PRUDERY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXV, Issue 4254, 3 July 1895, Page 5

PRUDERY.

By Lady Cook.]

The practice of prudery is tolerably ancient, although the word itself is somewhat modern and comes from the same derivation as prudent — namely, from the Latin "prudens," contracted from "providens," foreseeing ; and thus prudent is equivalent to wary, circumspect, discreet. Prudery, however, is the affectation of these, and is to prudence what pedantry is to learning. There is a very large class of well-meaning but excessively narrow-minded people always in our midst; their zeal is usually intense in proportion to their shallowness ; the shallower they are the more ardent. They are never moderate, but always in extremes. They scorn the happy mean. And thus a misery to themselves and a terror to others, they are like those Whose life the church and scandal share, For ever in a passion or a prayer. " What is prudery ? " asked Miss Howe of Alexander Pope, and he replied : 'Tis a Beldam, Seen with wit and beauty seldom. 'Tis a fear that starts at shadows, 'Tis (no 'tisn't) like Miss Meadows. And it urges, strains, and pants Deep within the breasts of Cants. 'Tis a virgin hard of feature, Old, and void of all good nature ; j Lean and fretful ; would seem wise ; Yet plays the fool before she dies. 'Tis an ugly, envious shrew, That rails at Pleasure and at you. , Since Pope's time the word has become so common, owing, unfortunately, to the "overmuch nicety" of a great many, that there are no Miss Howes now who need to ask its meaning. And since those who commend the quality chiefly belong to our sex, still "virgine, hard of feature, or uglys envious shrews," they have been dubbed " prudes," although really the specimens of both sexes are well-nigh equally divided. In this way two very expressive words have been added to our copious mother tongue. We wonder when they will become obsolete ? Not until prudence drives prudery from the field and the prude becomes as extinct as the dodo. As, however, both are still active, and particularly so of late, I venture to point out the evils that are caused by them. Injustice is the first. And this gives rise to persecution, hatred , malice, and all uncharitableness. In ' The Blithedale Romance,' by the author of 'The Scarlet Letter,' Zenobia says: "The whole universe, her own sex and yours, and Providence or Destiny to boot, make a common cause against the woman who swerves one hair's breadth out of the beaten track." But this was because among the Puritan New Englanders prudery was a universal habit. Like Hudibras, they belonged to A sect whose chief devotion lies In odd, perverse antipathies ; In falling out with that or this, And finding something still amiss. And so prudes to-day are still accustomed to Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to. Thus every walk of life is infested with some form of prudery. Are we accustomed to enjoy with a thankful heart and a cheerful countenance the blessings which God gives us, the heavy prude draws an elongated face and accuses us of frivolity. Do we partake sparingly of the glass that cheers and avoid inebriety, the teetotal prude frowns and says : " Touch not, taste not, handle not." But as Dean Hole has just written in his interesting book ' More Memories ': "I only ask them to give me credit in turn for the sincerity of my convictions that temperance means moderation, and that the moderate use of alcohol is a blessing and not a curse. Abuse does not necessitate disuse, and I fail to see why I should shave my head because another man has brain fever, or rather water on the brain ; why I should discard raiment because some do not pay their tailors ; or why I should abstain from horse exercise because others have ruined themselves by racing. So please don't say 'Because I don't, you mustn't.'" Are we good neighbors, fond husbands, true wives, reverencing our Maker, and striving to do unto others as we would be done unto ? The theological prude presents us with a bundle of dry creeds, and demands our unqualified assent under pain of eternal damnation. Do we regard all living creatures as our co-heirs of joy and sorrow, believing, with Coleridge, that He prayest best who loveth best All things, both great and small ? The vegetarian prude thrustsherself or himself before us, and says, with Ovid : ' 'JVec sanguine sanguis alatur " — let not blood be nourished by blood. All these modes of prudery, however, are mild and harmless compared to that which relates to sex or sexual relations. I have seen young matrons blush with shame when strangers have gazed upon their naked babes. The beautiful sight of these little, rosy, fragile incarnations of innocence, pure and spotless as from the Maker's hands, could crimson their own mothers with blushes. What folly is this ! What irreverence to Him who made us, and saw all His work that "it was very good " ! It was not thus that Mary presented the infant Jesus to those who came to do Him honor, and doubtless for many a year He ran and played with other children, as they do even now in the East, without a vestige of covering. The prurient mock modesty which is horrified by the sight of a naked child or a nude statue or picture is a reproach to our weakmindedness and to our defective moral training. If we were not . c o nice as we are our ideas would not be so nasty. We want more common sense, more philosophy on sexual matters, before the minds of our children can be trained to purity, and vice be more lessened thereby. For it is not what we see, but how we see. If impurity exist in the soul it will be inflamed by the most innocent cause, but if pure it will regard all things of evil with indifference, 1 and all of good with approbation. It follows then that prudery is a particular form of impurity. But the mischief is that prudery grows by what it feeds upon. If we encourage it we make a rod of iron for our own backs. It demands that all shall rigidly conform to its precepts, shall love what it loves and hate what it hates. Are we then to give way and be ruled by faddist formalists and moral mountebanks? Are there to be no more " cakes and ale," no merry music nor sprightly dance, no play nor song for those whose hard-working and weary minds and bodies need recreation? Are the preposterous nostrums of hired agitators to be forced down our throats whether we will or not ? Such a course would end in a reaction like that which followed the Commonwealth upon the Restoration. We should sound deeper depths of depravity than have ever

been known, and the very foundations of virtue would be sapped. There is an old saying that " prevention is better than cure," and experience proves it to be true. If the very fussy ladies of both sexes of the " genus " prude, who have lately been hounding the " unfortunates " from public places of amusement — although these paid for their seatß and behaved as well as others — if these, I say, wish to prove their sincerity in their work, let them practise prevention and avoid persecution. Let them cease harrying the immoral women who are irreclaimable, and whose vices are to a great degree the faults of society and of immoral men, and let them strike at the root of our great social evil. This cannot be done by adding to the hardships of adults, but by improving our laws and ameliorating the lives of the children. It is too late when social pests have been manufactured by unjust laws and cruel conditions to blame them for the misfortune of their existence. Eather let us place the sin where it deservedly stands— upon our own shoulder?. One thing further is needed. The women who fall into vicious lives through their own love of self-indulgence or through male seduction are not all derived from the lowest stratum. All classes contribute. Those who were dandled on the knees of pious parents are painted women. How is this 1 Because their own mothers never pointed out to them the dangers of concealed attachments, the pernicious consequences of vanity, flattery, and love of dress ; because all sexual possibilities were sedulously concealed from them lest adivulgence might injure their modesty. The mothers play the prude to their own daughters, refuse to tell them what they can never learn with propriety from any other, and so at the first assault of temptation they fall like ripe corn before the sickle of the reaper.