the
whole sex question, and out of that reconsideration there must come
a revision of the mediaeval penalties which now punish the slightest
frivolity in the female. The notion that honour in women is exclusively
a physical matter, that a single aberrance may convert a woman of the
highest merits into a woman of none at all, that the sole valuable
thing a woman can bring to marriage is virginity--this notion is so
preposterous that no intelligent person, male or female, actually
cherishes it. It survives as one of the hollow conventions of
Christianity; nay, of the levantine barbarism that preceded
Christianity. As women throw off the other conventions which now bind
them they will throw off this one, too, and so their virtue, grounded
upon fastidiousness and self-respect instead of upon mere fear and
conformity, will become afar more laudable thing than it ever can
be under the present system. And for its absence, if they see fit to
dispose of it, they will no more apologize than a man apologizes today.

43. The Lady of Joy

Even prostitution, in the long run, may become a more or less
respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks. That
quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary;
whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for example, religion,
fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin grammar. The prostitute
is disesteemed today, not because her trade involves anything
intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but because she is
currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity, against
her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is usually unsound is
no objection to it; nearly all the thinking of the world, particularly
in the field of morals, is based upon unsound assumption, e.g., that
God observes the fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a
Sunday-school superintendent. The truth is that prostitution is one of
the most attractive of the occupations practically open to the sort of
women who engage in it, and that the prostitute commonly likes her
work, and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a waitress
for anything in the world. The notion to the contrary is propagated
by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of professional
reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter
in order to cultivate their good will, just as convicts in prison,
questioned by tee-totalers, always ascribe