Saturday, December 14, 2013

Phrase of the Day: The “Pre-Oscular Agreement”


The humorist describes an American spinster visiting a country-home in England:

She had spoken to Jane of Theodore kissing her like a ton of bricks, and it was precisely thus that she would have liked Henry to kiss her.  His failure to do so, she supposed, was due to his being English.  An Englishman, she thought bitterly, would have to have a signed permit from a girl  before he felt justified in kissing her.
-- P.G. Wodehouse, The Purloined Paperweight (a.k.a. Company for Henry) (1967)

Wodehouse intended that as satire;  and yet, like his countryman Chesterton’s remarks while visiting America during Prohibition, and wondering (rhetorically, satirically) whether someday smoking might fall under a similar ban, the vision has proved prophetic, so far have the ravages of gender-feminist Political Correctness spread in our own day.   In Sweden (and perhaps soon in France), you will need such a document (modeled on the Pre-Nuptial Agreement) to stay out of the law courts.  Read all about it here:

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