The Ladies' Calling

Modesty

1. Many years have now passed since an appeal was made to the gentry of this nation, urging them toward the virtue that would be both their pleasure and their reward. I confess I cannot boast that its effects give me much encouragement to attempt this again. Yet in our own worldly affairs, defeat often spurs us on as much as success. I see no reason to give up in discouragement when pursuing this more charitable purpose.

Men do not usually abandon a siege at the first repulse. They reinforce their batteries, examine more carefully which parts are most vulnerable and accessible, and arrange their assault accordingly. It would therefore be reasonable to follow their example here. After an unsuccessful attempt upon the more impregnable male part of the gentry, I now approach the women. Their natural softness and gentleness may make them less inclined to resist good counsel, a resistance in which too many men place their claim to gallantry.

I presume those for whom that little treatise was originally intended will surrender their claim to it so willingly that I could exchange my patrons without being accused of robbery. A new dedication might spare me the labor of a new book. Indeed, what I said there rested more on distinctions of social standing than of sex. Few deletions would be needed to make it as suitable for women as for men. I will take this much advantage of it: I assure women of the gentry that they may find there much of the duty belonging to their rank and position in the world. Although I will sometimes refer back to it, I think that, for the most part, directing them there will be easiest both for them and for me.

3. But it might seem too much like a pedantic schoolmaster to offer new pupils only the learning that the old pupils have discarded or grown sick of. I remember that I am writing to ladies, who usually consider novelty a considerable addition to anything’s value. Both courtesy toward their taste and charity toward their needs therefore oblige me to give them something they can claim as their own. To make that claim more secure, I will attach it to their sex. My present inquiry will ask what particular and distinct obligations God and nature have assigned to them as women.

4. No one can deny that the obligation to moral and Christian virtues is universal in itself, confined to no sex or person. Yet human laws often contain precepts that, without excluding anyone, apply especially and prominently to a particular rank or class of people. The laws of God and nature show a similar distinction. The all-wise Creator has placed particular qualities and inclinations in his creatures, and has accordingly intended them to exercise and develop these.

Among human beings, who differ in sex rather than species, the variation may seem smaller. Still, it is enough to establish some difference either in the kind or the degree of duty. This is surely suggested by the particular warning given to the Jews against confusing the clothing of the two sexes (Deut 22:5). It is shown more clearly in the precepts the apostles address to women (1 Tim 2; 1 Pet 3).

Indeed, this truth is so widely accepted that all ages and nations have distinguished in some way between masculine and feminine virtues. Nature has distinguished not only the beauties of their outward forms, but also their constitutions, implanting particular aptitudes and qualities of mind. These accordingly vary the standard of propriety. What is becoming in one sex often is not becoming in the other, at least to the same degree.

It will therefore be reasonable to describe those excellences that are the genuine and proper ornaments of women. In some cases these may coincide with those of men. Yet even duties that the divine command lays equally upon both may carry additional weight for women because of propriety, reputation, or some other consideration that should not be dismissed.

5. To guide this inquiry properly, we should first ask which virtues are universally necessary to women at every age and in every circumstance of life. Like primary matter, they must be present before any particular form can arise. Like a firm and solid foundation, they must support every event and every change in a woman’s condition or relationships.

Second, we will consider women through those changes. We will follow them through the successive stages and periods of life, and through the states that bring the most considerable changes to them. In each, we will consider what new duties arise in proportion to those changes.

6. Among the outward provisions of life, the things needed daily and indispensably deserve the greatest value. Similarly, in moral or spiritual endowments, the benefit of possessing them is best measured by the misery of lacking them. This will recommend the first group of female virtues we consider. They are so strictly necessary that their absence is not merely the evil of deprivation. It also exposes women to a flood of further evils resulting from that lack.

7. This will prove true of every virtue we discuss, but most clearly of the one with which we begin: modesty. We may understand it in two senses. In the first, it stands against boldness and indecency; in the second, against frivolity and sexual wantonness. In the first sense, Zeno aptly defined it as “the science of decent motion.” It guides and regulates the whole of our behavior, checks and controls every rude excess, and does much to make our dealings with others civilized.

Its influence is general. It not only steadies the mind with sober and humble thoughts about oneself, but also directs every part of the outward person. It appears in the face through calm and gentle looks. It leaves such an impression there that it seems to have acquired from this the name “shamefacedness.” Certainly, whatever modern opinion may hold, nothing gives greater luster to feminine beauty.

St. Paul therefore seems to have considered women’s interests in this matter well when he offers modesty as an alternative ornament to “the deckings of gold and pearl and costly array” (1 Tim 2). But I fear this dress will now be thought too old-fashioned, and an apostle considered an incompetent judge of this art. It has now become so serious a pursuit that surely no academy in the world can match the number studying its mysteries.

Yet when they have pushed their art to its utmost, innocent modesty and a naturally simple expression will eclipse their glaring splendor and triumph over their artificial beauty. On the other hand, let a woman be adorned with every embellishment of art, and even with nature’s care as well. If boldness can be read in her face, it blots out every line of beauty. Like a cloud over the sun, it blocks the view of everything otherwise lovely. Its darkness becomes still more noticeable because it stands beside something that would naturally attract the eye.

8. But modesty does not confine herself to the face. There she appears only as a shadow and an image; in speech she lives and moves. From speech she banishes every indecency and rudeness, every insolent boast and haughty expression of contempt, and whatever else might make someone troublesome or ridiculous to the company.

She not only refines the language but also tunes it, regulating tone and accent. She permits neither unbecoming vehemence nor loudness in conversation. Loudness was thought so indecent in Carneades, even in his public lectures, that the official supervising the gymnasium rebuked him for it. Surely, if it was unacceptable in a philosopher teaching in his school, it is still less becoming in a woman’s ordinary conversation. If we consult Proverbs, we find loudness and clamor in women joined with other descriptions that will hardly recommend them (Prov 7:11; Prov 9). A woman’s tongue should indeed resemble the imagined music of the spheres: sweet and charming, but inaudible at a distance.

9. As modesty prescribes the manner of speaking, she also prescribes its measure. She restrains excessive talkativeness, a fault found only in the bold. Monopolizing conversation is one of the greatest imaginable acts of presumption. It imposes so rudely upon the company that scarcely anything could be more indecent in conversation. Our religious poet Herbert expresses this ingeniously:

A civil guest Will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.

Whoever takes all the conversation forces everyone else into silence. He is therefore presumed to regard them merely as his listeners and pupils, while he dictates to them like a master. This led Socrates to say, “It is arrogance to speak all, and to be willing to hear nothing.” Such behavior is insolent and unbecoming in anyone, but especially in a woman.

10. The ancient Romans thought it so unbecoming that they did not allow women to speak publicly, even when necessary for their own defense. When Amesia came forward to plead her own case in the Senate, they regarded it as so extraordinary a portent that they sent to consult the oracle about what it foretold for the state. Although these early strict rules were soon lost amid the empire’s successes, Valerius Maximus could find only two more women whose necessity or impudence persuaded them to repeat this unbecoming attempt.

11. I am willing to hope that the great indecency of excessive talking in women explains why their sex is so generally accused of it. I do not mean that all women are guilty. Rather, when they are guilty, the fault appears so unbecoming that it becomes more conspicuous and memorable. Whether this arose from the unbecoming nature of the behavior or from women’s inclination toward it, I will not decide. But we find the apostle very earnest in warning against it.

He expressly commands women to “keep silence in the Church,” where he declares it a shame for them to speak (1 Cor 14:35). Although this seems confined to church assemblies, even that restriction directly concerns the gifted women of our age who presume to become teachers. He did not allow women to speak in church even for the purpose of learning, though that is a more modest purpose than teaching.

Besides this, he gives women a more general prescription of silence: “Let women learn in silence” (1 Tim 2:11), and again, “to be in silence” (1 Tim 2:12). The apostle seems to base this expression not only on woman’s inferiority in relation to creation and the first sin (1 Tim 2:13-14), but also on the presumption that women needed instruction. Silence has always been considered an indispensable qualification for instruction. It is the introductory precept in every school, since all attention rests upon it.

If some women of our age think they have passed beyond the beginner’s condition the apostle supposes, and need no teaching, I must ask leave to believe they lack the very first principle that should move them to learn: knowledge of their own ignorance. This knowledge grows so much through study and reflection that Socrates, after a long life spent pursuing wisdom, gave this as the sum of his learning: “This only I know, that I know nothing.”

Our female talkers seem to lack this achievement greatly. In this respect they seem to disprove the common maxim and give what they do not have. They make their ignorance visible to others, although they cannot discern it themselves. To such women we may aptly apply Zeno’s sarcasm to a talkative young man: “Their ears have fallen into their tongue.”

12. Besides this presumptuous kind of talkativeness, another is usually charged against women: a mere habit of chatting and prattling that sustains itself at their neighbors’ expense. It can never lack material while anyone remains within reach of their observation.

I would gladly hope that this is chiefly the vice of women of the lower social ranks, and that the education of nobler women places them above such petty amusements. Yet St. Paul makes tattling an effect of idleness (1 Tim 5:13). We may therefore reasonably fear that where the cause is most abundant, some of the effect will also be found.

Indeed, it would be difficult to explain how the round of formal visits among people of high social standing could continue without it. No one will suspect that women’s visits are merely silent displays. When the unfashionable subjects of household management, piety, and the like are excluded, few topics remain unless gossip is brought in to supply them. This is an almost inexhaustible reserve. So many springs feed it that it can scarcely fail.

Consider also how readily it serves envy, spite, revenge, and other feminine passions. We cannot suppose it unwelcome wherever any of these rules. But I believe nothing introduces it more frequently than the vanity of wit. Wit finds nowhere a freer or more excessive range than in criticizing and mocking others. There it finds not only exercise but triumph. Vain people seldom consider others’ weaknesses or follies without some self-satisfaction and presumptuous reflections on their own superiority.

It is plain enough how incompatible this freedom of speech is with the modesty we recommend. Would to God that modesty were its only opponent! It is equally opposed to every obligation of justice and charity. Scarcely anything violates these so frequently as this unrestrained use of the tongue.

13. Another fault of the tongue for which women have generally been accused is revealing secrets. This weakness is presumed so common among them that Aristotle is said to have counted trusting a woman with a secret among the three things he solemnly regretted. Yet the greater the prejudice against women in this matter, the greater their care should be to clear both themselves and their sex of the accusation.

It is indeed extremely disgraceful. This destructive habit is a sign of an undisciplined, powerless soul, a kind of incontinence of the mind. Such a mind can retain nothing entrusted to it. As though it too suffered from a diabetic disorder, it continually and almost unconsciously discharges everything.

However willing we may be to assign this fault specifically to women, it arises only from this unhealthy condition of mind, which is often no less visible in men. Conversely, women who through reason and virtue have acquired solidity and firmness of mind are as trustworthy with a secret as the most manly confidant. I have no intention of including them in this accusation. Rather, by proposing their example to the rest, I show that nature has placed women under no unavoidable necessity of being so powerless.

A secret is not so unruly that it cannot be kept within. They may take the wise man’s word for it: “If thou hast heard a word let it die with thee, and be bold, it will not burst thee” (Sir 19:10).

14. This is one piece of daring manliness they may aspire to without violating modesty. Would to God they would accept it in exchange for the masculine boldness now so common among many women, even of the highest rank! We live in such a degenerate age that everything seems inverted, even the sexes. Men adopt women’s effeminacy and fastidious delicacy, while women take up men’s confidence and boldness. All this passes under the name of good breeding.

A blush, formerly considered the color of virtue, is judged worse manners than the things that ought to cause it. Only a country girl’s simplicity is thought capable of excusing it. But this supposed weakness usually proves easy to correct. A few weeks of city training wear away that rustic trait and advance women to a fashionable self-assurance.

Nor is this intended as an end in itself. It is meant to carry them onward until they reach a complete transformation. Their gestures, their language, and sometimes even their clothing become deliberately masculine. We may therefore apply to them what Tacitus says of Vitellius in relation to his being a prince: if others did not remember that they were women, they themselves could easily forget it.

15. If this affectation were confined to more innocent matters that are morally indifferent, it would be more tolerable. Alas, it goes further. Some women think they have not sufficiently escaped their sex until they have adopted men’s vices as well. A sober, modest manner of speaking is too effeminate for them. They adopt a blustering, ranting style and, to show their mastery of it, adorn it with every oath and curse their memory or invention can supply. It is as though they meant to clear their sex of the charge of timidity by defying Almighty God.

An oath certainly sounds harsh from any mouth. But from a woman’s mouth it has such a strange harshness that no sound this side of hell could be more shockingly hateful. Yet this is a music our discordant age has introduced. I think no earlier age ever heard it in any civilized place.

Women who swear therefore lack even the poor shadow of an excuse that men claim. The practice was so far from customary among women that its unfamiliarity must have forced them to take some trouble and effort before acquiring the habit and establishing themselves as female bullies. In this attempt they have been very kind to men, by showing the world that something worse can exist.

16. It is said that some women complete this demonstration by adding the parallel vice of drinking. This vice is detestable in everyone, but monstrous in women, who do double violence to their nature: first through intemperance, and then through immodesty. Although they may take men as their immediate models, to the credit of their achievement they surpass those models and approach the original beastliness itself. Nothing human is so much a beast as a drunken woman.

This is plain enough if we look only at the crime’s surface. If we look further into its consequences and accompanying evils, the assertion becomes still harder to dispute. A woman who first prostitutes herself to wine will soon do so to lust. She has dismissed her guards and rejected every prompting of reason as well as grace. She lies at the mercy of anyone and every assailant.

When we consider how much fuller the world is of Amnons than of Josephs, it is easy to guess the fate of a woman’s chastity when it rests on nothing but men’s chastity. Unless her vice protects her virtue, and the loathsomeness of her drunkenness prevents attempts upon her chastity, it is scarcely imaginable that a woman who loses her sobriety should keep her chastity.

I might therefore have made this observation more properly when speaking of modesty in its second sense, as opposed to frivolity and sexual wantonness. Still, it is not badly placed here as an introduction to that subject.

17. If we consider modesty in this sense, we will find it a woman’s most indispensable requirement. It is so essential and natural to her sex that every slightest departure from it is a corresponding departure from womanhood. Abandoning it altogether ranks women among beasts. Indeed, it places them as far beneath beasts as an acquired vileness is below one that belongs to nature.

I need not collect the judgments of philosophers or theologians on this matter. Modesty is so deeply an instinct of nature that, although too many contrive to suppress it in themselves, they cannot so obscure the idea in others that an immodest woman ceases to be regarded as a kind of monster: something diverted and distorted from its proper form.

The struggle and difficulty attending the first violations of modesty provide sufficient evidence of this strong opposition to nature. Such violations always begin with regrets and blushes. They require a great deal of self-denial and much vicious courage to overcome the recoil and reproaches of the offenders’ own minds.

18. I have no doubt that this age has developed methods as efficient as industrious vice can devise, and we have far too many examples of people who master this lesson early. Yet I dare appeal even to the most advanced of them: could they not, at first, have kept their virtue more easily than they lost it? Certainly, the horrors and shame that precede those first guilty acts are so great that they must commit a rape upon themselves, forcing their own reluctance and aversion, before they can become willing prostitutes to others. Their seducers seem to understand this well. That is why they take such pains over preliminary courtship and spend so much on presents. It is as though this crime were so foreign to these women that it could only be introduced through an alliance with their more familiar vices, pride or greed.

19. The best way for women to counter these stratagems is therefore to watch suspiciously even for the first approaches. Anyone who means to defend a fort must not abandon its outer defenses. A woman who would secure her chastity must never let the siege draw too close, but repel a tempter’s earliest and most distant insinuations. When we speak of modesty in this sense, we must oppose it not only to the gross act of sexual misconduct, but also to every kind of behavior that either reveals or may create an inclination toward it. This includes all frivolous behavior, wanton glances, and obscene conversation. Such things show a woman so weary of her honor that the next man who comes along may reasonably expect her surrender, and consequently be invited to attack.

Indeed, one would think these things the result of many sinful acts rather than merely the prelude to one. Only a habit of private sin could supply enough impudence to do what is so publicly scandalous. When such behavior appears in women of any considerable age, charity itself can scarcely judge it more gently. Yet the youngest may initially adopt these things, like their dress, merely in imitation of others. They accept them without question on the authority of those whose examples govern fashion.

When a poor girl, still child enough to admire everything that glitters, sees these things practiced by fashionable people, it is no wonder that she regards them as accomplishments. Faced with the formidable calamity of being unfashionable, she conforms to them. Yet this does less to lessen the guilt of those few who are seduced than to increase the guilt of their seducers. It also bears witness to the strange corruption of the age. Things that even the less hardened prostitutes were once ashamed of have become common and openly accepted as fashion, part of the training and education of the young.

It is as though vice now disdained to have any beginners in its school. By perversely rushing ahead, it makes its pupils begin where they once used to end. It initiates them at once into the shamelessness that formerly resulted only from long practice. The end of these skirmishers in impudence, who put their virtue in the most exposed advance guard, is easy to predict.

Yet this is not the only dangerous position. Those who keep their ranks and, though they do not provoke attacks, remain to receive them, may be far from safe. A woman who patiently listens to praises of her wit or beauty may at first intend only to gratify her vanity. But once she is charmed by that siren song, bewitched by that flattery, she gradually develops an affection for the person who values her so highly. When that spark is fanned by continual declarations of passion, perhaps with a few romantic tricks of pretending to die for her, and a thousand other devices that lust can suggest, it will behave like the naphtha naturalists describe. In a moment it will grow into an unquenchable flame, ruining both her virtue and her honor.

20. Let no woman, therefore, rely on the innocence of her first intentions. She might as well trust her sound constitution enough to enter a plague house and expose herself to the disease. Its infection insinuates itself no more subtly than this kind of temptation. In that case she would not stay to determine the exact distance at which she could safely approach, but would run as far away as possible. Here, too, she has no less reason to remove herself from the possibility of danger. However unfashionable it may be, she should adopt such strict modesty that her very looks guard her and discourage the most impudent assailant.

It is said of Philopoemen that, when the Spartans found it in their interest to corrupt him with money, their reverence for his virtues was so great that none dared attempt it. Surely women could attain the same security. Virtue has such authority that, wherever it is eminent, it tends to restrain all unchaste desires. Anyone who attempts to violate such a sanctuary must be not only lustful but sacrilegious.

21. But perhaps women may fear that, by adopting such strictness, they will lose the glory of their beauty, which is now chiefly measured by the number of those who court and adore them. My first answer is that trophies to beauty are miserable things when they must be built upon the ruins of virtue and honor. A woman who hanged herself by her hair to boast of its length would merely enact the same folly in a lesser matter.

22. Secondly, it is a great mistake to think their beauty will be less prized. Human nature tends to esteem most highly those things that remain at a distance, while an easy and cheap surrender breeds contempt. As long as women govern themselves by the exact rules of prudence and modesty, their radiance resembles the clear midday sun. Though less approachable, it is considered more glorious. When they depart from those rules, they resemble the sun behind a cloud. Though it can be gazed upon more safely, it is not half so bright.

Besides these accompanying advantages, modesty certainly improves beauty immediately and directly. Though men wish to separate them for their own vicious purposes, they cannot help thinking them most lovely when united. You will often hear men praise the appearance of the very modesty they would gladly overcome.

23. Thirdly, only such reserve can make their beauty truly triumphant. Negotiation and conquest are utterly different things. When a woman stoops to negotiate with an assailant, whatever he may tell her about being her captive, his purpose is to make her his. Once she is, no condition of servitude is half so wretched. Nothing in the world is so slavishly abject as a prostitute woman.

Besides basely surrendering all her interests in another life, she sacrifices everything valuable in this one. She places her reputation wholly in the power of the man who has corrupted her, and, worse still, her reformation too. If she wishes to return to virtue, she does not dare, for fear that he will reveal her former departures from it. Thus, like Catiline, she is committed to future evils to secure the past.

She subjects herself not only to his lust, but to all his moods and whims. Indeed, she subjects herself to everyone who has helped arrange their secret meetings. None of them must be displeased, for fear they will tell. When we remember what sort of creatures serve as instruments in such affairs, scarcely anything can be more deplorable than being under their lash.

Some, it is true, have found a way to cure this distress by becoming their own accusers. They not only confess but boast of their crime, forestalling every accusation by shamelessly admitting it. Yet this merely shows how intolerable the former condition is, when this worst of evils is chosen as a rescue. Their impatience with living in constant fear makes them adopt, concerning infamy, the resolution Caesar adopted concerning death. He said that “it was better to die once than to be always in fear.”

Though this desperate remedy may cure their fear, it makes their disgrace certain. When others bring the accusation, there is room for doubt, and charity may prompt some to disbelieve it. But when the offender defends the deed herself, the evidence cannot be challenged. It also doubles the infamy. Besides the disgrace belonging to the crime, a distinct share belongs to the impudence. Yet, like the scorpion, it must cure its own sting. Though it increases the public reproach, it deadens the sense of it.

24. But even when they have hardened themselves against every impression of shame, they remain subject to many other painful effects of their sin. How often they are tortured by fears of abandonment and jealousy of rivals! Nor are these fears groundless. They must know that the same taste for variety that drew their lovers to them may draw them to another woman, and another, and so on. It is as possible to grasp the air as to confine wandering lust.

Besides, how anxiously they dread approaching age, which they know will make them loathed and despised, as well as every decline in beauty before then! How minutely they examine their mirrors! Every wrinkle that appears in the face becomes a deep wound in the heart. But if they ever have the leisure, or indeed the courage, to look within, the sight is still more dreadful. There is a deformed soul, stripped of innocence and made almost as brutish as the sin to which it has consented.

Though in some respects it is “like the beast that perisheth,” it is not, and cannot be, like the beast in the respect that would benefit it most. It cannot lose its endless existence. From that superiority of its nature it can expect only an infinity of misery. This is such an overwhelming thought that, if dwelt upon, it should, I think, cool the hottest blood. No impure flames are fierce enough to contend with those of unquenchable fire.

Therefore, although it is deeply impious, it is no unskillful device for those who would corrupt women’s conduct to corrupt their beliefs. By extinguishing every hope or fear of another world, they persuade them to plunge boldly into all the abominations of this one. It is said that this is now an art of courtship, the modern prelude to the basest proposals. Apparently this age does not dare trust only to the former methods of seduction. It fears there will not be enough women who forget their interests in another world, and so it must recruit a new group who disbelieve in it.

I fear this design has been all too successful. Many women are so much more concerned for their bodies than their souls that they are content to have the one exalted by degrading and debasing the other. While they listen with vain delight to their outward form being praised as angelic or divine, they can calmly endure having their better part vilified and despised. They hear it defined as merely a puff of air in their nostrils, which will disperse with their dying breath, or, in the atheist’s phrase, “vanish as the soft air” (Wis 6:6).

They should consider that those who preach this doctrine to them intend only to draw a harmful practical conclusion from it. It is a maxim in politics that advice should be examined suspiciously when the adviser’s interest is displayed at its very front. That interest is certainly never more visible than here. Once a man wins this point, he never needs to fight for all the rest. Anyone who can persuade a woman that her soul ends with her body’s death will soon command her body.

Then what was at first his interest becomes hers at last. Her wishes for the mortality of her soul become far stronger than her belief in it could possibly be. This abundantly confirms my claim about such a person’s servile and wretched condition. If we judge a slavery very severe when it makes people wish to surrender a temporal existence, what must we think of one that provokes them to renounce an eternal one?

25. From this succession of evils we may now judge the deplorable condition of those who have abandoned their virtue. I have no doubt that many consciences can not only bear witness to this description but add much to it. All I will say to such women is that they should consult that inward monitor. Until they do, every sermon will be useless. My purpose, therefore, was not to tell them what they feel all too well, but only to point out their wrecks as warnings to others.

26. Let all those who remain untainted, and whose judgment is therefore clear and unbiased, soberly consider the misery of the other condition. They should do this not merely to applaud their own condition, but to secure it. Whenever a corrupted woman’s outward pomp and gaudy splendor seem, like those of Croesus, to boast of her happiness, let them see through that deception. Let them answer with Solon, “that those only are happy who are so at their end.”

Their most exquisite adornments are merely like garlands on a beast destined for sacrifice. Their richest gems are chains of slavery rather than ornaments. Their gorgeous clothing, like Herod’s, perhaps covers a putrid body, for even that often proves to be their fate. At any rate, it covers a still more putrid soul. Those who can consider them in this way will avoid one great snare. It is not always so much the lust of the flesh as the lust of the eyes that betrays a woman.

It is a known weakness of the sex to love finery and a splendid appearance. This makes temptations of that kind so suited to their nature that those who have not reached a more sober estimate of things will scarcely be safe. They must therefore regulate their opinions and bring all such things down to their true value. These will then appear so trifling that they can never compete with the more substantial interests of virtue and honor.

Though those terms seem to be rejected in this dissolute age, wherever the things themselves are visible they compel a secret reverence, even from those who think it in their interest to ridicule them publicly. On the other hand, abandoning them exposes women to every imaginable contempt. It makes them despised even by those who betrayed them into it and leaves a lasting stain upon their names and their families.

In a woman’s character, let wit, beauty, and every female accomplishment stand at the front. Yet if wantonness brings up the rear, the satire soon devours the praise. As in an echo, only the last words will reverberate. Her vice will be remembered when everything else is forgotten. But I need not declaim on this theme. The son of Sirach has already done it for me in many passages, especially Sirach 23, to which I refer the reader.

32. What has already been said is, I suppose, enough to convince every woman how much it matters to keep herself strictly within the bounds of modesty and virtue. For this purpose, nothing is more important than a wise choice of company. I mean not only men, but women too. Vice is contagious, and this vice especially has the plague’s worst quality: it is malicious and seeks to infect others. A woman who knows herself to be scandalous thinks another woman’s virtue reproaches her. She regards that woman as someone “made to reprove her ways” (Wis 2:14).

In her own defense, therefore, she tries to remove the difference between them, not by reforming herself, which she considers too difficult, but by corrupting the other woman. Such women are willing to insinuate themselves into an acquaintance. They will be eagerly helpful and use every art of accommodation and kindness to ensnare a woman of good reputation into intimacy with them. If they succeed, if they can once entangle her in that cobweb friendship, they then infuse their venom like spiders. They never stop their vile insinuations until they have poisoned and ruined her.

But if, on the other hand, they meet someone too perceptive to be trapped, they will try to destroy her reputation when they cannot stain her innocence. They represent her to the world as what they would have made her, in the psalmist’s phrase, “such an one as themselves” (Ps 50:24). There is therefore no associating with them without obvious danger to either virtue or honor. This, I think, should be warning enough.

It is true that meeting such people cannot always be avoided. They are too numerous and intrusive to be escaped altogether, unless, as St. Paul says, “one should go out of the world” (1 Cor 5:10). But all voluntary association involves a choice. Everyone who wishes can therefore refrain from it, keeping to the outermost boundaries of civility without ever allowing an approach toward intimacy and familiarity.

33. Surely, if this distance were properly maintained, it might be extremely useful. It would be a kind of lay excommunication, coming very opportunely to supply the lack of ecclesiastical excommunication, now fallen out of use. This seems quite consistent with the judgment of Solon, the wise Athenian lawgiver. Besides shutting the temple doors against adulteresses and barring them from sacred assemblies, he made it a law that an adulteress should not be permitted to wear ornaments. Their dress would thus carry the mark of their infamy.

If we observed a similar distinction, I fear many of our most splendid birds would lose their plumage. Though that measure is not now practicable, the earlier proposal of keeping our distance is, and might be very useful. Besides the protection of the innocent already mentioned, it might perhaps benefit the guilty. They could scarcely avoid reflecting upon themselves with some shame if they were singled out and distinguished in this way. As it is, while they are allowed to mix with the best company, they flatter themselves that they cannot be detected, like wounded deer in a herd.

34. Indeed, the advantage of this course extends still further. It would reach the whole sex, which now seems to suffer a general scandal because of particular people’s faults. We know that any considerable number of smut-diseased ears of grain casts a blackness over a whole field, though, if separated, they might not fill even a small corner of it. In this uncharitable age, things tend to be characterized by the worse part rather than the greater. But if the precious were separated from the vile by some distinguishing mark, a more reliable estimate could be made. I cannot judge womankind so harshly as to disbelieve that the scandalous portion, which now makes so much noise, would then make only a small showing.

35. Besides this, I can suggest only one more way for women of honor to vindicate their sex: make their own virtue as illustrious as possible. Its bright radiance may draw men’s eyes away from the worse prospect. This requires not only innocence but prudence. They must abstain, as from all real evil, “so from the appearance of it too” (1 Thess 5:22). They must give no grounds for criticism by any doubtful or suspicious action. As the apostle says in another case, they are “to cut off occasion from them that desire occasion” (2 Cor 11:11). They must deny themselves even the most innocent liberties when a scandalous inference is likely to be drawn from them.

Perhaps no caution is enough to protect them against the malicious and jealous. Some foul mouth may still slander them. Yet they still have Plato’s resources to fall back upon. When told that some people had defamed him, he said, “It is no matter; I will live so that none shall believe them.” If their lives enable them to clear themselves in the judgment of sober and unprejudiced people, they have all the security that can be sought in this world. For more conclusive testimony they must wait until the unerring tribunal hereafter. There, a sure appeal awaits every injured person who can calmly wait for it.