Man must be please; but him to please
   Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
   She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
   Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
   Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
   His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
   With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
   A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
   And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
   At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
   She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
   Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.

    -from  Patmore's The Angel in the House




Patmore (pictured above) styled himself "the psychologist of love," and he believed he had an exceptional ability to "discern sexual impurity and virginal purity, the one as the tangible blackness and horror of hell, and the other as the very blessed of heaven, and the flower and consummation of love between man and woman."  Throughout The Angel in the House, which grew more popular as the 19th century progressed, the narrator interperses details of his courtship and marriage with moral calls for woman's purity.   For example, immediately after a poem entitled "The Lover," in which the narrator describes the "love-sick" and "lavish" passions of a young man in pursuit of a  "kiss" upon the "skirt" of a young woman, the narrator upbraids a female prostitute for indulging in similar passions in a poem entitled "Unthrift":

                                             Ah, wasteful woman, she who may
                                                On her sweet self set her own price
                                             Knowing man cannot choose but pay
                                                How has she cheapen'd paradise;
                                             How given for nought her priceless gift,
                                                How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine,
                                             Which, spent with due, respective thrift,
                                                 Had made brutes men, and men divine

You might compare the language extoling female purity in this poem with the language extolling male purity in some of the anti-masturbation texts of this time.   See Representations of Men.   You might also compare the representations of female prostitution with similiar representations later in the Representations of Women section.

As a contrast to the image of the prostitute above, Patmore's wife, Emily (pictured below), served as his idealization of purity and domesticity.


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