The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1877-05-04
Our Prudes.

American women were once supposed
to be modest even to prudishness.
There was hardly foreign traveller who,
in his eagerness to detect some blOtch of
i'll favor, however minute, to mar the
fair promise of the country, did not
fasten his pen upon the squeamishness
supposed to be characteristic of our
women, and expose it to a cOngenial
public of his own land as a sign of
American vulgaIity.
Those in whose memory there NAV be
still left traces of the pungent sarcasm
of Mrs. TrOllope will recall a scene in
her book on the United States in which
that censOrious dame, with the aid of
the scratchy pencil of some now forgot
ten artist, depicts the overstrained deli
cacy of Western lady of her aequaint-
ance, or as is more probable, her inven-
tion. The point of the description aud
of the picture is the equivocation with
which our fastidiOus country-womaG
dOdges the pertinaciCS3s inquistiveness
of male visitor detesmine1- -tta-ferret
out the nature of the piece of work her
nimble neeele is so busy with. The So
luton of the mysterious problem, in
which the mutual ingenuity of coy
prudishness aud impudent curiosity is
cleverly displayed, is simply a shirt,
which Mrs. Trollope would have her
readers suppose was thing unmention-
able by American lips polite to any ears,
whether polite or impolite.
Captain Marryat, too, with his ward
room liberty of speech and Munchausen
stretch of Imagination, had his fling at
American prudishness, and, with the
practiced GOODNESS of a habitually un-
scrupulous rdcORteUr, related for the Sc
rious belief of his credulous country
men that American women were so
modest that they put the legs of their
pianos in PdRtdtetS, or trOwsers.
There was unquestiOnably basis of
fact for the construction of these tales of
travellers in search of the marvellous.
American women were fastidious, but
not prudish in the sense of affecting
mOdesty they did not possess. Theirs
was certainly genuine delicacy, though
the barriers with which they sought to
guard it may often have been awk-
wardly constructed and applied. The
subterfuges of youthful shyness are
foolish and transparent enough, but
they are nevertheless the resorts of I'M
doubted innOceuce. Let hardened men
of the world say what they will about
prudery being an indication of the want
of the very thing it processes, bushes,
averted faces, and disguised meanings
are the natural defenses of modesty,
The Americans were undoubtedly more
scrupulous in the use of many words
than the Europeans. But why should
this have been called prudery any more
than the increased fastidiOusness which
has marked the progress of civilization
in all countries? Madam De Sevigne,
who was very Diana of chastity, and
endowed with all the purity of maternal
sentiment, wrote in her letters to her
daughter about topics and in words of
which even French society, with all it's
| latitude of discussion and expression,
would now suppress the slightest whis-
per. Pages of Richardson, Fielding,
and of the writers of day still nearer
our own times, once read aloud in the
presence of and freely discussed by
mixed companies of innocent girls and
| boys and modest men and women,
would not now be tolerated in England,
| where most commonplace women of
average culture and refinement are not
| allowed to read, or at least to confess
having read, or even to know the titles
/ of the works of these authors of classic
fame. Much of the sO-called American
pTudishuess was perhaps, after all, only
state of the advanced public refine
| ment, to which civilization, with more
or less speed, is everywhere tending.
| We must, however, put in a protest
against the exaggerated deieacy of
| fastidiOusuess which seems too much
| inclined to disguise plain words in
equivOcal tinery of speech, by which
purity itself is sometimes made suspect.
There are various expressions in use
in this country which are either en-
L.. al.
lish, or applied in a sense different from
that in which they are ordinarily un-
derstood by them. The origin of these
novel or perverted words may be un-
doubtedly traced to false delicacy, but
they have become so ingrafted upon the
American lingo that those who now
ordinarily employ them are neither
conscious of nor responsible for the
prudishness from which they certainly
arose. Our American prOgeuitOrs, puri-
tanically nice, were easily startled by
the most remote suggestion of imprO-
priety, and, like all half-cultivated but
aspiring people, who, only too conscious
of vulgarisms from their lOwly associa-
tiOns, made Overstrained efforts to avoid
them. 1t is not now worth while to
!, specify them and endeavor to trace them
to their origin, for the process would in
evitably lead US back TO that polluted
source from which our sturdy ancestors
derived them, unconscious of all Ottense,
but which cannot, if reached, fail to
shock modern delicacy. 1t may be wise
to accept without inquiry what has al
ready been adopted by general usage,
but it is well to understand that over
nicely in expression is sometimes sug-
gestive of excessive nastiness of idea,
: and to avoid all attempts at guarding
every innocent word against the pOssi-
bility of its remOtest association with
improperly in the minds of the vulgar.
Such attempts will be vain, for as to
the evil all things are evil, so to the
! vulgar all things are vulgar, and we
shall only reveal a consciousness on our
, own part, which will have look very
like sympathy, and probably be mis-
taken for it.-Hdrper'S Bdzdr.
We have taken wood, potatoes, corn
Il. 81, ,sx.g-