Thus it is that to unclothe a person, is to humiliate him;
this was so even in Homeric times, for we may recall the threat of
Ulysses to strip Thyestes.[52]
When clothing is once established, another element, this time a
social-economic element, often comes in to emphasize its importance and
increase the anatomical modesty of women. I mean the growth of the
conception of women as property. Waitz, followed by Schurtz and
Letourneau, has insisted that the jealousy of husbands is the primary
origin of clothing, and, indirectly, of modesty. Diderot in the eighteenth
century had already given clear expression to the same view. It is
undoubtedly true that only married women are among some peoples clothed,
the unmarried women, though full grown, remaining naked. In many parts of
the world, also, as Mantegazza and others have shown, where the men are
naked and the women covered, clothing is regarded as a sort of disgrace,
and men can only with difficulty be persuaded to adopt it. Before marriage
a woman was often free, and not bound to chastity, and at the same time
was often naked; after marriage she was clothed, and no longer free. To
the husband's mind, the garment appears--illogically, though naturally--a
moral and physical protection against any attack on his property.[53] Thus
a new motive was furnished, this time somewhat artificially, for making
nakedness, in women at all events, disgraceful.
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