And she likes Richard Brathwait's The English Gentleman and The English Gentlewoman, dated 1630 and 1631 respectively. (According to Brathwait, "bashfull modesty" was a woman's ticket to salvation: "Modesty must be your guide, vertuous thoughts your guard, so shall heaven be your goale.") From Shalit's rendering, you might think Brathwait's interesting treatises are travel brochures for a cultural Shangri-la, a utopia to which we can easily return by clicking our heels or reading her book. The reality, of course, is that in the 1630s birth control was almost non-existent and reproduction mysterious. Women were often chattel; marriages were often arranged.
Shalit seems to think that if she can only explain why the olden days were better than today--if only we could understand the things she does--we could transform society overnight. But ideas neither last in a vacuum nor spring forth ex nihilo. Of course some values have eroded in the last century. But the cause of those changes cannot solely be found in the intellectual realm. The automobile probably did more to destabilize traditional values than Nietzsche did. One can argue with Nietzsche. But who, besides Al Gore, will argue with the car?
Shalit ignores the essential insight of modern conservatives, from Burke to Disraeli: Ancient wisdom is a vital guide for reform, not a replacement for it. Human nature, to borrow Glenn Loury's phrase, has no history. But institutions must have a history; if they do not change with the times, they die. If modern society suddenly adopted calling cards and modesty pieces, it would not enjoy an instant moral restoration. It would be hobbled with kitsch.
This might have been prevented if Shalit had researched her book more diligently. William F. Buckley has argued that the neoconservatives' great contribution to the American right was sociology: Where older conservatives had contented themselves with philosophical arguments, the neocons deployed data. But the younger generation of neocons seems to have given up on rigor. Shalit cites perhaps a thousand women's magazines and maybe five actual studies. Letters to Marie Clare may be interesting as anecdotes or as culture chaff, but intellectually they have the nutritional value of a styrofoam cup. She would have been better off exploring, say, sociobiology, a field rich in data that have a great deal to say about modesty.
She also might have been more wary of inconsistencies. In her introduction, she writes sweetly about the idea of fathers giving away their daughters at weddings: "What is really so terrible about `belonging' to someone who loves you?" Thirty-five pages later she attacks a notorious 1976 British House of Lords case, Regina v. Morgan, as a symptom of the decline of modesty. There is a contradiction here, and she misses it.
Regina is a staple feminist anecdote. One evening a man got drunk with three of his buddies. He told them that his wife was really kinky and that she would love it if they each had their way with her. Intrigued, the men went back to his house, where they proceeded to take turns raping his wife. The Lords ruled that the men weren't really guilty of rape because they believed there was implied consent.
Shalit, rightly horrified, believes that old-fashioned notions of modesty would have prevented this episode. (Maybe, maybe not: I'm not convinced that such atrocities did not occur a century ago.) Nevertheless, she sees no tension between extolling a system that says a father can own and then give away a daughter and denouncing the view that once the husband takes possession of the woman he can do as he pleases with her. Paternal ownership and matrimonial ownership are of the same piece--historically, in-tellectually, theologically. In the Third World nations where these institutions still exist--China, India, Central Asia--fathers regularly sell their daughters. If the daughters are lucky, they're sold to a husband.
A Return to Modesty is engagingly written at times, and Shalit's style will doubtless be most effective where it will do the most good: among young women who fear they are alone in questioning Naomi Wolfe's paean to the "shadow slut." Some of Shalit's critics have derided her for being a prude, but that criticism is unfair. If she had partied like a hooker during fleet week, she would have been accused of hypocrisy and dismissed out of hand.
And, yes, Shalit is very bright. But her book is sophomoric in its overconfident ambition. It would be more persuasive if it were a bit more modest.
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