The Todal posted
>
>It wasn't that long ago that in England a woman was considered to have lost
>her honour if she was in the company of a man without a chaperone and in
>circumstances where she could theoretically have had .ual relations with
>the man because there were no witnesses to the contrary: this is of course
>illustrated in David Copperfield and in the works of Jane Austen. The
>attitude isn't that different, but women wouldn't be killed for having lost
>their honour. Nor, I suppose, would they normally be in Iraq, but maybe a
>poor household takes these things more to heart than a wealthy household.
Moreover, the daughter's boyfriend was a member of the enemy forces
occupying Iraq. It isn't so very long ago that Frenchwomen who had
attached themselves to German soldiers during the occupation were tarred
and feathered (and in some cases much worse) by their own compatriots,
many of whom had spent the war indulging in considerably less honourable
forms of collaboration.
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Les Invalides |