying-in woman on
his hands and knees, in order to examine her unperceived. In
France, Clement was employed secretly to attend the mistresses of
Louis XIV in their confinements; to the first he was conducted
blindfold, while the King was concealed among the bed-curtains,
and the face of the lady was enveloped in a network of lace. (E.
Malins, "Midwifery and Midwives," _British Medical Journal_, June
22, 1901; Witkowski, _Histoire des Accouchements_, 1887, pp. 689
et seq.) Even until the Revolution, the examination of women in
France in cases of rape or attempted outrage was left to a jury
of matrons. In old English manuals of midwifery, even in the
early nineteenth century, we still find much insistence on the
demands of modesty. Thus, Dr. John Burns, of Glasgow, in his
_Principles of Midwifery_, states that "some women, from motives
of false delicacy, are averse from examination until the pains
become severe." He adds that "it is usual for the room to be
darkened, and the bed-curtains drawn close, during an
examination." Many old pictures show the accoucheur groping in
the dark, beneath the bed-clothes, to perform operations on women
in childbirth. (A. Kind, "Das Weib als Gebärerin in der Kunst,"
_Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_, Bd. II, Heft 5, p.
203.)
In Iceland, Winkler stated in 1861 that he sometimes slept in the
same room as a whole family; "it is often the custom for ten or
more persons to use the same room for living in and sleeping,
young and old, master and servant, male and female, and from
motives of economy, all the clothes, without exception, are
removed." (G. Winkler, _Island; seine Bewohner_, etc., pp. 107,
110.)
"At Cork," saye Fynes Moryson, in 1617, "I have seen with these
eyes young maids stark naked grinding corn with certain stones to
make cakes thereof." (Moryson, _Itinerary_, Part 3, Book III,
Chapter V.)
"In the more remote parts of Ireland," Moryson elsewhere says,
where the English laws and manners are unknown, "the very chief
of the Irish, men as well as women, go naked in very winter-time,
only having their privy parts covered with a rag of linen, and
their bodies with a loose mantle. This I speak of my own
experience." He goes on to tell of a Bohemian baron, just come
from the North of Ireland, who "told me in great earnestness that
he, coming to the house of Ocane, a great lord among them, was
met at the door with sixteen women, all naked, excepting their
loose mantles; whereof eight or ten were very fair, and two
seemed very nymphs, with which strange sight, his eyes being
dazzled, they led him into the house, and then sitting down by
the fire with crossed legs, like tailors, and so low as could not
but offend chaste eyes, desired him to sit down with them. Soon
after, Ocane, the lord of the country, came in, all naked
excepting a loose mantle, and shoes, which he put off as soon as
he came in, and entertaining the baron after his best manner in
the Latin tongue, desired him to put off his apparel, which he
thought to be a burthen to him, and to sit naked by the fire with
this naked company. But the baron... for shame, durst not put off
his apparel." (Ib. Part 3, Book IV, Chapter II.) Coryat, when traveling in Italy in the early part of the
seventeenth century, found that in Lombardy many of the women
and children wore only smocks, or shirts, in the hot weather. At
Venice and Padua, he found that wives, widows, and maids, walk
with naked breasts, many with backs also naked, almost to the
middle. (Coryat, _Crudities_, 1611. The fashion of _décolleté_
garments, it may be remarked, only began in the fourteenth
century; previously, the women of Europe generally covered
themselves up to the neck.)
In Northern Italy, some years ago, a fire occurred at night in a
house in which two girls were sleeping, naked, according to the
custom. One threw herself out and was saved, the other returned
for a garment, and was burnt to death. The narrator of the
incident [a man] expressed strong approval of the more modest
girl's action. (Private communication.) It may be added that the
custom of sleeping naked is still preserved, also (according to
Lippert and Stratz), in Jutland, in Iceland, in some parts of
Norway, and sometimes even in Berlin.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague writes in 1717, of the Turkish ladies
at the baths at Sophia: "The first sofas were covered with
cushions and rich carpets, on which sat the ladies, and on the
second, their slaves behind them, but without any distinction of
rank in their dress, all being in a state of Nature; that is, in
plain English, stark naked, without any beauty or defect
concealed. Yet there was not the least wanton smile or immodest
gesture among them. They walked and moved with the same majestic
grace which Milton describes of our general mother.
I am here
convinced of the truth of a reflection I had often made, that if
it was the fashion to go naked, the face would be hardly
observed." (_Letters and Works_, 1866, vol. i, p.
285.)
At St. Petersburg, in 1774, Sir Nicholas Wraxall observed "the
promiscuous bathing of not less than two hundred persons, of both
sexes. There are several of these public bagnios,"
he adds, "in
Petersburg, and every one pays a few copecks for admittance.
There are, indeed, separate spaces for the men and women, but
they seem quite regardless of this distinction, and sit or bathe
in a state of absolute nudity among each other."
(Sir N. Wraxall,
_A Tour Through Some of the Northern Parts of Europe_, 3d ed.,
1776, p. 248.) It is still usual for women in the country parts
of Russia to bathe naked in the streams.
In 1790, Wedgwood wrote to Flaxman: "The nude is so general in
the work of the ancients, that it will be very difficult to avoid
the introduction of naked figures. On the other hand, it is
absolutely necessary to do so, or to keep the pieces for our own
use; for none, either male or female, of the present generation
will take or apply them as furniture if the figures are naked."
(Meteyard, _Life of Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 589.) Mary Wollstonecraft quotes (for reprobation and not for
approval) the following remarks: "The lady who asked the
question whether women may be instructed in the modern system of
botany, was accused of ridiculous prudery; nevertheless, if she
had proposed the question to me, I should certainly have
answered: 'They cannot!'" She further quotes from an educational
book: "It would be needless to caution you against putting your
hand, by chance, under your neck-handkerchief; for a modest woman
never did so." (Mary Wollstonecraft, _The Rights of Woman_, 1792,
pp. 277, 289.)
At the present time a knowledge of the physiology of plants is
not usually considered inconsistent with modesty, but a knowledge
of animal physiology is still so considered by many.
Dr. H.R.
Hopkins, of New York, wrote in 1895, regarding the teaching of
physiology: "How can we teach growing girls the functions of the
various parts of the human body, and still leave them their
modesty? That is the practical question that has puzzled me for
years."
In England, the use of drawers was almost unknown among women
half a century ago, and was considered immodest and unfeminine.
Tilt, a distinguished gynecologist of that period, advocated such
garments, made of fine calico, and not to descend below the knee,
on hygienic grounds. "Thus understood," he added,
"the adoption
of drawers will doubtless become more general in this country,
as, being worn without the knowledge of the general observer,
they will be robbed of the prejudice usually attached to an
appendage deemed masculine." (Tilt, _Elements of Health_, 1852,
p. 193.) Drawers came into general use among women during the
third quarter of the nineteenth century.
Drawers are an Oriental garment, and seem to have reached Europe
through Venice, the great channel of communication with the East.
Like many other refinements of decency and cleanliness, they were
at first chiefly cultivated by prostitutes, and, on this account,
there was long a prejudice against them. Even at the present day,
it is said that in France, a young peasant girl will exclaim, if
asked whether she wears drawers: "I wear drawers, Madame? A
respectable girl!" Drawers, however, quickly became acclimatized
in France, and Dufour (op. cit., vol. vi, p. 28) even regards
them as essentially a French garment. They were introduced at the
Court towards the end of the fourteenth century, and in the
sixteenth century were rendered almost necessary by the new
fashion of the _vertugale_, or farthingale. In 1615, a lady's
_caleçons_ are referred to as apparently an ordinary garment. It
is noteworthy that in London, in the middle of the same century,
young Mrs. Pepys, who was the daughter of French parents, usually
wore drawers, which were seemingly of the closed kind. (_Diary_
of S. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, May 15, 1663, vol. iii.) They were
probably not worn by Englishwomen, and even in France, with the
decay of the farthingale, they seem to have dropped out of use
during the seventeenth century. In a technical and very complete
book, _L'Art de la Lingerie_, published in 1771, women's drawers
are not even mentioned, and Mercier (_Tableau de Paris_, 1783,
vol. vii, p. 54) says that, except actresses, Parisian women do
not wear drawers. Even by ballet dancers and actresses on the
stage, they were not invariably worn. Camargo, the famous dancer,
who first shortened the skirt in dancing, early in the eighteenth
century, always observed great decorum, never showing the leg
above the knee; when appealed to as to whether she wore drawers,
she replied that she could not possibly appear without such a
"precaution." But they were not necessarily worn by dancers, and
in 1727 a young _ballerina_, having had her skirt accidentally
torn away by a piece of stage machinery, the police issued an
order that in future no actress or dancer should appear on the
stage without drawers; this regulation does not appear, however,
to have been long strictly maintained, though Schulz (_Ueber
Paris und die Pariser_, p. 145) refers to it as in force in 1791.
(The obscure origin and history of feminine drawers have been
discussed from time to time in the _Intermédiaire des Chercheurs
et Curieux_, especially vols. xxv, lii, and liii.) Prof. Irving Rosse, of Washington, refers to "New England
prudishness," and "the colossal modesty of some New York
policemen, who in certain cases want to give written, rather than
oral testimony." He adds: "I have known this sentiment carried to
such an extent in a Massachusetts small town, that a shop-keeper
was obliged to drape a small, but innocent, statuette displayed
in his window." (Irving Rosse, _Virginia Medical Monthly_,
October, 1892.) I am told that popular feeling in South Africa
would not permit the exhibition of the nude in the Art
Collections of Cape Town. Even in Italy, nude statues are
disfigured by the addition of tin fig-leaves, and sporadic
manifestations of horror at the presence of nude statues, even
when of most classic type, are liable to occur in all parts of
Europe, including France and Germany. (Examples of this are
recorded from time to time in _Sexual-reform_, published as an
appendix to _Geschlecht und Gesellschaft_.) Some years ago, (1898), it was stated that the Philadelphia
_Ladies' Home Journal_ had decided to avoid, in future, all
reference to ladies' under-linen, because "the treatment of this
subject in print calls for _minutiæ_ of detail which is extremely
and pardonably offensive to refined and sensitive women."
"A man, married twenty years, told me that he had never seen his
wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive
organs, by married people, appears to be common.
Judging from my
own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and
many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no
beauty in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight
of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary,
most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women.
It seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy
the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after
attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as I am told by
a lady artist). Or else the majority of women dissemble their
curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother of several
children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 'I have
never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister
confessed that she had never looked at _her own_
nakedness in the
whole course of her life. She said that it
'frightened' her. She
was the mother of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family
told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have
monthly discharges.' The niece suggested that women have no
choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'I know that;
but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' I have heard of a girl
who died from hæmorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to
make the ailment known to her family. The misery suffered by some
women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be
very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble
with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes
alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after
marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach. Ignorance
of the nature of the sexual connection is often the cause of
exaggerated alarm. In Jersey, I used to hear of a bride who ran
to the window and screamed 'murder,' on the wedding-night."
(Private communication.)
At the present day it is not regarded as incompatible with
modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming
costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the
thigh. In swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be
combined with the demands of modesty. In England, the regulations
of the Swimming Clubs affiliated to the Amateur Swimming
Association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend
not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and
that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more
than three inches from the knee. (A prolonged discussion, we are
told, arose as to whether the costume should come to one, two, or
three inches from the knee, and the proposal of the youngest lady
swimmer present, that the costume ought to be very scanty, met
with little approval.) The modesty of women is thus seen to be
greater than that of men by, roughly speaking, about two inches.
The same difference may be seen in the sleeves; the male sleeve
must extend for two inches, the female sleeve four inches, down
the arm. (Daily Papers, September 26, 1898.)
"At ----, bathing in a state of Nature was _de rigueur_ for the
_élite_ of the bathers, while our Sunday visitors from the slums
frequently made a great point of wearing bathing costumes; it was
frequently noticed that those who were most anxious to avoid
exposing their persons were distinguished by the foulness of
their language. My impression was that their foul-mindedness
deprived them of the consciousness of safety from coarse jests.
If I were bathing alone among blackguards, I should probably feel
uncomfortable myself, if without costume." (Private communication.)
A lady in a little city of the south of Italy, told Paola
Lombroso that young middle-class girls there are not allowed to
go out except to Mass, and cannot even show themselves at the
window except under their mother's eye; yet they do not think it
necessary to have a cabin when sea-bathing, and even dispense
with a bathing costume without consciousness of immodesty. (P.
Lombroso, _Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1901, p. 306.)
"A woman mentioned to me that a man came to her and told her in
confidence his distress of mind: he feared he had _corrupted_ his
wife because she got into a bath in his presence, with her baby,
and enjoyed his looking at her splashing about. He was deeply
distressed, thinking he must have done her harm, and destroyed
her modesty. The woman to whom this was said felt naturally
indignant, but also it gave her the feeling as if every man may
secretly despise a woman for the very things he teaches her, and
only meets her confiding delight with regret or dislike."
(Private communication.)
"Women will occasionally be found to hide diseases and symptoms
from a bashfulness and modesty so great and perverse as to be
hardly credible," writes Dr. W. Wynn Westcott, an experienced
coroner. "I have known several cases of female deaths, reported
as sudden, and of cause unknown, when the medical man called in
during the latter hours of life has been quite unaware that his
lady patient was dying of gangrene of a strangulated femoral
hernia, or was bleeding to death from the bowel, or from ruptured
varices of the vulva." (_British Medical Journal_, Feb. 29,
1908.)
The foregoing selection of facts might, of course, be
indefinitely enlarged, since I have not generally quoted from any
previous collection of facts bearing on the question of modesty.
Such collections may be found in Ploss and Max Bartels _Das
Weib_, a work that is constantly appearing in new and enlarged
editions; Herbert Spencer, _Descriptive Sociology_
(especially
under such headings as "Clothing," "Moral Sentiments," and
"Æsthetic Products"); W.G. Sumner, _Folkways_, Ch.
XI;
Mantegazza, _Amori degli Uomini_, Chapter II; Westermarck,
_Marriage_, Chapter IX; Letourneau, _L'Evolution de la Morale_,
pp. 126 et seq.; G. Mortimer, _Chapters on Human Love_, Chapter
IV; and in the general anthropological works of Waitz-Gerland,
Peschel, Ratzel and others.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The earliest theory I have met with is that of St.
Augustine, who
states (_De Civitate Dei_, Bk. XIV, Ch. XVII) that erections of the penis
never occurred until after the Fall of Man. It was the occurrence of this
"shameless novelty" which made nakedness indecent. This theory fails to
account for modesty in women.
[2] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'Avenir_, Ch. VII.
[3] Timidity, as understood by Dugas, in his interesting essay on that
subject, is probably most remote. Dr. H. Campbell's
"morbid shyness"
(_British Medical Journal_, September 26, 1896) is, in part, identical
with timidity, in part, with modesty. The matter is further complicated by
the fact that modesty itself has in English (like virtue) two distinct
meanings. In its original form it has no special connection with sex or
women, but may rather be considered as a masculine virtue. Cicero regards
"modestia" as the equivalent of the Greek sôphrosunê.
This is the
"modesty" which Mary Wollstonecraft eulogized in the last century, the
outcome of knowledge and reflection, "soberness of mind," "the graceful
calm virtue of maturity." In French, it is possible to avoid the
confusion, and _modestie_ is entirely distinct from _pudeur_. It is, of
course, mainly with _pudeur_ that I am here concerned.
II.
Modesty an Agglomeration of Fears--Children in Relation to
Modesty--Modesty in Animals--The Attitude of the Medicean Venus--The
Sexual Factor of Modesty Based on Sexual Periodicity and on the Primitive
Phenomena of Courtship--The Necessity of Seclusion in Primitive Sexual
Intercourse--The Meaning of Coquetry--The Sexual Charm of Modesty--Modesty
as an Expression of Feminine Erotic Impulse--The Fear of Causing Disgust
as a Factor of Modesty--The Modesty of Savages in Regard to Eating in the
Presence of Others--The Sacro-Pubic Region as a Focus of Disgust--The Idea
of Ceremonial Uncleanliness--The Custom of Veiling the Face--Ornaments and
Clothing--Modesty Becomes Concentrated in the Garment--
The Economic Factor
in Modesty--The Contribution of Civilization to Modesty-
-The Elaboration
of Social Ritual.
That modesty--like all the closely-allied emotions--is based on fear, one
of the most primitive of the emotions, seems to be fairly evident.[4] The
association of modesty and fear is even a very ancient observation, and is
found in the fragments of Epicharmus, while according to one of the most
recent definitions, "modesty is the timidity of the body." Modesty is,
indeed, an agglomeration of fears, especially, as I hope to show, of two
important and distinct fears: one of much earlier than human origin, and
supplied solely by the female; the other of more distinctly human
character, and of social, rather than sexual, origin.
A child left to itself, though very bashful, is wholly devoid of
modesty.[5] Everyone is familiar with the shocking _inconvenances_ of
children in speech and act, with the charming ways in which they
innocently disregard the conventions of modesty their elders thrust upon
them, or, even when anxious to carry them out, wholly miss the point at
issue: as when a child thinks that to put a little garment round the neck