Quoting Westermarck (History of Human Marriage), he goes on to refer to the fact that the seduction of an unmarried girl "is chiefly, if not exclusively, regarded as an offence against the parents or family of the girl," and there is no indication that it is ever held by savages that any wrong has been done to the woman herself.
"Westermarck realises at the same time," adds Havelock Ellis, "that the preference given to virgins has also a biological basis in the instinctive masculine feeling of jealousy in regard to women who have had intercouse with other men, and especially in the erotic charm for men of the emotional state of shyness which accompanies virginity."
Here, in all probability, are the most powerful reasons for the value placed on virginity; each reason, too, is highly practical. Who among us truly wants to share his most treasured possession? And the shy charm of virginity 'neath the attack of the amorous lover is as undeniable as it is indescribable. Hence the virgin's lure for the old and worn-out roué, who finds in her shrinking reluctance a stimulant to his erotic prowess which sympathy, boldness, even lewdness, have no power to furnish. That quaint old book, "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure," (London, 1780), gives a typical account of the attempt and failure of an aged rake to ravish the then virginal heroine of the story.[1]
- ↑ We can supplement these remarks by a further quotation from that curious work already noticed, The Battles of Venus, wherein we read: "This lust, then, after the untouched morsel, I take not to be an original dictate of nature; but consequently to result from much
submit themselves very sweetly and gently, even when the assailant be of the roughest."
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