Year: 1873

There is word to be said Just here concern
ing that usage On which the reformers exhaust
their whole store of nvective, viz the ban
shIng OF immoral women from society, while
immoral men suffer no so exclusion. If what
they urged was the equal reprobatiOn of these
offenders, well and good but since it is rather
their equal social acceptance which they con-
tend for, the square truth must be said, that
however these parties may stand before lIea-
ven, such are the facts of earth, that it is the
presence of immoral women, and not men, in
society which would instantly fetter there the
freedom of every vlrtuOus member of the SEX
1t is because the line is so strongly and mex
Orably drawn between reputable female society
and the disreputable, that a man of careless
life is compelled to leave his careless manners
behind him when he enters the former, certain
else to be promptly kicked out of it for his
failure IN virtuOus etiquette, even by men who
might think very lightly indeed of his Iapses
from vlrtuOus character elsewhere. OdiOus
were that society where a lady must bristle
with the airs of prude, to be certain of re-
spectful behavior from the other sex, and into
such bondage would modest women inevitably
come in all general companies were the mere
trciOus OF their own sex common and unmark-
ed there. 1t is idle to sentimentalize about
the uBmistakable air of innocence /; it is hateful





matters; they feel slurred by the speculation
of glance, and it is the sitting Of their own
sex which saves them from such annoyances,
even 10 world OF unsifted men. Under pres
ent social rules, virtue is not obliged to pro.
claim itself, firstly, because it Is virtue, and,
secondly, because it is in the place of virtue
and the second reason would be important to
Diana if she went among people who had
never personally heard Of Diana, and who
were disqualified, by having lost their own
purity of soul, from knowing her by instinct


1t IS not pleasant to expOund these matters.
Nothing OF our present subject is pleasant TO
expOund but it is time somebody undertook
to point out that all the old wOmany traditions
are not founded in sheer nonsense, or hard
ness of heart, and women have been especially
censured for this unequal discrimination against
their own sex. We say they have at least this
one most logical and necessary reason for such
discrimination, viz that free social range fol-
| bad and good women cannot exist together
| When Greek courtesans went abroad, Greek
wives stayed at home, and were compelled tC
the ignorance, the rustcity, the meager, half
developed life and character which are the re-
suit of Gagged existence.


This is an existence which none of us de
sire, and to which the daughter of this republic
have never been wontcd. American womer
have had an unexample freedom, because
American men have had, on the whole, an un
exampled respect for, and belief in women
The soil of old Puritan morality made the
open, confident ground where the women o
this country have walked and however tha
foundation may be sinking through the grow
ing dissipations of men, our highway Of lib
erty, as we have endeavored to show, would b,
far more fatally ruined by the similar diffusion
| through society of corrupt wOmeD-Lull
Gray Noble; ScriJners for October.