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A Protest

About This Item

  • Title: A Protest
  • Date: 13 August 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01155
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 13 August 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "A Protest." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01155.xml (TEI)
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A PROTEST.—

Our modest man, in his matutinal strolls up Fulton street, has had his sensibilities wounded, his feelings hurt, and his native bashfulness shocked, for several weeks past, by the brazen and outrageous exhibitions then and there made of ladies’ wearing apparel. Our modest man mildly objects to being perforce obliged to walk under a grove of ladies’ skirts at every other corner, to having his hat knocked off by dangling “skeletons” and corsets, and to coming across mysterious glass cases containing saucer-shaped stuffings, destined for uncertain but guessable purposes. These things, good messieurs, the store-keepers, should not be exposed in this bare-faced manner to the public eye. At this rate there will soon be left nothing esoteric in the world. The ceremonies of the Bona Dea, did they exist at this present time, would be unravelled in a week. There is no such thing as keeping anything secret, be it private or public. Even the mysteries of the toilet are mysterious no more. That game is played out. Oh, incredulous, inquisitive Yankee intellect, that will be satisfied with nothing short of the Ultimate! Oh, skeptical 19th century! Oh, bogus babies and unsound store keepers! Our modest man enters his protest.

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