Marital shirt
Cut in a rather rustic canvas, it was not to facilitate relations between spouses, this was the barbaric night costume of our forefathers.
It was in the 18th century that the numb sisters of the convents invented the « Conjugal shirt » for their young residents ready to marry.
According to Anatole France, This nightgown had different names such as « Father La Pudeur's shirt », « shirt to make a Christian » or « Parisian shirt ». It had an opening that allowed the spouses to insure the offspring without revealing the « shameful parts »…
Emilie Carles in fact mentions his father in his autobiographical novel « Wild Herb Soup » :
« It belonged to this generation that had known the long hemp shirts that one never left, even between husbands, even at the time of making love... A hole, « pertuis », practiced at the height of the lower belly allowed to carry out the necessary operations without ever revealing the body« .
God's commandment of growth and multiplication could thus be applied, which at that time was all the primary purpose of marriage.
This hole was sometimes accompanied by encouraging comments like « God wants it. »Not to exacerbate libido muzzled by so much puritanism, but to encourage the most pusillanimous to practice the act commanded by God. Some more elaborate models were equipped with buttons allowing to close it temporarily to make the husband understand that it was not appropriate to venture there at certain critical times.
For man the shirt was equipped with a « portal » equipped with « drawbridge » of which one can easily imagine how it works. The size of this opening was standardised to « one hand under the navel ». This fed the sarcasm of some probably disappointed wives who said to each other « There is more portal than cattle« , which was to cause some gluts and rusts because these things were done but did not say. This nightwear lasted a long time; In 1952 the case of this wife giving birth to her twelfth child was also mentioned, when her husband had never seen her naked...
We are really lucky to have been born, because it was really necessary for our ancestors to obey their only animal reproductive instinct in order to be able to reproduce in such conditions.
Because of its geographical location, the city Lost or pertussis in Latin that means « holed » for the purposes of « passage« . It has always been a crossroads of communication between the sea and the mountain, this is the relationship (if I can express myself in this case) between the dress opening and this city.
Claude Boyer
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