This concealment of the face is more than a convention; it has a psychological basis.  We may observe among ourselves the well-marked feminine tendency to hide the face in order to cloak a possible blush, and to hide the eyes as a method of lulling self-consciousness, a method fabulously attributed to the ostrich with the same end of concealment.[70] A woman who is shy with her lover will sometimes experience little or no difficulty in showing any part of her person provided she may cover her face.  When, in gynecological practice, examination of the sexual organs is necessary, women frequently find evident satisfaction in concealing the face with the hands, although not the slightest attention is being directed toward the face, and when an unsophisticated woman is betrayed into a confession which affects her modesty she is apt to turn her back to her interlocutor.  “When the face of woman is covered,” it has been said, “her heart is bared,” and the Catholic Church has recognized this psychological truth by arranging that in the confessional the penitent’s face shall not be visible.  The gay and innocent freedom of southern women during Carnival is due not entirely to the permitted license of the season or the concealment of identity, but to the mask that hides the face.  In England, during Queen Elizabeth’s reign and at the Restoration, it was possible for respectable women to be present at the theatre, even during the performance of the most free-spoken plays, because they wore masks.  The fan has often subserved a similar end.[71]

All such facts serve to show that, though the forms of modesty may change, it is yet a very radical constituent of human nature in all stages of civilization, and that it is, to a large extent, maintained by the mechanism of blushing.

FOOTNOTES: 

[64] Melinaud ("Pourquoi Rougit-on?” Revue des Deux Mondes, 1 Octobre, 1893) points out that blushing is always associated with fear, and indicates, in the various conditions under which it may arise,—­modesty, timidity, confusion,—­that we have something to conceal which we fear may be discovered.  “All the evidence,” Partridge states, “seems to point to the conclusion that the mental state underlying blushing belongs to the fear family.  The presence of the feeling of dread, the palpitation of the heart, the impulse to escape, to hide, the shock, all confirms this view.”

[65] G. Stanley Hall, “A Study of Fears,” American Journal Psychology, 1897.

[66] Men are also very sensitive to any such inquisitiveness on the part of the opposite sex.  To this cause, perhaps, and possibly, also, to the fear of causing disgust, may be ascribed the objection of men to undress before women artists and women doctors.  I am told there is often difficulty in getting men to pose nude to women artists.  Sir Jonathan Hutchinson was compelled, some years ago, to exclude lady members of the medical profession from the instructive demonstrations at his museum, “on account of the unwillingness of male patients to undress before them.”  A similar unwillingness is not found among women patients, but it must be remembered that, while women are accustomed to men as doctors, men (in England) are not yet accustomed to women as doctors.