VIRGINITY AND ITS TRADITIONS.
value," he goes on to point out that the presence or absence of the hymen is no real test of virginity.
"There are many ways," he writes, (Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Philadelphia, 1914: vol. 5: Erotic Symbolism), "in which the hymen may be destroyed apart from coitus. …… On the other hand, integrity of the hymen is no proof of virginity, apart from the obvious fact that there may be intercourse without penetration. …… The hymen may be of a yielding or folding type, so that complete penetration may take place and yet the hymen be afterwards found unruptured. It occasionally happens that the hymen is found intact at the end of pregnancy."[1]
And while the foregoing is the exception rather than the rule, it goes far to prove the fallibility of the physical, tangible test.
To most of us, virginity is a quality supposedly prized at all times and by all races. This is far from the case. As Havelock Ellis points out, (op. cit.), virginity is not usually of any value among peoples who are entirely primitive. "Indeed, even in the classic civilisation which we inherit," he writes, "it is easy to show that the virgin and the admiration for virginity are of late growth; the virgin goddesses were not originally virgins in our modern sense. Diana was the many-breasted patroness of childbirth before she became the chaste and solitary huntress, for the earliest distinction would appear to have been simply between the woman who was attached to a man and the woman who foll-
- ↑ Schuring, in the 17th century, notes a case of this kind. C.f. his Gynæcologia, where he speaks of a girl being pregnant without losing her virginity. Pide note, p. 100 post, where futrher details of the life and works of this erudite physician will be found.
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