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Women's Scandalous Ankles

by Ruthie Alekseeva  
12/11/2023 / Christian Living

A Dancing Civil War Veteran

Jumping his aged legs up and down, Irving spins Ada around and around as a musician swings his bow back and forth across the strings of his violin.

“That’s it, Ada,” Irving says. “You’re doing fine.”

The much younger Ada smiles.

“Do you really think so?” she says.

“Yes, of course,” Irving smiles back at her.

“I’m relieved, Ada says. “Mrs Lovelace always said I had two left feet.”

Irving raises his eyebrows.

“Mrs Lovelace?” he says.

“Yes, my dance instructor and French tutor who I learned from as a child.”

“Ah, but she taught you the quadrille dance, didn’t she? Well, we don’t dance like that anymore, do we? Times have changed.”

As the violinist plucks his last few notes, Irving and Ada spin to a halt.

“I’ll tell you what else has changed,” Irving says. “I want to tell you, that when I was a little boy, women wore long dresses, and some of them swayed way back down there,” he says, pointing at his behind. “Then they commenced wearing them big,” he says pointing at a woman wearing a long dress, “like something like this over here. Then, they commenced cutting them off,” he says, pointing at a spot above Ada’s ankles. “Then, they cut them waaaay up here,” he says, pointing at his knees.

Nudging Ada with his elbow, Irving smiles, saying, “and you never saw such a sight in your life.”

Ada, the violinist, Irving and the young woman in the long dress laugh, then ready themselves for another dance.

A Lovely Victorian Woman

That’s a real-life account of women’s fashions, as described by an old American civil war soldier at the turn of the 19^th Century. I found this account on a YouTube channel called Life In The 1800s. If you watch the video yourself, you will see this civil war veteran doesn’t talk of these changes in women’s fashions with anger nor does he talk about these changes in fashion with condemnation and he doesn’t speak of having overwhelming desires to lust after or molest ladies when he sees women wearing these new shorter outfits. Instead, he talks of these developments in a lighthearted, humorous way and, despite growing up in a much stricter time, rather than leering at and ogling the women he dances with, the YouTube video shows that this man treats the women he’s around with great respect, appearing as if no great struggle with lust is occurring inside of him at all.

Life In The 1800s has another video featuring a 108-year-old Victorian woman. This woman states that she remembers a time when another Victorian lady’s ankle became exposed in front of a bunch of Victorian-era men. The 108-year-old woman says these men stared at this woman’s ankle with great interest until her ankle disappeared from their view. This begs two questions, why was the exposure of a woman’s ankle forbidden in the 18^th century, and where in the world did men of the 19^th century gain the super-human strength to resist such a sight without lusting when, apparently, men of other centuries could not?

A Gentlemanly Grandson

Perhaps, another video on this YouTube channel can answer the first question. The grandson of a man who knew Napolean states,

“The atmosphere [of those times], apart from politics, was one of Puritan piety, very great piety, very great austerity. We always had family prayers at 8 am and, before prayers, I had to do half an hours’ practice at the piano, which I hated.

Although there were eight servants in the house, the food was always of the utmost simplicity and, even of what there was, if there was anything at all nice, I wasn’t allowed to have it, because it wasn’t good for children to eat such things. For instance, there would be rice pudding and apple tart. Grown-ups had the apple tart, and I had the rice pudding.

There was extreme austerity in all those ways. My grandmother, until she was over 70, would never sit in an armchair until after dinner, ever.”

The Puritan piety this grandson speaks of came from a Christian group other denominations of Christianity named the Puritans. The Puritans broke away from the Roman Catholic church in Europe because they believed that the pope and his followers had inserted doctrines into the Christian faith that no one could find written in the Bible, but although we can learn lots of great things about God from the Puritans, some say that, in their zeal to live a God-honouring life, they ended up adding doctrines of their own.

Galatians says, Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.

This verse indicates the importance of the law, but some say the Puritans exalted the law to the point of becoming legalistic. I think I remember in history class my teacher saying that, at one point, Puritans went not only without armchairs until after dinner, but without any kind of chair no matter what the time of day or night.

Although we must repent and obey God’s law, Galatians says that, really, we can’t obey God’s law perfectly and that’s what the Bible means when it says the law is a tutor because our attempts at keeping the law teach us, that this side of Heaven, we can’t obey the law, and that’s why we need Jesus and now that His death on the cross and resurrection has defeated sin, we gain acceptance from God, not by perfectly keeping the law, but by placing our faith in Jesus. So, although the Puritans rightly valued the law they aggrandised it to the point where a mood of austerity - a sternness and severity of manner and attitude and a plainness and simplicity - pervaded society, as the grandson in the above interview expressed. So, I hope this gives a possible reason for why the exposure of women’s ankles remained forbidden in previous centuries. People of those times, although already living in austere conditions - not having cars, running water or refrigerated food - imposed strict rules upon themselves and others, seemingly, without any real rhyme or reason.

An Amusing Entertainer

An unlikely source may help us answer the second question, which was, where in the world did men of the 19^th century gain the super-human strength to resist lusting after woman’s ankles when, apparently, men of other centuries could not? I’ve pondered this question because Purity Culture taught that we should cover our thighs but they didn’t care about shins, calves or ankles.

Well, why not? I wondered. Where did modern-day men get this new-found strength from?

Well, comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, tells a joke about men’s curiosity regarding women’s bodies where he says whatever women won’t let men see, that’s what men want to see. So, if women started wearing hats all the time, never taking them off, men would become irresistibly inquisitive about women’s heads, not because a woman’s head has sexual alure but simply because this secrecy has created a curiosity inside of them.

And that’s something Purity Culture taught. As a teenager, I believed porn magazines contained pictures of completely naked women, and it surprised me when Purity Culture informed me that women in these magazines keep some of their clothing on because a fully naked woman has lost her mystery but a woman with some clothing still on, tantalises. So, if we take Jerry Seinfeld’s word for it, ankles, although not sexually stimulating in the least, if always covered, created an insensible pruriency in men of former generations that we don’t see now.

A Christian Author

And perhaps that’s why C.S. Lewis, author of the book, The Chronicles of Narnia, writes in his other much enjoyed literary work, Mere Christianity, that he,

“doesn’t think that a very strict or fussy standard of propriety is any proof of chastity or any help to it, and I therefore regard the great relaxation and simplifying of the rule which has taken place in my own lifetime as a good thing.”

It seems he’s saying that the newer, shorter fashions didn’t force lustful thoughts into his brain and the longer fashions of older times hadn’t prevented them either.

Jane Austin’s book, Pride and Prejudice, tells a story of a woman who runs off with a man named Mr Wickham, whereupon they commit fornication. Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables, tells of a woman named Fantine who has an illegitimate daughter with a man who doesn’t stick around, and, Gone With The Wind describes a man named Rhett Butler, who spends his time carousing with prostitutes. These people are fictional, I know, but their stories show that, despite the longer, wider, higher-necked styles of those times, lust, fornication and adultery still existed in those societies.

In fact, History of Woman’s Suffrage; Volume 1, says that although both men and women wore garments that provided abundant coverage, sexual desire simmered below the surface in the hearts and minds of many men and women, with them only restraining these urges because of the stigma sexual immorality aroused in those times, a misdemeanour so serious it could affect your social standing in society and your employability. History of Woman’s Suffrage; Volume 1 also says that although men stood when women entered rooms and when they rose from a table, for some men this was only a custom, like us shaking hands today, and after these obligatory behaviours were out of the way, some men behaved towards women in a less respectful manner.

Perhaps, C.S. Lewis noticed this as well and felt women should have the right of dressing in more practical clothing because the long lengths they went with their clothing didn’t purify some men’s behaviour, and so why should women pay the penalty for that? Lewis also defends women by implying that some women dress immodestly because their youth and inexperience leaves them lacking knowledge of how sex works and, even when a woman does know how sex works, sometimes faux pas occur, as when a Hollywood actress’s dress fell down revealing more of her chest than she had intended, much to the paparazzi’s’ delight. Purity Culture never mentioned those two factors. Women should not receive reprimands for accidental exposures such as this, and we must remember that what one culture considers immodest, another culture may condone as normal attire.

A Dutch Stalwart

Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian survivor of the Nazi holocaust, also lived through the transition that occurred in both men’s and women’s clothing during the 1890s and the early years of the century that followed. She states in her book, The Hiding Place, that in 1937, some Dutch women wore skirts that exposed their calves and shins but she still only felt comfortable wearing her dresses above her shoes. She says her father would compliment her and her sister on how pretty they looked in their “new styles” which caused Corrie and her sister much laughter because their younger nieces didn’t enjoy seeing their aunts looking so homely and longed that they would try the newer more chic cuts, which sported shorter neck and hemlines and more cheerful colours. Corrie says she only ever saw the women of her mother’s generation wearing black, which shows another pious Puritanical austerity measure which I’m sure had no real rhyme or reason behind it.

C.S. Lewis says, in Mere Christianity, that the changes he and Corrie experienced in their lifetimes caused confusion over what constitutes a modest or an immodest outfit because people of different ages couldn’t agree. He gave this advice, that older people should not necessarily call younger people corrupt and younger people should not necessarily call older people prudes and Puritans. Instead, we should have “a real desire to believe all the good you can to others and to make others as comfortable as you can,” this, he believed “would solve most problems.” C.S. Lewis wrote Mere Christianity in 1942. It saddens me that these lessons regarding the issue of modesty dressing, which this writer settled so long ago, weren’t heeded and passed onto the Purity Culture generation of the 1990s and early 2000s.

References:

(7) Civil War Veterans Dancing (With Sound): Filmed in 1930 - Enhanced Video & Audio [4k, 60 fps] - YouTube

(7) Victorian women | Life in Victorian times | 108 year old woman | Money Go Round | 1977 - YouTube

(7) My Grandfather Met Napoleon: Bertrand Russell Interview 1952 - Enhanced Video & Audio [60 fps] - YouTube

Galatians 3:24-26 NKJV

Lewis C.S. Mere Christianity p. 85 & 86.

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

History of Woman Suffrage; Volume 1 - 1848-1861

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