The mockery he encountered from the fellow undergraduates who called him “Lady” makes it clear that Milton’s view was not typical of the young men of his day. Then, as throughout most of history, concern with virginity focused on unmarried girls. Milton believed that this focus was a reversal of what should rightly be the case. He had, he later wrote, thought it all through. If unchastity in a woman is a scandal, then it must be even more dishonorable in a man, who is “both the image and glory of God.”
