A short time since, some friends drinking tea one summer evening at their residence near Maidenhead, with all the windows of the drawing-room open, there suddenly burst in a host of small flies, which covered the table and the furniture […]

Put in but little Silver or Gold, for if you do, you quite spoil the Compoſition ; but inſtead thereof, add of Tradeſmens Bills for Cloaths, to the Value of 100 l. [¶] Laſtly, Take away the Girl's Maidenhead, and then the Compoſition is fit for Uſe.

Gallants, a bashful poet bids me say,
He's come to lose his maidenhead to-day.
Be not too fierce; for he's but green of age,
And ne'er, till now, debauch'd upon the stage.

My lord,[…]/ I brought you nothing else it may be said / But faith and nakedness and maidenhead.

She prayed to Pallas, and by her help escaped from him in the form of a crow, rejoicing more to keep her maidenhead white under the blackness of the feathers than to lose it and be adorned with the fairest pearls.

So the reference to the plucking of the ginger flower is again an indirect allusion to the taking of the girl's maidenhead .

The gender reversals that pervade this play continue mischievously in the man's maidenhead being the undisclosed secret.

[…] He said that Katheryn told him he should have her maidenhead, though it be painful to her. I told him to be gone with his empty promises of marriage. But I doubt not that Mr. Mannox has known her intimately.

[…] a young virgin makes an even trade of her maidenhead for a hat that she desires. She negotiates with the haberdasher, who originally stipulated for her maidenhead plus a crown […]

The penis imagery becomes apparent: the nails are 'blunt' and 'large', designed to push through the fair skin in body parts (feet, hands) that had earlier been described in erotically-charged language. As if losing his maidenhead, Christ's body 'bursts' when entered, bringing forth a gush of blood that mars his white (womanly) skin.

Almost immediately afterwards, Scanlan discovered that the marriage was legal; Ellie was his wife. He began to feel that he had paid an exceptionally high price for his maidenhead.

Maidenhead

Meaning

Noun

Name

Origin

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