old lubbers, I feel a thickening sensation in the toe of my boot.’
‘Not in thy soul, but in thy sole, harsh Jew,’ said Mr Mountjoy, laughing.
‘Yes, I confess it does raise the family porcupine in me,’ replied Mr Bristley. ‘Although, mind you, it is only fair to remember that the Christian morality, by its blundering monogamic theories, has done more, theoretically at least, for woman’s dignity than other creeds have.’
‘But about the social evil, Mr Mountjoy?’ said Lesbia.
‘Well, Miss Newman,’ he replied, ‘in the first place, why and in what sense is it an evil? It is an evil because, and in so far as, in its present conditions, it operates for the degradation of women. But under other conditions it need not do so. I am not now referring to the material uncleanness with which so much of it is mixed up, nor to the horrid plagues arising therefrom. Sanitary regulations, carefully organised and strictly enforced, can do away with all that. But when I speak of the degradation of women, I mean their moral degradation by means of being placed in false relations toward men. What is society’s present standard of female virtue? We have it in the words of Shakspeare; you remember that when Desdemona is accused of playing false to Othello and is called by a scurrilous name, she protests against it, saying that she keeps herself ‘for my lord, from any other foul unlawful touch.’ Now that sort of thing is what I complain of, and what I call the degradation of woman. Woman's dignity is in herself, not ‘for my lord.’ The false doctrine that woman’s place is to shine with borrowed lustre,—to be glorified by her good relations with man and not by her own inherent worth; the doctrine that her virtue consists in making her person the property of a man; this doctrine, I say, is the head and front of her degradation. No doubt the celibate life is the higher
