modesty is not easy to define, for it varies with races, epochs and climes. as i said in the preceding chapter, in some parts of japan and in one arab tribe, it is almost shameful for a young woman to be married without having had sexual experience. a woman of the western races on the other hand, regardless of her age and past, must in order to show a ladylike breeding, pretend a certain ignorance of things sexual when in the company of men, even in the company of her fifth or sixth husband.
in turkey, a woman may show her eyes but must veil her mouth; in the southern sahara, men of the tuareg tribes go about veiled like turkish ladies. certain african tribes cover their backs carefully while exposing the rest of their bodies. in other tribes, men, instead of concealing their genitals, wear sheaths which exaggerate the size of their organs. in most parts of the earth, women keep the fact of their menstruation a secret. in[pg 123] others, they wear a cloth of a special color proclaiming that condition when present.
on the modern stage, modesty seems satisfied if the nipples and the genitals are duly covered. in some parts of europe entirely naked dancers have been seen in public. until recently, an unwritten law made it more or less necessary for the male performers to wear more clothing than female ones did. the wave of homosexualism which has followed the war is probably responsible for the growing numbers of naked male actors and dancers who disport themselves nowadays on the french stage and elsewhere.
there is a normal form of modesty, however, and there are many abnormal aspects of that elusive feeling.
many animals seek safety and seclusion when performing certain important functions of their life, nutrition, reproduction and defecation, which naturally place them at a disadvantage in emergencies requiring flight or fight. even the boldest among the carnivorous animals, lions and tigers, drag their prey to a cave or into the depths of the bush before devouring it.
naked and otherwise shameless and "indelicate" savages will often walk a considerable distance from[pg 124] their village to satisfy their natural needs, and then hide behind bushes or trees.
many birds and animals pair off and isolate themselves at mating time.
races and nations differ greatly in their degree of modesty in relation to nutrition, reproduction and defecation. european races dine in the open, are more or less "shameless" in their love making, they talk freely on sexual topics and erect urinals and comfort stations, designated by their exact name, in many public places. anglo-saxons hide themselves while eating, are very silent about the processes of reproduction, seldom indulge in public kissing and designate urinals and toilets, which are very scarce in their lands, by cover names such as lavatories, smoking rooms, etc.
normal modesty may then be a survival of the fear which the primitive men and women experienced of being surprised and overpowered by hostile animals or tribesmen during an embrace or when unprotected by garments or armor.
in fact, modesty seems to disappear as soon as safety reigns or when no hostile element may be suspected of lurking in the environment.
a woman strips without shame to undergo a medical examination, men and women appear naked[pg 125] in public baths where only one sex is admitted at a time, etc.
then also normal modesty must be considered as an offgrowth of the unavoidable repressions of modern, civilised life. like the incest taboo, it has been cultivated for reasons of convenience.
modern community life having placed a thousand restrictions upon the age at which we can marry and the conditions under which we should marry, in other words, having delayed considerably our normal sexual gratification, an effort has been made to "repress" erotism by concealing "suggestive" parts of the human body.
this is, of course, an abortive attempt, for habit is a more potent protector against temptation than veils. the races which live practically naked are not more erotic than the fully clothed, civilised races or the arabs who not only cover their entire body and heads but conceal even the shape of their bodies in the loose folds of their ample garments. a husband, no longer erotically aroused by his wife's naked body, may be attracted violently by the partly draped body of another woman.
suggestive draperies. one of the results of the policy of body-concealment has been to transform certain draperies into sexual symbols of great aphro[pg 126]disiac power. certain garments lend to the human body an appeal which it might not have if fully exposed. in other words, the obstacles which are meant to hold back erotism may be used neurotically as a morbid expression of erotism.
at the present day, however, that form of protection against temptation serves its purpose to some extent and cannot be discarded until mankind has been reeducated. custom and the law uphold official modesty. the mere fact, however, that modesty has to be enforced legally is one of the best arguments against the sentimental, unscientific view that modesty is an "innate," "natural" feeling of "delicacy" based upon some "higher," "spiritual" values, etc.
modern, official modesty is merely a compromise with sexual reality. it has been, like all inhibitory feelings, greatly overestimated and forced upon the weaker sex by egotistical men to prevent a display of their female's charms, likely to attract other women-hunters. weak males with a sense of inferiority have called modesty the typically feminine virtue.
excessive modesty, in men as well as in women, is an abnormal phenomenon, a mask for unconscious lewdness and obscenity. it is a neurotic means of[pg 127] protection against uncontrollable desires, or at times an expression of one's "sour grapes" attitude to others.
it is always the shapeless and unattractive woman who is the most vociferous champion of highneck gowns and long skirts. a sense of bodily inferiority obsesses the woman who does not allow any caresses unless the room is darkened. her modesty yields rapidly, however, to the praise of her attractions which she hears from the mouth of her lover.
immodest modesty. a woman took her daughter to a specialist's office for an examination. the girl, asked to strip, complied at once with the doctor's request and stood naked before him without any display of shame.
when they left, the mother made the very unwise remark that her daughter must have lacked modesty entirely to have stood the ordeal without any embarrassment. in this case, it was the mother who lacked "true modesty" and the daughter whose mind was "pure." the girl knew she was in the presence of a physician, but to the more highly sexed mother, the physician was above everything a "man."
this sort of prurient modesty which, very often, exerts a baneful influence on the love-life of the[pg 128] individual, is usually due to repressed childhood memories and complexes.
fear of love. stekel, of vienna, cites the case of a girl who evinced on every occasion a morbid fear of everything connected with love. she avoided men, she protected herself zealously against every "suggestive" influence, she decried love and marriage and was constantly trying to "spiritualise" the things of the flesh which she considered "bestial."
analysis showed that until the age of thirteen she had been perfectly normal in her behavior, considering love and marriage as natural human goals.
one day, however, she chanced upon a collection of pornographic photographs belonging to her father. instead of "corrupting" her mind, the incident disgusted her and caused her to renounce all the things of the flesh and to become unusually, negatively modest.
a patient of mine declared on the occasion of her first call at my office that all men were "beasts." whenever she associated with a man, at dinner, theater or dancing parties, she suffered from choking sensations, nausea, etc. analysis revealed that at the age of six she had been subjected to an attempt at seduction.
[pg 129]
another woman patient who went thru a mental crisis in the course of which she gave up all worldly pleasures and decided never to marry, merging into hysterical states very soon afterward, had bow legs and a tendency to skin eruptions which had, on many occasions, proved humiliating to her egotism. her decision never to marry meant: "i shall not risk showing my deformed legs and my skin blemishes to a man." also, at the age of ten, she had witnessed a scene of brutality in which a man had dragged his wife on the street by her hair.
she was morbidly modest and wept bitterly once when a man whom she knew only slightly, pressed a kiss upon her lips. withal her dreams revealed a violently erotic temperament.
like all exaggerated feelings morbid modesty is the mask for the opposite feelings, passionate sexual cravings. the woman who allows every one to kiss her is aroused but little by such caresses. the woman who never kisses any one and pretends she does not like being kissed, is usually the one who knows that a kiss might cause her to lose her self-control and to abandon all modesty.
the puritanical male, paragon of modesty among his sex, is either an inflammable type who is afraid[pg 130] of his own sensuality or an impotent individual who protects himself against being put to any sexual test.
that exaggerated modesty is only one of the components of the neurotic temperament has been well demonstrated by adler: "the morbid modesty of neurotics," he writes, "who cannot visit a public toilet, who are unable to urinate in the presence of others, who avoid the society of women on account of blushing or anxiety or heart palpitations, reveals to us the strained manly ambition which supports itself against the original feeling of inferiority.
"the masculine protest(craving for virility) of those patients, insecure to the core, forces them into this arrangement whose boundaries encroach upon those of bashfulness and awkwardness. often, in neurotics of either sex, one observes an inability to go to a toilet in cases of great necessity if some one is looking at them. the greater modesty of women, especially of neurotic women, in all relations of life, originates from the fear which is implanted in them from the earliest childhood that attention might be directed to their sex.
"i have often convinced myself that the behavior of girls and of women is considerably influenced[pg 131] by this more or less unconscious factor, indeed that the progress of their sexual development, like that of male patients who feel unmanly, the formation of social and professional relations and love relations, are immediately checked as soon as the patient is allowed to play a real 'feminine' or subordinate part or presupposes this expectation from others.
"this fact is in no way affected when repressed sexual stimuli come to light as the present source of the checks of aggression. they are similarly arranged and have the purpose of enhancing the fear of the partner and of permitting the retreat decided upon in the plan of life, to be entered upon with certainty; they are therefore acts of foresight. the neurotic had already in childhood laid the foundation of this foresight and in it is reflected the feeling of shame as the guiding line of reassuring modesty and the prudery of civilisation.
"the previous history of the patient reveals an exaggerated modesty and this is true at times of those who in other respects show a boyish nature; the anxiety of nervous children on being exposed may be observed in their conduct. they exclude every one from the room and lock the door when they are going to undress. this conduct is also observable in boys who have grown up among girls.[pg 132] in the prognosis of neurosis, this expedient of cowardice is a bad symptom. it is the equivalent of later castration thoughts and neurotic wishes, the wish to be a woman, for instance, which expresses itself as soon as the fear of the life mate becomes actual or a decision has to be avoided."
lack of modesty, when it assumes a morbid form, has, according to adler, the same meaning as prurient modesty.
"the very shameless, obscene talker," adler writes, "is trying to demonstrate to his listeners the fact of his great manliness of which he is not very sure himself, the very immodest woman merely demonstrates her inability to adapt herself to her feminine role.... in the analysis of such women, at times only in their dreams, is observed the childish expectation of a metamorphosis into a male, an attempted substitute for the will-to-power, the will-to-be-above."
