This essay is going to attempt to perform an impossible literary marriage in that it involves the virginity of Muslim women and an apt poem by A. E. Housman, an English poet who could foresee miracles of the future. Whether this marriage will last is a reasonable subject for discussion, but I believe that it is worthy of our investigation at this moment. If the marriage does not work out, I will arrange to finance an annulment.
This started with the publication of a story in The New York Times this week on a procedure known as hymenoplasty. The New York Times has contended from its start that it prints “the news that’s fit to print.” It is also known as “the old gray lady of Times Square.” So by discussing this front page story, it would seem to me that I am not violating any cultural prohibitions.
Over the past several centuries, France has attempted to influence the affairs of neighbors across the Mediterranean in North Africa. Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco were once French possessions. Because of economic conditions, residents of those French speaking countries have emigrated to metropolitan France. I suspect that at this point there may be as many as five million former North Africans resident in France and most have clung to their Muslim faith. A good many of them are now citizens of France. You may recall the great debate when Muslim women attempted to wear their head scarves to school and to work. In the end, they were banned from such practice at the direction of the President of France, Jacques Chirac. But whether the French like the Muslim visitors or citizens, they are a fact of life. It is equally clear that the Muslim population is not about to leave France to take off for its original homes in North Africa. The French people understand this situation and with the exception of a few politicians, seem to say, “The Muslims are with us, so let us get on with the business of governing the fortunes of la belle France.”
Now we come to the sticky part. As young Muslim women grow up in metropolitan France, there are temptations all about them. Some of those temptations are sexual ones. The fact of the matter seems to be that in spite of all of the thundering that comes from Muslim pulpits by the imams and ayatollahs, some Muslim women in France yield to the temptations of love and surrender their chastity. For lovers of chastity such as myself, this is a cosmic disappointment. But the world must go on and we must yield to the inevitable.
In the Muslim world, women are treated basically as commodities. At least that is the way the Muslim faith is practiced as it gets closer to Mecca. According to the code of the Muslim religion, it seems that Muslim men insist upon marrying only virgins. As we learned from The Times story, there are cases in which a woman must submit a document attesting to her virginity to her prospective husband. If a woman enters into a marriage with a Muslim man and he has doubts about her virginity, he can take her back to the shop after the wedding night. I know this is unfairness at its greatest, but that is the way the world works when women are treated as mere commodities.
Now objective observers might ask whether there is a similar test for virginity among the prospective grooms. In point of fact, there is no such test and a Muslim man may embed dozens of women and then still demand that his bride be chaste in all respects. Is that unfair? Of course it is. But that is the way the world works. If I were a Muslim woman, which I am not, obviously, I would not wish to enter into a marriage with a fervent Muslim man because it would mean being confined to the kitchen and the bedroom. On the few occasions when a Muslim woman appears in public, she is often obliged to wear the chadour which is a shapeless black garment which covers her face with a veil and then the rest of the black garment flows down pretty close to the floor. If a Muslim man ever took a woman wearing a chadour to a restaurant, I would be interested in following the progress of the meal as it would require the female to lift her veil each time a mouthful of food was entered. All I can say is that this is no way to live.
My calculation is that the prophet Muhammad who established the Muslim faith was born about 1500 years ago and he established the basic ground rules for conduct between men and women. Over these many centuries, I suspect that there must have been endless torment among women who were intent upon proving their chastity to their new husbands. But now relief has arrived. If a Muslim girl has slipped a few times – or many times – there is now a surgical procedure which will re-establish her virginity. I know that is an oxymoron about re-establishment of her virginity, but that is the way it is. According to The New York Times report, a woman with $2,500 may undergo a procedure known as hymenoplasty which is guaranteed to pass the required inspections and to lead to the husband’s conviction that he has indeed married a pure-bred full fledged virgin. The Times reports that it apparently is an outpatient procedure which requires about half an hour on the operating room table. Once the surgeon has made his last stitch, the prospective bride may leave the operating room and glory in the thought that her chastity odometer has indeed been turned back to zero. If that is what it takes to fool a Muslim groom, I will join in the cheering.
Now there is a poem, which is the other half of this marriage in this essay, called “When I Was One-and-Twenty.” It would seem to fit a young woman who loses her chastity in the vicinity of her 21st birthday, but regains it in the succeeding years. The poem was written in 1896 by an English poet named A. E. Housman. I think it fits the situation quite adequately. Here is the poem.

“When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.’
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
‘The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
‘Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.’
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.”

In the former days, when a Muslim youngster at the age of one-and-twenty “lost her heart out of her bosom” and surrendered her chastity to her lover, the thought would have been, “’Tis paid with sighs a plenty and sold for endless rue.” But now modern surgery has made it possible to avoid those “sighs a plenty” and “endless rue.”
My mathematics, faulty as they are, tell me that the poet Housman wrote “When I Was One-and-Twenty” in 1896, which is about 112 years ago. My belief is that Professor Housman wrote a prescient poem that peered into the future. It peered through the Muslim faith and into modern surgery. If the poet Housman were alive today, I am quite certain that he would add a final verse having to do with the glorious outcome of the procedure known as hymenoplasty.
So there you have an English poem which predates the procedure outlined in The New York Times of June 11, 2008, by 112 years. Beyond all that, I feel a warm glow inside my chest knowing that I have wed an English poem of the 19th century together with a surgical procedure in the 21st century. Every Muslim woman must know that there is now no need to have “sighs a plenty” or “endless rue.” That, my friends, is a heavenly outcome.
E. E. CARR
June 11, 2008
Essay 321
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Kevin’s commentary: As my girlfriend accurately points out, this is basically a procedure in which women go through a painful experience so as to have yet another painful experience. It makes not a whole whole lot of sense. But I suppose if that’s what is necessary to maintain the supposed dignity of the marriage, especially when there are such double standards in place re: male and female sexuality, then it seems like as sensible a decision as any other.