It seems that only highly-cultivated and imaginative women enjoy
the spectacle of a finely-shaped nude man (especially after
attending art classes, and drawing from the nude, as I am told by
a lady artist). Or else the majority of women dissemble their
curiosity or admiration. A woman of seventy, mother of several
children, said to a young wife with whom I am acquainted: 'I have
never seen a naked man in my life.' This old lady's sister
confessed that she had never looked at _her own_ nakedness in the
whole course of her life. She said that it 'frightened' her. She
was the mother of three sons. A maiden woman of the same family
told her niece that women were 'disgusting, because they have
monthly discharges.' The niece suggested that women have no
choice in the matter, to which the aunt replied: 'I know that;
but it doesn't make them less disgusting,' I have heard of a girl
who died from haemorrhage of the womb, refusing, through shame, to
make the ailment known to her family. The misery suffered by some
women at the anticipation of a medical examination, appears to be
very acute. Husbands have told me of brides who sob and tremble
with fright on the wedding-night, the hysteria being sometimes
alarming. E, aged 25, refused her husband for six weeks after
marriage, exhibiting the greatest fear of his approach.
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