“It must not be supposed that these women are always easily won; the greatest attentions and fervent solicitations are sometimes requisite, even though there be no other lover in the way.  This happens sometimes from a spirit of coquetry, at other times from a dislike to the party, etc.”

Now coquetry is a cousin of coyness, but in whatever way this Tongan coquetry may manifest itself (no details are given) it certainly lacks the regard for modesty and chastity which is essential to modern coyness; for, as the writer just referred to attests, Tongan girls are permitted to indulge in free intercourse before marriage, the only thing liable to censure being a too frequent change of lovers.

That the anxious regard for chastity, modesty, decorum, which cannot be present in the coquetry of these Tongan women, is one of the essential ingredients of modern coyness has long been felt by the poets.  After Juliet has made her confession of love which Romeo overhears in the dark, she apologizes to him because she fears that he might attribute her easy yielding to light love.  Lest he think her too quickly won she “would have frowned and been perverse, and said him nay.”  Then she begs him trust she’ll “prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange.”  Wither’s “That coy one in the winning, proves a true one being won,” expresses the same sentiment.

UTILITY OF COYNESS

Man’s esteem for virtues which he does not always practise himself, is thus responsible, in part at least, for the existence of modern coyness.  Other factors, however, aided its growth, among them man’s fickleness.  If a girl did not say nay (when she would rather say yes), and hold back, hesitate, and delay, the suitor would in many cases suck the honey from her lips and flit away to another flower.  Cumulative experience of man’s sensual selfishness has taught her to be slow in yielding to his advances.  Experience has also taught women that men are apt to value favors in proportion to the difficulty of winning them, and the wisest of them have profited by the lesson.  Callimachus wrote, two hundred and fifty years before Christ, that his love was “versed in pursuing what flies (from it), but flits past what lies in its mid path”—­a conceit which the poets have since echoed a thousand times.  Another very important thing that experience taught women was that by deferring or withholding their caresses and smiles they could make the tyrant man humble, generous, and gallant.  Girls who do not throw themselves away on the first man who happens along, also have an advantage over others who are less fastidious and coy, and by transmitting their disposition to their daughters they give it greater vogue.  Female coyness prevents too hasty marriages, and the girls who lack it often live to repent their shortcomings at leisure.  Coyness prolongs the period of courtship and, by keeping the suitor in suspense and doubt, it develops the imaginative, sentimental side of love.