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Title: Woman: a vindication
Author: Anthony M. Ludovici
Release date: October 4, 2023 [eBook #71805]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Constable, 1923
Credits: Bob Taylor, Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN: A VINDICATION ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
WOMAN
A Vindication
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
A DEFENCE OF ARISTOCRACY
MAN’S DESCENT FROM THE GODS
THE FALSE ASSUMPTIONS OF DEMOCRACY
ETC.
WOMAN
A Vindication
By
ANTHONY M. LUDOVICI
CONSTABLE · LONDON
BOMBAY · SYDNEY · 1923
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
Part I
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
I POSITIVENESS—THE SAYING OF “YEA” TO LIFE 3
II THE SUBJECT TREATED GENERALLY 24
III WOMAN AND HER UNCONSCIOUS IMPULSES 37
IV THE POSITIVE MAN AND THE POSITIVE WOMAN 54
V VIRGIN LOVE IN THE POSITIVE MAN AND THE POSITIVE GIRL 80
VI THE POSITIVE ENGLISH GIRL 104
Part II
INFERENCES FROM PART I
VII THE MARRIAGE OF THE POSITIVE GIRL AND THE POSITIVE MAN 125
VIII BREACHES OF THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT AND DIVORCE 178
IX THE OLD MAID AND HER RELATION TO SOCIETY 229
X THE VIRTUES AND VICES OF WOMEN 280
XI WOMEN IN ART, PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE. THE OUTLOOK. CONCLUSION 346
INDEX 369
INTRODUCTION
“The most disgusting cant permeates everything. Except for the
representation of savage and violent sentiments, everything is stifled
by it.”—Stendhal, _De l’Amour_.
The object of this volume is twofold: in the first place to
raise certain weighty objections to that industrialization and
commercialization of woman, which has stamped the “progress” of Western
Europe during the last fifty years; and, secondly, to reveal woman, not
only as a creature whose least engaging characteristics are but the
outcome of the most vital qualities within her, but also as a social
being in whom these least engaging characteristics themselves only
become disturbing and undesirable when she is partially or totally out
of hand.
While trying to escape the influence of all that “tinsel of false
sentiment” which in the atmosphere of Democracy and sentimentality has
gathered about the subject of Woman in modern England, it has been my
endeavour to defend her against certain traditional and well-founded
charges, by showing that the very traits in her character which have
given rise to these charges form so essential a part of her vital
equipment that it would be dangerous to the race to modify or to alter
them. Thus, despite the fact that there is much in this book that
may possibly strike the reader as unfriendly, if not actually harsh,
I am aware of no other work in which so complete and so elaborate a
plea (from the standpoint of Life and Life’s needs) has been made in
defence of Woman’s whole character, including all that side of it which
the wisest of mankind, and the oldest traditions of mankind, have
consistently and unanimously deprecated.
Couched in the briefest possible terms, my thesis is practically this,
that, whether we contemplate Woman in the rôle of the adulteress, of
the heartless stepmother, of the harlot, or of the creature whose
duplicity has been the riddle of all ages; or whether we contemplate
her as the staunchest of lovers, as the most reliable of allies, as
the mother whose noble devotion to her offspring will drive her to any
extreme of danger in defence of them, and as the representative of that
sex which has given us a Joan of Arc, an Emily Brontë, and an Emily
Davison of Derby fame; we are always confronted by a creature whose
worst can, on final analysis, be shown to be only the outcome of her
best and most vital qualities, turned to evil by mal-adaptation; and
whose best is but the normal and effortless expression of her natural
endowments.
Seeing, however, that among the mal-adaptations which cause Woman’s
best to manifest itself as her worst, I include lack of guidance and
control from the quarter of her menfolk, I range myself naturally
among the Anti-Feminists, though at the same time I most emphatically
disclaim all anti-feminine prejudices. Indeed, so far from this being
the case, I am a deep and passionate admirer and lover of Woman. In
order to love her, however, I do not find it necessary to exalt her to
a plane on which all her sturdier, more vital, and more “dangerous”
characteristics are whittled down to mere sweetness. Those to whom the
love of woman depends upon so gross an idealization of her nature as to
cause them to overlook or deny that “wickedness” in her, which is at
once her greatest vital strength and her most powerful equipment as the
custodian and the promoter of life, will find very little to sustain
them in this love throughout the present volume. And, if in this age
of “Safety first,” they fancy that it is expedient to rear and to love
only those women from whom all “danger” has been removed, they will
find that I have endeavoured to demonstrate to them the extreme peril
even of this plausible ideal.
As far as I know this work represents the first radical attempt that
has been made to differentiate two very definite and dissimilar types
of women—the positive and the negative—and to account for their
respective virtues and vices on the grounds of their peculiarities of
health, tonality, vigour, and constitutional bias in favour of life. It
is my belief that this is a necessary and useful differentiation, that
without it there can be no clarity about Woman, and that the fact that
it has not been attempted by previous writers, accounts for much in
their work which is both unfair and untrue. It must be quite plain to
everyone, that in a world where so-called virtue is all too frequently
the outcome of a _minus_ rather than of a _plus_ in vitality, it
would be grossly inaccurate to class all women together; for while
in the case of one woman chastity may be a great feat of discernment
and self-overcoming, in the case of another whose body is less tonic
and less vital, it may be the easiest of human accomplishments. All
reactions are known to differ according to the vitality of the organism
stimulated. To overlook tonality and vitality in any description of
human beings would therefore be a most unpardonable omission. Thus,
Weininger’s and Schopenhauer’s failure to differentiate between
positive and negative women effectually invalidates, in my opinion,
most of what they have said about her; while a good deal of the rest
of the literature dealing with the subject of sex seems to me to fail
owing to the fact that it makes no attempt to describe a standard or a
norm before it proceeds to expatiate upon sex characteristics and their
consequences.
The fact that a classification on these broad lines does not prevent me
from occasionally bringing charges which will seem severe against the
very type that I most warmly recommend, is in no way inconsistent with
my claim that my work is a vindication; for while I show that all the
charges that I myself advance are only an indictment of Woman in so far
as she is unguided and uncontrolled, I also defend her against many
other harsh judgments which are commonly passed against her, and with
which I will have nothing to do.
Thus in the course of this work, the reader will find that I defend
even the so-called “male” woman against the gibes which recently it
has been the fashion to level against her. And on what grounds do I
undertake her vindication?—I point out that, in a nation that can
boast, as England undoubtedly can, of great and worldwide masculine
achievements in the past, such achievements can only have been possible
because the women of the nation did not too seriously dilute the
masculine qualities of the race, with the element “effeminine.” But for
this to have been the rule, these women must have had a large share
of masculine virtues. I show that other nations, such as the Romans
and the Red Indians, also reared generations of masculine women, and
always to the advantage of the community. These male women, against
whom so much has been said, are therefore merely the vestiges of our
great masculine past. Now they are ill-adapted, because they can no
longer find the men to whose greater masculinity they might adapt
themselves. It is the degeneration of man that is the cause of their
mal-adaptation. Women, or at least the best women, nowadays, are no
longer inspired or uplifted by their association with him.
To reply to this, as most people all too hastily do, that the last
War was a proof that Englishmen at least have not degenerated, does
not constitute a serious objection to my statement. For, after all,
successful fighting is only one—and the most primitive—among the many
desirable qualities that the masculine civilized being has cultivated.
Degeneration may be defined as a departure from the high qualities
of a race or a kind. But it is possible to depart from a very great
number of cultivated qualities, and still to retain the moral and
physical equipment of the good fighter. When, therefore, I seek to
explain a good deal of Woman’s discontent with Man, and most of her
very justifiable contempt of him, by pointing to his degeneration, I
mean that, despite the evidence of the great War, in which the modern
European admittedly revealed the primitive fighting qualities in all
their pristine strength, the man of to-day in many other respects—in
the matter of catholicity of tastes, for instance, versatility of
gifts, will-power, vigour, character, and health—shows a marked
departure from the higher endowments of his ancestors. The fact that
this degeneration is due to the devitalizing, cramping and specialized
labours which several generations of Commercialism and Industrialism
and excessive “Urbanism” have imposed upon the male sex, can hardly be
questioned; and if we are in search of an explanation of Feminism, if
we are anxious to discover how and why it is that women are now coming
forward in large numbers to measure their strength against men in all
those callings and offices which hitherto have been regarded as Man’s
special spheres, we may be sure that the true cause of all this does
not lie so much in a desirable change in Woman’s nature itself, as it
does in an undesirable depreciation in our own general abilities, which
women have been only too slow to observe.
To point to the great War in such circumstances, is only cant; but like
all cant, it is the outcome of a desire to spare our vanity at a moment
when everything points indubitably to our humiliation.
There is, however, no subject in the whole world, or at least in the
whole of our English world, around which more cant has collected, than
the subject of sex and the relation of the sexes. But perhaps it would
be as well to make quite clear what is precisely meant by “cant” in
this respect. With Stendhal, I am of the opinion that cant is created
more by vanity than by Puritanism, or the sense of propriety. And it is
because vanity is involved, that the fight against cant is so stubborn.
If Psycho-Analysis had really assailed our vanity, instead of merely
offending our sense of propriety, we should have heard much less about
it. Also we have only to think of the huge popular success of writers
like Zola in order to assure ourselves that for a man’s work to be
hushed up and ignored, he must be guilty of a greater crime than the
mere violation of the proprieties or conventions.
As a rule, mankind will listen patiently when it is told of the
material and not infrequently sordid animal background to some of its
dearest emotions; for, after all, it is only disturbed in its prudery
by such revelations. But proceed to tear away the tinsel of cant from
those activities, for instance, which are alleged to be humanitarian,
“unselfish,” or to belong to the class known as “self-sacrifice,” and
point out how all these activities themselves invariably arise from
purely egotistical emotions and desires, and mankind will immediately
become both incredulous and indignant. Why is this? Obviously because a
very large section of the population of the western world find the very
basis of their self-esteem in the activities enumerated. To show the
egotistical root of these activities, as Hobbes, Helvetius, Stendhal
and Nietzsche consistently did, is therefore to wound these people in
the very sanctuary of their vanity; and those against whom this kind
of violence is attempted nowadays usually retaliate with both rancour
and rage. Hence the determination with which writers like Hobbes,
Helvetius, Nietzsche and Stendhal are forgotten and ignored.
Over the writings of all these men there hangs a very pronounced and
unmistakable fragrance, which may be almost painful at the first
inhalation, and a certain atmosphere which has a noticeably low
temperature. Frequently this atmosphere is quite glacial, and produces
the distinctly unpleasant reaction of goose-skin in the reader’s mind.
Both in the ideas they present, and in their manner of presenting them,
these authors scorn to please. They all possess the same penetrating
insight into the psychology of man; they reveal what the French call
“_une psychologie fouillée_,” and their honesty is hampered by no
desire to fortify themselves or their fellows in their self-esteem.
Unlike Swift, however, it is certain that these men did not write
“to vex the world more than to divert it,” but because they realized
that certain falsifications of sentiment are dangerous and lead to
degeneration.
Now there is an instinctive inclination in every reader to identify
himself with the picture of humanity presented to him in the book
that he happens to be perusing, whether it be a novel or a scientific
treatise. Naturally enough, therefore, he is exposed to the severest
shocks if at every turn he is prevented from idealizing his own nature,
or from thinking too well of it, owing to the fact that the picture
he is contemplating is too humiliating to be pleasant, and yet too
convincing to be lightly rejected.
The bulk of modern readers, however, are women. This fact, too well
known to editors and publishers, is quite inadequately understood
from the standpoint of its influence on taste and quality in literary
production. For not only do women reveal the trait common to all
readers, which consists in a tendency to identify themselves with
one of the characters of a novel, or with the portrait of humanity
presented in a scientific treatise, but they are also addicted to the
practice of confounding that which is pleasant to themselves with that
which is true. Thus in the woman reader there is a twofold tendency
to tolerate or to applaud cant; for, on the one hand, she views truth
hedonistically, and, on the other, she feels deep discomfiture,
either when she finds herself unable, through her false idealization
of herself and her motives, to identify herself with the anti-cant
portrayal of a certain heroine (Stendhal’s Félicie Féline, for
instance), or, when she finds her reading of human nature, which is
based upon her idealized reading of herself, affronted by a picture of
humanity which shatters her rosy view.
To the influence of women in this connexion, however, ought in all
fairness to be added that of a vast number of men, who, in these days,
whether from the same hedonistic view of truth, or prompted by a
certain poltroonery and vanity in the face of reality, tend to shrink
ever more and more from any understanding of human relations and the
passions that govern them, which would distort their comfortable and
comforting assumptions concerning both. If, however, they actually
form, together with the women, a force sufficiently powerful to govern
the taste of the day, especially in the world of literature and in that
department of it which treats of human psychology, we may well feel
some anxiety concerning the real worth of that literature. If Byron and
Stendhal could honestly complain of cant even in their time, what can
be our position to-day?
* * * * *
Frankly acknowledging my indebtedness to the school of writers that can
be said to have adopted the rigorous psychological uprightness of our
great philosopher Hobbes, I have endeavoured also to strip the “tinsel
of sentiment” from one of the most important of human relations, in
order, if possible, to build afresh, and to build wholesomely, where
too much confusion and too much falsehood have been allowed to flourish
in the past. In order, however, to protect myself from a charge to
which the asperity and frequent severity of my language is almost sure
to expose me, it may be as well for me to state at once that, unlike
many that have written on the subject of Woman, I have been animated by
no bitterness and by none of those unhappy experiences which often warp
judgment and impair the vision. On the contrary, to all my principal
relations to women I owe the most pleasant and possibly some of the
most valuable experiences of my life.
Unlike Schopenhauer, Byron, or Balzac, my relationship to my mother
was an exceptionally devoted and happy one. Both friends and relatives
are unanimous here, and have frequently declared that they rarely saw
anything to equal it, both on her side and on my own. Up to the time
of her death she was my best and dearest friend, and in my passionate
love for her, my love for my subject may well be said to have begun.
What has my relation to other women been? In this regard I can only
say that, though I have spent an enormous amount of my time with
women, I have never suffered the smallest wrong at the hands of any
one of them; neither have I had any experience which could possibly
give me a distorted view of the sex, or a resentful attitude towards
it as a whole. I have learned a tremendous deal from women, and,
having not a little of the woman in me besides (and to _comprise_ is
to _comprehend_), I have through the usual channels of introspection
been able to supplement my objective studies with a good deal of
subjective information. From my earliest youth, too, the subject of sex
has interested me deeply. True, it interests every one deeply; but I
have fortunately never felt any of the customary shame that so often
arrests thought and speculation on the subject. Neither can I say that
my environment was ever of a kind to hinder me in my free and careful
study of it. Brought up in an atmosphere of art and literature, I never
became acquainted with that false modesty and embarrassment that seizes
upon most young people when, for the first time, they are confronted
with the most mysterious and fascinating subject of existence. I was
allowed to dwell on the question, had no reason to suppose it was wrong
to do so, and even when, at the age of ten I took my first steps in the
science of physiology—a subject I used to beg all my elders to instruct
me upon—I and they little knew that I was anticipating, by at least
six years, a passionate interest in the principal and most fundamental
question of human relations. To this day I remember the little green
manual of Physiology, by Professor Huxley, that my governess put into
my hands, and I cannot say I remember any book better, save perhaps
another little green volume containing Schopenhauer’s essays on _Woman
and the Metaphysics of Love_, which I read when I was eighteen. At the
age of nineteen I wrote my first book, which bore the title _Girls and
Love_; but, needless to say, it was never published. And ever since
the subject of sex has scarcely ever ceased from occupying my mind in
various ways. For the rest, I have listened with respectful attention
to the voice of the Ancients—of the Orient, of Egypt and of Greece—and,
as usual, have listened most intently there where I knew relative
permanence to have been achieved and humanity to have flourished best.
Such preoccupations in regard to a matter that ought to be so natural,
so well ordered, as to be taken for granted, just as breathing is, can
denote but one thing, namely: that to the thoughtful, nowadays, sex
has undoubtedly become a real and puzzling problem; that is to say,
something that is not in order, that is not properly understood, and
that every one has, as it were, to face and to overcome for himself
afresh, before he can “carry on,” and before he can allow time and age
to overtake him.
In the present work I have attempted to be as clear and as
straightforward as is compatible with the task of handling a delicate
subject delicately. I am convinced that a good deal of the dangerous
silence that hangs over the vital and fundamental questions I shall
sometimes have to touch upon, owes its existence for the most part to
the unfortunate fact that the subject of sex, outside medical circles,
has hitherto usually been confronted by only two classes of mind—the
puritanically prudish, who have done their best to shelve it, and their
opposite extreme, the licentious and libidinous, who have refrained
from no excess or extravagance that could possibly offend and startle
their opponents in the opposite camp. With neither of these classes
have I any connexion. I object to the licentious as wholeheartedly as
to the Puritanical. I protest against being suspected unjustly of a
licentious turn of mind, because I venture to speak freely concerning
a subject that is systematically hushed up to the peril of all; I also
protest most emphatically against being suspected of Puritanism because
I make no attempt to conceal my loathing of certain modern aspects of
the sexual relationship.
Part I
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
CHAPTER I
Positiveness—The Saying of “Yea” to Life
(1) SEX _VERSUS_ DEATH
A scheme of life that includes death as the periodic end of each
generation of beings must, if it is to persist, include some form of
periodic reproduction of life. Reproduction, or the reproducing of a
fresh generation of beings, is thus the necessary balance of death.
This sounds the merest platitude. But it is a platitude that cannot be
dwelt upon too often or too carefully, if one remembers how constantly
and obstinately its consequences are denied or vilified.
To speak of the higher organic life on this globe as sexual, therefore,
is merely to state in other words, that all higher organic life is
doomed to die, and must be replaced by new life. Abolish death and you
abolish the meaning and the need of sex and reproduction. Abolish sex
and reproduction, and, if you cannot establish eternal higher organic
life, the higher organic life of the globe must for ever perish.
At least for human beings and myriads of animals, Death and Sex are
consequently counterparts. Sex with its purpose, reproduction, might
be regarded as the contrivance for circumventing Death, for nullifying
it, for cheating it of its complete victory over life. And that is why
all dreams or concepts of eternal life are, and cannot help being,
tainted by a certain hostility to sex: because where eternal life is
the scheme, sex drops out. Conversely, all hostility to eternal life is
and cannot help being tainted by a certain positiveness, friendliness
and favour towards mortal life and its ally sex: because where eternal
life is an impossibility, sex is indispensable.
It is for this reason that, in its depths, Christianity is more logical
and more acceptable to a rational man than Mohammedanism. Christianity,
accepting the concept Eternal Life, says: “In heaven there will be
no marriage or giving in marriage.”[1] It realized that you cannot
eat your cake and have it. Mohammedanism, while accepting the concept
Eternal Life, imagines an eternity of sex-life into the bargain, which
is an absurdity. Mohammed did not realize that you cannot eat your cake
and have it. Read the Koran and you will understand how it happened
that he could be guilty of this confusion of thought.
Sex, then, while as a scheme it is opposed to eternal life, is
nevertheless the enemy of _death_—the most unconquerable, crafty,
resourceful and untiring enemy of death—so much so, indeed, that
whereas mortal life is not nearly such a good opposite of death as is
eternal life (for the dead mortal is eternally dead to this world), sex
might, and in this book will be regarded as _the_ opposite of death,
the reverse of death.
This point is important in any case; but it is particularly important
to me in this book; because all my conclusions will be based upon
it. To repeat, then, the equation reads: Sex = Mortal Life; No-Sex =
Eternal Life, or, in the absence of Eternal Life, Death.
From this chapter onwards, however, save in regard to the one
particular question of virtue, I shall cease from considering Eternal
Life; because, as we see from the equation, Eternal Life and Death come
strangely as correlatives together—that is to say, for all ordinary
purposes, and as far as this world is concerned, they mean the same
thing—they both oppose mortal life and sex.
A very significant conclusion arises from this: that in this conflict
of sex and death, all those who are opposed to sex, or who call it
a sin, or who associate it with guilt, or who cast odium upon it,
range themselves on the side of death; while all those who stand by
sex, favour it, wish to vindicate it, and claim for it a character
absolutely free from all sin, guilt or odium, range themselves against
death. Here Christianity is quite logical. At its root it is hostile
to mortal life, and in favour of Eternal Life. But it never refers to
Eternal Life as a possibility on this globe, but always as an existence
that is a correlative of _death_ on this globe.
Christianity, therefore, being an advocate of Eternal Life, very
logically preaches that sex is to be deplored, to be avoided, and,
if possible, negatived. And the Puritan, who may be regarded as
the extreme Christian, is notorious for his implacable loathing of
sex. Unconsciously he sees quite clearly that any scheme of organic
life that involves sex, must be a substitute for eternal organic
life[2]—which in an idealized form is the life for which he has been
taught to crave. Death to him, therefore, is merely a merciful gateway
leading from Sex into Eternal Life. Being the foe of Sex, he knows
quite well that Death must be his ally, his accomplice, his ringleader,
in his conspiracy to realize Eternal Life.
Is this quite clear? For the present I have wished to say nothing
concerning the respective merits either of Sex, Death, Eternal Life,
or Mortal Life; I have only wished to point out that, as schemes, as
ideas, they are mutually exclusive and irreconcilable, and that you
cannot desire the one without thereby coveting the doom of the other.
As far as this world and its problems are concerned, however—and who,
if you please, stands outside this world and its problems?—we have to
deal with one kind of life only—Mortal Life. As I have shown, the
necessary correlative of Mortal Life, if it is to continue, is Sex. We
are concerned, therefore, immediately and directly, with Mortal Life,
and its indispensable correlative Sex. We need not accept the scheme
as it is thus unceremoniously thrust upon us. We can deny Mortal Life
and its concomitant need, Sex, by putting an end to everything at least
for ourselves, through straightway committing suicide the very moment
we realize that Mortal Life and Sex are undesirable. If, however, we
accept the proposition, “Mortal Life is desirable,” we necessarily
commit ourselves to the rider, “Sex is desirable.” These features are
all we know concerning Life; they constitute the two sides of the only
kind of Life of which we are aware, and however real and realistic our
visions of an Eternal Life may be, however vivid our mental pictures of
a Heaven may seem, such visions and such mental pictures, as we very
well know, are of a kind the true existence of which is quite incapable
of proof or demonstration; whereas Mortal Life is here before us, with
us and in us, and the way to live it is our chief concern; the way to
live it well so that it may redound to the benefit and credit of all,
is our highest concern.
Throughout this book, I shall argue on the assumption that the reader,
like myself, believes that mortal life is desirable. I shall take
it for granted that he, like me, is content to allow transcendental
questions to weigh with him only in so far as they do not render him
hostile to Mortal Life. I shall therefore assume all along that he
believes, as I do, that Sex is desirable, however far the consequences
of such an admission may lead him.
Be this as it may, let him entertain no qualms as to the direction in
which I wish these consequences to lead him. There are more than two
alternatives in the choice of one’s attitude to Sex. To most people
there appear to be but two opposite extremes: the attitude of the
lecherous reprobate who makes decent women ashamed of being women;
and the attitude of the Puritan who, in his heart of hearts, feels
that if only he could have been at the Almighty’s elbow at the time
of the Creation, he would have respectfully suggested a somewhat more
“drawing-room” method of propagating the species.
To neither of these attitudes has this book, or the spirit of it,
even the remotest relation. The acknowledgment that Mortal Life is
desirable, and that consequently its indispensable correlative Sex
is desirable, can be made by a man in full possession of a healthy
control over his passions,[3] in a state of complete mastery over his
appetites, and endowed with the most fastidious taste as to where
normal desire and its gratification end, and where excess begins.
Extremes belong only to the uncultured, to the hogs of life. It is they
who make everything appear disgusting, simply because they are unable
to approach a single aspect of life with that amount of understanding
and reverence which is due to all things connected with the sacred task
of making mankind and his existence an honour and not a curse to the
universe.
To accept the proposition that Mortal Life is desirable and to commit
one’s self by so doing to its inevitable rider that Sex is desirable,
may lead one very far, as this book will show; but, if it lead one to
a tastelessly pornographic or licentious attitude towards the most
fundamental instinct of life, then one is of a nature that has no right
to Mortal Life, much less, therefore, to its indispensable correlative
Sex.
Without wishing to labour this point, but with a keen sense of the host
of misunderstandings and prejudices that will cling like barnacles
to a book of this kind, unless I make my position unmistakably clear
from the start, let me put the case a little differently by the use of
another instinct of Mortal Life. Let me say, to accept the proposition,
_Mortal Life is desirable_, is to commit one’s self to its inevitable
rider that eating and drinking are desirable. There is no objection
to this statement as it stands. All who endorse Mortal Life also
endorse eating and drinking. And those who attack eating and drinking,
simultaneously strike at Mortal Life.
This conclusion, however, provides absolutely no sanction for those
who are sufficiently material and gross to make food and drink
things of shame and of horror. No man, therefore, need fear lest by
acknowledging that eating and drinking are desirable he should find
himself supporting gluttony, drunkenness and bestiality of all kinds.
It is, however, a strange and significant coincidence that, where we
find hostility to Sex, we also find a certain suspicion of all things
connected with the body. The Puritans did not accept Sex as desirable;
at the best they held it to be a necessary evil; but we also find the
Puritans hostile to eating and drinking, and not only to excessive
eating and drinking. I have already shown with sufficient elaboration
elsewhere what regrettable reforms in food and drink they introduced
into England in the seventeenth century.[4] This only supports my
contention that you cannot be hostile to Sex without being hostile to
Mortal Life in general.
If, therefore, you believe that the acceptance of Sex is immoral, as
Otto Weininger did;[5] if you believe, as he did, that “woman is the
sin of man”;[6] if, moreover, you claim, as he did, that “it is the
Jew and the woman who are the apostles of pairing to bring guilt on
mankind”;[7] if, again, you assert that “sexual union is immoral”;[8]
that “women must really and truly and spontaneously relinquish it”;[9]
that “woman will exist as long as man’s guilt is inexpiated, until
he has really vanquished his own sexuality”;[10] that “man must free
himself of sex, for in that way, and that way alone, can he free
woman”;[11] and, finally—this gem of negativeness: “all sexuality
implies degradation”;[12]—if this be your position, I say, then, you
must logically be hostile to Mortal Life, and you cannot rationally
accept it. Your only course is to commit suicide. This, as we know,
Otto Weininger was logical and consistent enough to do. He died by his
own hand on October 4, 1903.
(2) MORTAL LIFE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ACCEPTED
As we have seen, it is impossible to have it both ways and to remain
consistent. You are at liberty, of course, to take up the Puritan’s, or
Otto Weininger’s, or St. Paul’s attitude towards Sex; but, by so doing,
you straightway disclaim Mortal Life itself and reject it utterly. Let
this be quite clear to you before you go any further, because a good
deal depends upon this simple but profoundly significant issue. The
fact that St. Paul and the Puritans did not put an end to themselves
right away, as Otto Weininger was clear-headed and honest enough to
do, need not disturb you. Fanatics are rarely clear-headed, and they
are scarcely ever honest. It is sufficient for my purpose to point to
St. Paul’s and the Puritan’s hostility to life in general in order
to show that, although they did not reach the logical end of their
journey, they were certainly well advanced along the road thither.
Besides, if you study St. Paul and the Puritans, you will find, as I
have done, that there is perhaps another explanation to their apparent
inconsistency.
A man may remain longer than he likes in a certain vicinity or
apartment, if he feels it his duty, before taking his leave, to get
others to accompany him thence, to persuade and exhort others to
forsake the place as well. St. Paul certainly felt it his duty to act
in this way, and so for that matter did Schopenhauer.
For us who accept Mortal Life and say “Yea” to it wholeheartedly,
there are certain very grave duties too. The thing to which we say
“Yea,” we wish to keep both clean, sweet and alluring. This world is
our home, and we take a pride in it. We must make it such that we are
able to take a pride in it. We recognize that Mortal Life includes
pain as a prominent factor; but, provided that pain is practically
inseparable from the best purposes of life (as, for instance, the pain
of self-discipline, self-mastership, the pain of habituation to new
knowledge, new arts, the pain resulting from the natural relationships
to our myriads of fellows, and the pains of child-birth), we say “Yea”
to it too, and with the same wholeheartedness.
We do not shrink from pain, as Schopenhauer did, we do not magnify it
or concentrate upon it, as he did, and condemn the whole of existence
because of it. We do not call our glorious history, as the King of the
Animals, the _Martyrdom of Man_, as Winwood Reade did. We call our
history the _Triumph of Man_; and it is because we wish to maintain it
as the triumph of man that we face it with spirit and positiveness.
Our duties are grave, I say; they involve everything, in fact, that can
be conceived as belonging to the task of keeping that to which we say
“Yea” in the highest degree worthy of our “Yea”—worthy, that is to say,
of our unreserved acceptance.
The conduct of Mortal Life, therefore, is our principal concern. And
for this conduct to be correct and fruitful in good things, we must be
quite clear as to the “shall” and the “shall not” of what we should
hate and what we should love, of what we should call bad, and what we
should call good.
Throughout this book the word “good” will always mean “_that which is
favourable to the best kind of Mortal Life and its multiplication_.” If
this book reveals any hate at all, it will be for that which is hostile
to the best kind of life, and if it reveals any love at all it will be
for everything that is friendly to the best kind of life.
This takes us far, no doubt; but not farther, I believe, than anyone
should wish to go who has said “Yea” honestly and sanguinely to Mortal
Life.
For instance, in opposition to men like St. Paul, Knox, Calvin, Prynne,
Schopenhauer, Otto Weininger and their like, we say that Sex is good,
Woman is good, the flesh is good. And we heartily dislike men like St.
Paul, Knox, Calvin, Prynne, Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger because
their attitude shows not only hostility to Woman and to Sex, but also,
by implication, to Mortal Life, to which we have said “Yea.”
We call _good_ all that which actuates us and maintains us in a proper
exercise of our functions, and makes Mortal Life desirable: appetite,
desire, lust, motherhood, fertility, reproductive love, reverence for
the body, prepossession in favour of health and prejudice against
sickness, respect of love, of beauty and of its multiplication. We also
call _good_ the loathing of ugliness and the desire to suppress it; we
therefore approve of deep suspicion towards ugliness and illness, and
towards everything and everybody that attempts to give ugliness and
illness fine-sounding and euphemistic names, and we cultivate a love of
moderation and a loathing of excess.
We call _bad_ all that thwarts us in a proper exercise of our functions
and all that makes Mortal Life undesirable or seem undesirable:
loss of appetite or desire, the abuse of appetite or desire, as of
all things; the finding of excuses or extenuating circumstances for
ugliness, botchedness and sickness. We also call the following _bad_:
excess, sterility, non-reproductive love, prostitution, homosexuality,
irreverence towards the body, the setting of transcendental questions
before vital questions.
On our side, in our advocacy of the first-named things, we have our
instincts which, if they are sound, confirm us on every point.
It frequently happens, however, that Mortal Life is so difficult, and
those who preach against it are so many, so eloquent and so powerful,
that we need almost an intellectual assent over and above our
instinctive acceptance of it. For it is precisely in the moments of our
greatest weakness, when we feel uncertain, when we have made mistakes
and know that we have erred, that the preachers against life and the
body, and against the fundamental instincts and desires of Mortal Life,
will seem to be right, will seem almost to convince us that they are
right. Like vultures they wait afar off till they see the body of our
trust and hope in life, the corpse of our clean conscience, prostrate
on the ground, and then down they swoop and devour the carrion that is
their natural food.
It is before such disasters happen that an intellectual assent to
the deepest promptings of our instincts is the greatest need of all.
In practical life it may be taken as a general rule that it is more
helpful to have an intellectual justification for our mistakes and the
instincts that have led to them, than the most convincing theories
in favour of our virtues. For it is innocence in the exercise of our
natural functions that the preachers against Mortal Life and the body
are most anxious to undermine, and most successful in undermining. And
how often, particularly when an instinct has, so to speak, “drawn in
its horns,” or ceased to assert itself owing to a momentary mistake,
check or rebuff, would not an intellectual justification of its
vigorous re-assertion help us to tide over the evil hour without our
falling a prey to the opposing party—to the enemies of Mortal Life and
the body!
If, however, we bear in mind the maxim that everything is “good” that
is favourable to the best kind of Mortal Life, and everything is
“bad” that is unfavourable to the best kind of life; if, moreover,
we stand bravely and firmly by the principle that Mortal Life is
acceptable and desirable, and therefore that all it exacts for its
continuance must also be acceptable and desirable, and consequently
that the things of the body—beauty, charm, ardour—together with the
flesh, the world, sex, woman, procreation, multiplication and good
food, are for the glory, joy and exaltation of Mortal Life and man;
if, over and above all this, we heroically embrace pain as a necessary
incidental factor in the process of living, then, I say, we have an
intellectual weapon far more formidable and far more effective for
the warding off of those vultures of gloom and doubt—the preachers
against life and the body—than any known engine of destruction could
possibly be. It is this intellectual attitude to Mortal Life, with all
its consequences in our code of morals, our likes and dislikes, that
throughout this book I shall call the “_positive_” or “_yea-saying_”
attitude: while the opposite attitude of mind will be designated by
the word “_negative_.”[13] Nor shall I refer any longer in these pages
to “Mortal Life,” but will speak merely of Life itself: for not only
is it the only kind of life that will concern me here, but also, as
we know nothing about Eternal Life, and our only notions of life are
derived entirely from what we know of Mortal Life, Mortal Life and Life
are to all intents and purposes one and the same thing for us, and
the expression “Mortal Life” can well fall out at this stage of the
discussion.
(3) THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POSITIVE MIND
Unless they are very delicate or very sick, all children are positive.
They are fresh from the anvil of Life. Life itself speaks through them
without reserve, without constraint. They have made no mistakes yet,
or are not aware of having made any; they have had none of those rude
shocks that shake our faith in Life and render us an easy prey to those
vultures of which I have already spoken, that live on the carrion
of shattered hopes and broken consciences. They say “Yea” to Life
innocently and unconsciously, like kittens playing with balls of wool.
And it is because they say “Yea” to Life innocently and unconsciously
that they are so deeply interesting to the positive philosopher.
Because in them he sees the attitude which he must maintain and
sustain intellectually, despite all the shocks and misfortunes life
has brought. But I point out again that I speak of this intellectual
positiveness only as a helpful confirmation of sound instincts. If the
sound instincts are not there, the positive intellectual attitude is
nothing but a pose.
There is something strangely pathetic about this positiveness of the
child. The philosopher knows the wilderness it is in. He knows that
on the mountain peaks all around, the vultures are waiting hungrily
to see it make its first mistake, to see it writhe under its first
misfortune—or its first “guilt” as they like to call it. He knows with
what extraordinary vigilance they are tracking its footsteps, so that
they may be there in time, so that they may be at its side in the first
moment of its doubt in Life, to tell it that Life is sinful, that
lust is sinful, that sex is sinful, that the World, the Flesh and the
Devil are interchangeable terms. And the positive philosopher cannot
help wondering with some alarm how the child will survive this first
encounter with doubt, with suspicion, and with distrust concerning that
to which a moment ago it said “Yea” so wholeheartedly.
The positive philosopher trembles over the outcome of the conflict.
With fear and trepidation he forges the weapons of intellectual
positiveness and flings them with anxious prodigality before the child,
hoping that they will sustain it in the struggle and confirm its best
instincts; trusting with all his heart that they will revive its
“Yea” to Life before it is completely overcome. And when the positive
philosopher succeeds in this and sees the birds of ill-omen turn
disconsolately away, foiled in their endeavour, he celebrates his feast
of feasts; because there is more rejoicing in his heart over one child
that is saved from negativeness than over thousands that repent!
To the positive philosopher, then, the healthy child is the best
pattern for the yea-saying and positive man. The only danger the child
is in, as I have shown, consists in the fact that it is intellectually
unprepared to justify its “Yea” in the face of the preachers of “Nay.”
Apart from this one flaw, however—which in a universally positive
world would not be felt as a disadvantage at all (because it is
only in negative environments and negative ages that a conscious or
intellectual confirmation of one’s soundest instincts is necessary)—the
child, or the animal for that matter, presents the perfect example
of the positive attitude towards Life. The positive philosopher,
therefore, learns from the child, and watches it with interest.
The principal characteristic of the healthy child is, that it does
not play with its primary appetites; it does not laugh about them;
it cannot abide a joke about them. Watch a healthy child eat! It is
absolutely serious, absorbed, concentrated, intent! A very healthy boy
will even frown over his meal, just as he will frown when he eats a
piece of chocolate. It is obvious from his expression that eating is no
joke with him. It is one of the gravest, most pressing, most engrossing
interests in life. And the same holds good of all healthy, positive
adults. Watch a healthy and positive adult at his meals; he is serious
to a fault! It is only when the demands of his body have been satisfied
that he begins to indulge in levity. The man who habitually jokes at
the beginning of a meal is past salvation. He is negative by nature and
cannot be rescued.
Seriousness towards the primary instinct of self-preservation is
one of the principal characteristics of the healthy child. But the
healthy child is not yet fully, consciously concerned about any other
instinct; if it were—if, for instance, it were fully conscious of the
reproductive instinct—we may be quite sure that it would take it quite
seriously too; for it is serious—most serious perhaps—even when it is
playing.
In spite of all the apparent light-heartedness of the healthy child,
which is all that superficial people can see in it; in spite of the
ease with which it turns from sleep to wakefulness, from tears to
laughter, and _vice versâ_, there is a profundity, a sobriety, a
solidity about its seriousness that nothing can affect. It takes its
own body, itself, the world, and life tremendously seriously. It takes
its wants and its desires seriously. It takes its loves and its hates
seriously. Little children can be homicidal in their loathing of other
children; they can be heroic in their devotion. Those who always depict
children with a smile on their chubby faces, and hopping about on one
leg, know nothing about them. They know nothing of the imperturbable
gravity of the child, and of positiveness generally.
To watch the face of an elderly, negative spinster when a really
healthy boy loses his temper, is to witness in one human countenance
the whole history of the long conflict between those vultures of which
I have spoken and the artless yea-sayer to Life.
Later on, if he is carefully handled, this boy will take his love
seriously; he will cling to the girl he chooses in a manner that will
make that same spinster marvel at his determination, and he will be as
fierce and as serious in his desire for the woman of his choice as he
once was over his games, over his hates, and over his meals.
Laughter is not nearly such a common characteristic of healthy positive
life as the superficial imagine—more particularly noisy laughter. In
every mixed party where much loud laughter or shrill laughter is heard,
there is sure to be a good deal, not of gaiety, not of wanton spirits,
but of nervous irascibility, sexual excitation, and particularly
sexual abstinence, exasperation and—negativeness! He who travels the
world over ascertains this curious fact: that loud, shrill laughter is
essentially the social _noise_ of Puritanical countries.
Positive people take too serious an attitude to life, to themselves, to
each other, and particularly to members of the opposite sex, constantly
to vent what they feel in an idle cackle or giggle. They laugh, but
their hilarity is short, violent, and apparently effective; because
it seems to relieve them for longer periods than does the laughter of
negative people.
_One of the chief characteristics of the positive mind, then, is the
gravity, the solemn interest, with which it confronts life itself, the
body that holds it, and everything vital, including sex._
Behold the healthy child, and you have an automaton guided absolutely
by a positive mind! To retain this positive mind throughout one’s
youth and adulthood is the greatest triumph—particularly nowadays—that
anyone can achieve. He who achieves it may well laugh; he has a right
to laugh; for he has mastered the most redoubtable foe a man can
encounter—the powerful false values that are now seeking to prevail
everywhere, and over the victims of which the vultures are muttering
their thanksgiving.
The only positive form of laughter is the expression of a consciousness
of acquired power. This is Hobbes’ view, it was Stendhal’s view; it
is the biologist’s view, who says that laughter is the expression of
superior adaptation.
Another characteristic of the positive mind _is its forgetfulness in
regard to the things that incapacitate it for taking a lively interest
in life_. This quality of the mind is simply a spiritual counterpart
of the healthy body’s power of evacuating those portions of the food
absorbed which cannot be assimilated without hurt: forgetting and
digesting being the same function of evacuation in two different
departments. The positive mind, like the healthy body it is in,
knows how to get rid of a useless thing quickly—in fact knows how
to forget. Things do not weigh on it, or bear it down, any more than
a hearty meal lies heavily on its body’s stomach. Its body digests
quickly, and has very soon done with the process. The positive mind
digests quickly—particularly its supposed misdeeds. That is why it is
so difficult to give a positive person a guilty conscience; because a
guilty conscience is simply a costive conscience. The positive mind
remembers only so much as interests it keenly, or as much as does not
stand in the way of a continued positive attitude to life; just as its
body only retains the nourishment out of all it absorbs.
_The positive mind has no fear of pain_, particularly if this pain is
incurred in a vital effort. Little boys will actually enjoy enormous
discomfort and pain, provided it is encountered in doing things that
reek of active life, that bring their bodies into violent action, and
give them the thrill and bracing sensation of overcoming an obstacle,
of resisting an attempt at capture, or of effecting a capture. “Yea” is
their constant attitude to everything, even to the things which, to the
adult, are disagreeable.
I remember on one occasion, when I was walking home from a friend’s
house in the pouring rain, I met that same friend’s two little sons
returning at a perfectly leisurely pace from school. I had an umbrella,
they had not. Naturally I felt it incumbent upon me to see them
home, and, gathering them carefully under my silk shelter, I marched
them smartly in the direction of their father’s house. I soon found,
however, that all my pains were wasted on them, for whenever I was
not looking, out one of them would stray into the drenching shower;
and when I insisted on their keeping quite close to me, each of them
gravely extended his free arm out into the rain to catch as much of
it as possible, while every puddle was conscientiously and solemnly
explored by their feet.
This may seem a trifling circumstance to dwell upon; but unimportant
as it was, it struck me as being but another example of the indomitable
yea-saying of healthy childhood to anything and everything.
The gravity of the little boy when he does these things shows clearly
the relation between positiveness and things that matter—things that
have _weight_, _solidity_, _importance_, _tangibility_, _definition_.
Another incident occurs to me as I write. I remember once feeling a
little intrigued by the sight of a knot of little village boys standing
like conspirators very seriously together in one of the streets of my
favourite Sussex village. Their ages ranged from about eight to eleven
years. I knew them all perfectly well, and the fact that I drew close
up to them did not disturb them in the least. When I was near enough to
discover what they were talking about, this is what I saw and heard:—In
the centre of the grave and almost hushed group there stood a lad of
about nine years of age. He was exhibiting his dirty hands proudly and
almost arrogantly to his friends, and the latter were listening with
rapt attention to his harangue. I noticed that they all appeared to be
a little crestfallen and dejected, save the boy who was demonstrating
with his hands, and one other boy who seemed to be arguing with him.
Now the explanation of all this profound interest, rapt attention
and conflicting emotions, was as follows:—The central figure, the
boy of nine, had hands that were covered thickly with large warts,
and he possessed one particularly big and ugly-looking specimen just
beneath the knuckle of a finger of his right hand. He was exhibiting
these horrible excrescences to his schoolfellows triumphantly and
defying them to show anything like them, or even approaching them in
size and number; and there was but one of them who had a sufficiently
respectable record, where warts were concerned, to be able to answer
him and meet him, as it were, on equal ground, and this was the boy who
had been contesting his point all the time.
Again, this is a trifling incident, but it is full of significance
for the analyst of the positive mind. This yea-saying to anything and
everything, which surges up with the conviction of an explosion at
every moment, everywhere, is far more important, far more profound,
far more solid, as a characteristic of childhood, than that mythical
innocence and sweet merriness which is the only characteristic of
healthy childhood that superficial child-lovers will either grant or
recognize.
(4) DISCIPLINE IN ITS RELATION TO THE POSITIVE MIND
The discipline of healthy children, because of their very positiveness,
is one of the most intricate and delicate tasks that devolves upon the
adult man or woman. It is the task and problem of practical morality,
and to solve it without chilling any of that valuable positiveness
of childhood, to impose a limit, in fact, upon juvenile positiveness
without destroying or blighting it, is the most difficult achievement
in education.
To say “yea” to everything—to mud, to filth, to danger, to illness (for
positive children are positive even to their bodily disorders), to the
rain, to animals, to vermin, to the knife, to explosives, to ladders,
to dangerous altitudes, to the precipice, and so on—is of course,
supremely delightful, supremely healthy; but it cannot be allowed in
its full catholicity. This I am perfectly ready to knowledge. The
luxuriance of the child’s positiveness _must_ be pruned. The human
being must be reared for society. He must be taught the limitations of
his freedom; above all, he must be taught taste and discrimination:
what to select and what to reject. And there is perhaps no more
solemn moment in life than when a full-grown man or woman, in perfect
possession of all the necessary intellectual equipment for the task,
approaches his universally yea-saying junior to discipline it—that is
to say, to determine its “yea,” to limit it, and to confine it only to
a certain set of things.
The problem is obviously, how can the child be kept positive to this
world while being rendered negative to the undesirable elements in
this life. Or to put it in a sentence: how can I make my little boy
say “No” to warts without saying “No” to the world? To all those who
approach the child with a negative creed, to all those who are vultures
themselves, or who derive from the vulture breed, the order is clearly
“Hands off!” Only people who have retained their positive attitude
to life should be allowed to interfere where children are concerned;
because ordered social life itself is discipline, and but very little
careful and discriminating guidance need be added. When Herbert Spencer
said that children of large families were always better than those of
small families, because in the case of the former the parents have
less time to interfere with natural processes, he propounded a very
true principle as far as the modern negative world is concerned;
because most of the juvenile discipline nowadays is not only imposed by
negative people, but the very social environment in which these people
move and breathe is also negative and hostile to life.
The object and province of juvenile discipline are simply these: to
rear a positive human being for social life; to discipline it to
selection and rejection without forcing it to scout or to suspect vital
functions or vital virtues. It sounds simple enough when stated in a
single line; but how many misunderstandings, how many ruined careers,
how many bitter, disappointed and ill-adapted adults are not the result
of the opposite principle, the principle which reads that the positive
child should above all be taught to distrust its deepest instincts, its
body, and to be suspicious of the world, the flesh and the Devil—the
latter meaning very often no more than wanton spirits.
Sometimes when one sees the kind of people—men and women—into whose
gentle bloodless hands, into whose drab, lifeless but well-meaning
existences, healthy helpless children are made to fall, it is
difficult not to shudder. How good they are! How sweet is their ideal
of what a child ought to be! How vigilant they are for any signs of
“wickedness”! Who can submit to their Procrustean method and survive
a whole, positive being? They _know_! They know what pleases God and
the angels! No one is better informed than they on this subject.
Honest?—no one could be more so than they. Reliable?—they could be
trusted to stamp the exuberance out of a boa-constrictor! Good?—not
merely good, but holy! Their mild cerulean eyes gaze beyond the child
in their tender care, and towards a wonderful ideal, far away, of
perfect childhood—a bright, merry, glowing angel who, preferably, would
have wings on his shoulders, _à la_ Joshua Reynolds, and nothing—no
nothing at all—beneath the thorax. His body might end there with
advantage. That is their belief, their hope, their ambition. All human
beings might end there with advantage; but above all the child, because
children are so pure, so guileless, so sweet; it is such a pity that——
Luckily, robust positiveness has a tenacity and a vigour that
frequently survive even the contagion of these toads with evil
consciences. But how few are the survivals compared with the number
that go under annually!
That is why little girls survive the process more often than little
boys; because, as a rule, unless attacked from the side of the body,
a female’s positiveness to life is wholly and utterly unbreakable.
But it is deeper, more silent, less conspicuous, less articulate
than that of the little boy; therefore it more easily eludes the
cerulean but very superficial glance of the negative adult. It is
more unconscious and consequently less liable to betray itself in the
presence of constraining influences. It manifests itself, too, in a
less arresting, less annoying fashion; it appears to be “harmless.”
Behold the girls that are turned out annually from convent schools or
strictly Puritanical High Schools. If their tremendous positiveness had
not been secret, concealed, subcutaneous, unconscious, how could it
possibly have survived? Again and again I have heard the negative adult
deny a passionate positive temperament in a little girl, when I saw it
clearly. It is this mistake, this inability to detect a trait that is
deep enough to be very far below the surface, that is alone responsible
for the salvation of thousands of girls to-day.
Modern man is not only less positive generally than woman, but
the modicum of positiveness he possesses is also more apparent,
less resisting, more self-assertive, more conscious and therefore
less secret. It also manifests itself in a more obtrusive and more
irritating way.[14]
Boys suffer most from a negative discipline. Men are suffering most
physically and mentally from our negative age. Women only suffer from
the indirect results of the age—that is to say, from the deterioration
it causes in their men.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See St. Matthew, chap. xxii. verse 30: “For in the resurrection
they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of
God in heaven.”
[2] It should always be remembered that the promise of Christianity is
“the resurrection of the body.”
[3] For an explanation of what I mean by this much-abused phrase, see
pp. 70, 90-94.
[4] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_ (Constable), chap. V.
[5] See _Sex and Character_ (Heinemann, 1906), p. 299.
[6] _Ibid._, p. 299.
[7] _Ibid._, p. 329.
[8] _Ibid._, p. 336.
[9] _Ibid._, p. 343.
[10] _Ibid._, p. 345.
[11] _Ibid._, p. 345.
[12] Op. cit., p. 346.
[13] Of course, I mean this intellectual positiveness only as a
rational confirmation of bodily and constitutional positiveness; for
frequently when I shall use the expression “positive” it will also
mean the unconscious, spontaneous positiveness of a healthy body.
From the context there will be no mistaking which I mean. The same
remark applies naturally to the expression intellectual negativeness.
For instance, St. Paul and Calvin were both intellectually as well as
spontaneously negative. An unhealthy child, or an unhealthy adult, may
be only unconsciously or spontaneously so.
[14] In this connexion, see pp. 98-103.
CHAPTER II
The Subject Treated Generally
In my Introduction I have said enough to show that I can be neither
a so-called Woman-hater nor a Woman-despiser. And if I have departed
somewhat from the common rules laid down by precedent for the writing
of a book of this nature, it was because I felt compelled to safeguard
some of my hardest and most unacceptable views and conclusions from the
withering suspicion of having been dictated by bitterness or resentment.
Other men have written about Woman, and have said hard things about
her too: Knox, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Weininger are among them.
Neither Knox, Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche, however, started life with
such a large fund of prepossession in her favour. Neither Knox,
Schopenhauer nor Nietzsche can be said to have been free, as I am,
from those bitter experiences and shocks that distort one’s vision and
destroy one’s focus.
If I appear to say things that are hard, therefore let it be plainly
understood at this stage in my work, that I do so only because I wish
to speak frankly and clearly about my subject; and that in view of the
muddled and maudlin misunderstandings that now hang like a stifling
mist over the female sex, it is impossible to dissipate errors or to
take up a clear and definite stand at all, without occasionally seeming
hard, unrelenting, metallic. Any flash may be taken for a flash of
steel, particularly when one is in a fog.
My intention in writing this book was to save Woman from the cruel
misconceptions that are steadily undermining her body and her
character, and although there is much in my work that will try the
patience and the endurance of many of my readers—particularly men and
unhealthy women—I could not possibly eliminate a single one of the more
provocative passages without failing in what I feel to be my duty to my
undertaking.
I maintain that Woman is now miserable, wretched, desperate. I am
not one of those who are certain that present woman is a product of
man’s own fashioning. If she were she would not be miserable, because,
step by step, as man has advanced—or declined!—she too would have
changed, and thus remained his adapted and contented mate. But there is
something essentially idiosyncratic in Woman, something that makes her
an individual, unalterable and for ever fixed; something that nothing
can fashion. You can make her miserable; you can make her sick; you
cannot change her! I would go further and say, that all women from
Pekin to London and Lisbon are the same; they are only a little more
happy or healthy, or a little more miserable and ill, according as to
whether their men do or do not understand how to treat them.
Disbelieving utterly, as I do, in the theory that Modern Woman is as
man has made her—I mean apart from her wretchedness or sickness, of
course—I cannot uphold the view that Woman has any destiny to work out
for herself. She has no “true Womanhood” that has yet to be sought and
found while we leave her alone. We cannot leave her alone. The moment
we leave her alone she ceases to be true Woman: where, then, could she
go alone to seek and find her “true Womanhood”?
All those who speak of a “true Womanhood” to be sought and found away
from us and from the children we give her, would do both Woman and the
world a kindness, a great and inestimable kindness, in henceforward for
ever holding their tongues on the subject of Woman.
We try to soothe our consciences; we try to slur over our social
mistakes; we sneakingly pretend to ignore the fact that our social
life is wrong; and we, and even some women themselves, preach the
accursed doctrine that there is a true Womanhood to be sought and
found in women alone, by women alone, for women alone! We have not,
cannot, will not, do our duty by Women, and we assuage their blind and
often unconscious misery by this damnable falsehood which thousands
of them in their trustfulness believe. We tell them that somewhere
in the Far Away, in the Never-Never-Land—not in the Backwoods of
Superior Bunkum—there is a True Woman, a hybrid of a misunderstood Joan
of Arc and a glacier. She is alone glorying in her True Womanhood.
No man has fashioned her. She has no fashioning—or fashion either,
for that matter!—and she simply sits and exults in her manless,
childless, splendid independence! Towards this ideal we bid our sisters
strive—nay, some of our sisters themselves bid their sisters strive;
and we have not enough decency left to blush at our perfidy, at our
blackguardly deception!
The problem is out of hand; its difficulties have proved too much for
us, otherwise we could not have the barefaced duplicity to settle it in
this transparently farcical manner.
What should we think of a cattle-farmer, who, on discovering that he
had not enough pasture-land for all his sheep, taught the pastureless
ones, when they had grown thin and wan for want of their proper food,
that there was a True Sheephood somewhere, a lofty ideal—a Sheephood
that could go without pasture-land and without grass altogether;
a Sheephood that was self-contained and self-reliant, independent
and indisputable, and that they were to go in search of that True
Sheephood, and if necessary grow thinner and less attractive every
day in their search for it? We should feel that they would have to be
very inferior sheep to believe this story, or, rather, very real sheep
indeed! Everything in their body, from their cud-chewing molars to
their long grass-digesting gut, would surely tell them that the Ideal
of True Sheephood was arrant nonsense, and _cruel_ arrant nonsense too.
No, it is impossible to accept the “True Womanhood” ideal of woman
gloriously alone, emancipated from man, independent and “discovered.”
Inasmuch as we have not fashioned her, and could not do so if we tried,
woman is as her rôle in the course of evolution has made her. She is
certainly more unhappy, more tormented, more unwell, than she ever need
have been; but that is because her principal adaptation—her relation to
man—is now so often entirely wrong, or alas! non-existent. I point out
again: if, as some presumptuously maintain, _we_ have been fashioning
her all through the ages, she would have followed us contentedly to
our present stage—a thing she has _not_ done. There is something
essentially idiosyncratic in woman then, something that defies our
clumsy “fashioning” hands.
This unalterable individuality has not to be found. It is not an ideal
after which we might strive. It is present, it is seated in Woman now
and for evermore, and one of its principal characteristics is that it
cannot brook isolation, solitude, independence, glorious singleness.
The “True Womanhood” hoax of Woman refound by herself, for herself,
and in herself, as if all this time her association with man and
her dependence upon him had been a mistake, an error of judgment, a
cramping, limiting and disturbing factor in the evolution of “Pure
Woman,” is simply pure falsehood of the worst description; because it
overlooks the facts precisely there where they are most glaring, most
undeniable, most conspicuous.
Examine the tendrils of the vine and deny that it is a creeping plant
destined to cling to a wall or to a tougher plant than itself, and you
would declare yourself in so many words an ignoramus or a madman.
Examine Woman and deny that she must have two primary adaptations—that
to the man and that to the child—in order simply to fulfil her destiny
as it is stamped indelibly on her body; and you acknowledge yourself
straight away not only an ignoramus and a madman, but a dangerous
specimen of both.
Immersed as Woman obviously is, up to her shoulders in the business of
Life and its multiplication, let it be said plainly and unequivocally:
all those who teach her that any other business is her business, all
those who, in face of the dilemma of modern problems, confuse her with
tales about a true Womanhood away from Life and its multiplication;
all those, in short, who beguile her with promises of happiness,
contentedness, or even comfort, without her primary adaptations to man
and the child, are liars both unscrupulous and criminal.
And here I have touched upon what I claim to be idiosyncratic and
perfectly individual in Woman—her deep and almost whole-bodied concern
with Life and its multiplication. Above all the other functional
differences and similarities between the sexes, this fundamental trait
must prevail as a permanent and ineradicable characteristic of Woman,
and it is the bedrock on which we must build, and from which we must
set out, if we wish to arrive at a clear and untainted image of Woman
as distinct from Man.
When, moreover, one remembers that this principal characteristic of
hers is the seed and generating force of all her will, her leading
instincts and her virtues, it is simply deliberate blindness to deny
that she has not a distinctive and powerful individuality that places
her far outside the possible influence of those “fashioning” male hands
that some have the impudence to maintain have warped or diverted the
true course of her evolution.
Leave her alone then; leave her to work out her own salvation, and like
Nora in Ibsen’s _Doll’s House_, to venture single-handed in search of
that true Womanhood which according to some theorists has yet to be
found, and has never yet been allowed a free development, and what
happens?—She ceases from being a true Woman at her very first step into
the wilderness of isolation. She denies her principal characteristic,
her distinctive individuality, by the very act of desertion constituted
by her flight into so-called freedom and autonomy. For the only power
that rules Woman with an iron hand, the only power that moulds her
destiny and actuates her behaviour and aspirations, she can never
desert; and that is a power far more inexorable and irresistible than
the power of man. It is the power of Life itself, with which she is
much more deeply, secretly and thoroughly in touch than we are, or
could ever hope to be. We are an amputation from Life, to which we
return only at odd intervals, as it were to pay tribute: she is Life’s
uninterrupted stream that receives this tribute.
I repeat, therefore, that while we have the power to make Woman
miserable and ill—a power which for the last 250 years in England we
have exercised with ever-increasing folly—we have no more right to
boast that we have moulded or directed her evolution than we have a
right to boast of having shaped the stars and the moon. And those women
who allow us this boast and who accuse us of having arrested their
development (whatever that may mean), or of having distorted their true
individuality, fall with treacherous perfidy to their sex, into the
ranks of Woman’s worst enemies.
How have we made Woman miserable and ill?
Let me explain what misery and illness means:
Put a mole to live upon a concrete floor, lay a frog in a parched sandy
plain, and confine the agile cat to a space only just large enough to
allow it to lash its tail, and you will have succeeded so thoroughly in
thwarting the primary instincts of these three animals—the subterranean
life of the mole, for which its large forelegs and its whole body
crave; the amphibious life of the frog after which its webbed feet and
nimble limbs hanker, and the stalking, hunting and prowling lust of the
cat to which all its magnificent body is so superbly adjusted—that you
will have made them utterly and desperately miserable and probably ill
as well.
What have you done? You have deprived them of their primary
adaptations. The same holds good of Woman. Millions of women to-day
are hopelessly irrevocably deprived of their primary adaptations, and
_even those who are given their primary adaptations, so frequently
receive them in a form that is inadequate and unsatisfying, effete
and inferior_, that even among the married women of our day there is
a depth of disappointment, disillusionment and vague dissatisfaction
that makes some of them even more miserable than their single sisters.
The latter, at least, are still able to hope against hope (a wonderful
power in women); the others can only await the end, knowing the worst
and knowing that everything is hopeless.
How do we men absolve ourselves from the blame of this? For it is
certainly we who mould society and ourselves, even if we do not mould
women. How do we try to evade, escape, circumvent the main issue?—We
have the effrontery to teach Woman the doctrine that since we fail
them both in quantity and quality, there is a life away from us and
the children they could have from us that is worth living. We do not
scruple to tell them that they can be happy, content, comfortable,
without the surroundings to which they are primarily adapted. We abet
and promote a process by which millions of our women deliberately turn
their backs upon their primary adaptations, and spring to our side like
neuters in the arena of _our_ active life, _our_ besotting duties,
_our_ drudgery! But not content with undermining their health and their
happiness by denying the just privilege of their primary adaptations,
we undermine their spirits by casting them like convicts into the
wheels of the very machine that has already reduced us to such pale
shadows of our former selves, such faint echoes of manhood, that they
were rightly growing dissatisfied with us.
But not only that, we taught them that they could find happiness in
this independence, in this single-handed struggle—_happiness_! Aye,
there were even some women who arose and assured their sisters that we
were right and that they could _live lives_, yes, and enjoy _Life_, in
this independent isolation!
If this were not all visible before us, many would still refuse to
believe it. Unfortunately it is all only too true! This incredible
farce is _our_ present-day existence—_our age_!
We have actually not refrained from telling young girls that they can
_live a life_ away from their principal adaptations!
Only recently, for instance, when the 1921 census revealed that there
were approximately 2,000,000 more women than men in Great Britain—that
is to say, 2,000,000 women who on the monogamous principle could not
be expected to find mates—several prominent people wrote to the papers
protesting indignantly that these women were not superfluous, and
arguing that there was “enough work in the world” for all the women.
These people wrote as if the whole question were an economic one, and
that, provided the two million unmated women could only make themselves
self-supporting in their singleness, the difficulties of the case would
be entirely overcome.[15] But this attitude towards the question was
ridiculously unsympathetic. For, if the only object in life were to
become self-supporting by means of work, one would not require to be
either a man or a woman; a neuter, after the style of the worker-bee,
would be all that one required to resemble. But the attitude of these
prominent people was unfortunately worse than unsympathetic; it was
insulting and dishonest. For, to tell a body of two million women that
they need not despair, that even if they could find no mates, there
would be work enough for them in order to render them self-supporting,
was to assume, without enquiry, that they _were_ neuters, or that
they _were_ capable of leading satisfactory lives as neuters. It was
at least tantamount to assuming that they would be content in leading
the lives of neuters—an assumption insulting both to their physical as
well as to their mental development, and one which, having not a fact
to support it, was entirely dishonest. Apart from all this, however,
it amounted to a vulgar narrowing down of all earthly aspirations and
desires, to the economic struggle—to success in the task of finding
sustenance.
The Holy Catholic Church was more honest in this, and more practical
than we are. It told all those women for whom society failed to provide
their principal adaptations, that they could find comfort, occupation,
and even a high purpose, by entering the Church, but it was frank
enough to add: if you do so you must turn your back for ever upon those
things for which you were built, those things to which your whole body
was ingeniously and artfully adjusted and contrived.
And even when the system broke down, as it frequently did,[16] at least
where Life was illicitly found in the convent or the monastery, it
was found and enjoyed _secretly_, under the respectable auspices of a
powerful institution, and not on the streets of big cities where the
fruits are nothing but distress, disgrace and disease.
But behind all this unwillingness to recognize or admit that Woman
cannot really be “adapted” (which is simply a biological way of saying
she cannot be really happy or well) without fulfilling the destiny
that her rôle in the process of evolution, and not man, stamped
indelibly upon her body from the start, is the very same insidious
and devastating force that has made her unhappy in other directions,
that has reduced her men, for instance, to nincompoops. I refer to
Puritanism.[17]
Puritanism, always so hostile to sex, would fondly like one to believe
that sex is no longer one of the first considerations of Life, even
for women. It would give a good deal, and has given a good deal, to
convince everybody that one can “get on without it”! And, indeed, its
values and atmosphere have now reared so many thousands of wretched,
lank, bloodless and lifeless men and women who _can_ get on without it,
and who _do_ get on without it, that quite a large number of people are
beginning to believe that Puritanism is right. In any case, it is to
these unconscious victims of its system that it now has the effrontery
to point as evidence of its criminal contention when it seeks to
persuade the unwary that it is right.
When, therefore, the cruel solution of modern sex problems (problems
that only arose through the kind of society Puritanism has created)
was supposed to have been found by telling women that “they really did
not want men or children, and could easily ‘get on’ without either,”
it was the voice of Puritanism that was distinct and persuasive here;
Puritanism at last within an ace of complete triumph, and exulting over
having achieved what to all intents and purposes must have seemed an
impossible undertaking from the start.
When, however, one remembers how carefully and skilfully the ground had
been prepared, when one remembers how unscrupulously every possible
means had been exploited in order to consummate the end in view, how
can one wonder at the unravelment!
After having reduced man to a mere shadow of his former self, after
having atrophied, besmirched and slandered the sex instinct until it
was literally ashamed to show its face (fancy, the fundamental instinct
of life being ashamed to show its face!)—after having heaped up so
much odium on the waning innocence of sexual beauties and the sacred
joys of procreation that shame descended upon them like a deadly and
withering shroud—no wonder that there were some, nay, thousands,
who were ready to acknowledge that there was a life away from the
fundamental instinct of life!
For fire alone purifies; _fire alone renders some fusions and
combinations possible_. Damp the ardour of man, therefore, reduce
his fire, and the sexual act does indeed become an affair from which
many might be justified in shrinking. The procreative love of human
beings was obviously designed on the presumption that they would
remain warm-blooded animals. Once they grew to be cold-blooded, it
of necessity became improper, impious. The procreation of fish is
accomplished without any embrace, without any _étreinte_ of male and
female: but fish are cold-blooded.
Thus in support of the Puritan’s chilling cry that there was a life
away from the fundamental instinct of Life, there arose very soon a
chorus of disillusioned and indignant married women’s voices, who knew
the anguish and embarrassment of human sexual life with a human fish,
and who were not in the least prepared to conceal its horrors.
And how convincing all this seemed! How many sensitive and intelligent
girls have not listened to this married woman’s chorus in support of
the Puritan’s plea, and felt their hope in life, their trust in life,
their love of life, shake in its foundations! So much so, indeed, that
it is now possible for them to listen no longer with suspicion but
with eager interest to those of their “fortunate” sisters who are too
unhealthy, or too deficient in vigour to feel any desire for their
principal adaptations; it is possible even for the naturally sterile
among women, for the women below par in every respect, and incapable,
either through repulsiveness or botchedness, to fulfil their destiny,
to pass through the world without being despised, without being looked
down upon. And since the number of women who lack the vigour and the
spirit really to crave for their principal adaptations increases every
year, an atmosphere of reality and naturalness is imparted to the
artificial and destructive claims of Puritanism, which is as deceiving
as it is dangerous, and as difficult to dissipate as it was slow and
gradual to form.
It is precisely because women are so deeply in touch with Life, so
secretly and unconsciously Life’s ally, Life’s ambassador, Life’s
_custodian_, that they cannot help being miserable and in pain
nowadays. The voice of Life inside them tells them emphatically
that things are wrong, that the muddle man has made of Life is
tragic, cruel, insufferable. As Life’s unconscious advocate, Woman
is essentially opposed to modernity, however much she may seem in
favour of it. When she appears to be most in favour of it, she is only
following modern man and his ideals most closely.
Having all the equipment for Life’s most important business, it will
not appear hard to believe that Woman is positive. Life through her
says “Yea” to itself. In fact when Woman says “Yea” to Life, it is
simply Life itself accepting itself as such. All women’s apparent
negativism is either only skin deep, or else it is the outcome of
bodily sickness or degeneracy. The mere fact that in all periods of
decline Woman has always come to the fore, the historical fact that
Feminism is undeniably a phenomenon of male degeneration—the swan-song
of male-constructed societies—shows how inevitably Life itself comes
forward at the last moment in order to try to rescue itself when it
feels all else is failing. But it comes forward in a form that cannot
lead to salvation. Because, although Woman is equipped for carrying on
Life’s business, she is not equipped for ordering it. You cannot be a
thing and above it, or out of it, at the same time. The part is not
greater than the whole. And, as Woman is immersed in Life, she has not
the duality of vision that is necessary for placing and ordering Life.
She knows, because she feels, when Life is going to pieces; she knows
when Life has been outraged, when hostility to Life is working havoc
with Life’s material; but she can only ascertain the fact, she can only
protest against the fact; she cannot remedy it.
To remind me that modern women—or the most far-seeing among
them—organized a powerful agitation to obtain the Parliamentary vote,
is simply to point to a proof of what I say. The Parliamentary vote
is essentially a male invention. It is essentially a male idea. It is
not an idea of Life. In fact, three-quarters of the harm that has come
to Life might be ascribed to this very Parliamentary vote, and the
Democracy it implies; and yet, when Woman in her agony casts about her
for a remedy for Life’s sickness, she can do nothing more than lay hold
of this futile and dangerous male invention, and seek salvation through
it.
It is her cry of protest, however, that is interesting as a symptom, as
a warning. And all those who have ears to hear, know it is the cry of
Life itself, agitating for reform. But, as the feeling is unconscious
with Woman, and as she is not equipped for the task of standing outside
Life and ordering it, the remedies she advocates must be suspected and
rejected just as earnestly as her cry of warning must be respected and
observed.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] See Arabella Kenealy in _Feminism and Sex-Extinction_ (pp.
211-12): “That all women do not marry—cannot marry, indeed, because
of their preponderance in number over the other sex—is no reason for
dissembling the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie women’s most
vital and valuable rôles. Nor is it a warrant for training the whole
sex as though none were destined to fulfil this, their natural and
noblest, if not always their happiest, vocation.”
[16] The reports made in the reign of Henry VIII by his Commissioners,
concerning the state of the convents and monasteries, give proof enough
of this, as do also the reports of visiting bishops in the Middle Ages.
[17] For an exhaustive description of the metamorphosis of the
Englishman through the influence of Puritanism, see chapter V of my
_Defence of Aristocracy_ (Constable & Co., 1915).
CHAPTER III
Woman and her Unconscious Impulses
If a healthy child be told to sit still for a long time at a stretch,
the chances are that it will disobey the order at the end of the first
two minutes.
Likewise, if a rhinoceros be placed in a soft-floored stable, the
chances are that it will very soon plough up the whole of its place of
captivity with its nasal horn.
Other examples can be thought of: the wallowing of ducks, unprovided
with water, in dirty puddles and ditches; the nail exercise of the cat
on the legs of our dining-room tables; and the gnawing away of wood by
white mice in a manner that can in no way effect their escape.
Let me explain some of these examples:
A healthy child—a little boy—is told to sit still. What happens? The
muscles and tissues of his body are well-nourished. In his constitution
there is a reserve of strength which, like the power of a galvanic
battery is seeking an outlet, a method of discharging itself. All his
muscles tell him most emphatically that they _want_ to be moving, that
they want to be actively employed.
Now let us turn to the child’s consciousness and to his brain. Let us
look to see what is happening there. These impatient messages that
are constantly coming up from every nerve and tissue in his body are
registered in the brain, but they do not enter consciousness in their
original form. _Consciousness receives only an interpretation of them._
The child is not really aware of them at all. If you asked him when he
first began to move or fidget: “What is the matter with you?” he would
reply either “I don’t like sitting here” or “I want to go and play.”
Not only is he unconscious of the fact that while he is sitting there
his body is in a state of genuine distress, because of energy seeking
to be discharged, but he would be utterly incapable of using the proper
phraseology to explain his condition, even if he were aware of it. All
he knows, all he is conscious of is this:
(1) _Playing is good fun._
He does not know that the reason why his body insists on moving is that
all his tissues are alive with energy that wants to be used.
(2) _Sitting here is a hopeless bore._
He does not realize that sitting still to a live body in a state of
energetic exuberance is actually painful, and even if he cries from
sheer pain, on this account alone, his consciousness will still say: “I
want to play,” “I don’t want to sit here.” He will never say, “I am in
pain,” or “It hurts not to play.”
Let him get down from his chair and go to play, and in less than a
minute you will probably find him exerting vain efforts to move a huge
stone or a massive log from one place to another. The purpose of the
transposition of this solid and inert mass will be clear neither to you
nor to him; but that is immaterial. His body wants to spend its energy,
and the little boy, therefore, likes moving a large stone or a large
log about. And he will cry or protest violently if you tell him he is
not to do it. He does not know in the least why he wants to do it; he
only knows, for the moment, that moving big stones is good.
_From all this it is clear, not only that the brain’s interpretation of
a bodily state is unreliable as a sign of what is actually proceeding
in that body, but also that it does not always require to be reliable
in order to lead its owner to do the right thing, or to adopt the
proper course of action._
Now let us suppose the same child peevish and irritable. What actually
happens?
Let us look inside his body for a moment! The large intestine is
congested; his bowels have not been properly opened for thirty-six
hours. Last night, owing to this condition, his sleep was restless and
feverish. This morning he has eaten a good breakfast, but he is not so
lively as he was yesterday. Messages are going up to his brain every
second from every tissue in his body. And all these messages say one
and the same thing: “We are not happy: we are not in our usual clean,
healthy condition.” The brain itself, owing perhaps to disordered
circulation, is also a little surcharged with blood; so that, in
addition to the messages of distress that incessantly rise from the
body, it has its own distress.
Now let us turn to the child’s consciousness! What is happening there?
The child is not conscious of all the alarms and signals of distress
coming up from his body; he is not conscious of the pressure of blood
on his brain. All he knows is that he is feeling thoroughly and
utterly discontented. And since his human intelligence tells him that
discontent must have a cause, this cause must be found. An incident at
breakfast soon provides the whole scheme of a convincing cause for his
feeling of distress. His little sister picks up a crumb of his bread
and eats it—an innocent action which, if it had happened yesterday, or
the day before, would only have provoked laughter.
_It is, however, sufficient to provide the badly informed brain
with material for a false interpretation._ The sister’s action is
immediately posited as the cause of his feeling ill at ease, and in
a moment all his body’s angry discontent about its bad condition is
vented against the unfortunate little sister, who is as staggered as
she is hurt by his sudden unaccountable outburst of tears and bitter
words.
In the two examples given, what has been the _unconscious_ motive of
the little boy’s behaviour? In Example 1 it was a reserve of physical
energy that was seeking an outlet—interpreted by the little boy’s
consciousness as a desire to roll a stone or a log as an end in itself.
In Example 2 it was a state of physical depression which, reaching the
lad’s consciousness as a vague discontent, led him to seek its cause.
Thanks to a false interpretation, and still acting quite unconsciously
of the _real_ cause, he flies into a passion with his little sister,
because her taking of his crumb of bread seems to him a sufficient
cause for his discontentedness.
This part of my disquisition on the unconscious, together with what
follows, will do excellent service, if understood, in helping the
reader to see more clearly into the complicated train of consequences
which, as I shall point out later on, in Chapter VIII, lead to most
conjugal differences, and ultimately to Divorce. Irrelevant as the
above examples may seem, therefore, I would ask the reader to endeavour
to make quite sure that he understands the principle they involve;
because much of the lucidity of Chapter VIII will depend upon a
thorough grasp of this principle.
When I speak of people acting in a certain way, or doing otherwise
unaccountable and apparently immoral deeds as the result of a bodily
impulse that they misinterpret, I shall speak of an _unconscious_
motive on their parts. Only in this sense shall I speak of unconscious
motives.
The correlation of bodily equipment and motive or desire, therefore,
must always be kept very carefully in mind if we are to comprehend the
behaviour of our fellows, and of the lower animals.
_An animal that has a horn on its nose, like the rhinoceros, will have
a concomitant desire to use it._ Its motive for using it may be quite
_unconscious_; but that does not matter. The little kitten does not
hate you, or desire to hurt you when it uses its claws on your hands.
It has a bodily part, well supplied with intricate mechanism and
nerves, and it is more than it can do not to use that part.
The impulse coming from a bodily part that cries to be used is
generally misinterpreted. That can be taken as a more or less
universal rule. We have seen how the child, though it acted in the
right way in the first example, was utterly unconscious of the true
springs of its action. But that almost every positive action we perform
in our lives is the outcome of a correlation of our bodily parts
sending commands to our brain, is nevertheless an undeniable fact.
Take, for instance, the man who possesses the happy combination of a
very good eye and an agile, dexterous hand. According to the sort of
environment into which he falls, he may be one of several things—either
an excellent shot and warrior, or an excellent draughtsman, sculptor,
craftsman or painter. The correlation of his bodily parts determines
his desires and consequently his career. His motives throughout may be
unconscious—that is to say, he may be unaware until the end, of the
nature of the forces that actuated him.
Turning now, with these considerations in our mind, to the
contemplation of Woman, what do we find?
We find a creature who stands up to her shoulders in the business of
Life and its multiplication. Artfully contrived and richly equipped for
this business, and with the whole of her trunk and its nervous system
intricately organized for it—so that even in her limbs and the skin
upon them, so that even in her face and the hair on her head one can
detect reverberations, as it were, of the mighty and momentous forces
that irradiate her being—Woman cannot evade the common fate of all
creatures, and cannot help being guided in her conduct rigidly by the
correlation of her bodily parts, any more than all other creatures can.
But her actions and the unconscious motives behind them will be all the
more inevitable, for having such an elaborate, such a purposeful, and
such a deep-seated mechanism as their generator.
Woman’s positiveness to Life, therefore, only amounts to her saying
“Yea” to her bodily impulses, and this she cannot help doing without
entertaining thoughts of self-destruction. And her “Yea” to Life is
more determined, more unswerving, more unrelenting than man’s, in
proportion as she is more thoroughly organized and equipped than he
is for Life’s business. Her “Yea” to Life cannot be changed to “Nay,”
because she is utterly unconscious of it, and is therefore powerless
to change it. She may in a moment of bottomless despair say “Nay”
to herself, when a sufficient number of people, or a sufficiently
important one of many people, has said “Nay” to her; but even then,
she is not saying “Nay” to Life, but “Nay” to the thought of living an
empty life, or no life.[18]
Woman may ultimately marry. But she is already wed when she is born.
She is wed to Life. Life is her taskmaster, and Life is her Lord. I
shall show very soon how she unconsciously acknowledges this sway,
sacrifices herself to it, and immolates herself before it—aye, even
commits adultery for it, lies for it, murders and thieves for it, and
sometimes kills herself for it.
What is man in the presence of this formidable engine of Life’s
purpose? Merely a means that Woman unconsciously exploits while she
consciously imagines that she loves him. What are her children?
Children are the object of her eternally unconscious gratitude, because
they are the product of her healthy functioning, the instruments on
which she has played off the whole gamut of her sensibilities and
sensations.
The hierarchy then reads: (1) Life, (2) Woman, (3) Man. For the present
this will do.
To understand Woman, then, we must first of all think of her as a
creature who is constantly being actuated by the readiness and desire
her bodily equipment feels, to be used, to be made to function, to
exercise its powers. But we must always remember that she is not
aware of the nature of this actuating force, that it is always the
_unconscious motive_ of her actions. We know it must be so; we know it
is so; but we also know that she does not know it.
All her will, all her conduct, all her crimes or great deeds—if she
perpetrate any—must be ascribed to the actuating force of her bodily
equipment; but she will always be aware only of other motives for her
conduct, and her mind will invariably misinterpret the causes of it.
Let me go over the ground I have just covered, in a slightly different
way, in order that I may be quite sure of being understood. All those
who have already thoroughly grasped my point can skip this passage.
If we examine the relation of instinct to will, what do we find it to
be.[19]
An instinct may be understood as a predisposition implanted in a living
creature to act in a certain way prior to experience, or, as a bias
in favour of a certain line of conduct before any knowledge of that
line of conduct or its consequences has been brought clearly to the
conscious mind by individual experiment.
An infant, for instance, has no experience of food and its relation to
the body; it has no experience of anything; but it has a predisposition
to suck, which is the outcome of its bodily condition and ancestral
history at a certain period of its life; and, as far as its early
months are concerned, a child may be said to have an indomitable will
to be suckled or to suck—it will cry violently if this proclivity be
not indulged; its tears and cries will immediately subside if it has
its way.
How does instinct become implanted in a living creature? Instinct may
have two origins: (1) A racial origin, by which I mean that it is the
outcome of an ancestral habit, and constitutes a predisposition to
perform certain actions in a certain way, because of the incalculable
number of times that the ancestors in the same line of descent have
performed them in that way. As an example of this, take the circling
movements of the dog before he lies down. The movements have no purpose
now, because the domestic dog no longer lives in tall grass; but it is
reminiscent of his ancestors’ behaviour for ages, and in this sense may
be called an instinctive action of racial memory. The dog’s will is
bent on performing this unnecessary and now perfectly empty formality,
simply because his ancestors performed it so often in his line of
descent.
(2) A bodily origin, by which I mean that an instinct is the natural
outcome of a certain correlation of organs, bodily parts or weapons,
and the possession of which in itself is sufficient to suggest and to
enforce a certain mode of conduct in their possessor. As an example
of this take the butting or tossing proclivities of the goat and bull
respectively, the clawing of the cat, the burrowing of the mole, etc.
etc. All these activities are the outcome of the possession of certain
organs or bodily parts, that insist upon being used, that cause the
animal to feel ill-adapted and miserable if they cannot function.
What, then, is will?
All will is obviously the power of the instinct that determines conduct
for the moment, for a given period, or, as in some cases, for a
lifetime.
The will of an animal, therefore, is inseparable from the instincts to
which either his racial memory or his bodily parts give rise. For he
will do whatever his most powerful instinct, for the time being, bids
him do.
Let us now turn to man. With Reibmayr let me posit the three
fundamental instincts of man as (1) the Self-preservative Instinct, (2)
the Reproductive Instinct, (3) the Social Instinct.
According to his nature, man has one of these instincts stronger or
weaker than the other two, and this strength or weakness determines his
character, his choice of paths in life and of conduct in life.
Imagine the Self-preservative Instinct superior in power to the other
two, and, like all ambitious men bent only on self-aggrandisement,
he will scout both woman and society at all points where either of
these threatens to make him pay too heavy a toll. Suppose that his
Reproductive Instinct is the most powerful—as was the case with Mark
Antony—and he will be ready to sacrifice society and himself for the
woman he loves. If his Social Instinct leads him—as it lead Napoleon,
Disraeli, Charles I, Strafford, Colbert and others, he will make woman
and self subordinate to society’s claims upon his energies.
His will—that is to say the guiding power directing his conduct—is thus
only the popular term for “leading instinct.”
In men of the Herbert Spencer, Nietzsche, St. Francis of Assisi, John
the Baptist type, the social instinct was so strong that it completely
mastered and sacrificed the other two instincts. Their reproductive
instinct was suppressed and snubbed, and women were scouted by them,
while they considered their self-preservative instinct only in so far
as it assisted them in continuing and prolonging the exercise of their
social instinct. The will in these men resided in their leading social
instinct. It was that which determined their conduct.
In the coward, the anarchist, the deserter, the ambitious upstart
bent only on self-aggrandisement and security, in the unscrupulous
plutocrat, the self-preservative instinct is so strong that woman and
society are sacrificed or ignored, whenever any emergency or dilemma
occurs in which it becomes necessary to sacrifice them for the sake of
self-preservation. Such men’s wills reside entirely in the thought of
their own survival and security, and are determined exclusively by the
self-preservative instinct.
If, now, we ask what is Woman’s will, by what instinct is it
determined?—we are in a position to say at once: Woman’s will, owing to
the very correlation of her bodily parts and the important place the
organs and business of Life’s multiplication hold in her constitution,
is at least likely to have a strong bias or predisposition in favour
of being determined by her reproductive instinct. For the latter is
clearly very strongly implanted in her. The two sources from which
alone instinct can arise, and from which this particular instinct can
draw its strength, are present within her; they are undeniably her
idiosyncracy, and they are: (1) Racial memory (her women ancestors for
millions of generations, with the same organs as she possesses, having
performed all the functions of conception, parturition, and the rearing
of children more or less successfully, otherwise she herself would not
be there) and (2) the correlation of bodily parts (her body having
the full equipment for reproduction, which must crave the exercise of
its functions and suggest its use, if that equipment be healthy and
well-formed).
You may suggest that the same holds good of man. As a matter of fact,
it does not. Because in man there is some doubt, some uncertainty as
to the bias, as to the prejudice, suggested by his bodily parts. If
in man the organs concerned with Life’s multiplication held the same
predominant place as they do in woman, the same would certainly hold
good of him. But it is obvious that this is not the case. The case is
rather the reverse.
It is because of woman’s elaborate and extensive equipment precisely
for the business of Life’s multiplication, that we are justified in
suspecting that her will is likely to reside in this equipment, or
rather in the instinct that springs and takes its strength from it. We
are justified in suspecting this, on the same principle as that which
justifies us in suspecting that the will of the mole is determined by
its forelegs and general correlation of bodily parts.
_Provided she be healthy and well-formed_, then Woman’s will cannot
help being determined by the paramount equipment of sex in her body,
from which arises the reproductive instinct. Her social instinct
will be subservient, docile, ready to retreat before its master the
reproductive instinct on all occasions. The self-preservative instinct,
too, save when she is with child, will be limited by and associated
with the reproductive.
And all this will be so much Woman herself, so much part of her
essential being, that she will not be aware of it, _and while her
reproductive instinct will guide her, she herself will misinterpret
its promptings while doing its bidding_. So much so, indeed, will
she misinterpret its promptings, and her unconsciousness will be so
profound, so genuine, so unpretended, and so impenetrable, that it will
deceive even the spectator himself, even the contemplator and observer
of Woman.
If she has virtues, they will be offshoots from the reproductive
instinct; her vices will be the same. Her immorality, if she be capable
of it, will be Life’s immorality, vital immorality, positive immorality.
But what is most important in understanding Woman is, I repeat, her
inevitable mental misinterpretation of these phenomena. Weininger’s
book is wrong, weak, unjust, because he never lays sufficient stress on
this question of the unconscious and its bearing upon the nature and
conduct of Woman. Later on in this book many apparent problems in the
life-conduct of Woman, many of Woman’s apparent crimes, all Woman’s
so-called immorality, will be explained precisely on the basis of her
unconsciousness of the true forces actuating her. There is no other
explanation. There is no other way of understanding these things.
Let me repeat the sort of dialogue I constantly have with the average
man who is in the habit of taking things at their face value.
I. How’s Miss A.?
A.M. Oh, flourishing, thank you!
I. What is she doing now? Is she engaged yet?
A.M. No—not yet.
I. Any prospects?
A.M. None that I am aware of.
I. Where is she?
A.M. She’s attending lectures on Political Economy.
I. Political Economy!—whatever for?
A.M. Oh, she’s a very clever girl, and she’s interested in these
subjects.
I. Let me think!—how old is she?
A.M. Just twenty-three.
I. Well, well! I suppose she will meet plenty of fresh men at the
School of Political Economy, and may find what she wants there.
A.M. Oh, but you misunderstand Miss A. She has no such thought. She
says herself that she is deeply interested in Political Economy.
I. She does not know why she goes to the School of Political Economy;
she imagines it is because she is interested in the subject. But I know
why she goes there. Life sends her there. And even if the only thing
she could learn there were the turning and painting of skittles, she
would be interested in that. Life has found that one environment has
failed to give the girl her primary adaptations, so now it bids her
seek a new environment.
A.M. Oh nonsense!—you always imagine women think of nothing but men.
I. I didn’t say so!
A.M. But you imply it.
I. I. I don’t even imply it.
A.M. You do!
I. On the contrary, I feel quite certain that Miss A. is quite
unconscious of the true nature of the command that sent her to the
School of Political Economy.
At this stage in the dialogue the average man usually shrugs his
shoulders, because he knows nothing of unconscious motives; he knows
nothing of the brain’s misinterpretation of the body’s messages to it,
and the consequence is that he believes honestly in the avowed motive
in people’s conduct always being the real and true one.
But if this were so, women, with their moral upbringing as it is at
present, would be ashamed of doing half they constantly and habitually
do. It is their salvation in the present Puritanical age that their
deepest motives for their actions are not apparent to themselves,
otherwise the more tasteful, the more sensitive among them, would fly
to the nearest cellar for concealment and never show their faces again.
Never accept a Woman’s explanation of the motives actuating her—not
because she is deliberately lying, but because she does not know them:
The motive to her is always the one that is apparent, _the one that is
the outcome of her mind’s misinterpretation of the body’s messages to
it_.
People who say that women deliberately lie in these circumstances
simply do not know the subject, and had better start studying it afresh.
Let us analyse Miss A.’s case. I assume that she is a healthy normal
girl. Her hips are broad, her chest is full, she has been regular
in her periods from her fourteenth year. What is going on inside
her? All this equipment, in perfect working order and vigorously
constituted, has not ceased from signalling to the brain ever more
and more insistently for years: “We are not content; we are idle;
we are _sitting still_; we are not functioning; we are aching from
sitting still.” The brain misinterprets all this straight away, and
transmits it to consciousness as follows: “What a bore life is! _When_
is anything interesting or exciting going to happen? What are all the
men in my circle doing? Why don’t they notice me, or fall in love with
me?” The messages continue persistent, and they are the same as in the
first case, but more emphatic, more urgent. Again the brain transmits
them to consciousness as follows: “What a bore _home_ life is! What a
self-complacent, heedless creature mother is! What a tedious round this
week at home has been! I must go out; I must get away from it! I must
leave home! Couldn’t I study something? Anything that gets me out of
this tiresome futility! Isn’t there a course of something at the School
of Political Economy?” And so on!
In the terms of Life, this means simply: “My present environment is
failing to procure my principal adaptations for me. Life bids me seek
another environment at once.”
_Fidelity to Life in Woman must prevail over every other form of
fidelity._ In order to be _faithful_ to Life and Life’s purpose,
therefore, Miss A. must be _unfaithful_ to her old environment.
But to accuse such a girl of falsehood or dissimulation when she
declares that she is interested in Political Economy, and is pursuing
the study for its own sake, would be the cruellest injustice. Life is
quite unscrupulous in achieving her ends, and if Political Economy can
prove a road to them, why not Political Economy? But the woman is no
more conscious of the fact that Life is secretly directing her, than
the mole is of the reasons why it selects a subterranean life.
Hitherto I have spoken only of the healthy or positive woman. I
must, however, refer to the unhealthy woman; because, unless she is
rejected immediately, as a standard, we shall be utterly misled in our
examination of the true Female attitude.
For the present work, all I shall mean by unhealthy or negative,
will be that condition in which the body may be said to be either
_atonic_—that is to say, lacking in tone, in sanguine vigour—or
unfit, owing to inadequate, arrested or faulty development, for the
performance of its functions.
The fact that Weininger makes no classification of healthy and
unhealthy, but confines himself entirely to the two orders of women
that are either inclined to be male or inclined to be truly female,
vitiates the whole of his argument.
Unless I take into consideration whether a woman is properly equipped
not only with the mechanism but also with the tonality of the mechanism
for her functions, how can I proceed to postulate that she is either
male or female in her physical bias?
We know that the impulse to use an organ normally arises in the organ
itself in a state of health, and that the instincts of a creature have
only the two sources—racial memory and a correlation of organs—from
which they can possibly draw their strength. Suppress the more powerful
of these two sources, the organic impulse, and you cannot help
reducing, depressing, or even totally eliminating the instinct.
An unhealthy woman, in my sense, therefore, will approach maleness
in any case, whether she have male elements in her or not (to recall
Weininger); because with the decline in vigour of her reproductive
instincts consequent upon the atonic condition of her reproductive
organs, the voice of other instincts will make themselves heard, and
she will be less of a woman the more her other instincts dare to
measure themselves against her reproductive instinct.
To me, therefore, Weininger’s classification “Male” and “Female” woman
seems superfluous; it serves no useful purpose—because almost all the
secondary sexual characteristics of the male are rudimentary in woman
and come into prominence when her sex is in abeyance, either through
negativeness, immaturity (childhood), or at the climacteric (late
middle age); besides, even Weininger himself admits that he has “never
yet seen a single woman who was not fundamentally feminine,”[20] and
scores of cases could, moreover, be adduced which show that certain
races have reared women approaching as closely as possible to the
male—the _squaw_, for instance—without having produced _feminine_ males
to couple with them.
How Weininger, by the by, reconciles the opinion just quoted with his
other view, it is not incumbent upon me to say. His book is so full of
shallow conclusions, contradictions and superficial judgments, that it
is difficult to understand how it was ever taken seriously.
The relation of the unhealthy woman to Life, then, is rather that
of the renegade, of the atheist, of the infidel, towards his native
religion. She will not hanker after the business of Life and its
multiplication. Her Will will not reside in her reproductive instinct.
And this is what goes on in her mind:
(We are now inside the unhealthy woman’s brain.) Messages are being
received from all corners of her body. Her trunk with all its intricate
mechanism for reproduction sends constant signals of no urgency at
all—mere small talk! “We are quite content to be left alone; we are
quite happy sitting still; we are not anxious to have our lot altered
in the least.” The brain misinterprets all this straight away and
transmits these signals to consciousness as follows: “Man and my
supposed fatal relationship to him do not interest me in the least.
I am _above_ sex. I do not even feel a thrill in the presence of the
most virile, most positive male. All this talk about my lot on earth
being the business of Life and its multiplication, is simply nonsense
multiplied _ad infinitum_! I am born for higher things; I have the
instinct of higher things.”
As if there could be anything higher than the purpose of human
life!—Unless, of course, one is of the opinion of Schopenhauer,
Weininger and the rest of that ilk, and disbelieves in the desirability
of prolonging human life on earth.
To us, then, who are positive to Life, and to whom sterility is
therefore a thing to be regretted, deplored, and not admired, as
Weininger admired it; to us, who loathe the infertility of prostitution
and particularly of homosexuality, and who regard such a statement as
that of Weininger’s in regard to the last-named vice[21] as sufficient
not only to condemn a whole book, but a whole man as well: the
unhealthy or negative woman, despite all her superior and overweening
claims, is a subject of repulsion and disgust; and we would give her
a place in society where all her misinterpretations of her condition
would be rendered non-infectious and innocuous.
Unfortunately, what with the influence of Puritanism and its hostility
to sex and to sex-expression, what with the depressing foods and drinks
it has introduced,[22] or whose use it has fostered in the nation,
vitality even among creatures so positive and so vigorously positive as
women, has been greatly reduced and frequently hopelessly impaired; and
particularly in England, negative women, asexual women abound.
If, however, we keep strictly to our positive tenet: “_that all
that is good which is favourable to the best kind of life and its
multiplication_,” we shall have no difficulty in deciding whether this
increase of asexual women is a good or a bad thing; and our judgment
may be accordingly both definite and severe.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] The statistics showing that more women than men commit suicide and
go mad through disappointed love, prove that the importance attached by
women to this rebuff is much greater than that attached to it by men.
See Lombroso and Ferrero’s _La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée_, pp.
515 and 517.
[19] I have already done this in my _Defence of Aristocracy_; but as
the standpoint is comparatively new, it will bear being related here in
fresh terms.
[20] Op. cit., p. 188.
[21] Op. cit., p. 66: “In the second part of my book, however, I shall
show reasons in favour of the possibility that homosexuality is a
higher form than hetero-sexuality.” See also p. 226, where Weininger
says: “Her position outside the mere preservation of the race, the fact
that she is not merely the channel and the indifferent protector of
the chain of beings that pass through her, place the prostitute, in a
sense, above the mother.”
[22] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.
CHAPTER IV
The Positive Man and the Positive Woman
I have spoken about the positive child and its Yea-saying attitude to
Life generally. Now I am going to turn to two creatures, a man and a
girl, who have been fortunate enough to succeed, despite the negative
influence of the age, in growing up to manhood and mature girlhood
without having lost the positive attitude to Life.
Let us consider the positive male first. And I refer to him only
because no book on Woman is complete without a more than passing
reference to her counterpart—Man.
First of all examine his body! It is clear that Life and its business
of multiplication have not nearly so strong, so complete, a hold over
him as they have over Woman. The sphere the business of reproduction,
alone, occupies in his body is limited, comparatively small, and
confined. The part he plays in this business is, moreover, incidental,
transitory, spasmodic. As I have already said, he is an amputation from
Life rather than Life itself; and he returns to Life only at certain
intervals in order, as it were, to pay tribute to her, to enable her
to carry on her grand scheme. When he has paid this tribute at stated
intervals, the fact that he willingly renounces any further concern
in the matter, in fact, with some discontent and sense of surfeit,
turns away as one who does not want to have anything more to do with
it, is proof enough of the relatively small part he plays. For while
he turns away and refreshes his resources by indulging for a space his
two other instincts only—the self-preservative and the social—Woman’s
reproductive work goes silently on and may be truly said never to cease.
In Man, therefore, we must not confound the attitude of positiveness
or yea-saying to Life with positiveness or yea-saying to sex. In Woman
they amount practically to the same thing. Her reproductive instinct
and her yea to Life are inextricably involved. They merge; they are
simply different ways of expressing the same attitude. But in Man there
is a positiveness to sex which is smaller, more fitful, more irregular
than his positiveness to Life. For the latter may last uninterruptedly
throughout his whole existence, whereas the former, as we have seen,
unless he be a mere beast, is moody, transient, intermittent.
Looking upon men from the outside, therefore, we should no more expect
to find their reproductive instinct universally predominant in them,
than the vice of kicking is universally predominant in horses.
We should readily acknowledge that a certain supernormal sexuality
might exist in men of the Mark Antony type, in which the reproductive
instinct prevailed over all others; but we should be forced to conclude
that as a general rule there would be every chance, even in the
healthiest and most normal man, either of the self-preservative or of
the social instinct obtaining the upper hand.
And this indeed is what we find constantly occurs in real life—at least
sufficiently often for us to recognize that the reproductive or sexual
obsession in Man is more or less an exception, or an abnormality.
From the correlation of his bodily parts, then, we cannot deduce a
predominance of the reproductive instinct in Man.
What do we know of his racial memory? What have his ancestors done
and been doing all these years? If we can posit anything absolutely
certain about them it is this, that they have been almost incessantly
concerned with the mastering of Life, and the organization of Man’s
life as a social being. Nothing is more certain than that. Nothing can
be read more clearly in the pages of history. Whereas the reproductive
instinct has formed but a recurring _leit-motif_ of man’s life, his
social instinct, with all that it entailed in the mastery of Nature
and the concomitant organization of man’s life, as a social being, has
constituted the unremitting and endless harmony of his existence.
Whereas, therefore, a woman cannot be positive without being
paramountly sexual, a man who would be paramountly sexual would be
negative to a most important part of his being—his relationship to
Nature, to the mastery of Nature, and therefore to the ordering and
organization of Life, including himself as a social being.
A paramountly sexual man, therefore, is as hostile to Life as the
asexual woman, and just as useless.
When a positive man faces Life with his social instinct keenly
sharpened, his ordering mind becomes creative and his creation is
society. He feels himself above Nature and bends it to his will which
is governed by his social instinct. The stylobate of the ancient Greek
temple, the elevation above the ground of the foundation of the Chêteau
de Versailles—these things are but instances of the unconscious tokens
Man has given all through his career as a rational being, of his
feeling of difference, of distance, from rude uncultured Life. When he
faces Woman, he also faces Life pure and simple, and in exactly the
same spirit. But here his body obtains the mastery, and the creation is
the child.
Nature and Woman, being both different forms of Life unordered and
unarranged, yield to Man’s ordering mastery. They understand it and
follow it, always _provided it understands them_; for, obviously, the
gardener who sought to turn the rose-tree upside down, the cattle
farmer who sought to make the sheep carnivorous, or the social gardener
who sought to convert woman into a sort of non-productive asexual
worker, might certainly come within an ace of success, but would be
equally certain of having consummated the wretchedness if not the death
both of the rose-tree, the sheep and woman respectively.
But when nature is understood it yields cheerfully and eagerly to
Man’s ordering power, although it does so dumbly and inarticulately.
Woman, on the other hand, who is simply nature, Life itself, become
articulate, does so admiringly, cheerfully, happily and consciously.
The positive man, therefore, is positive to three things; Society,
self-preservation, and Woman. He cannot be wholly positive if he lack
any one of these attitudes; and those men who have maintained all these
attitudes with dignity and _creative_ success, have been the only
truly great men of history. Others are simply specialists, cripples,
deformities or nonentities. Of course, for a man to be positive to
Woman it is not necessary that he should actually have had a child from
her. Circumstances may have been hostile to this consummating proof of
his sexuality. This is only documentary proof, so to speak, and its
absence does not necessarily argue against his having maintained a
strictly positive attitude towards her and sex all his life.
We must always remember, too, that the complicated and wearing
responsibility that man has always cheerfully undertaken, of ordering
Life and mastering nature, is an arduous and very onerous business, and
that those men who have fulfilled their obligations to their social
instinct most scrupulously and honestly, have frequently come to their
journey’s end without having been able to cast more than a glance of
hearty encouragement and tender affection at the women they passed on
the road, however positive may have been their feelings towards them.
When we see a whole regiment, or two or three regiments, present arms,
or slope arms simultaneously, so that the glint on their rifles seems
like one flash that illuminates the whole multitude in the same second
of time; when we see one policeman suddenly make a clear channel
through the congested traffic of Cheapside, in order that a fire-engine
may dash through to perform its work of rescue; or when we watch the
rhythmic and regular movements of a _corps de ballet_, keeping strict
time with a well-conducted orchestra;—a mysterious thrill passes
through us, a magic breath of cool air seems to lap the lower regions
of our spine, and for some reason which we do not stop to analyse, we
feel uplifted, exalted, in mystic and glowing fusion with something
deep and distant, buried far away in the history of our race.
What is this mysterious thrill, this cold shiver? It is intensely
pleasurable. It is the only purely non-sexual thrill that in any way
approaches the sexual thrill. Its importance, therefore, to us and our
lives must be enormous. For the fact that it is poles asunder from
sexuality, ought to make us see that here we have something, a deep
instinct that is not reproductive, which is capable of feeling immense
bodily pleasure.
As a matter of fact, this cold shiver is one of the most infallible
signs of profound unqualified approval that our body shows. When it is
felt deep down in the back, man may conclude with absolute certainty
that one of the strongest, most vital and most necessary chords of his
nature has been touched and set vibrating. For the fact that it is the
body that speaks here, is, I repeat, a proof that we are concerned
with an instinct, and not with an act of intellect. It is always
possible to make quite sure of this distinction by remembering that
the body never participates in an act of intellect. When the intellect
apprehends anything, the body, remembering its superior rank, and its
superior age, remains coldly distant and unaffected. For the intellect,
as Schopenhauer rightly observed, is the servant of the body, and not
_vice versâ_. And the body does not share either its servant’s triumphs
or pleasures.
Conversely, when the body apprehends something by means of its
instincts, its servant—the intellect—is all agog, intensely interested,
watchful and helpful; the intellect “stands by” and is ready to seek
ways and means by which the body may speedily be guided to the object
of its longing or to the consummation of its desire—no matter what the
instinct be that is providing the momentum.
All bodily thrills, then, are very important; because they signify
that the superior part of one, the older, more traditional, more
unalterable, and more untractable part of one, is gratified,
acquiescent, _deeply approving what happens to be taking place_.
This fact is most significant, particularly in regard to all that is
going to follow in this book.
The thrill of the sexual union is easily explained and disposed of once
and for all:—It is the superior, the oldest, most traditional, and most
unalterable part of us—our body—approving the act of procreation, which
promises a continuation and a multiplication of Life.
Now my claim is that this other thrill, which, in its different way, is
just as pleasurable as the thrill of sexual union, is also an act of
bodily approval—but of what?
Let us consider in what circumstances this thrill is felt. I have said
that it is when we see a large body of troops manœuvring in such a
manner that the movements of the whole multitude are as the movements
of one man. I have said that it is when we see one single man in blue
step into the midst of the torrent of vehicles in Cheapside, put his
hand up, and clear, as if by magic, an open thoroughfare for the
fire-engine to dash through on its mission of mercy and of rescue.
I have said also that it is when we see the rhythmic movements of a
_corps de ballet_ adjusted to perfection to the regular beat of a fine
orchestra.
Now what is common to all these three instances? It is obvious that the
only thing that can be common to them all is the quality of _order_,
the quality which is the result and creation of the _ordering power of
man_. Where this is found in a tangible, forcible, overwhelming form,
the body approves, the body is thrilled. And this thrill is the body’s
exultation over witnessing what from time immemorial must have been one
of the human being’s strongest cravings and deepest faiths,—the faith
in order, in regular arrangement, in the power of ordering confusion;
because such order, such regular arrangement, and such power of
ordering confusion, have always meant greater mastery over nature, over
our foes, over Life in general, and therefore greater security, better
fruit, more happiness, more beauty!
The particular manifestation of order that the body may be witnessing
is immaterial; for it is not the nature of the manifestation, but its
quality of order, that moves and thrills us so deeply, that, perhaps,
in no other moment of our lives—save possibly in sexual union—do we
feel such an exquisite titillation of our nerves and tissues.
This approval, this never-to-be-forgotten chorus of praise that our
old body sings, in spite of ourselves, is the sign that our _social
instinct_[23] feels gratified, feels secure, and in the environment in
which it can thrive; for it is our _social instinct_ that knows how to
appreciate the value of order, how important order is, and how great
were those who first created order out of chaos.
I do not know whether women get this cold shiver down their backs at
the sight of order—I believe they do; in fact I am sure they must:
because, to the extent to which they feel positive to Man and to the
child they must feel positive to the order that makes men and children
possible and safe acquisitions.
Woman’s respect for Man, her whole attitude of awe towards him, must of
necessity fall to pieces when the order which it is his duty to Life to
establish by means of his social instinct, either collapses, or proves
in any way inadequate. Because, although Woman is constantly seeking to
lure Man to specialize in his reproductive instinct, she never respects
the man whom she thus succeeds in forcing to betray his other trusts;
and knows perfectly well, unconsciously, that only that man who remains
positive both to his social and his reproductive instinct, is of any
use to the world and ultimately to her and her child.
For Man to fail in the exercise of his social instinct brings him
into just as bad repute with decent women as when he fails in his
reproductive instinct. Women realize that he cannot be wholly positive
to Life without the exercise of both, and although they may make a mad
and delirious rush into voluptuous pastimes with the man of degenerate
social instincts—as they are doing at present, for instance—the more
far-seeing among them, the more sensitive and apprehensive of their
sex, will have a sense of insecurity and dissatisfaction which will
make them look anxiously around and wonder whether all is well with
Life and the world.
This is not the place to discuss the Woman’s Suffrage Movement; but the
above adumbrates my view of the deepest causes that underlay this most
interesting, most significant and most symptomatic agitation of recent
years. It was by no means the most frivolous, the most superficial, and
the most pretentious women who were militants in this movement. All
frivolous, superficial and pretentious women nowadays are to be found
only shoulder to shoulder with degenerate man wherever and whenever he
is “enjoying himself,” and whiling away his empty existence in a whirl
of still more empty pleasure.
For the present I must proceed with the consideration of Man’s social
instinct in its relation to Woman.
In addition to the task of imposing order on chaos and of creating
the foundations of civilized society, it is the social instinct of
man that has always been responsible for the contriving of all codes
of morality, however diverse, however conflicting. It is the social
instinct in lesser men that keeps them moral. For immorality is, in the
first place, a crime against society.
Social life—and all healthy human life is social life—cannot flourish
unless it is well ordered; unless, that is to say, it follows certain
well chosen rules of conduct, diet, amusement and the like. Where
man’s social instinct begins to decline, therefore, he is not only
ceasing from being positive to social life, but he is actually immoral.
Of all this the best women, the most sensitive women, are vaguely,
unconsciously aware. As the custodians of Life, they cannot respect, or
feel confidence in, men whose social instincts are declining.
By immorality I do not mean that limited, foolishly narrow-minded
notion of the Puritans, which confines itself to the condemnation of
all sexual pleasure. The Puritans themselves were immoral in my sense;
because, they were hostile to life. St. Paul himself was immoral, in
my sense; because, being a celibate, and as good as a monk himself,
he said to the Corinthians: “It is good for a man not to touch a
woman,...[24] For I would that all men were even as I myself[25]....
I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if
they abide even as I.”[26] St. Paul was indeed very immoral in my
sense; because when he cast about him for a reason to justify the holy
and sacred union of matrimony, the only one he could find was that it
alleviated a man’s lust.[27] I mean by immorality, as I have already
explained, all those crimes of omission and commission that are hostile
to the best kind of life. Social life cannot continue unless it is well
ordered. Disordered social life is in danger of annihilation: therefore
all those crimes that lead to social disorder as the result of man’s
declining social instinct are, in my sense, immoral.
In Chapter III I showed how predominant the reproductive instinct must
of necessity be in Woman; but I also showed that, owing to her mind’s
constant misinterpretation of bodily messages, it does not follow that
Woman will always be _thinking_ of sex, man and the child, simply
because her body thinks and works round nothing else.
The Positive Woman—the young fully formed girl—is all sex; her body
aspires and yearns for nothing more ardently than the fulfilment of her
destiny; this cannot help being so, and yet what from all appearances
could be more remote, more different from thoughts of sexual relations
and reproduction than the mental preoccupations of the healthy decent
young girl? She could not tell you why she is fond of men’s society.
She knows only that she is fond of it. She could not explain why she
hopes to marry ultimately; she knows her father and mother were married
and that most adults seem to marry, but she has not the faintest
conception of all that this implies. She notices that she has a marked
taste in men—that some men are like wooden images to her, and that
others thrill her through and through; but she is not aware of the
reasons of all this. While, however, the very mystery of these thrills,
the very impenetrability of her likes and dislikes in regard to men,
make her abandon any hope of knowing the why and the wherefore of
these experiences, she is not unfavourably disposed towards them. On
the contrary they interest her and attract her as if magnetically;
while men are the object of her most solemn and most undivided
attention. Occasionally she has a terrible, unutterable dream, the
very recollection of which shocks her for days afterwards; but these
adventures she has in slumber throw no fresh light on her problem for
her; for has she not had the most impossible dreams all her life? Who
is to say that these she is having now are any more reliable than those
she had three, four, five or six years ago,—although the subject of
them is so entirely different? Still, it is all very strange, _very_
strange; and she regards men with perhaps a trifle more penetration on
the morrow, and the day after.
The very positive girl may be timid, in fact is, as a rule, very
timid in the presence of men, and very self-conscious too. Her body
is aware that in this environment it can find its consummation, it
would like to find its consummation, and it is therefore all tense and
braced with excitement—an excitement that the girl herself does not
quite understand, except that it makes her extremely uncomfortable.
And it is the difficulty she feels in overcoming her body’s concern
that constitutes the strain. This difficulty may easily be understood,
however, if we remember that ever since she first became fully
formed, her body has silently, but regularly been preparing for the
consummation of its destiny. Unbeknown to the girl’s consciousness,
though of course she has been aware of the phenomenon, every month Life
has prepared her—her body has dressed itself, so to speak, for the act
that will lead to the consummation of her destiny,—no wonder that after
all these months and years of silent waiting and waiting, and elaborate
and minute preparations for the guest, that there should be some
bustle, some joyful apprehension, when a potential guest is at hand, or
actually waiting. But the mind knows nothing of all this. What in fact
is going on in the girl’s mind?
All this bodily agitation gets telephoned through correctly enough to
the brain; but it is transmitted to consciousness in a form so utterly
garbled and inaccurate, that it becomes unintelligible. Consciously,
the girl only feels uncomfortable, and sometimes so painfully so that
she has to take flight altogether, and retire somewhere alone to
recover her self-possession. Charlotte and Emily Brontë had to avert
their eyes when they passed an attractive man in the street.
You may be quite certain that when a fully formed and decent girl looks
boldly and unmoved (as hundreds do nowadays) into the eyes of men—even
of the most attractive men—her degree of positiveness is very low
indeed, and her body feels very little at all in the presence of the
male sex.
The whole of the above, of course, applies only to the virgin.
There is no true positiveness to the social instinct in the positive
girl. The social instinct’s next finest products,[28] which are the
fine arts, are to her but means to an end—unconscious means to an
end, just as everything else is: the end being the full exercise of
her reproductive instinct. If a girl show a strong desire to play
the violin, to paint or to write, you may feel quite sure these next
finest manifestations of man’s social instinct are attracting her only
temporarily, as extra plumage with which to eclipse her sisters and
friends. And the really positive girl will throw all these accessories
to her bodily charms overboard the moment they have served her purpose.
No admirably positive woman would ever continue the pastimes of
painting, or music, once they had achieved her object for her.
As I suggested in Chapter III, for the social instinct to speak with
even an ever so feeble voice in Woman, it means that some part of
her reproductive instinct has had to stand aside—_ergo_, that her
reproductive instinct is not as strong as it might be, and consequently
that some flaw may be suspected either in her ancestry, or in the tone
or correlation of her bodily parts. If, then, she applies herself to
the fine arts—which are only the next highest bloom of the human social
instinct working for order in expression—she can do so only under
two conditions—(1) At the bidding of her reproductive instinct which
makes her unconsciously adopt one of the arts temporarily as an extra
feather with which to make her a more conspicuous female against the
background formed by her sisters and friends; or (2) at the bidding of
a genuine impulse to art, arising from a real whisper coming direct
from her social instinct—in which case her reproductive instinct may be
considered as imperfect, suspect, lacking in vigour. All positiveness
to the social instinct in Woman, therefore, denotes a decline of Woman
as Woman, a depression in the manifold and exalted virtues, the beauty,
the charm, and the power of Woman as the breeder, the mother, and the
custodian of Life.
Enough has now been said on this subject to leave the reader in no
doubt as to how I distinguish between the Positive Man and the Positive
Woman.
The first must, in order to be whole, be positive both to sex and to
society, through his reproductive and social instincts respectively.
The latter must, in order to be whole, be positive to sex only.
Of course, I need hardly remind the reader that all men, by the
exercise of their social instinct cannot be creative in social order,
or in the fine arts; but the least of them, if their social instinct is
normal, can protect and maintain society by observing its conventions
and rules.
Nor do I wish to imply that, because Woman is now anxious about the
fate of Life and society, she is therefore developing or acquiring new
powers of which neither her female ancestors nor her body can reveal
the generating source. I say only that the most apprehensive and most
sensitive of modern women are losing their faith in man because of
the undoubted decline in his social instinct, and because of their
having become aware of the danger that this entails to Life. I do not
even mean to suggest that what they say on this subject is worthy of a
moment’s attention. It is the fact that they _feel_ the danger, that is
important.
It now remains for me to differentiate between the Positive Man’s
and the Positive Woman’s attitude to the sexual act itself. This is
necessary, in fact indispensable; because upon a proper grasp of this
matter a true and serviceable understanding of Woman largely depends.
I shall deal with Man first.
The Positive Man, who is necessarily the healthy and moral man,
is faced by Woman as a temptation from a few years after puberty,
practically until the end of his life. He is faced by her as a
temptation very much in the same way as the child of my third chapter
was faced by the heavy stone as a temptation. One of the first things
he observes in regard to this temptation, however, is that it is not
continuous, not constant, but intermittent and fitful. It is much more
in the nature of an appetite that can be satisfied and momentarily
stilled, a desire that can be met and gratified, than a need that never
ceases, as for instance the need of air, or of food. What is more,
the very satisfaction it is possible to give it, is the principal
cause of its intermittent character. I do not, myself, believe in any
feeling of disgust or repulsion arising in the male towards the female
after a gratification of the male sexual appetite; I am convinced that
where this occurs it is only the outcome of bestial excess; but I am
certain that the appetite of the male, his desire, undoubtedly can and
does remain quiescent for a space after its gratification, _that it
is possible for him during that quiescent period to act and live in
a way which is absolutely, to all intents and purposes asexual, or
indistinguishable from the asexual life_.
The fact that the sexual act alone constitutes the whole of man’s
share, the whole of his desire, and the whole of his physical
concern, in regard to reproduction, and that for a space after its
accomplishment he may be regarded as practically asexual, is so
important in the understanding of Man’s attitude and his duty both to
the world, to Life, and to Woman, that it cannot be too thoroughly
understood.
It is the fitful nature of Man’s sexual Life, the _crescendo_
and _diminuendo_ of his desire, that constitutes its principal
characteristic. From the moment he rises from the couch—not refreshed,
but having rejoined the continuous stream of Life for a moment, only to
pay it tribute—he becomes for a while purely social, purely asexual,
turning his mind to other matters, _pleased_ to turn his mind to other
matters, and retaining the woman who is his mate, _no longer from pure
desire_ (let all women thoroughly grasp this), but from pure morality,
pure sociability;—aye! and supporting her children too, no longer as
a sexual accomplice or confederate, but as a social agent, prompted
thereto by his social instinct.
This state of asexuality, or pure sociability, lasts until the next
longing for the stream of Life seizes him once more; but even then
again, it is his social instinct that guides him in the way in which
he should gratify it, and the way he should meet the responsibilities
arising from having gratified it.
One can recognize immediately the man with a normally developed social
instinct (just as one can recognize immediately a well-developed social
community) by the strictness with which his fitfulness in regard to sex
is not allowed to work havoc among his female acquaintances generally,
or to make him neglectful of the responsibilities it imposes.
For, it should always be remembered that to the positive man,
well-built and well-fed, the sexual longing is sometimes the most
intolerable anguish, the most acute and importunate suffering, and its
gratification a thing which for the moment appears fraught with such
unspeakable, such ecstatic joy and delight, that to think of subsequent
responsibilities here, to dwell on subsequent duties here, denotes
a degree of social instinct that is far beyond the measure usually
supposed to be possessed by even the civilized individual. During the
moment of crisis, at its most acute stage, the only object that seems
desirable, reasonable, possible, the only prize that seems worth while,
is—gratification, satisfaction, in fact the willing Woman; even if
damnation loom threateningly behind her, even if death stand waiting at
the end!
Who has felt this and not marvelled at the fact that Man was ever able
to build up a _possible_ human society! Who has felt this and not
learnt thereby to admire and respect Man’s social instinct, which was
able, out of this fierce and tremendous passion to construct a scheme
whereby he who felt it took upon himself the responsibilities arising
from its very gratification![29]
No wonder a cold shiver of exquisite and mysterious pleasure courses
down our backs whenever we are in the presence of a masterful example
of Man’s order! What triumphs of the past that cold shiver remembers,
which we are at a loss to recall, but which we still unconsciously
applaud every time the regular movements of a multitude, the measured
strains of a rich melody, or the swing and stride of a _corps de
ballet_ appear before our eyes! For these are but the outward, visible,
tangible and most obvious examples of Man’s social instinct working for
order!
Powerful as the sexual passion is in Man, small though intense as is
his share in the joys of reproduction, only think what a powerful force
was required to meet this sexual passion, with any hope of success, in
order to discipline and control it! It had to be a force as great if
not greater than the reproductive instinct itself. And what force is it
in us that gives us a mysterious thrill, so different from, and yet so
subtly akin in bodily strength to the sexual thrill? I have spoken of
this thrill already; it is the cold shiver mentioned in the preceding
paragraph—the cold shiver of the social instinct gratified. This,
then, was the only power in man, that he himself could rally against
his fierce and ungovernable sexual desire; it was the only power that
held anything like a corresponding hold over his body; and he turned
it so successfully against his reproductive instinct, that he taught
the latter its limits, and forced it to accept the responsibilities
its tempestuous ardour involved.[30] This is the only form of
“self-control” that arises from the strength and not from the weakness
of a man.[31]
To return, however, to the question of his attitude to the sexual
act, it is clear that man, once he has risen from the couch, after
gratifying one of his fitful longings, has for the time being _done_
with sex. This is most important. After having rejoined the stream
of Life to pay it tribute, he becomes once more the amputation from
Life, and can turn away from its sexual thraldom until another of his
fitful longings overtakes him.[32] As a well-known French painter once
said to me at a moment when his house was in a turmoil over his wife’s
presenting him with his first child: “_J’y suis pour si peu de chose là
dedans!_”
It is clear, then, that while the joy of sex for man is intense,
immense and indescribably pleasurable—for, in addition to the actual
physical gratification it brings, there is the spiritual ecstasy of
the exercise of power, and power in its most flattering form, i.e.
over another human being—it is all concentrated into a few such brief
moments, into a space so short as to seem ridiculous when the efforts
made to experience it are taken into account. True, it is zenithal,
stupendous, quintessential; but it is perhaps, for that very reason,
short and exquisitely so. It is as if all the qualities of pleasure,
physical and spiritual, had for man been distilled and re-distilled
until they had been reduced to the smallest possible compass, in order
that he might be quickly and sufficiently gratified, and yet not
detained too long from those other duties to Life to which his other
instincts direct him.
And it is precisely this tabloid form of sexual ecstasy that enables
man to know exactly the limits and boundaries of his part in sexual
life. _He knows that there it begins and ends._ It is a definite thing
that he can seek and find. He can be quite conscious about it and _is_
quite conscious about it from the start. It is small enough, short
enough, intense enough, to be grasped and understood by consciousness.
The only things connected with sex that _last_ and _endure_, where man
is concerned, are its responsibilities—and these are, of course, the
very aspects of it that the man with a declining social instinct wishes
to cast off from the problem of sex. That is why the value of a man, as
a man, may almost always be determined by his attitude towards Woman.
The anarchist, the degenerate, loves the prostitute; the true artist,
the sober, healthy citizen loves the mother.[33]
To turn now to the attitude of the Positive Woman to the sexual act,
how very different is the case with her!
Take the little jewel constituting man’s small instant of sexual
ecstasy and beat it out to a length sufficiently great to cover twenty
to thirty months, and sometimes more, and you have its extended and
attenuated equivalent for the female. Until Woman has gathered up
all the experiences that constitute her participation and her share
of pleasure in the sexual act, and which are distributed over the
period above mentioned, her sexual life and the pleasure it brings to
her, cannot be said to be complete. Even the craving for the proper
functioning of her organs and the primary instinct that animates and
actuates her cannot be gratified unless she picks up every one of the
moments strewn over that space of time—unless, that is to say, she
passes through the whole cycle of events and sensations that go to make
up her complete relationship to man and to the child.
To suppose, by a false analogy with man, that sexual union alone,
without its natural results, is going to satisfy Woman’s body, however
much she herself may be deluded into believing it will, is nothing more
nor less than to condone an act of pure cruelty, of savage violence,
against a basic instinct and its elaborate generating mechanism.[34]
As a matter of fact, although Woman means everything to Man’s
sexuality, and is the embodiment of all that his reproductive instinct
can desire, even when it is at its keenest, Man means very little to
Woman. He is, after all, no more than the sparking-plug that sets an
elaborate process going, and the brief moment in which his share in
her business is accomplished, and the incomplete pleasure it affords
her, are ridiculously insignificant when compared with the importance
he himself would fain attach to them. Woman’s supposed devotion to
man, and even her love for him, is therefore much more of an illusion
than Man’s love for Woman. Regarded dispassionately and coolly, Woman’s
love for Man must be more or less of an exaggerated and romantic ideal.
He is merely the first station on a long and delightful journey, in
which the subsequent destination is the chief concern. Of course he may
be desired again as the first station for a second, third, fourth or
fifth journey; but it is always self-deception that induces any woman
to regard a man as more than that, as more final, more satisfying than
that; although utilitarian motives may induce her to exploit and use
his social instinct to the utmost while she is serving nature’s and her
own ends by having children by him.
The only kind of woman to whom Man is everything, is the prostitute,
and I shall show in Chapter IX what a cruel misconception even her
position is.
By the time that man has done his share in the sexual act, therefore,
and that his social instinct _alone_ has taken command of him, bidding
him protect and support his mate, and face the responsibilities that
are coming, the Woman may be said to have only just begun, only
just started on the road. Silently, secretly, but with vigorous
determination, the reproductive instinct still reigns supreme, and has
an enormous amount to do—pleasures and pain to bring and to forget,
power to confer and to withhold.
This is as important as it seems generally to be misunderstood; and
yet its non-acceptance as a principle is the source of more than
three-quarters of the crimes that are committed against and by women in
the whole of the modern world.
Unfortunately, positive Woman herself does not come forward with any
help here. Because positive Woman—sometimes even when she is married—is
completely unconscious of what is necessary in order for her to have a
complete and full sexual experience. _All positive women are in the
first place positive to men, and to men alone._ This cannot be helped,
as I shall explain later; it is one of the inevitable consequences
of Woman’s universal unconsciousness. But how easy is the step from
positiveness to men to exclusive positiveness to sexual union alone,
only those women who have experienced it can tell! And this fatal step
is taken by thousands of women annually—particularly in France, and it
is a step taken by all prostitutes.
It is, of course, physical anguish for the woman. Her body suffers;
because all the necessary subsequent stages of the sexual cycle are
omitted: the period of gestation; parturition; suckling, when the
mother’s power reaches its zenith, and when the soft helpless creature
in her arms offers exquisite flattery to every fibre, both mental and
physical, in her body. All this, until the actual day of weaning, comes
strictly within the cycle of Woman’s complete sexual experience. To
suppose that the mere act of sexual union, which is the first step in
this cycle, is sufficient or adequate in the case of Woman, especially
positive Woman, is to court disaster, it is to violate her deepest
craving. She does not know this. How many millions of women have lived
and died sufferers through not knowing this!
But those who profit from her unconsciousness in this matter, those who
trade upon her apparent inability to understand her body’s demands in
this matter, those, in short, who while debasing her from her exalted
position of the mother of Life to a mere instrument of pleasure, also
rob her of her full and complete sexual experience and its quota of
pleasure, are in my opinion no better than barbarians, troglodytes,
common whoreson knaves! Many thousands of them get punished quite
soundly enough, as I shall show in Part II; but how many thousands get
off scot free!
The Positive Woman, although she does not know it, must be and is
positive to the whole cycle of female sexual experiences. Her body
knows nothing else and craves for nothing else. It is true that her
body bids her seek the male alone (consciously), but merely because if
it were not for man’s diabolical skill and craft, this attitude would
perforce lead to the natural and inevitable results. The body, however,
knows nothing of the interception of the male fructifying element;
when, therefore, it drives woman to be positive at first to man alone,
it does the right thing; it does all it can be expected to do. It
forces woman to the first step which, as far as it is aware, will lead
to the inevitable cycle. Contraceptives obviously cannot come into its
purview.
That is why positive woman is conscious only of desiring the male,
while her body insists blindly on obtaining the whole cycle.
No young virgin who craves for children, or for a child of her own,
is really sincere. Such a desire never reaches consciousness from the
body. In fact the girls that make the best mothers are frequently
absurdly impatient with and intolerant of other people’s children. My
mother always told me that before she had her first child she took no
keen interest in children whatsoever. A positive girl may be fond of
children, and kind to children; but she is _consciously positive to
man only_. It is only natural that she should be so. The body knows of
no royal road to the love and possession of offspring save through the
portals of sexual life. Very often, however, a very positive girl will,
from mere bashfulness or decency, express her strong desire for man
by what she conceives to be a more polite and more euphemistic way of
revealing it, and will tell you that she longs for a child. This should
deceive no one. It is either a pose on her part, or a very transparent
disguise of her genuine feeling.
Although, therefore, we may again be deceived, and frequently are
deceived, by Woman’s double life—the unconscious life her body leads
with all its determined aspirations and desires constantly directing
her footsteps, and the mental or conscious life she leads, which
frequently has not the smallest bearing on the true aims of the
body, and as often misinterprets these aims—we cannot help admitting,
notwithstanding, that positive Woman, though she appears to be, and
will declare she is, positive to man and the sexual union alone, must
unconsciously be positive to the whole cycle constituting the female
sexual experience, _including particularly those long months spent with
the child alone_.
The prostitute, therefore, is merely a positive woman whom unfortunate
circumstances have conspired to petrify and confirm in her
misunderstanding of her true needs and desires.
The important bearing this admission has on the subsequent chapters
of this book, emboldens me to urge the reader to bear it well in mind
from now onwards; for, simple as it seems in its baldest statement, it
clears up so many of the apparent complications of practical sexual
life, that unless it be properly grasped and remembered now it may in
itself appear complicated before my task is done.
I have but one more remark to make on positive Woman’s attitude to
the sexual act, and with it I shall draw this necessary but delicate
discussion to a close.
After admitting that she, or rather her body, pronounces it, alone,
inadequate, insufficient, why do I assume that though she consciously
craves for it alone, she unconsciously craves for the whole cycle?
As I have pointed out, it is possible for man to recognize the limits,
the full extent of his momentary participation in the business of
procreation. It is short, intense, tangible. But think of the host of
accidents, unexpected joys and pains that may attend an experience
lasting eighteen to twenty months! How could that possibly be grasped
by the body, let alone the mind, as a definite desire! Prophetic power
would have to enter into consciousness as well as into the body, in
order to distil from this panorama of events anything so delicate and
unequivocal as a desire for a pleasurable experience! It is impossible
for the young girl consciously to desire _all_ the events of these
fateful eighteen to twenty months, however much her body may insist
upon having them, and complain and murmur if it does not get them.
Personally I am convinced, from my knowledge of the healthy well-built
and positive mothers I have known, that once the joys of these eighteen
to twenty months have been experienced, they are _consciously_ desired
again. As, however, such mothers are, as a rule, not very communicative
concerning the precise nature and degree of these joys, but secretly
hug them all through their lives as something precious and private that
elevates them and differentiates them from the rest of mankind, a girl
can scarcely be expected to know about them secondhand, nor can she be
blamed for not finding out about them.
Have you ever injured or harmed, even by accident, a child that
its mother had reared at the breast? Have you ever experienced the
fierce love that immediately flashes out of the mother in the form
of the heartiest and most unjust indignation at your unintentional
trespass? If you know all this, like myself you can entertain no doubts
concerning the untold joys that Woman’s life, alone with the child, can
and often does bring her. To regard her relationship to man (without
its natural consequences) as her sexual consummation, or even as her
sexual pleasure, is, therefore, simply the most crass and most hopeless
form of primitive barbarism.
It is true that, in order to rule man and to get a hold over him,
also with the view of providing herself with an ever-ready means for
creating in him a guilty conscience about her, Woman, in Europe at
least, has grossly misrepresented her attitude to motherhood, and by
concealing its joys and exaggerating its pains as much as possible,
has at last succeeded in making maternity appear a sort of voluntary
self-martyrdom. It should never be forgotten, however, that with
stupid and ill-informed men, woman finds it easy to obtain power and
mastery in this manner; for, if her man be foolish enough to believe
her, it is the best means she has for cowing him. In making him
believe that he gets all the joy and she all the suffering from the
sexual life, she gives him a constant sense of guilt or at least of
indebtedness which makes him submissive. But the whole attitude is of
course pure misrepresentation and fraud. For the very idea that the
performance of a natural function should be so painful as to amount
to an act of “self-sacrifice,” is obvious nonsense. Certainly, when
disease or malformation is present (as it is now in the majority
of cases), maternity is nothing less than a torment; but in such
circumstances, disease or malformation should be pleaded, and not
maternity or matrimony, as the cause of the trouble. A man coupled to
a wife who moans and groans over maternity, should realize that he
has been guilty of a fundamental mistake in taste, that he has chosen
an inferior woman, and should blame himself, his upbringing, and his
general notions about life, for the trouble maternity brings into his
household. But he should not let himself be persuaded that because his
inferior woman suffers over a perfectly normal function, that therefore
all maternity is “self-sacrifice” and “unselfishness.” There could not
be a grosser misunderstanding. Only the sick or badly-formed woman has
any honest right to complain of motherhood; _but she has no right to
motherhood at all_. Motherhood is only “unselfish,” therefore, when
it is unpleasant (i.e. when abnormal conditions prevail); and those
English philosophers who derive altruism from the maternal instinct are
guilty of taking the abnormal as the norm for the basis of their values.
Healthy, honest women will confess that they thoroughly enjoy every
moment of motherhood; but inasmuch as to-day it is the fashion to speak
of self-sacrifice in regard to these functions, they will only admit in
secret, and with the feeling that they are making a guilty admission,
that they have enjoyed them. It has become the custom in modern Europe,
and particularly in England, to represent women as performing some
mysterious personal “sacrifice” in marriage. In all modern novels
and plays this view of women is taken for granted. But it is only
another of the sentimental myths created by modern Western women for
their own ends. Where it is true, it ought to be a subject of shame,
as showing marked physiological inferiority; and where it is not true,
it is never anything more than a hoax for exercising moral power over
a foolish husband. For thousands of men nowadays are convinced that
whether a woman be healthy or unhealthy, well or badly formed, there is
something sweetly and edifyingly “unselfish” about motherhood. Western
Civilization has not produced a greater lie, or a more pernicious
lie than this; for it makes abnormality a virtue, and physiological
inferiority a claim upon our admiration!
Unfortunately the number of women to-day who really do suffer from
maternity shows such a large annual increase, and men’s taste in women
is so much vitiated by ignorance and false values, that the morbid
association of “self-sacrifice” with motherhood is now regarded as
almost inevitable, and doctors who thrive on it are the first to
proclaim it as a necessary and even _natural_ association.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] I feel I must offer some explanation here in regard to the precise
relationship of the social instinct to order. Some will object, and
quite rightly, that all order is not social order, and that all rhythm
is not gregarious rhythm. There is the natural rhythm (and therefore
the natural order) of birds’ songs, of insects’ buzzing, of horses’
and most animals’ movements, of fish in water, of corn waving in the
wind. Whatever be the strength or weakness of our social tendencies,
therefore, we must, as animals, feel instinctively and deeply akin to
the phenomenon of rhythm and its charm. This affinity will reside deep
down in our natures, and will hark back to an age far more remote than
that in which the first human society was formed. All this is perfectly
true. But this very phenomenon of natural rhythm, extended into the
general notion of order, is the only origin to which we can possibly
trace the power of rhythmic or orderly arrangement in the creative
human being. Extended into the notion of order and applied creatively
by a superior human being to Nature, whereby chaos becomes arrangement,
and confusion is unravelled, this rhythm constitutes the birth not only
of all human society, but of each separate civilization that has ever
existed. In this way I conceive of the social instinct having, as a
product of natural rhythm and order, engulfed and absorbed the source
of its existence, in the human kind, and established itself in humanity
as the developed and highly extended form of that source.
[24] 1 Corinthians vii. 1.
[25] _Ibid._, vii. 7.
[26] _Ibid._, vii. 8.
[27] _Ibid._, vii. 9. “But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for
it is better to marry than to burn.”
[28] For the connexion between man’s social instinct and the Arts, see
my Introduction to _The Letters of a Post-Impressionist_ (Constable &
Co., 1912).
[29] I know of only one woman who has recognized this and given man
full credit for his self-mastery in regard to the consequences of his
sexual lust. See Arabella Kenealy (_Op. cit._, pp. 178-9). The passages
are too long to be quoted, but they should be read by all those who may
be tempted to conclude that my views, as expressed above, have been
prompted by masculine bias alone.
[30] See Sir Almroth E. Wright, M.D., F.R.S., _The Unexpurgated Case
against Woman Suffrage_, p. 74, where the author hints at how much
under civilization has been done for women by man.
[31] See also pp. 7, 90-94.
[32] The part played by his self-preservative instinct in all this will
be disclosed in another chapter. See chapter V, pp. 89-90.
[33] Cf. Weininger, Op. cit., p. 227: Where the author disagreeing
with me says: “Great men have always preferred women of the prostitute
type.” It is true that eighteen pages farther on he contradicts
himself by saying of the prostitute: “She is the mate of the worst
sort of men”; but this single example, taken from among the many
equally amazing contradictions in this book, only tends to show its
extraordinary futility.
[34] And yet most of the modern books on sex questions, particularly
those written by women, take this false analogy for granted.
CHAPTER V
Virgin Love in the Positive Man and the Positive Girl
The moment when a healthy young man stands for the first time before
a beautiful positive girl, with a full consciousness of what that
girl can and may mean to him, is one of the most trying and most
disconcerting in his whole life.
In plain English, he is standing before Life itself. Life itself is
taking stock of him. Let us be in no doubt here. His eyes may wander,
dazed, over the bewildering spectacle before him; his eyelids may
quiver; he may not understand what his feelings are, or why he feels so
numb and speechless, and breathes so deeply; but he is well aware that
an iron Fate has suddenly seized him like a vice, and is holding him
spellbound before an examiner, who is far more relentless than any he
has hitherto encountered at school or college.
And now turn your eyes on Life itself! Look at the girl! Provided that
he is not watching her too closely, her eyes are scanning every inch
of his body, with a penetration, an attention, a fierce criticism,
that is allowing no detail to escape, no indication of virile potency
to go unnoticed. Her hands may be cold, even moist with emotion; but
Life in her is neither cold nor moist: it is at white heat, working its
hardest, and deciding for her whether it shall be Aye or Nay!
The very speed with which this decision is often made proves how
concentrated, how unrelaxing the scrutiny must be; and however hard
the work that has to be done, it is all over and frequently quite
brilliantly dispatched in a few seconds—a minute at the most!
Aye or Nay! No wonder the youth feels embarrassed! Such an examination
by Life itself is hard to bear. The verdict, too, if it be favourable,
is gratifying. The approval of a positive, healthy, well-built girl
is a certificate of potency; because it is not only Life’s approval
of one of its own products; it is healthy Life acquiescing in one
of its essential means to multiplication. To feel pleased in such
circumstances is perfectly justifiable; to feel satisfied here is
nothing but becoming.
But there is another side to the picture, and I state it now, while
we are discussing this particular situation. There is nothing more
harrowing, more pathetic, more heartrending than to witness poor,
patient and enduring Life, in the form of a beautiful maiden, being
forced by circumstances (by the fact perhaps that this is the girl’s
only chance) to choose the next best, the second best, the third best!
Oh, how she stifles her highest feelings! How she chafes beneath the
yoke! And how ruthlessly Life re-registers upon her eyes all the
defects of her future mate, as fast as she in her positiveness wipes
them away with the impatient sponge of her desire!
That “Yea,” given reluctantly, shamefully, almost guiltily (because
women feel that they are betraying a trust in such circumstances),
in the presence of a poor specimen of manhood,[35] simply because it
is better to be positive to Life, even on a minor scale, than not to
be positive at all!—there is nothing more excruciatingly painful to
witness!
How often this tragic farce is enacted in _our_ part of the world, only
women know, only brave women know—they who prefer anything rather than
not to remain positive to Life.
Unfortunately, it is not unusual nowadays for the positive healthy
girl, particularly of the wealthier classes, to be spoilt by foolish
modern prejudices that misguide her in this first important criticism
of the men with whom she is confronted. From the very atmosphere she
has breathed ever since her infancy, she has imbibed certain wholly
fictitious standards regarding so-called “manliness” which, at this
vital moment in her life, frequently cause her to make the most
grievous mistakes. She has had dinned into her innumerable conventional
desiderata relating to manners, sporting capacities, cheerfulness,
levity, boyishness and bodily build, which now cause her to select
consciously the very kind of man who is least likely to constitute
an understanding and adequate mate. He must possess a certain kind
of mind—supple, ready for light laughter, humorous, not too broody,
not too masterful, not too self-centred, and above all, painstakingly
chivalrous. He must have had his spirit, if not broken, at least
curbed by the public-school system; his self-esteem severely shaken
by excessive contact with mediocrities who have insisted on his being
like one of themselves, and he must have the body and face of a young
athlete. He must be capable of being trusted alone with her on rambles
in the country, at games, on short excursions. He must not take himself
or his claims or his thoughts too seriously, and the _sine qua non_
is that he must be capable of idealizing Woman, of “looking up” to
her, of feeling a lump in his throat at the thought of her purity, her
devotion, her “heroism” as a mother, her condescension as a possible
mate to himself, and her ladyhood.
All these attributes the spoilt positive girl of our wealthier classes
has been taught to seek and select among the young men that are paraded
before her; and in insisting on these attributes, she consistently,
almost without exception, succeeds in taking a man who is ideally
equipped with every possible characteristic for making her thoroughly
and exasperatingly miserable the whole of her life. For very few indeed
of these attributes have any connexion whatsoever with true, desirable
manliness in a mate, and the young man who has been tamed into making
a trustworthy companion to a single positive girl in her games and her
walks, is more often a torture machine than a delight as her husband in
later years.
But let us see what unspoilt Life, through the positive unspoilt girl,
is actually trying to discover in the positive young man before her.
Is she concerned with probing his soul? Does she meditate about his
chances of going to Heaven when he dies? Is she wondering whether he
has a load of sin that weighs him down?—She is very far from giving a
thought to these matters. Her primary consideration is undoubtedly:
Is he a fully equipped male? Is he a normally equipped male? Has he,
above all, that _exuberance_ which at one and the same time is beauty,
sexual potency, and tense passion? Is he savoury?—that is to say,
is he devoid of everything capable of ultimately inspiring disgust?
Classical features are by no means a vital consideration. Exuberance
and savouriness are much more important. Is there fire in his
eyes?—voluptuousness and fullness in his mouth? Is there eagerness and
enthusiasm in the dilatation of his nostrils? Is there energy lurking
in the vibrations of his voice? Is his mouth clean and his breath
pure?—Is there all this, and yet a remoteness from the brute, from the
mere animal into the bargain?
These facts are ascertained in the first few seconds, and all this time
Life alone has been active in criticism. A satisfactory reply to all
these questions makes the young man at once an object of the keenest
interest to the girl, and her eyes now begin, in a more collected and
less rapid manner, to survey the accessory man—his hands, his feet, his
taste as revealed by his clothes, his intelligence as revealed by his
remarks, his degree of mastery as revealed by his manner of approaching
her. All these things are important, because they represent not merely
the “quality” but also the “surviving power” of the tree to which the
female butterfly is going to entrust her eggs.
A sleek, flourishing youth has a tremendous advantage here; because it
is not Woman’s self-preservative instinct that demands the evidence of
a sound worldly position in a man, but again her reproductive instinct
thinking of the security of the coming brood. All this, of course, is
more or less unconscious, but it is satisfactorily accomplished by the
instinct.
A brilliant exuberant youth, who is shabby and poor, is naturally and
very rightly less attractive to the positive girl than the youth who,
though less brilliant, but quite as exuberant, flings on an opulent
fur coat after a champagne supper, and gracefully hands her and her
chaperon into his 40-horse-power Rolls-Royce. This youth is simply
irresistible!
This must be so. Because, although the more brilliant youth may be
an artist, a fascinating poet, or a gifted musician—all these things
belong to the sphere of the social instinct, which Woman can scarcely
appreciate critically, while the flourishing circumstances of the
fur-coated youth belong to the sphere of the reproductive instinct,
since they are one of the necessary conditions of the tree to which the
eggs are going to be entrusted.
Great spiritual gifts, _per se_, never really attract the healthy,
positive girl; the only reason why she so frequently falls in love
with men of great spiritual gifts is because extraordinarily high
sexual exuberance is so often correlated with great spiritual gifts
and powerful creative genius in a young man. In later life, of course,
the relationship changes; because you cannot burn a candle at both
ends, and the man of great spiritual gifts who has cultivated that side
of himself alone, generally suffers a proportionate loss of sexual
exuberance as he advances in years. But in any case, as far as young
men are concerned, the rule holds good that high sexual exuberance is
frequently accompanied by very superior spiritual gifts.
Incidentally, this association always constitutes the most dangerous
and often most disastrous characteristic of the artist’s life. It is a
choice of roads—and frequently the favour he finds with women leads the
young artist inevitably along the road of least resistance and greatest
voluptuousness.
Recalling our positive couple, we will suppose that the youth, in
addition to responding favourably to all the girl’s searching scrutiny,
is also a person of sound material position. Then, when the chorus of
bodily messages to the girl’s brain are unanimous in praising him,
consciousness comes forward with the conclusion: “That man attracts me
or fascinates me!” or “I like that man!” or “That man is a dream!” or
“He’s my ideal!” etc. etc. It is from this moment that the relationship
of virgin love may be said to begin, and if there is a response from
the young man besides—if, that is to say, he also comments favourably
on the girl, then the two may be said to be each other’s destiny; and,
if they are both very positive, and therefore impatient, the sooner
they marry the better.
Many girls are, however, so overwhelmed by spiritual gifts, nowadays,
that the position of the man, his material wealth, is often foolishly
overlooked. On the whole this is not quite the fault of the modern
girl. This Age, for some reason or other, sets enormous store by
spiritual gifts. Girls are brought up in an atmosphere steeped in the
worship of intellect. “Clever”—this is the most coveted adjective. Is
he clever? Is she clever? Very often the most unhappy marriages are
consummated precisely owing to the absurdly exaggerated value that is
attached to cleverness. I do not lose sight of the fact that great
spiritual gifts are frequently accompanied by great sexual exuberance
in a man, and I make allowances for that and for the temptation such a
man may certainly prove to the positive girl; but his spiritual gifts
ought not to be allowed to weigh against his poverty if he be poor,
or his inferiority as an animal, if he have bad teeth, an undersized
and weak frame, a delicate constitution, or foul breath. Only girls,
of course, whose minds have been perverted in this matter, make the
mistake of taking a poor clever man, or an unappetizing clever man,
in preference to a duller though wealthier or more appetizing suitor;
for the instinct of the female when unperverted is to find not only a
secure support for her offspring, but also a mate whom it will at least
not disgust her to embrace.
And, after all, what does this spiritual fascination amount to
for women, apart from its occasional correlation with high sexual
exuberance? If you ask yourself what it is you tire of first in life;
if you inquire to which kind of phenomenon you can relevantly apply
the expression “hackneyed” when you have seen or heard it once too
often—what is your inevitable reply? The word “hackneyed” can be used
relevantly only in regard to products of the spirit. A song, however
beautiful, repeated too often becomes a bore. A picture seen too often
begins to pall. (It is only because we scarcely ever notice with deep
attention the pictures on our walls, that we can endure them. In
time, they form part of the general scheme of decoration.) The finest
poem read too frequently becomes insufferably wearisome; and who can
read even the best novel more than three times? I confess I have read
_Wuthering Heights_ three times; but I doubt whether I could perform
the feat a fourth time. All these things, however, are of the spirit,
products of spiritual gifts. It would not sound strange or irrelevant
to apply the epithet “hackneyed” to any one of them, provided that
their charms had been impressed upon us once too often. This fact alone
should make us suspicious of the spirit as a phenomenon possessing
lasting powers of attraction.
There are, however, other things to which the expression “hackneyed”
could not be relevantly applied. What should we think or say, for
instance, of a visitor, who rising suddenly in the middle of one of
our tea-parties, exclaimed quite gravely that she refused to take
another piece of bread-and-butter for the rest of her life, because
bread-and-butter was “hackneyed.” We should all be astonished, not to
say alarmed. We should suspect her of something a little more serious
than mere eccentricity. But, as a matter of fact, nobody in his senses,
however professedly devoted to the spirit he might be, would ever dream
of saying “bread-and-butter is hackneyed.” It is a thing of the body,
and provided the body remains healthy and exuberant, the pleasures it
provides are _never_ hackneyed. Given a fair appetite and a healthy
digestion, and bread-and-butter will remain a joy for ever. Unlike the
spirit, therefore, which however exuberant and however healthy, wearies
and fatigues if it be called upon to appreciate the same spirit, or
the same product of another spirit too often, the body can enjoy
“bread-and-butter” for threescore years and ten without ever feeling
that it is hackneyed.
This alone ought to make all admirers of “brains” in men pause before
they allow themselves to be so completely dazzled by mere spiritual
brilliance, as to forget other things.—What other things?—Material
position, and that quality which all eminently desirable men have in
common with good bread-and-butter—I refer to _savouriness_.
I know of one very sad case that happened in my own circle. A
well-educated but misguided Swedish girl who while being no fool
herself had the modern exaggerated love for “brains,” happened to meet
a man in Ireland who, though brilliant to the point of genius, was
as unappetizing, as _unsavoury_ as the form of man can possibly be.
I confess to having sat in that man’s company frequently myself, and
having revelled in the easy and fluent flow of his exuberant wit. There
was virtuosity not only in his speech but also in the thoughts behind
his speech. When he met the girl in question she too came under the
spell of his extraordinary intelligence; and, forgetting the rule about
the spirit, and forgetting the quality of good bread-and-butter—for
he was so unsavoury that one could not approach him without becoming
aware of the fact with one’s nostrils, not to speak of one’s eyes—she
worshipped and married him.
It was, of course, a cruel mistake, because marriage from the woman’s
standpoint is a tragedy if she has to smother any loathing in the
embrace. Still, she admired “brains” and she certainly obtained what
she admired. But at what cost! In time, of course, she explored all the
territory of his spirit, and tasted all the delights of his skilful
conceits; and had, no doubt, by a kindly effort of will, prolonged her
enjoyment of these things very far beyond the point at which anyone
else would have tired of them; and then—what was left?—Only boredom
where spiritual intercourse was concerned, and ever-increasing disgust
of all physical intercourse, because of her unfortunate husband’s
eminently unsavoury person.
No truly positive woman, however—particularly if she has remained
uninfected by modern brain-worship—ever takes any notice of a man’s
spiritual gifts, provided that he be savoury, exuberant, and in a sound
material position; and the very fact that she does not do so is a sign
of the wise and penetrating vision of Life behind her. Men have to take
spiritual gifts into consideration in their dealings with one another;
it is essential that they should. They may be pardoned, therefore, if
they all too frequently extend this habit to their relations with the
other sex. But the woman who takes a man for his brains is a ninny, or
else a poor deluded victim of the madness of the Age. All she wants,
I repeat, is exuberance with savouriness and a sound position; and if
brains enter into the bargain as well, they are usually accepted quite
unsuspectingly by the really positive and sane woman as one of those
incidental details concerning her husband which, like his number in
gloves or his taste in ties, she bears in mind simply as part of his
general identity. Truth to tell, however, most women are saved from the
mistake of marrying brains alone, owing to the readiness which most of
them show to impute brains to the dullest male, provided he pleases
them.
This explains why so many wives of gifted men have loved and eloped
with males infinitely inferior to their husbands where brains were
concerned; it also explains why so many wives of gifted men, who have
been faithful, have been bitterly unhappy in their fidelity.
Where the artist is concerned perhaps we might make an exception,
because the artist’s peculiar gifts are so frequently allied with an
exceptionally exuberant sexuality. One German writer has suggested that
the creative power itself is the outcome of an excess of absorbed semen
in the blood. But even the artist’s mental gifts, though correlated
with a quality that is frequently irresistible to women, are an unsound
reason for a girl’s mating with him. All women should remember that
artists cannot marry them without committing adultery. For, if Woman
is wed to Life before she marries, the artist is certainly wed to his
particular muse.
All this the positive girl knows more or less instinctively, because
Life in her knows every word of it. It is only when she has become
infected with the stupid modern worship of brains that her conscious
bias sometimes overrides her better bodily feelings.
But to return to our positive couple—the condition of mutual attraction
in which they now find themselves is one of tremendous fascination,
because it constitutes an enhancement of the feeling of power, and
a deepening of the feeling of surrender. So intense is this feeling
of power and of slavery at the same time, so exquisite is the scale
of emotions that run from the bottom note of absolute subjection to
a human being to the top note of supreme sovereignty over a human
being—so that the girl bids and her bidding is done, and the man bids
and his bidding is done—that it is probably the richest experience,
as spiritual sensations go, that anyone can have. While it is being
undergone the self-preservative instinct of both parties is entirely
suspended. The male’s must be in any case, because no male throughout
the animal kingdom can approach sex without making a substantial
sacrifice in self-preservation. He cannot join the stream of Life
without paying it tribute, and this to begin with is hostile to his
self-preservative instinct inasmuch as it reduces his surviving power
for the time being. But there is this fact in addition: his social
instinct cannot face the responsibilities of a wife and her offspring
unless his self-preservative instinct is prepared to make a good many
reluctant concessions.
The woman, too, readily sacrifices all her self-preservative instinct
to her first-husband Life, and to her second husband, her lover. In
fact, to speak with levity, but with some profound truth as well,
in every respectable love-marriage, the legal husband is the dupe
or breadwinning agent who _keeps_ the girl while she does her first
mate—Life’s business.
Child-birth is not always successful even in the most healthy
communities, and a woman’s reproductive instinct often has to clap its
hand on the mouth of her self-preservative instinct before she can
consent to having a second child.
With the self-preservative instincts both of the man and the girl
in abeyance, then, we have what is always a dramatic situation. We
have a situation in which neither the man nor the girl cares what
happens provided that each can get the other. Pain, hardship, parental
hostility, parental injustice, privation, dangers of all kinds, fire,
water, exile—all these things, even to Death itself, will be faced with
determination by the positive couple who are waiting only to be united,
if only they help a step forward, or put an end for ever to all doubt
and misgivings.
How often in the history of our race have not a chaste and positive
couple, kept apart by unfavourable circumstances and in the midst of
appalling difficulties, whispered to each other passionately: “One
long embrace from you and I should be content to die!” This shows that
the self-preservative instinct is as good as dead in such cases. Dead
in the woman, because when her reproductive instinct is “meaning
business,” nothing else can live beside it; and dead in the man,
because (1) he knows that love and his girl expect him to be determined
and unrelenting in his worship and his desire, and (2) because his very
positiveness itself makes him set the multiplication of Life higher
than his own existence for the time being.
Moreover, when the girl and the man insist upon an attitude of complete
and unreserved “unselfishness” in each other, they are simply betraying
the fact that they expect the self-preservative instinct in each other
to be for the time being in a state of suspended animation. This is
a proof of what they understand by love. As a matter of fact, it is
a proof only of the circumstance that the reproductive instinct is
expected for the moment to become all-powerful or to suppress every
other feeling.
When this state is reached, if the girl has no vigilant protector or
guardian, and the man is not strongly endowed with social instinct,
the result is usually and inevitably seduction, particularly if the
man shows some mastery in sex, and some understanding of it too. And,
indeed, when one considers the forces that are active here; when,
moreover, one considers the temptations that are elevated here to the
_nth_ power, the wonder is not that seduction occasionally occurs among
positive couples, but that it does not always occur, that it is not
the rule. Only man’s social instinct can prevent it. Only man’s social
instinct remains, and is strong enough to prevent it. Do not, however,
let us confound the social instinct of the positive man, which is
strong enough to stand up to his reproductive instinct, to control it,
and to make it wait and consider responsibilities, with the so-called
“self-control” of the negative young man, who could love his negative
girl for half a century without ever desiring more than to squeeze her
pale thin hand, while she feels exactly the same about him.[36]
Of course, in countries like France, where positiveness on both sides
is at such a high pitch of intensity that it actually fills the
atmosphere of every room and makes every mixed company electric, and
also where the social instinct of men is declining more and more every
year, the only possible check on wholesale seductions is a vigilant and
inexorable protector or guardian, who watches over the _jeune fille de
famille_, until she is married, and does so with such unabating zeal
that it can truly be said that a respectable French girl is _always
being watched_.
As a matter of fact, if the same custom of vigilant supervision of the
young girl does not prevail in England, it is a bad rather than a good
sign.
It is a bad sign for the following reasons: (1) It is waived either
because it is a generally recognized thing that the Englishman’s
social instinct is of a higher order than the Frenchman’s (which is
not the case); or (2), because it is a generally recognized fact that
the Englishman is safer, i.e. less inflammable, i.e. less exuberant
sexually, i.e. less positive than the Frenchman (which _is_ the case).
I think it would be hard to prove that the social instinct of the
Englishman is of a higher kind than that of the Frenchman. There is
nothing to show that there is more order in England than in France,
more social harmony, more mastery of social problems. There are
absolutely no grounds whatever for assuming that there is less social
misery in England than in France, less social muddle, less social
strife. Nor if we go to the next highest products of the social
instinct, which are represented by the sense of order manifesting
itself in artistic productions, can we say that there is more Art, or
a higher kind of Art, in England than in France. In fact, if we draw
these comparisons at all, we must in fairness conclude that if there is
any difference, that difference is undoubtedly to the advantage of the
Frenchman. But for the sake of this discussion it is sufficient for me
to assume that the social instincts of the Frenchman and Englishman
respectively are about equal.
Well, then, if this is so, it must be some other circumstance that
accounts for the enormous freedom allowed in this country to the girl
turned sixteen, in her intercourse with men of her own generation and
older.
There can be no doubt that, in the first place, the English girl is
generally a little less positive to Life and therefore to man than
the French girl; this accounts for a good deal. There can be no doubt
either that there is a very much larger sprinkling of negative girls
in England than in France—girls, that is to say, who are happy and
content as spinsters, or whose passions are so tepid as to enable
them to endure platonic relations with men, and to resist men quite
successfully for interminable periods.
A few facts alone, apart from the evidence that can be gathered first
hand by all those who know France and England well, will be sufficient
to prove this.
In 1910, although France had for many years admitted women to the
hospitals, to the Bar and to the chemist’s dispensary, there were out
of a total of 13,000 French doctors only eighty-three women[37]; there
were only two women barristers—one in Paris and one at Toulouse, and
there were only three women chemists—one in Paris and two at Montpelier.
To take the profession of the Bar alone, think how very many more
women-barristers we should have in England in the space of five years
if the Bar had been opened to women!
To point to economic pressure here, and to say that the English girl is
more hard pressed than the French girl, would be entirely false. It is
much more difficult, as a matter of fact, for a French girl than for an
English girl to find a husband.
The truth of the matter is that the French girl is very much more
positive to Life and therefore to man, than the English girl. The
latter can frequently not only be happy without man; but she will boast
of the fact—applaud, that is to say, her negativeness, her nothingness!
I do not say this in any spirit of hostility to the English girl,
because I have travelled England and Scotland, and am aware that
very large numbers of British girls are positive and extremely
positive to Life and to man; it is, however, unfortunately true that
negativeness is on the increase—hence the almost amazing liberty
that is granted, and every year more readily granted, to the English
girl in her intercourse with young men. Were things otherwise, such
liberty would only lead to the most disastrous results; because there
is absolutely no reason whatever to suppose that the Englishman’s
social instinct—which is the only adequate check to an overpowering
reproductive instinct—is superior to that of the Frenchman.
There is, however, another side to the question, and a far more serious
and alarming side. I refer to the almost universal and increasing
negativeness of the English youth and young man. The negativeness among
females in England is as nothing compared with the negativeness to be
found among males—and it is here really and truly that the safety of
the young positive girl lies. Often to her intense annoyance and sorrow
she finds she is dealing with wood and not with vital tissue at all.
It is simply humbug to speak of self-control in such cases. For the
negative young man is nothing more or less than a wet squib—and who
believes in the self-control of a wet squib when it refuses to respond
to the lighted match.[38]
The ravages that Puritanism perpetrated in the human kind—and I have
dwelt sufficiently upon these ravages in another work[39]—affected the
men of England far more deeply than the women; and were in a sense
bound to do so. Men are not Life itself, they are an amputation from
Life. As I have shown, the reproductive instinct is less powerful, less
wilful, more fitful and less persistent in them than in women; how,
then, could they fail to be more disastrously affected by the cruel
repressing and detoning methods of Puritanism than women are? They had
fewer forces to meet and resist the attack; sex held their bodies with
too much laxity to make them survive it completely, and the consequence
is that in England and all countries like England, sexual exuberance
in males—save in the working classes (which are always the last to be
affected by anything)—is not only lower than elsewhere, rarer than
elsewhere, and more heartily suspected than elsewhere; but it is also
decreasing more and more every year. So much so, indeed, that for many
generations now, long chaste engagements have not only been possible,
but more or less common; so much so that _positive girls who marry are
able to declare quite honestly that marriage is a disappointment and
an empty delusion_; so much so, that in nine cases out of ten we could
without a qualm and without a scruple allow our unmarried daughter to
travel round the world with her so-called lover and feel quite certain
that they would both remain perfectly chaste.
This may seem most convenient and even desirable from the standpoint
of the squeamish matron; but would it not be ever so much better from
the point of view of Life if it were impossible, and if we were forced
to exercise a vigilance at least equal if not greater than that of the
French chaperon over the young couple?
To mention self-control in connexion with such safety in the
association of young people is to use a euphemism for a very much
less acceptable word. It would be unfair and wrong to postulate the
possession of a higher degree of social instinct by the Englishman than
by the Frenchman; therefore it must be some other factor that is active
in this unnatural continence where there are no safeguards; and that
factor, as every one must know, as every doctor knows, and as most
women know, is a low degree of sexual exuberance, a strong and in many
cases a pronounced form of negativism.[40]
Many readers will probably cry out: “But surely this is excellent!
What could be better! Our girls are safer; we do not require to be
suspicious; we can trust the young men—and everybody is happy!”
But _everybody is not happy_! The men are not happy; because this
negativism in sex, this lack of exuberance in sex, gives them no
mastery over it, and leaves them all their lives with a guilty
conscience about it. (For, as pointed out earlier in the book, _certain
fusions are only made possible through fire_. Fire purifies all
things.) And the women are certainly not happy, particularly if they
are positive; because they meet with no response, they meet with no
leadership, they yield to no overwhelming impetuosity where sex is
concerned—an impetuosity that carries everything before it, and which
leaves them with no ungratified desire or longing, with not one of
those aching, secret longings that thousands of women are too tasteful
and too proud to reveal and often even too modest to entertain.
Of course the negative ideal in sex was excellent from the Puritan
point of view; because, as I have shown elsewhere,[41] the Puritans
were concerned with rearing a race of office hermits, clerks,
commercial and industrial slaves of all kinds; and to these, sexual
exuberance would naturally be a most irksome, dangerous and undesirable
possession. But Life is not an office or a factory, or, for that
matter, a large draper’s store; and what may be eminently desirable for
these horrible institutions, is simply ugly, repulsive, and nauseating
out in the open, amid fields, sucking lambs and beneath a shining sun.
There are few things more pathetic, more tragic, than a positive
young English girl going to her coming-out dance. What could be more
beautiful than to see her, figuratively speaking, extend her eager
open hand to Life, with a confidence, a fullness of hope and trust, a
profuseness of delicious expectations, and a bravery and singleness
of purpose that is never again equalled in her life? And who can help
hiding his eyes when he sees the same girl take back her hand again and
again, either holding nothing at all, or filled with the merest husks,
the merest scrapings of Life? Oh, the youths that go to dances!—these
sacred functions where the positive girl takes her first step towards
her sacred calling! One can watch with equanimity the negative young
Miss of narrow hips, still narrower chest, and even still narrower
outlook, succeeding in captivating her negative affinity. Such dramas
leave one unmoved. But to witness exuberant Life itself, obliged to
be content with creatures who are mere mementoes of Life, mere echoes
of Life; to see exuberant Life itself unnoticed, unselected, feared,
shunned, and shelved!—to anyone who has any feelings at all, such an
experience must be too painful ever to be forgotten.
For in England, not only are there barely sufficient men to go all
round; but there are not nearly sufficient positive men for the
preponderating number of positive girls. And since innocent girls are
absolutely unconscious of the causes of their misery when they meet and
marry the negative man, you find in England and all countries like it,
hundreds and hundreds of positive women who will affirm—nay, who are
ready to prove—that marriage is the most unexciting thing in existence,
and that Life itself is the most unexciting phenomenon in the universe!
And the tragedy of it all is that, as far as their own unfortunate
experiences go, they are right, and they convince because they are not
only right but miserable.
Thus Life gets suspected, slandered, unjustly weighed and valued, and
the legion of negative women about seize hold of these facts with the
avidity of famishing jealousy, and _prove_ that Life and its legitimate
joys are suspicious, rightly maligned, and valueless!
Although this is a book on Woman, it is necessary to speak about one
aspect of the question of virgin love which strictly belongs to this
chapter, but which is concerned only with men; I refer to the love felt
for a girl by a man, and of the forces that direct him in feeling this
love.
When the positive man faces the positive girl, he really has but one
inquiry: “Does the girl provoke desire?” Because desire is essential
to his share in the sexual act. He does not actually say: “Does she
provoke desire?” but he implies as much.
He insists upon her being what he calls “pretty” or “attractive.” But
from that point onwards it depends entirely upon his upbringing, the
values and current opinions of his Age, the prejudices of his religion,
his class, or his own particular taste, whether he makes a wise or a
foolish choice from the standpoint of Life.
I have shown that Man is much more conscious of the limitations and the
extent of the joys that sexual life is going to bring him than Woman
is or can be. He is not only more conscious as regards the sexual life
alone, but also as regards its consequences, its responsibilities.
Notwithstanding all this, however, or rather precisely on account
of all this, he is much more susceptible to the traditional values,
opinions, or prejudices of his time, his country or his class, than
Woman is, in the making of his choice. Woman is in the grip of Life.
Life constantly speaks through her. Unless she is actually unhealthy or
spoilt, Life speaks through her in a way that is profitable to Life.
The positive, unspoilt girl, then, although she acts unconsciously,
rarely makes a mistake in her choice of a man as a sexual being,
provided that she be not reluctantly compelled to do so by social
stress, by the feeling that her choice is a last shift to be positive
somehow, or by any other non-vital consideration.
Man, however, is rather differently situated. Being conscious, he
is much weaker in the stand he takes. For _conscious_ opinions,
_conscious_ views, can be modified by persuasion, by precept, by
example, by a consensus of contemporary opinion.
When the man faces the girl, therefore, he is often and almost
universally swayed by the prejudices in regard to what constitutes an
attractive girl that are current in his Age, country or class. And
thus we arrive at this important conclusion: _That provided his Age,
his country and class entertain positive views and values in regard to
Life, his choice will be correct and perfectly desirable as far as the
highest purposes of Life are concerned; but that provided his Age, his
country and class entertain the wrong or negative views or values in
regard to Life, his choice will be incorrect and entirely undesirable
as far as the highest purposes of Life are concerned_, and this despite
the fact that he himself may be a healthy, exuberant and positive
specimen of humanity.
If, for instance, the ethereal, languishing, angelic and slightly
delicate type of female beauty be the type exalted by the current
values of his environment, he runs considerable danger of regarding
her as the attractive type; and in selecting her he will deliberately
overlook her narrow frame, her lack of fire, her lack of exuberance,
her lack of positiveness.[42] Where Puritan values prevail, the
sexually exuberant female with the ardent and fierce brow and eye
will be regarded even as distinctly ugly. It will not surprise some
people to hear, therefore, that in France the angelic, passive, and
meek expression of most Englishmen’s wives is regarded as strangely
incompatible with the frequently robust, self-assertive, exuberant
appearance of the Englishmen themselves.
Purity is indeed exhaled by such women: but not the purity that all
positive people understand as purity. _To them the only purity worth
having is that which is the outcome of fire._ Everything else is
impure. A tepid passion, a non-exuberant passion, is impure: it can
wait, it can temporize, it can play with Life; it can even thwart the
highest purposes of Life: therefore it is impure.
How often in our own small circle have we not seen a youth that we
admired—a positive, robust and savoury fellow, full of trust and
energy—condescend to take the most fragile, shadowy reminiscence of
Life for a mate and the mother of his children! I say “condescend
to take”; but I mean _in his sense of course_, “aspire to taking”;
for it was obvious that he regarded her as the highest example of
womanhood that could possibly be discovered; to this extent was he
prevailed upon by the Puritanical prejudices of his Age! But it is
within the experience of most people that the negative values of an
environment will drive some men even farther. There are a few who will
not even stop at deformities, sickness, disease. I know of two such
cases: one man who fell in love with a consumptive girl, knowing her
to be consumptive; and another who loved and married a girl with hip
disease. Both of these men were acting in a manner utterly hostile
to the highest purposes of Life; their love actually denied, baulked
and frustrated the highest purposes of Life; they were, in my sense,
therefore, utterly impure, immoral, criminal. But from the point of
view of their Age, their class, their religion and their country, what
was there, in sooth, to show them that they were wrong?
Had they not heard from their earliest childhood onwards, that the soul
was everything and that the body did not matter? Had they not had it
dinned into them at every turn along their life’s path, that a pure
soul can make up for any physical defect, even foul breath? Had they
not learnt to regard brains as better than brawn? And who had ever told
them when they were children and when they were quite ready to despise
sickness, deformity, or botchedness generally, that their instincts in
this respect were quite right and proper? Who had explained to them
that things that are unclean (as the good, honest Old Testament has it)
should be avoided?[43]
There is no science of physiognomy and of human selection to-day. It
will be objected, of course, that no possible elaboration of such a
science could ever induce young people to “fall in love” with the
proper mates. My reply to that is: Let it be tried. When our young folk
tell us that they have fallen in love at first sight, we know that
they must have followed some principles of physiognomy and selection.
However adventitiously these may have been acquired, they constitute
the only guide obtainable. But are these principles any the better
for having been acquired by chance, and very often from false and
unreliable sources? They must have acquired their principles from some
source. Is it better that they should have picked them up, as it were,
on life’s way, than that they should have been taught them? It is not
a difficult matter to educate the taste of children on certain broad
lines. The fact is not that these guiding lines are lacking to-day—on
the contrary, they abound—but that they are based on no understanding
of essentials and are as a rule not regulated by a deep concern for
health and high vitality. And since you can teach mankind the points of
a good horse or a good dog, it is surely a little bold to deny that you
can teach it the points of a desirable mate.[44] At least you can lay
down certain very distinct principles regarding the mate to be avoided.
But not even that is attempted nowadays.[45]
The danger at present is that a young man, despite his proper instincts
in this matter, may be wrongly influenced by the values and prejudices
of his Age, his country and his class, so that willy-nilly he goes
astray, and inclines in a negative direction when all the time his
instincts are positive.
In regard to sex and the choice of the positive woman, the Englishman
particularly, therefore (more especially of the wealthier middle
classes), wants re-educating, re-instructing in the values of positive
Life. And it is to him, more than to Woman (for, after all, he is the
chooser), that the chapters of this book are addressed.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Always from the standpoint of sexual potency be it remembered.
[36] See also pp. 7, 70 and 94.
[37] In 1911 there were 477 women doctors in England, 382 of whom were
unmarried.
[38] See also pp. 7, 70, and 91.
[39] See _A Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.
[40] It will occur to some that I ought perhaps to have referred to the
fact that English Law is more severe against illicit relations than is
the Law of France. This is true; but, after all, English Law applies
only to girls under a certain age, and is by no means repressive of
illicit relations after that age.
[41] _A Defence of Aristocracy_, chapter V.
[42] Speaking of the prevalence of this type of girl at present,
Arabella Kenealy says (op. cit., p. 84): “So devitalized and
neurasthenic are many of our pretty young girls that their flowerlike
faces, topping over-tall and undeveloped bodies, suggest delicate
blossoms crowning long attenuated, sapless stems. Neither faces nor
bodies are vitalized and athrill with powers rooted in healthful
organs, vivified by healthful functions, and instinct with warm,
iron-rich, magnetic blood. They show that making for beauty which is
inherent in the Woman-traits, but which, in latter-day girls, owing to
defective constitutional vigour or to educational, social or industrial
exhaustion, has been able to realize itself only in sickly and
weed-like development.”
[43] Even the fiction they read did not help them to the correct
attitude in this. Does Lord Lytton ever express any horror at his hero
and heroine, who were both consumptive, falling in love with each other
in _Pilgrims on the Rhine_? And how many other cases could be quoted!
[44] The teaching that is most steadily opposed to this view is that
of Christianity; for, if once you admit that the physical points of a
human being are important, you underrate the supreme importance of the
so-called “soul,” which takes precedence of everything. That is why
Christianity has always strongly deprecated any doctrine of physiognomy
or human selection.
[45] For instance, most of the stigmata of degeneration and disease are
well known. Why are they not generally taught to the young? This would
constitute at least a start in the right direction. The ancient Hindus
were in this respect, as in many others, very much more civilized than
ourselves. In the Laws of Manu, Book III, definite hints are given to
the young man regarding the kind of girl he should choose. In verse
seven we read: “Let him avoid that family (in selecting a wife) which
neglects the sacred rites, one in which no male children (are born),
one in which the Veda is not studied, one (the members of) which
have thick hair on the body, those which are subject to hemorrhoids,
phthisis, weakness of digestion, epilepsy, or white or black leprosy.”
Verse eight: “Let him not marry a maiden (with) reddish (hair), nor one
who has a redundant member, nor one who is sickly, nor one either with
no hair (on the body) or too much; nor one who is garrulous or has red
(eyes).” Verse ten: “Let him wed a female free from bodily defects who
has an agreeable name, the (graceful) gait of a _Hamsa_ or an elephant,
a moderate (quantity of) hair on the body and on the head, small teeth,
and soft limbs.”
CHAPTER VI
The Positive English Girl
Nothing is more instructive than to proceed from a general to a
particular case; and nothing, at all events, could possibly be more
instructive where women are concerned, than to select the positive
English girl as the particular case; because it is in her heart that
the conflict between the sound promptings of the body, and the unsound
external promptings of the modern world rages most fiercely and most
dramatically. It is in her heart that the issue of the conflict has its
most momentous and far-reaching consequences.
To a heart overflowing with human sympathy, there is something
infinitely wistful and pathetic in the appearance of this apparently
careless and blooming maiden. For, has not every circumstance of her
education and upbringing conspired to make her believe that all those
things which to-morrow will be the meaning and explanation of her
existence, are the very things that yesterday were most concealed, most
“tabooed,” most anxiously hushed up?
The transition from indifference, here, to keen disconcerting interest,
is an effort of the first magnitude—however willing and eager the body
may be to assist in the change of standpoint.
Her soul is very self-contemptuous, self-condemnatory, pessimistic.
And the more positive she is, the more this will be so; because the
greater will be her feeling of conflict with it. She feels she must
be wrong, and her soul and the world right. She is on the verge of
morbid self-dislike, self-rejection. But how can it be otherwise?
Her body is a scandalous and exuberant old Pagan, and every minute
of the day is whispering all kinds of shameless “indecencies” to
her modern high-school soul. And she has been taught to value her
modern high-school soul more than anything on earth. How can she help
despising herself from the standpoint of a first-class high-school
upbringing, when the latter constantly snorts prudishly at everything
her other self—her body, dares to hint to her reluctantly attentive
ear? Who is there to tell her that her high-school soul is entirely
wrong in making her despise herself?
But it is her pessimism that is so terrible and so virulent. All
ill-adapted creatures are prone to be pessimistic, and she is horribly
ill-adapted. Beneath all her tennis-playing, her hockey-playing, her
bright and cheerful manner, that always utterly deceives her parents
and the superficial adults about her, this pessimism clings to her like
a limpet. But how could she help feeling ill-adapted and pessimistic,
in the face of the terrible alternative that now confronts her—the
alternative consisting of either doing violence to the healthy dictates
of her body, or of rejecting all the deepest beliefs of her childhood
and adolescence?
And that is why an everlasting curse must surely hang over every
creature, woman or man, who can be so unscrupulous as to exploit this
temporary pessimism of healthy English female adolescence, and to turn
it to negative account. For all those who, in the nefarious traffic of
political or religious propaganda, avail themselves of it in order to
turn a girl against Life finally and irrevocably, no punishment that
can be imagined is sufficiently severe. Let them draw the unhealthy,
negative girl over to their side; for it is better for all concerned
if she and her like are converted to Life-Heresy; but let them leave
the healthy positive girl alone, to fight her own battle with her
high-school soul.
But the healthy English “Flapper” is courageous and infinitely
enduring. And this is the secret of her constant success against her
high-school soul. For, what is it that really matters in her apparently
uneven conflict between soul and body—a conflict, remember, in which
all the weight of her environment and education is on the side of the
soul? What matters is her body. Now her body knows quite well that
everything is all right, and it has its tongue in its cheek the whole
time, more particularly when the girl herself dallies with thoughts
of the convent or of suicide. Besides, even her high-school soul has
elements that can be persuaded and lured over to the other party. She
is attractive, and is beginning to receive attention. The vanity in
her soul, therefore, soon forms a league with the instincts of her
body. Her soul also wants power, and this power her body guarantees to
give her, if only she will snub the importunate high-school portions
of herself, and neither balk nor overlook its designs. Above all, her
soul is aching with curiosity concerning the secret of life, and the
happiness of life; and as her body’s irrepressible lust of life is
always at hand to lend support to any intellectual inquisitiveness,
a combination of forces is effected that is as formidable as it is
usually triumphant.
Where is the party on earth that could survive all these defections
from its ranks? That is why, if left alone, the negative side of her,
her high-school, puritanical soul, is bound to be defeated; that is why
she ultimately rises superior to her shame, her apprehension and her
pessimism.
But it would be a mistake to underrate her struggle, to minimize her
qualms, or to scoff at her cryptic religiosity; her conviction that she
is tremendously deep—all people are deep who have a fight raging in
them—and that she stands on the brink of an even deeper abyss! Even the
haughty manner in which she holds her inexperienced nose high in the
air is instructive. She is trying her hardest to appear as if she were
already above the struggle that is not yet over. Besides, all people
who are in pain, not only feel deep and proud, but are deeper and
prouder than those who do not suffer. Pain not only delves, it also
distinguishes.
Her confusion and the conflict raging inside her, are inclined to make
her ill at ease with all men except the youth of seventeen; for, since
she feels years his senior, he cannot disturb her. She will readily
kill time with him, and with his assistance play an empty game while
she is waiting for the forces in her body to readjust themselves
to the new facts. Then she will not even look at him. Then it is
business. Lads of seventeen will strike her as raw, ridiculous! Even
full-grown men will interest her only to the extent to which they mean
business. They will evoke her blessing only to the extent to which they
realize that she too is in earnest about life, and takes it perfectly
seriously. Then woe to her if one who attracts her heedlessly passes
on! But woe to _him_, above all, who while promising business, and
undertaking it legally and conscientiously with all the sanction of
society and the Church, yet undeceives her, and disappoints her when
it comes to the point, and drives her back to the pessimism of her
youth, and the doubts and shame she had so valiantly overcome. For the
duty of the positive man is to give woman a perfectly clean conscience
in regard to sex and its pleasures. As the Church of England Prayer
Book nobly and rightly puts it: “The husband ... is the Saviour of the
body.” He who does not realize the profundity of this passage in the
Church of England Prayer Book had better put the present work aside;
for he will never be able to sympathize with anything in it. No man who
is not the “Saviour of the body” of his wife can help being anything
else than a thing of torment and torture to her; while her love and
her devotion to him are increased a thousandfold, and her fidelity to
him probably secured for life, if only he knows how to confirm and
consolidate the triumph her body once achieved, single-handed, over her
high-school soul during the trying period of her adolescence.
* * * * *
Let no young lady who has read the above passage with indignation
suppose that it was an attempt to describe her particular type. The
very fact that she has felt indignant about it sufficiently proves that
it does not refer to her in the least; so she can set her mind at rest
and absolve me of any intention of slighting or offending her.
If, however, she has read the words with a feeling of passionate
anger—anger at the thought that all I have said truly applies to her,
though no longer now, alas!—no longer at her present stage in life;—if,
therefore, her emotion is the righteous anger of one who is filled with
regret and sorrow for the things that she now recognizes as having
once been hers, though they are hers no longer;—things she is still
young enough to possess, though they have been filched from her by her
environment and her unsound mode of life—I, as the mere analyst in this
affair, applaud her feeling, and am glad that she has not yet reached
that stage of listless resignation when youth, positiveness and ardour
have ceased from moving her or from exciting her longing. If once she
has been the girl I have just described, and she has deteriorated or
grown negative, either (1) through a too prolonged and too exhausting
wait, and a period too protracted of absolute abstinence; or (2)
through unwholesome living, or—which is worst of all—(3) through
marrying a man who has not proved the “Saviour of her body”; then I,
too, join my anger to hers, and am perhaps even more angry than she;
because all those who have a keen appreciation of quality, must loathe
to see it squandered, destroyed or so badly mismanaged as to be made a
thing of naught.
The three causes of deterioration and deflection to negativeness will
now be examined separately, and in the order of the numbers given above.
(1) Maybe that at seventeen, or perhaps eighteen, the positive English
girl was fully equipped, and felt herself fully equipped. Maybe Nature
itself at that age had concentrated all its most subtle art on the one
task of making her as attractive and as irresistible as possible. Her
top wave came with her nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years—all
years of bewilderingly beautiful ripeness, when every fibre in her body
was agog, on the _qui vive_, harking for the approach of the mate that
would justify all this sumptuous and generous preparation; harking
timidly, though eagerly, for him who would consummate her expectant
womanhood, give the only genuine value that they could claim to all her
wondrous charms, and reveal herself to herself in all her wealth of
ancestral virtues, gifts and skill.
She had received her pearl necklace; she had received her golden
bracelets; she wore on her right hand a ring that had belonged to
her grandmother; but now she wanted the crowning jewel of all, the
hall-mark of her genuine womanhood—the little band of gold that was the
emblem of matrimony.
Her twenty-second year went by, and nothing happened. Her twenty-third
and twenty-fourth vanished also, and still her insignia were
incomplete. But there was time yet, and anxiety, though present, was
by no means acute. She was prepared for another year, or two, or even
three, of patient waiting.
Since, however, it is impossible even for Nature herself to stand for
ever on the tiptoe of anticipation; since it is too much to expect of
anything or anybody, that weariness will not ultimately supervene if
a wait is prolonged unduly, or if nothing—aye, nothing!—ever comes
to repay an all too lavish outlay of beauty and its promise of joys
untasted; it is, alas, a not uncommon occurrence—however ready the
girl herself may be to continue waiting and watching—for Nature itself
to feel so bitterly snubbed that it withdraws, as it were, from its
position of proud and unstinting impresario, and wanders off elsewhere
to spread its ornaments and charms over another and perhaps more
fortunate subject.
This stage in the positive English girl’s career is not apparent to
the outsider, nor is it immediately apparent to the girl herself. All
she knows is that she does not feel quite as well as she used to feel.
She does not sleep so well, eat so well, or resist fatigue so well.
She is not conscious, yet, that her looks are no longer so startlingly
attractive as they were three or four years ago; but there is a shade
of difference of which even she herself is aware on certain days. Her
face is beginning to acquire definition. Her features do not melt into
one another with the same indefinite sweep of downy cuticle; while
the tone has also begun to decline in her bigger organs, and they are
losing the braced, tense, healthy readiness they possessed at the
beginning of the wait.
She may have all kinds of disorders now which she did not have at
the moment of her top wave, while a concomitant depression of spirit
makes her feel less keen about life, less eager about its mysteries.
There is even a threat of anæmia—the result of occasional costiveness,
its frequent correlative leucorrhœa, and a general lack of tone in
her whole system. A neglected organ avenges itself, a neglected body
avenges itself; her whole spirit wishes to avenge itself; for, like
a flower, she needed the sun—in her case the sun of love—and she is
visibly withering without it.[46]
With the third and final stage, all the symptoms become acute,
before dying away completely only to leave the body a mere husk of
_unrealised_ and now _undesired_ possibilities. Discontent, unconscious
or conscious, together with all kinds of troublesome, though not
dangerous, disorders, gradually reduce her body and her spirit, and
thus undermine her positiveness. Her temper is irascible; her periods
irregular, unreliable and sometimes very painful—the sign that the body
is really indignant! Costiveness and leucorrhœa set in chronically.
Nobody understands either; nobody cares. The first principles of
negativeness begin to creep stealthily into her once positive mind.
Her features, hands and arms have lost all their bloom and roundness.
With genuine alarm, one day, she suddenly recognizes that she is but a
travesty, a caricature, of what she once was; and that Life itself is
only a caricature of what it used to be. Now she no longer feels any
real physical horror at the thought of spinsterhood, because she is not
what she was when spinsterhood would certainly have filled her with
horror. If she dislikes the idea of spinsterhood now, it is chiefly
owing to her vanity, not to her bodily appetites. She feels that her
prestige would be enhanced by the “Mrs.”—that is all! But her body has
no share in this vain sentiment.
If she has once been the positive girl I describe, however, she is now
filled with an indescribable feeling of burning, aching, consuming
detestation of the world she once loved. Hope, trust, yea-saying have
all gone. Her thwarted instincts manifest themselves in an obverse
character, and she becomes misanthropic, purely negative to Man and to
Life, and desiring only to end her existence in an act of revenge on
man, society and her more fortunate sisters.
Only the very positive girl makes a hateful spinster, because only
she has lost anything precious, only she knows what a cruel snub
her sumptuous preparations once received! To have had all these
preparations wasted; to have had to look on while, one by one, her
charms grew so faint as no longer even to lure the guest for whom
such a rich banquet had once been laid; to have been a magnet and to
have watched one’s magnetism gradually vanish without having been
effective—these experiences are cruel in any case; but their cruelty
increases in proportion to the magnitude, wealth and beauty of the
original welcome that Nature had organized.
The negative girl, to whom an atonic state of the body, irregular and
painful periods, have been an ever-present and familiar condition since
her earliest puberty, or the negative girl who, while suffering from
none of these disorders, is yet insufficiently vigorous or sound in
organic equipment to render the thwarting of her reproductive instinct
a state of suffering and bitter disillusionment, may make a perfectly
cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old
maid.[47]
It is an interesting fact that in France, where positiveness among
girls is ever so much more general than in England, the old maid is
universally unbearable, and is proverbially known to be so.
* * * * *
(2) But there are other agencies at work in modern society for reducing
the positive English girl to negativeness, besides the unfortunate
and often inevitable circumstances of an all-too-long wait. For, in
England, there is extraordinarily little care taken of the female body.
It should never be forgotten in this regard, that although we, as a
nation, are lovers of both sport and open-air exercise, we are culpably
neglectful of that hygiene which is concerned with the fundamentals
of life. Genuine and gentle reverence for the body, particularly for
the young female body, is startlingly rare in England. Fundamentals
are not faced; they are, if possible, avoided; and frequently owing
to a deliberate refusal to recognize the needs and fragility of an
equipment that is vital, elaborate and easily disordered, girls are
as much as possible handled and treated like boys of their own age.
Positive girls, particularly, who are well built and vigorous, whose
correlation of bodily parts is as near perfect as it is possible for
the organs of modern people to be, have very few difficulties in early
puberty. They are regular, they feel little or no inconvenience from
the attending phenomena of puberty; but owing to this very freedom
from morbid symptoms they are often allowed, thanks to the prevailing
lack of reverence for the body, to engage in pastimes and sports—even
during their moments of indisposition—which must, and undoubtedly do,
ultimately induce a morbid condition if the habit is persisted in. Let
me explain:—
To begin with, the very fact that anxious and almost fearful silence
and secrecy are made to hang over all the manifestations of puberty in
girls, is in itself an inducement for the young female to desire to
behave during her moments of indisposition as much as possible like her
schoolmates who are not indisposed. When, therefore, in addition to
this desire, she feels and is known to feel no very marked discomfort
at such moments, there is apparently nothing to prevent her from going
a long walk or joining in a game of tennis, net-ball or even hockey
with the rest of her friends, at a moment when violent exercise of
all kinds ought to be most carefully avoided. In girls’ high schools
and later on at college, such breaches of reverence towards the body
are not only of constant occurrence, they may be said to be the rule
where the positive girl is concerned, unless, of course, her parents
have been wise enough to insist specially upon the proper precautions
being observed. In the end, however, long as the period of successful
resistance may be, the body must suffer from this violence, and the
toll paid is then both severe and heavy.
Another very dangerous custom is that of having recreation and games
directly after a meal. There is nothing objectionable in sports for
girls, provided they are not too violent.[48]—On the contrary, games
keep them out in the open air and exercise their bodies. But it
is a risky thing, in view of the subsequent cost to the whole body
and spirit, to give the alimentary canal in girls the slightest
possible excuse for getting out of order; and exercise after a meal,
particularly when such exercise is violent, is a potent factor in
bringing about indigestion, costiveness and all their concomitant
disorders. This notwithstanding, it is not uncommon, in fact it is an
almost regular practice for girls in high schools and at college—often
with the consent of their parents if these happen to know—to rush out
directly after lunch to a game of hockey or tennis, or what not, and
to engage in the most violent exercise and movements in the course
of their play. This is the most unscrupulous vandalism; for, even
if they are not indisposed at the time, the evil effects of such
excessive activity directly after a meal are notorious. In the end
costiveness must occur, not as a temporary affection, but alas! as a
chronic habit; and the custom of correcting this tendency by means of
constant purgation only aggravates the trouble.[49] Now constipation
is in itself a bad thing. It lowers spirit, it gives rise to nervous
trouble, causes auto-intoxication that saps energy and interferes
with sound sleep; it also acts as a poison on the red corpuscles of
the blood and reduces their number, and thus fosters the development
of anæmia. But this is not all; for with constipation there is always
serious infection of the lower colon, and a general loss of tone in
that organ. The gravity of this condition in women cannot, however,
be overrated, because the surrounding and adjacent parts are so vital
and so important, that no risk that can possibly imperil their health
and vigour ought ever to be run, much less therefore courted and
chosen. How long it takes for an infected and atonic colon to affect
the neighbouring organs, it is impossible to say; but that the atonic
condition can and does spread from the original seat of the trouble
to other parts is unquestioned, particularly when anæmia has reduced
their resisting power; and the results are always of the worst possible
nature. Very quickly, if it is not already present, that worst and most
insidious of maladies, leucorrhœa, makes its first appearance, and then
a vicious circle is formed which it is extremely difficult to break.
This does not pretend to be a medical work; but the consequences and
symptoms of this disease, leucorrhœa, are so far reaching and generally
so much ignored, that it seems imperative to speak out quite openly on
the subject. All through this book, the relations of the spirit to the
body is considered as being so close, so intimate, and the relation of
the attitudes of the positiveness and negativeness to the state of the
body is recognized as so inevitable and deep-seated, that I should be
guilty of a flaw in my argument, of a grave omission in the frank array
of my facts, if, particularly at this stage, I were to scout a subject
which, however disagreeable and delicate, formed a necessary link in
the chain of my reasoning.
To begin with, then, let it be said most emphatically, for all those
whom it may concern, that leucorrhœa—this most regrettable and most
neglected of the hidden scourges that harass the women of England—is a
much more serious and much more distressing ailment than the ordinary
general practitioner, or even specialist gynæcologist, is ready to
admit. The fact that Albutt in his _Twentieth Century Practice_ allots
only one paragraph of about fifteen lines to the subject of leucorrhœa
in girls, shows at once with what a frivolous shrug of the shoulders
the orthodox medical school cavalierly disposes of this all-important
question. Leucorrhœa is not only a catarrh in a most vital part, it is
also the symptom of a loss of tone in a most vital part—a loss of tone
and therefore of vitality. It is important to remember, in regard to
this disease, _that scarcely a case of the kind has ever been known in
which colon bacilli were not present in the mucous discharge_. The
intimate connexion between leucorrhœa and the state of the colon is
therefore indisputable, and shows with what reverent care the body of
the young positive girl should be tended and watched. The body of the
negative girl does not matter nearly as much.
When it is remembered that persistent and obstinate leucorrhœa is
the cause not only of more than three-quarters of the irregularity
and pain of girls’ periodic indispositions, not only of a depression
and degeneration of sexual keenness that may make sexual union quite
unenjoyable, not to say unpleasant, but also that it is a reducing,
an exhausting, and a sterilizing ailment (sterility where it is not
the result of actual malformation is almost always the result of
leucorrhœa), it cannot be too urgently or too deeply impressed upon the
parent and the guardian of the positive English girl, that reverence
for her body, and not alone for her pure soul (which, as we have seen,
can well be left to look after itself), is their most solemn and most
sacred duty.
Unfortunately, and incredible as it may appear, I have, after the
most careful inquiry, discovered that even where leucorrhœa has been
diagnosed and proved beyond any doubt to be present, it has been
impossible to prescribe the only effective remedies and the only
salutary hygiene, owing to the fact that they are frequently of such
a nature that no English parent would dream of tolerating their
application for an instant! The price we pay for our Puritanism is
occasionally very heavy indeed.
When in addition to chronic costiveness and leucorrhœa, anæmia
ultimately sets in to stamp its powerful blight upon the face and body
of our fair and positive English girl, the amount of positiveness
that has been left within her, the extent of her original self that
still remains, may easily be computed. I need hardly say that this is
not much, and yet, though she is spoiled for every other purpose, she
probably stands as a tennis, a hockey, and often a classical champion,
as the glory of her whole family, class and nation.
And, mark you, she has been spoiled for every other purpose, not
by necessity, not by fate or accident, but by a manner of life the
mistakes of which could have been avoided, eliminated and corrected,
if only those to whom she was related had felt that reverence for her
body, which all beautiful things deserve and demand, and without which
they surely perish.
Where the positive girl of the poorer classes is concerned the evil is
just as great and just as widespread; but at least in her case, there
is the excuse of necessity, of compulsion, of economic pressure. She
does not, it is true, rush out to a game of hockey, tennis or net-ball
immediately after her meals, neither, as a rule, does she have to take
a long pleasure-walk; but she has certainly to rush off either to the
local underground railway or to an omnibus in order to get to her work,
or else she has to hurry along a considerable distance on foot to get
there. She does not play at hockey or tennis when she is indisposed;
but if she works at a factory she has to go there all the same; if she
works in a shop she has to stand about there all the same; and if she
is a laundress she has to stand at a board or a machine all the same.
In both classes, then, rich and poor, Puritanism in different ways—on
the one hand by its doctrine of indifference to the body, and on the
other by its creations, modern industry and commerce—has succeeded in
suppressing all reverence for the positive girl’s beautiful body, and
the spiritual as well as the physical cost to the nation of this stupid
and iniquitous attitude is as appalling as it is incalculable.
* * * * *
(3) Even if she marry early—as all positive girls should—she may
still be converted to negativeness; and in this last instance, not by
discontent, a too long wait, or an unhealthy mode of life during youth,
but actually by her young husband himself.
Although, strictly speaking, this question should come in the chapter
on Marriage, its discussion here, in view of what has gone before,
seems so opportune and necessary, that I have decided to include it
here, and thus leave myself all the more room for other considerations
in Chapter VII.
I have mentioned before that the deterioration of men from the
standpoint of Life—i.e. their gradual approximation to a purely, or
relatively, negative type—has been a process that, in England at least,
has been going on for almost 270 years. In this time a good deal can
be accomplished in the matter of altering a type, and there can be
no doubt that a good deal has indeed been accomplished. Fortunately,
however, apart from the actual deterioration through bad food and
unhealthy living and work (which, as I have shown elsewhere, are the
indirect results of Puritanical values), Puritanism has not done much
to affect the positiveness of the poorest classes in England. Where it
has proved most formidable is in (1) the plutocracy, (2) the middle
classes, and (3) the lower middle classes. In these the ravages of
Puritanical tradition on the constitutions and outlook of the men is
everywhere noticeable; and that which makes the incidence of this evil
all the harder to bear is the fact that the women of all these classes
have not suffered nearly to the same extent from this tradition.
Whereas, therefore, it is a more or less common experience to find a
positive girl in all these classes, the appearance of a truly positive
man is excessively rare. I may have occasion to refer to this state
of affairs again in Part II; but, for the present, let us examine its
immediate effects on the positive girl who has just married.
The positive girl extends her hand confidently, bravely and hopefully
to Life. She does not expect to draw it back empty; she does not desire
to draw it back full of bliss. She is brave enough, rational enough,
and above all exuberant enough, to expect to draw it back with its full
quantum of pleasure and pain. She wants _Life_, and what though Life
means some pain, willy-nilly she will have it notwithstanding, and her
heart whispers “damn the consequences.”
But there is something she does expect, something she has a right to
expect; and that is that her husband himself should be her guide, her
mentor and initiator. From time immemorial it is his sex that has been
_prehensile_. Throughout the higher animal kingdom, prehension in the
sex act is the exclusive attribute of the male. He often has the organs
for it, and he almost always has the superior strength for it—even when
his strength is not required for other purposes. But just think what
prehension means! It involves initiation; it means taking the first
steps; it is certainly tantamount to setting the tone, the manner,
the order of an encounter. Traditionally, then, for millions of years
the male has had his particular rôle, the rôle of prehension, with
all its correlative virtues and qualities. Before self-consciousness
dawned in the human being, he was prehensile in the sexual act—and his
rôle therein involved, as I think it necessary to repeat, powers of
initiation, the ability to take the first steps, the necessary mastery
over sex, to set the tone, the manner and the order of the sexual
encounter. What does all this imply? It is obvious! It implies that
for an equal number of millions of years the female of the species has
expected this prehension and all its correlative qualities in the male.
It means that now, to this very day, her deepest feelings tell her
that it is only right, only proper, and only becoming, that he should
possess and display a certain mastery, a certain free virtuosity—that
virtuosity of a flame in a roaring fire—in the matter of sex, and that
his very ardour, his very virtuosity, his very ease in mastery, should
finally seal the coffin of all that guilty feeling towards sex which
she had almost killed in her youth, and which she now expects to be
buried once and for all.
This, positive Woman understands. This is what she has a right to
expect; this is what makes her serene, content, free in conscience and
in gait, confident that life is worth living and that her positive
impulses have been correct all along.
But what is it that happens so frequently that often a sense of shame
regarding sex actually begins in a positive woman on the very day of
her marriage—never again to be completely dissipated?
—The unfortunate modern man whom our positive girl marries, is often as
remote from any mastery over sex, or from any ease or free virtuosity
where it is concerned, as a marble statue. Thanks to the prudish
nature of his upbringing, his environment and his outlook, and also
to the general lack of sexual exuberance in his constitution, he is
frequently as terrified of the subject as is his spinster aunt, and
he knows no more about taking the initiative properly, artistically,
capably, than a child of three. As for that impetuosity that carries
everything before it, even the girl’s natural modesty, and releases the
pent-up demons of roguery so long stifled in her breast!—poor man! far
from releasing them he would prefer a thousand times to slip another
bolt across the door that imprisons them! Hesitation, shame, disgust,
a sense of guilt and of discomfort, often followed by incredibly
long periods of post-conjugal virginity and chastity, are frequently
the result, and with general consequences that are most deeply to be
deplored.
Prehension!—He has not even comprehension where sex is concerned! And
since in this matter, which is rightly so delicate and therefore so
dependent upon consummate art, the Woman is utterly dependent upon
him, a miserable, uncomfortable and clammy atmosphere is straightway
generated in a new home, in which everything could otherwise be so
bright, so clean, so full of mutual confidence and good spirits. And in
all this, mark you, no reference is made to the need of child-bearing
for the woman, which here is left indefinitely ungratified and
unconsidered.
How many women ever survive this first great shock to their
positiveness it is impossible to say; but that a very large number
undoubtedly do grow negative from the effects of it, I myself have
been able to ascertain and to record, even in my own small but fairly
representative circle.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] Hundreds of people, doctors included, will declare that this is
wrong; that an all-too-long wait does not necessarily impair health
or beauty. As if not being used, not being made to function, could
possibly be a good thing, or at least a thing that does no harm! Make
a child sit still for years, and see how its health will be affected!
It is absurd to argue that when an equipment is normal and healthy, it
does not do it and the body containing it considerable damage not to
use it! But in this matter, I do not ask you to believe me! Ask the
positive girls themselves! Ask them (if they remained virgins) whether
they felt the same at twenty-five as they did at nineteen! Ask them
whether they have not learnt from sad experience that an elaborate
mechanism when it is not used gets out of order! Get them into your
confidence, and you will hear the truth for once on this matter.
[47] Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, it is however only
too true that the worst kind of spinster is precisely this “perfectly
cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old
maid,” because, like the cheerful cripple or the happy invalid, she
is a living mockery of Life, passion and instinct thwarted. Her very
adaptedness to her unnatural lot seems to the unwary an argument in
favour of an unnatural lot, or at least not an argument against it. See
chapter IX.
[48] By violent sports I mean any form of jumping, hockey, football,
lawn tennis, golf and lacrosse. In all these games the movements
of the body are too jerky and too jarring, and muscular effort is
too long sustained. Even for men football is very bad, for women it
is barbarous. In young girls Nature makes an effort to compensate
the excessive demands made by violent sports on the muscles and
bony structure of the legs and pelvis, by proceeding to a premature
stiffening of the fleshy, and a premature ossification of the bony
parts—both of which processes not only arrest full subsequent
development, but also make for unnecessary rigidity in the pelvic and
upper femoral regions—effects which are heavily paid for later on
unless the girls remain unmarried. The fact that even among males,
sailors show smaller hip measurements than soldiers—the former being
habituated from earliest youth to much more violent bodily exertions
than soldiers—shows what a difference this natural compensation for
early muscular strain makes in a sex in which pelvic development is
neither as vital nor as characteristic as it is among girls. Another
danger arising from violent sports for young women, which is not
mentioned in the text, consists in the jerking and jarring of the
spine, small and imperceptible sprains of which, particularly near
the ilium, often lead to very obscure but severe nervous disorders in
later life. The fact that young girls enjoy violent sports is often
adduced as an argument in favour of their adoption at school and
elsewhere. But surely young people, as I have shown, are so catholic
in their positiveness, that their mere liking for an occupation or
amusement should not constitute in itself, and without further inquiry,
a sufficient ground for allowing them to pursue it. Neither should
parents allow themselves to be influenced by the fact that a conclave
of women doctors has recently decided in favour of violent sports for
girls. The decisions come to by middle-aged matrons or middle-aged
spinsters concerning the care and discipline of young girls, should
never be trusted. It is always difficult to be quite certain about the
motives, whether conscious or unconscious, that have animated women of
this age in their dealings with young girls. On the whole, unless it be
her mother, the advice of any middle-aged woman concerning a young girl
ought to be treated with suspicion. See p. 246 (footnote).
[49] With regard to the effects of diet on constipation, I give some
useful hints in chapter V of _A Defence of Aristocracy_.
Part II
INFERENCES FROM PART I
CHAPTER VII
The Marriage of the Positive Girl and the Positive Man
The multiplication of life in human society involves certain burdens
and responsibilities. A normal, positive young man could easily
fertilize a hundred women a year, without departing even for one
instant from his usual habits of industry and useful productivity.
Could he, however, undertake to provide for, protect, and rear
a hundred children in the ensuing year? He might if he were a
millionaire; but all men are not millionaires.
Although, therefore, the mere carnal union of two young positive people
is the normal and natural consummation of their desire, it is bound to
be interfered with by the State, or by the community, in order that
the burdens and responsibilities resulting from Life’s multiplication
may be delimited, defined, fairly apportioned and allotted as far as
possible to those who ought properly to bear them. And since a man
cannot procreate a hundred children a year without in the vast majority
of cases imposing grave burdens and responsibilities upon his fellows,
the State or the community officially refuses to recognize, or to offer
legal status, to any offspring that are the outcome of multiplication
that takes place outside the monogamic union. Thus although marriage
and its forms and limitations—particularly the monogamic limitation—may
frequently have a religious ceremonial, it is society, or the
community, that ultimately favours it, because society as a whole
cannot undertake to pay for the promiscuous indulgence of every man’s
lust.
Hence, despite the fact that the carnal union of our positive couple
is all that the multiplication of Life requires, and all that the
conscious or unconscious desire of the two young people demands, the
State interposes its jurisdiction and declares that the multiplication
of life that will follow the union, in fact the union itself, will
only be legally recognized provided that it take place along certain
specified lines.
Thus marriage is not a natural state, nor is it even the logical
outcome of the “love” of a positive couple; it is an artificially
imposed condition devised for the purpose of safeguarding the
community. And, being unnatural and gratuitously imposed upon the
simple relationship that Nature requires, it complicates that
relationship, and necessarily possesses all the disadvantages that any
unnatural[50] solution of a natural problem must involve.
It might be thought that if it is so very unnatural the positive
couple would instinctively rebel against it?—Not so! How many of them
are aware even that it is not a natural law? Custom deceives the
young positive couple in the same way as it deceives us all. We are
accustomed to innumerable constraints which to a man unfamiliar with
them would be intolerably irksome. When, therefore, the young positive
couple stand at the altar and hear the priest say to the man: “Wilt
thou love her, comfort her, and keep her in sickness and in health,
and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both
shall live?” and the young positive man answers innocently “I will,”
neither of them suspects the cloven hoof of social fear or social
constraint behind the words. They imagine not only that the question
is a perfectly normal one, implying a normal condition, but they also
imagine that this implied condition itself—that of lifelong love—is a
possible and generally acceptable proposition. They are not even led
to suppose that it is an _ideal_ difficult to realize, otherwise the
man would not be invited to take such an enormously difficult vow with
so little preparation and warning. To answer the priest’s question
honestly—that is to say, with a full knowledge of the terms of the
vow and with a perfect conviction that he is ready to fulfil them—a
young positive man would require to be in possession of knowledge
regarding himself and the future which he can hardly be expected to
possess. For a man to say on March 20, 1922, that, if he live so long,
he will entertain the same æsthetic or moral or political sentiments
on March 20, 1952, as those he holds on the day he makes the vow,
would be daring—or to say the least, presumptuous—as implying a claim
to a gift of prophecy. But for a man to say of a sentiment in which
passion enters as an important factor, that he will hold it thirty
years hence, he must either be quite ignorant of what he is being asked
to declare, or a prophet capable of accurately reading the future; or
else he must be the most unprincipled blackguard that ever lived, and
prepared to take any vow in order to obtain his immediate needs. Now,
since it would be unfair to assume that the majority of the young men
who answer “I will” to that question are blackguards; since, moreover,
it would be unscientific to suppose that any of them are gifted with
the superhuman power of prophecy, we can only conclude that they are
completely ignorant of what it means. They are completely ignorant of
the whole significance of the marriage rite, and it is their ignorance,
coupled with the fact of the force of custom, that enables them to
accept the unnatural imposition of the State-ordered marriage as if it
were a natural condition. Besides, the young positive couple are, as a
rule, not very analytical. The only thing they insist upon with all the
impatience of what is called “love,” is union; and since their elders
and society seem to offer them the chance of union without black
looks and moral indignation, only in legalized “marriage,” they seize
society’s offer without thinking much about the question of natural or
unnatural solutions of natural problems. Thousands, it is true, do not
wait for the unnatural solution.[51] They simply unite and consummate
their desire without taking any public vow. Then, however, they
find the social machinery for discouraging such simple behaviour so
formidable and unrelenting that they are frequently unable to face it,
and resort to crime in order to attempt to wipe out the consequences
of their action. Unmarried motherhood, with all the moral indignation
it provokes; prosecutions for affiliation, and the weekly payments in
which they result—are some of the unpleasant menaces that face those
who refuse to wait for the State’s conditions before consummating
their desire; and, in the end, the great majority, preferring the more
peaceable and more generally accepted course, resolve on marriage the
moment they feel they must consummate their desire.
The desire that makes the two young positive people wish to unite is
called “love.” It is mutual attraction culminating in a condition
of mutual irresistibility. It is the power which, in the course of
evolution, each has acquired to draw the other into that condition
which best serves the purpose of Life and its multiplication.
Now, as we have already pointed out, this power of attraction serves
its purpose—multiplication—whether they unite legitimately or
illegitimately. Since, however, the purposes of society are best served
by their uniting according to certain rules, and since these rules
are chiefly designed to secure each party to the union against the
evil consequences (to society) of promiscuous mating, it is expedient
that the two should be bound together for life; and the marriage tie
is made a permanent tie: “_Till death us do part_,”—that is the ideal
aimed at. But in this way a lie is tacitly smuggled by society into the
marriage of two young people. Since society’s purposes are best served
by a permanent match between the young positive couple, they are led to
believe that the desire which the moment before union has drawn them
together, and which is called “love,” is also permanent; in fact that
it is really the _best_ reason for making the match permanent!
Having once been perpetrated by the social organism, this lie is
repeated in all the moral prejudices and saws, all the fairy-tales,
the popular novels, the poetry and the songs, of a whole nation—of a
whole continent—and soon acquires the sanctity of truth; and he who
dares to nail it to the counter as a piece of counterfeit psychology or
physiology, is dubbed a cynic, an anarchist, and a misogynist.
We call the emotion “love” which convinces two young people that they
had better, on grounds of expediency, accept the State regulations
concerning their prospective union, but we have no business to imply
by actual words or by suggestion that the desirable permanence of that
union, from society’s point of view, will find one of its principal
causes in the persistence of the emotion that led to its being
consummated. Unfortunately, the advantage to society and to the family
of a permanent legal contract, has led to so complete a distortion of
the truth, that the majority of young people are led to believe, quite
blindly, that it is the enduring power of the emotion itself which
justifies the nature of the contract. And everything is done to confirm
them in this belief. It is only when they are married that they find
how utterly untrue it is.
It is readily admitted that in every generation of human beings there
is a percentage, an ever-dwindling percentage in degenerate days, of
men and women who are capable of deep and lasting emotions. These rare
creatures of profound and enduring passion, to whom change of any
sort is distasteful, and who cling faithfully and stubbornly to their
hobbies, their pursuits, their ancestral faiths, and their particular
taste in literature, music, the graphic arts and food, may and do
sometimes evince a steadiness and a stability in their love which makes
their monogamic unions exceptionally harmonious and affectionate to the
last. But for the average modern couple to claim that they belong to
this very small percentage of human beings, is the most contemptible
impudence. Even positive couples cannot all be said to belong to this
class, and as for the negative couples, whose unions are chiefly an
idle pursuit of sensation or else a gratification of vanity, they
are as different from these slow-moving, deeply passionate people as
if they belonged to a race utterly strange to them. It is therefore
essential that, for the vast majority of people, a more sensible, less
dramatic, and more realistic colour should be lent to their unions,
so that they may enter them with a clearer understanding of the
enormous difficulties with which permanent marriage is beset, and with
other considerations to support and fortify them, than a trust in a
possibility so utterly fantastic as the endurance of their emotions.
When once they are married, it is perfectly true that expediency,
economic considerations, and the presence of children frequently
convince them that it is better that their union should be permanent;
but to call by the name of “love” the reasons which cause them to
arrive at this conclusion, is a colossal hoax, the prodigiousness of
which would be amusing did it not lead to such untold misery.
But, it may be objected, even if we admit that the legal union,
marriage, is as a rule incompatible with lasting “love,” where is the
harm, provided that the two objects of the contract, the obtaining of
a union between two positive people and the propagation of children on
regular and well-ordered lines, be secured? Is it not after all the
best solution of the sex problem?
The question whether it is the best solution of the sex problem we must
leave undecided for a moment. But to the first part of the question
we may now answer definitely that there is harm in any contract based
upon a lie, when that lie is one which, connected as it is with the
psychological and physiological conditions of a certain common human
relationship, is bound to be discovered as a lie by the parties to that
relationship.
To allow, however tacitly or implicitly, that society’s unnatural
solution of the sex problem is even favourable to the endurance of the
emotion which first led the couple to desire union, is harmful in the
first place:—
(1) Because it makes the idea and pursuit of marriage too hedonistic.
Young people know that the state of mutual desire in which they find
themselves before the union, is one of exquisite pleasure. As we have
pointed out in Chapter V, it is probably the richest experience, as
spirito-physiological sensations go, that anyone can have. They also
know that the happy and masterly consummation of this desire is a
source of enormous spiritual and physical well-being and delight.
The parties to be united, therefore, can easily be persuaded, both
immediately before consummation and for a brief period afterwards, that
this exquisite pleasure and delight will be secured them permanently
by a permanent contract, and marriage is pursued as a source of
happiness. People are even in the habit of asking of a married couple,
not “Are they successful?” not, “Are they breasting their difficulties
satisfactorily?”; but always, “Are they happy?”—as if for all the
world one were necessarily happy in fulfilling a difficult and vastly
complicated contract.
It is necessary for the positive young girl to find her physical
adaptation. Only the negative girl can be content without it. It is
also necessary for the positive young man to find his. But surely it is
not necessary to lead either of them to suppose that in doing this by
means of legal marriage they will find anything more in the long run
than the most moderate well-being, disturbed by the most tremendous
responsibilities and difficulties.
The way in which girls and young men are led to look forward to the
married state as if it were a kind of fairy transformation, summed up
in the formula “and they were happy ever afterwards,” vitiates the
whole value of the contract; for while it lays all emphasis on the
contentment that naturally comes with proper physical adaptation, it
passes over the enormous difficulties which any such permanent contract
between sensitive and intelligent beings must entail.
(2) It is harmful, secondly, because by leading both young people
to expect too much from marriage, it expedites the period of
disillusionment, which is bound ultimately to supervene in the great
majority of such unions. If the State solution of the sex problem,
known as monogamic marriage, be really a good institution, then surely
everything should be done to make it tolerable for as long as possible
to those who are parties to it. Since disillusionment must come, it
is obviously the duty of teachers and elders to endeavour to postpone
it as long as possible. And the way to do this is certainly not by
emphasizing the “happiness” of marriage to the exclusion of all thought
about its enormous and almost insuperable difficulties. A salutary
reform in this respect would consist in leading young people to accept
the State’s solution of the sex problem in a more sober mood, with a
more grave concern about the future, with a greater insight into the
utility of marriage, and with less precipitancy than is shown at
present. They would realize that while union was what they desired,
legal marriage was the least unsatisfactory way for all concerned of
meeting that desire for union; but that it was only a clumsy way of
securing their sexual adaptation, and held no necessary promise of
any greater happiness than they could expect from any other system of
constraints.
It might be objected that, in this case, young people would not marry.
The reply to this objection is that they would if their desire for
normal adult adaptation were strong enough, but that they would be
likely to fulfil the contract all the more satisfactorily by realizing
from the start its utility, its limitations, its very doubtful promise,
and its artificial nature.
(3) It is harmful, thirdly, because, by _confusing marriage with
the pursuit of happiness_, grave considerations are likely to be
overlooked. Let me give a concrete instance:—
It may be in the best interests of a farmer’s son, who intends to
adopt his parent’s calling, to marry a rural maiden, accustomed to the
problems of a farm, and familiar with all the valuable traditions of
the countryside. In fact, from the standpoint of the State also, it may
be best for him to select his bride from among the female population of
his village or locality; for by so doing, in addition to acquiring a
useful mate, his children will inherit rural virtues from both sides,
and are more likely to become good and efficient farmers in their turn.
But if, by a false association of happiness with marriage, he fancies
that he will have what is known as a “better time” with an urban
typist of smart appearance, with small bird’s-claw hands and expensive
tastes, he is likely to overlook the gravity of the purpose of marriage
in order to gratify his hedonistic lust. This accounts also for the
destruction of many of our aristocratic houses by _mésalliances_
with chorus-girls and American and Jewish heiresses. If the utterly
hedonistic bias were only removed from marriage, such stupid and wanton
outrages against good blood might be prevented. For since the alleged
“happiness” of a permanent association like legal marriage is in nine
cases out of ten pure illusion, it should not be allowed to override
a man’s duty to himself and to his children. One of the principal
rewards of the legal marriage is the means it gives a man of preserving
his family virtues and tradition, and since this is best achieved by
choosing a girl from his own kind and set, the supposed pursuit of
happiness can only act as a disturbing element, which could be condoned
only if it were not so entirely illusory.
Of course the _mésalliance_ as a social evil has a Puritanical root
as well, which ought perhaps to be mentioned here. The Puritans were
not so utterly and incurably stupid as to deny the existence of bodily
pleasure. They knew perfectly well that the joys of sex were very real
joys. By insisting, however, upon these joys being sought only in fast
wedlock, they threw a burden upon marriage which it was hardly designed
to bear. They converted it by one stroke into a source of joy—that is
to say, into the unique source for a certain kind of joy, into a symbol
of pleasure and happiness of a certain kind. By so doing, however, a
false association grew up in the minds of men regarding marriage, which
has resulted in the scions of some of our best houses seeking happiness
and pleasure in matrimony by marrying women whose blood necessarily
diluted or destroyed their stock qualities. Had the stupid Puritan
prejudice not existed, they might have found pleasure with these
inferior females without marrying them, and thereby saved their family
line with some one who, though perhaps less garish and less vulgarly
amusing, was at least capable of giving them children true to their
traditional stock quality.
The advantages of the legal monogamic match are chiefly social. _They
have very little to do with happiness, and most of them redound to the
benefit of law and order._ They are:—
(_a_) The creation of a compact unit known and recognized as the
family, in which responsibility for the fruits of the union fall on
the two parents, and in which the financial responsibility in the
great majority of families falls upon the more free (physically) of
the two parents—the male. The State is by this means secured against
the obligation of having to rear the innumerable host of children that
would result from promiscuous parenthood where the father could not be
traced.
(_b_) The creation of a unit with which it is easy for the law to deal,
because in it human duties are simplified down to the three relations,
spouse, parent, child, each of which has its status in the law, all
converging towards the head of the unit, who can be made answerable to
the law for his unit.
(_c_) The creation of a definite and stable environment for the early
and tenderest years of the nation’s youngest inhabitants, where, in
the majority of cases at least, they may be assured the care and the
supervision and the schooling of those who are by nature best equipped
for discharging the duties of protectors and tutors with love and
tenderness, with natural pride in their work, and above all without
demanding payment for their services.
(_d_) The creation of a natural centre of interest for the female and
the male, but particularly for the former, after the first bloom of
youth and attractiveness has fled, so that each may claim, as by right,
a place in a _home_, in which their presence is earnestly desired, at
least by the majority—the children.
(_e_) The creation of a microcosm—a part and counterpart of the nation
as a whole, reduced to its smallest compass, in which the traditional
character of a people becomes imparted to its children, in which the
virtues and aspirations of a nation are inculcated by precept and
example upon its youngest members, and in which these form the first
strong attachments which, increasing with age, ultimately identify
them, and act as the first moral check upon their conduct.
(_f_) The creation of a centre in which the child has a chance to
develop family or stock qualities quietly, slowly, and unhindered;
because it is sheltered, or partly so, from the influence of
antagonistic or competing mob or universal characteristics.
(_g_) The creation of relationships—that of spouse to spouse, parent
to child, child to child, and child to parent, in which the growth of
many virtues useful to society are fostered and cultivated: a sense of
responsibility, self-respect, fidelity, early associations of devotion
and gratitude, the sense of traditional continuity which gives rise
to the feeling of dignity, honour, obligation, and individual rights,
claims and duties.
(_h_) The creation of a community on the smallest scale, in which the
children may, by constant association with their parents, acquire their
stock of general and specialized knowledge, learn the business by which
they may ultimately earn their living, and cultivate efficiency in
it quietly and gradually from infancy upwards. (This is an advantage
which, except in rare cases, has hardly survived in family life in
England.)
Now, attractive as these advantages may appear to the legislator, or
legislators of a people, and cogent as they may make the argument for
monogamic marriage, it will be seen, that they contain little that
will necessarily secure the conjugal “happiness” of the two young
people whose actions and movements they are designed to limit and to
constrain. They consist chiefly of duties which, while not necessarily
unpleasant, give rise to no small amount of anxiety and misgiving, and
certainly lend a graver accent to matrimony than is usually imparted to
it by that promise of light-hearted enjoyment upon which most stress
is laid by the traditional literature, poetry and public sentiment of
all Anglo-Saxon people. On the other hand, it would be idle to deny
that if the aspects of monogamous marriage that they represent were
more frequently emphasized and brought to the attention of both young
and old, the number of “happy” marriages might certainly be very much
increased. For as I have shown, it is the hedonistic view of marriage,
or that picture of it that dwells immoderately upon its supposed
unfailing gift of happiness, that has done most in modern civilised
societies to undermine its value as a working and workable institution.
Its plain utility is smothered under too much sentiment and false
doctrine. This result has been brought about largely by Christianity,
which has persistently endeavoured to teach the high-falutin’ nonsense
of matrimony as principally “a union of souls”[52]; but added to
Christian influence in Anglo-Saxon countries, at least, there has also
been the detrimental overlay of romantic obsessions,[53] which has made
a realistic view of primitive and natural needs almost impossible.
The general tendency in Puritanical and Anglo-Saxon countries, at
least, is to keep as far as possible in the background the subject of
offspring and the fruits of marriage when discussing it or arranging
for it in the presence of any two young people who have stated their
desire to be joined together. It is not considered decent to refer
to this, its most important side. As we have seen, the advantages of
the legal monogamic marriage chiefly concern the children that may
result from the match. Scarcely any other advantage exists. It is
folly, therefore, not to make the subject of offspring one of the most
important in all deliberations relating to matrimony. It is true that
in the _Book of Common Prayer_ the first reason given for the joining
of a man and woman together in holy matrimony, is “for the procreation
of children”; but there are many people who dislike this passage in the
marriage service, and all those who have attended marriage ceremonies
often will be able to testify to the frequency with which it is rapidly
slurred over in order to give the least possible offence.
Now this is the most pernicious nonsense that could ever have been
devised for destroying the value of the legal monogamic marriage. For
if proper stress were laid upon the consequences of the union, _the
children_, it would not only check the hedonistic attitude towards
marriage as an institution, but would also make young people more
serious in the matter of choosing their mates and more critical of
themselves in regard to their readiness for marriage.
“Am I one who can grant myself the privilege of contributing fresh
people to the world? Am I sufficiently desirable? Is it at all
desirable that I should reproduce myself in a second, third or fourth
edition?”
But how can these questions be asked in an atmosphere where the
offspring of a marriage is the last consideration to be thought of?
How can they be expected to be asked in an atmosphere where “Luvv” is
supposed to justify any match, however horrible?
In regard to the mate, too—who nowadays selects her with that serious
criticism which gazes through the optics of the next generation and
envisages their best interests? How can the average man assume this
attitude, when all the stress in matrimony is laid upon the love match,
upon the union of two souls? As far as possible, everyone tries to
forget the other matter in contemplating a girl and her betrothed.
People shrug their shoulders and say, “If children come, they come—and
there’s an end of it.” They prefer to regard the couple from that
standpoint. Christianity has so far succeeded in establishing a false
atmosphere of a union of souls around this most fundamental of all
relationships (that of the betrothed couple) that it is possible now
to meet people who entertain the most solemn determination to marry,
and yet who have hardly one single feature in their minds or bodies
that would render their repetition or recurrence on earth in any way
desirable.
The whole attitude of Christianity towards the joining of male and
female together, however, is so unrealistic on the one hand, and so
base on the other, that it is not astonishing that after 2,000 years
of Christian teaching we have wellnigh reached matrimonial chaos in
Europe, and all countries like Europe.
Marriage should be regarded as the sacred garden of the next
generation. All the exalted emotions that possess an artist at his
work, all the solemn misgivings that beset a responsible man when
he feels he is determining the future of Man, ought to surge in the
breast of him who contemplates matrimony. To feel that emotion which
the modern world calls “love” may excuse a man for forming an illicit
union, but, alone, it does not justify him in concluding so grave a
contract as marriage.
The disadvantages of the monogamic marriage are chiefly confined to its
effects upon the individual, and are of a nature that the State can,
as a rule, afford to ignore and to waive. I shall only point to one
disadvantage that deeply concerns the State (see objection H), and that
is so serious that it should be examined and removed instantly.
The disadvantages are the following:—
(A) Monogamic marriage presupposes a possibility which is the very
reverse of natural and human, one in fact which, through the optics of
life, does not even amount to a probability—and that is that two people
of different sexes can be united for life without needing or craving
for that same variety and respite which in all other departments of
their lives they regard as the most essential factor of well-being.
This is the great _lie_ underlying the State’s tacit assurance that its
solution of the sex problem is for the benefit of the individual.
Every child suspects, every adult knows, how difficult friendship is,
how hard it becomes to keep up that enthusiasm and eager interest
in the relationship of friends, which alone makes companionship a
refreshment and a pleasure. And everyone feels that there is a natural
prudence in sound friendship which, founded on good taste, points
distinctly to a moderate frequentation of a friend at all times
when that enthusiasm and eager interest show signs of declining too
seriously. So that it might truthfully be said in a paradox, that
friendship can be maintained only by judicious separations, and that
the duration of these separations is determined by the barometric
level, so to speak, of the friendship felt at certain periods.
No one who has attained to adult years can fail to have realized
the value of change to the body. Variations in diet, occupation and
environment act as a stimulus not only to the senses but also to the
tissues; they brace and invigorate the system. Life, like beauty,
has even been defined as “repetition with a certain modicum of
variation.”[54]
Moreover, every human being, child, adult, savage or sage knows the
fatal consequences of complete and exhaustive exploration: how it
cloys, how it surfeits, how it nauseates! The very constitution of man
as a sentient being necessitates such consequences. The repetition of
a stimulus reduces the force of its appeal owing to the very tendency
to habituation to which all of us as adaptable creatures are prone. We
react eagerly and quickly at first; the thousandth time we hardly lift
an eyelid.
Now, in the face of all these facts of common and everyday experience,
it would seem both absurd and indefensible to claim that any two
people, whether of the same or of different sexes, could hope to spend
many years together—not to mention a lifetime—without ultimately
falling the prey to indifference, if not dislike; and where the
circumstances of their first coming together have been attended by any
excessive warmth of feeling, the ultimate revulsion of that feeling,
by constituting at once a disillusionment and, among unwise people, a
surprise, must lead to an indifference proportionately more acute.
Unlike the mere association of friends, in which two people may work
together, share the same interests, enjoy the same games, or suffer
the same hardships, pleasures and difficulties, the married couple are
united chiefly by a physical bond which has its basis in an act of
_passion_, an act of _desire_, an act of _power_.
But _passion_ is largely a matter of surplus strength, violent
stimulation and the lust of possession, all of which are steadily
worn down by (_a_) a steady drain on surplus strength, (_b_) the
supervention of gradual callousness through the repetition of similar
stimuli, and (_c_) the consciousness of holding definitely, or rather
indefinitely, the object originally coveted.
_Desire_ also, by being gratified, is stilled. The best cure, in fact,
for desire is precisely gratification. But a _cure_ is hardly what is
anticipated by the usual love-match.[55]
With regard to the _act of power_, which, despite civilization, still
accounts for more than half the savour of the sexual relationship,
that is surely seriously impaired by the law itself which enjoins
cohabitation as a duty upon the parties to a marriage contract.
Thus the indefinite continuance of the emotion which first led a couple
to unite, and the protraction _sine die_ of the delights of the early
consummation of their desire, are bound, as it were, with mathematical
certainty to become impossible. But this makes the relationship
exceedingly difficult, and one which, far from constituting a promise
of happiness, is very much more likely to develop into an absolute
guarantee of incessant and most tiresome differences.
To reply to these objections that there is a “love” that transcends all
these difficulties, may sound pleasant and charming and good-natured,
but it is hardly candid. For as I have pointed out above, the
possibility of the existence of this rare kind of love does not justify
us in making marriage a lie for the bulk of mankind.
(B) Furthermore, monogamic marriage makes no allowance for the fact
that human courtship and the subsequent union of the sexes to which it
leads, partakes essentially of the nature of an adventure. In fact, to
a large number of people in these dull and ordered days it is the only
adventure of their lives. In many of its aspects it is reminiscent of
the qualities of the chase, and it would be unscientific not to allow
for this smack of venery in the preliminaries which precede _venery_.
That mutual attraction which ultimately leads to mutual capitulation is
full of the excitement, the doubt, the anxiety and the final triumph
of the huntsman. When the quarry is a positive virgin and her pursuer
a positive man, even the fascination of fear is added—fear of the
intensity of the passion awakened—to complete the similitude of the
experience to the circumstances of the chase.
Beside this, however, the steady hum-drum routine of married life can
at best only be a flat parody—particularly married life in modern
civilization, witnessed, as it is, by innumerable stuffy relatives,
marred by imperfect health, supported by tired and irascible nerves,
and depressed by the consciousness that it must last a lifetime.
Nor can it be said that the divine gifts of imagination and artistic
creativeness tend to mitigate the solemn boredom and exasperation that
overtake the parties to such a legal union; on the contrary, they but
enhance its horrors: behold the unhappy married lives of most men of
genius, Dickens, Carlyle, Byron, and the philosophic Socrates!
(C) The monogamic marriage based on the modern idea of “love” (which
should, by the by, be spelt “Luvv” to differentiate it from the nobler
idea called by the same name), in addition to leading to bitter
disillusionment, has in its very first condition—this sentiment
“Luvv”—the seeds of its most potent corrosive. For it is impossible
nowadays to conceive of love without contempt. Indeed, an innuendo of
contempt is essential before love can be possible. This is easily seen
if we reflect upon what love is. It is, in its present acceptation,
a very wild, a very torrential sentiment. From the man who says he
loves her, the girl exacts little less than single-minded adoration.
She expects him to say she is the best girl in the world for him, and
she insists on his believing it. She might, at a pinch, forgive his
not regarding her as _the best girl_ in the whole world, in the sense
of supreme above all other girls _in fact_. But to him, relative to
his taste alone, she expects to be that. And he expects the same. But
what does this mean? What can it not help meaning? Both parties in a
courtship are fully aware of what sorry figures they cut before the
critical and fully informed eye of their own inner consciousness. Each
knows his shortcomings, his pitiful and helpless foibles, his ugly
traits, his despicable features, his nauseating, revolting side!
And what? Some one has been found who calls this the best? who raves
about it? who is visibly frantic about it?
Deep down in her heart, therefore, where the girl secretes her
contempt for herself, she now begins secreting the first drops of
contempt for the one who can appear so wildly enthusiastic over
something she knows to be so defective. Her man feels exactly the
same, and though he may be exalted, for a while, by the girl’s having
mistaken him for a hero, he would not be human if he did not feel a
little contempt for one who could appear so enthralled by such humble
attainments as he knows his to be.
When once, however, the first blush of passion has died away, this
seed of contempt has to be reckoned with, and then, watered by
disillusionment and nourished by indifference, it soon germinates and
grows into the fungus which helps to blight the last green leaves
that may still be left on the spare frail tree of conjugal affection.
Because, the moment it shows its true colour and nature, it is
recognized by either party in the other, and interpreted as a flat and
wilful recantation of their former protestations, and consequently as
an insulting and heartless _volte-face_ which cannot be forgiven.
(D) In addition to the element of contempt in all love of the
ordinary sort, there is another factor which, when once the moment of
disenchantment comes in monogamic marriage, adds seriously to its force
and hastens the end; and that is the unpardonable arrogance which is
implicit in all these “love” matches.
When a young man A so far misunderstands his condition as to say
he loves a young girl B with _undying_ affection, although the
psychologist may smile, he does not necessarily expostulate; for, after
all, the attitude, though ridiculous, is not necessarily provokingly
impudent. It is true that it is assuming that he is capable of an
enduring passion, and therefore, that he is arrogating to himself a
depth and a permanence which nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of
a thousand do not possess; nevertheless, it is allowed to pass, because
a certain modicum of exaggeration is allowed to lovers.
When, however, the young girl B believes A’s declaration of undying
love, and accepts it as a fact, the psychologist is naturally annoyed;
for here a degree of self-deception comes into play which cannot
possibly arise out of anything else than the most stupendous arrogance.
In order that B may believe A, she must first have convinced herself of
the following:—
(α) That she is capable of inspiring an undying passion.
(β) That she is capable of keeping it alive when once it has been
kindled.
(γ) That there is nothing at all unlikely or preposterous in her being
the object of such a passion.
But to convince herself of any one of these propositions she must
possess the most prodigious conceit, the most unbounded impudence.
And the same applies to A, to whom B has declared her undying love.
In addition to contempt, therefore, there is in every love-match in
which the parties propose to adopt a permanent monogamic union as their
destiny, a degree of arrogance and self-esteem on either side which is
wholly and unspeakably distasteful both to the sane psychologist and to
the man of balanced mind.
But let that pass! What does it matter that the psychologist should be
offended when he hears that A has declared his undying love to B and
that B has believed him?
Yes, but unfortunately the arrogance that B shows in listening with
patience and even credulity to such a declaration as A’s, does not end
merely in giving offence to the psychologist. It ultimately recoils
upon herself in the cruellest possible manner; just as A’s arrogant
acceptance of B’s declaration recoils upon him. When the moment
of disillusionment and indifference supervenes, as it must in all
ordinary “love” matches, A finds it somewhat difficult to forgive B
for having ever dreamt, even in her wildest nightmare, that she could
keep their love alive all through their married life, and B finds
it equally difficult to forgive A for having fancied, even in the
wildest flights of his imagination, that he could ever provoke a life
passion. And thus, in addition to the contempt that has already been
analysed in the preceding section, there now arises a rankling feeling
of indignation of each towards the other for ever having been guilty of
such stupendous arrogance.
And we must confess that in the majority of cases this indignation is
well deserved.
The only excuse that may be pleaded in mitigation of A’s and B’s lack
of modesty is that probably no one had ever told them, nor had they
ever read, that to accept a declaration of undying love necessitates a
degree of self-esteem that is positively indecent.
(E) There are many modern people who will protest that I have not
considered the monogamic marriage on its “higher” or more “spiritual”
aspect as _companionship_, and that unless its possibilities in this
respect be viewed fairly and impartially, its general desirability
cannot possibly be estimated. But before we assume too hastily that
this is one of the brighter aspects of the monogamic marriage, let us
make quite certain that we are not confronted by yet another of its
grave disadvantages.
Companionship is a matter of the spirit. The pleasure of it might be
likened to the refreshment that a parched body obtains from a fresh
drink. It is the bliss peculiar to friendship. The friend refreshes one
by his companionship. Provided we have not spent too many of our years
with him, he opens before us a new aspect of things. Provided that we
have not frequented him too much, his mind, however simple it may be,
always offers us some sentiment or point of view which we have not
yet thoroughly explored. And this communion with the friend is a joy,
because it is a recreation. It makes the old world seem new again. Even
familiar landscapes, viewed again with a friend whom one has seen at
discreet intervals, acquire a freshness they did not possess before.
The very essence of companionship, therefore, if it is to be a joy,
consists in the freshness, the novelty, the change that it introduces
into our life.
But where is the freshness, where, therefore, the joy of companionship
with some one whose mind one has thoroughly explored, whose every
word, comment, or exclamation one anticipates five or six seconds
ahead? Where is the exquisite quality of the companion in one whom
one knows as well as oneself, whom one has had endless days, weeks,
months and years to study, to listen to and to understand? The most
gifted brain can be circumnavigated if it be lived with daily. The
richest storehouse of spirituality can hardly hold out against daily
depredation.
Companionship, however, offers something else that is priceless in the
mortal monotony of our lives. It draws us away from excessive communion
with ourselves, from the surfeit of self. Thus the friend comes as a
welcome disturber of the interminable meditation that proceeds at all
hours of the day between a man and himself.
But the mate who is always with you is so much a part of yourself,
so intimately known to you, that nothing she can say is sufficiently
arresting to disturb any meditation; and unless she actually overturns
the lamp, or accidentally chops one of her fingers off, or falls
downstairs, she is hardly noticed.
And what is true of the husband here is equally true of the wife. She
gets to know her husband’s every word, every mood, every gesture by
heart. To call his presence companionship, or the boon that comes with
friendship, would be to cast a slur on all companionship and friendship
for ever.
Companionship between husband and wife is therefore impossible.
It is impossible because the very source of the chief quality
of companionship—refreshment—is cut off at the root by too much
association, too much and too incessant exploration of each other’s
minds, by the two spouses.
(F) The monogamic marriage is as a rule more satisfying to the female
than to the male; but only, as we shall see in the chapter on Divorce,
if children are born regularly, and the circumstances of their birth
and their infancy run a normal course. The reason of this is that
since the positive healthy woman finds her complete sexual experience
only by means of the coitus, _plus_ the period of gestation, _plus_
parturition, and _plus_ the months of lactation, she finds, as a rule,
in the course of a married life in which she brings forth children
regularly and in normal circumstances, all that her body can possibly
expect from an adapted sexual life.[56] The act of fertilization,
which, as we have already seen in a former chapter, is only the
sparking-plug that starts the huge cycle that culminates in the
weaning, is such a trifling incident in her sexual experience that very
soon her husband begins to assume in her eyes the importance which,
as a matter of fact, he enjoys relative to the huge cycle itself. And
if she happens no longer to feel that enthusiasm for him which she
felt as a fiancée, she can endure the disillusionment with equanimity
and sweetness because she is now aware that, after all said and done,
he does not really matter to her nearly as much as she once rather
foolishly imagined. Promoting and expediting the drop in a woman’s
affection for her husband must also be reckoned not only the natural
surfeit and indifference that comes with excessive familiarity, but
also the presence of the children themselves. For while they act as
a consolation to the woman for the declining affection of the pair,
they also operate as a powerful reducer of that affection in herself.
The unconscious longing for fertilization that has long been drawing
her to her husband and forcing her to transfigure his very common and
ordinary personality into something exceptional, naturally abates as
fast as children are born, because, as an unconscious longing, it gets
gratified and therefore stifled. And thus children, far from being
the alleged bonds uniting couples, may become the most potent wedges
driving them asunder. The extraordinary number of loving childless
couples in which the woman’s devotion remains unabated may be accounted
for in this way.[57] Policy, as a rule, bids her treat him with
consideration and the outward signs of devotion as the breadwinner, as
the father of her children, and as a person who, since he is destined
to be her constant companion, it is merely ordinary good sense to
humour and to please; but provided that she have children from him at
regular intervals, she is not much troubled by the pronounced drop in
her affection and regard for him.
To the man, on the other hand, to whom, as we have seen, the
sparking-plug incident constitutes a complete sexual experience, and
whose sexual life therefore begins and ends with this spasmodic desire
for woman and the brief relation with her to which it leads, this
falling off in affection and desire is a matter of very grave concern,
_because he has no bodily consolation_. He may love his children, he
may delight in their company, and he may be wholly interested in his
home; but the bearing and nursing of his children constitutes no bodily
experience to him; and in life it is the demands of the body that are
most important and most importunate when they are not obeyed.
For his body to enjoy its necessary, satisfactory experience, slight
and brief as it is, it is essential that some desire, some passion, in
fact some of the feeling he felt for his wife as a fiancée, should
remain. It is necessary that he should still look upon the act as one
of passion, desire and power. But as we have seen, the act has been
deprived of most of its passion, desire and power by the inevitable
consequences of the State monogamic marriage. Its beauties have
literally been worn away. It has lost its savour and its strength by
having been systematized, time-tabled, protected, ordered, and above
all, repeated too often, without that “certain modicum of variety”
which is the essential element in all life.
Generally speaking, then, it may be argued with justice that, where
conditions are normal and children are born regularly, monogamic
marriage can be tolerated quite well by women, but not by men. For when
once the elements constituting the joy of cohabitation have been robbed
from the man’s share—as in nine hundred and ninety-nine marriages out
of a thousand they must—the relationship, though still endurable to the
positive healthy female, to whom the act of fertilization, and _raison
de plus_ her husband, is of such minor importance, becomes intolerable
to the healthy positive male; and unless he is prepared to face a life
in which every week is a long-drawn-out torture to his body, he cannot
remain faithful to his spouse.
In its general attitude towards and understanding of monogamic
marriage, therefore, this Age, in addition to smuggling the lie of
happiness into the contract, also completely distorts the true relation
to the union of the woman on the one hand, and the man on the other.
By a false and entirely gratuitous analogy, it supposes that the man’s
position can be and is as tolerable as that of the child-bearing female.
It is useless to object that thousands of married men to-day remain
faithful to their wives, and yet cannot be said to be among those rare
geniuses in love for whom alone the monogamic marriage is suitable. In
the first place it may be asked, how many of those thousands are really
healthy positive men, sexually exuberant and virile? It is simple
enough to be a Puritan if one is below par. But how many faithful
husbands are truly normal, in the sense of their body’s insisting upon
leading a satisfactory sexual life?
(G) It would be unfair to omit to mention among these objections to
the modern monogamic marriage, those that arise more particularly from
the woman’s standpoint in a match with a man who is both positive and
healthy.
At the risk of repeating statements already made, the reader must be
reminded here that when either party to a matrimonial match is negative
or unhealthy, the union ceases from being one to which mere objections
can be raised; it then becomes actually impossible. And by positiveness
and health in the woman, I mean that condition in which the bearing
of children is accompanied throughout by an easy pleasure-giving
functioning of the body.
Because I am not attempting to discuss all the sordid complications
of the sort of match in which either one or both of the parties are
unhealthy or negative, it does not follow that I fail to recognize the
enormous percentage of unhappy marriages, to which such unions lead.
But this is not a book on the pathological aspects of sex. I take only
the best possible conditions—the mating of a healthy and positive
woman with a man of the same stamp, and show the objections that may
be raised to their monogamic match. Naturally, if the unfavourable
circumstances with which the start is made be increased, the objections
to the match necessarily increase proportionately.
Now, despite the best initial circumstances, there are objections
to monogamy from the woman’s standpoint which will be seen to be
both serious and insuperable. But these objections, let it be well
understood, only arise in thoroughly modern conditions. I have hinted
at one of them in a former chapter (see Chapter VI, section 3).
(G1) A woman may marry a man who is wholly positive, healthy, and
therefore quite savoury (such men get ever more rare, but they are
still to be found). Very early in her married life, however, she
discovers that, through some cause which she of course cannot fathom,
her husband is a person utterly unfit to make her his wife in the only
way in which her instincts and senses easily accept the rôle—that is
to say, as the yielding partner to an impetuous, masterful, and at the
same time skilful initiator. Although he is not negative by nature, he
has been brought up negatively. He fears and shuns what he should be
most eager to experience. His timidity and awkwardness are infectious.
He proves himself not only unmasterly; he convinces her that he is a
bungler—often a bungler more terrified than she is herself.
A relationship which should have been but a means of raising their
courting happiness to ecstasy becomes instead either frigid and
frightened post-marital virginity for weeks after marriage,[58] which
proves disastrous to their love and ruinous to their nerves; or else, a
consummation which is so hopelessly clumsy, hurried and nervous, and so
distasteful to either party, that it is repeated as seldom as possible,
and is always followed by the most bewildering disenchantment.
I have previously explained that to the decent girl the act of
consummation seems acceptable and right only if purified by fire. She
does not need to be in the least influenced by Puritanical prejudices
in order to hold this attitude. It is the natural outcome of her
instincts, as they have been formed throughout the ages. The bulk of
the ancestors in her line, for millions of years, on the female side,
having encountered the proper impetuosity and fire in the male, which
carries all before it—that prehensile and initiatory masterfulness that
belongs by nature to the male’s share in the act of consummation—this
is what her racial memory leads her to expect, this alone is what gives
her that clean joy in sex, that light-hearted innocence in sex, without
which her married life is but a torment.
Yet now she finds herself with a creature who far from showing any
mastery or abandon, actually increases, if you please, her own natural
timidity about the whole affair, and even carries it one stage further
until it is brought perilously near to disgust and moral indignation.
Beginnings tell most poignantly, particularly when they consist of
first experiences in fundamental matters. And this kind of beginning,
if it is not quickly corrected, is almost always fatal. It destroys
that trust, that confidence, that humble and willing subservience,
which are at once a young woman’s instinct and her joy. It poisons the
first hours of her maturity, of her self-realization, of her taste of
life’s deeper waters; but, above all, it revives in her precisely those
emotions and prejudices which ought to have been stifled for ever—her
high-school doubts and qualms regarding the general desirability of her
Maker’s scheme for mammalian fertilization.
She may forgive this first tragic disenchantment. It is doubtful
whether she ever forgets it. And if her husband, as is often the case,
continues inept, clumsy and uneasy about the whole relationship, it
matters not even if they have children, that disillusionment which, in
any case, is bound to come, is unduly expedited, and the union gets
prematurely blighted. If there are no children—then there is either
open revolt or infidelity, or both.
In this way very many eminently desirable women suffer untold
hardships through monogamy[59]; and though they are frequently too
proud and too dignified to reveal to anyone the smallest hint of their
suffering, this may be read in a hundred signs about their homes and
their persons. The bitter contempt that many women display towards
their husbands, their tendency to contradict, offend and insult them
before strangers, and their aptitude to appeal to outsiders rather than
to their husbands for advice and help, are all probably the outcome of
experiences that have occurred quite early in their married life, all
of which were disenchanting, unpleasant, and destructive of confidence.
For the healthy, positive young man, in this case, all that can be
pleaded is that it is not entirely his fault. In England, as a rule, he
is bred in an atmosphere so perfectly sex-tight, that no intelligent
or enlightening word ever reaches him on the subject. On the contrary,
all is clammy, frightened, guilty silence. On reaching maturity, if he
be sensitive, the ordinary means of acquiring practical experience in
the matter will probably strike him as too sordid, too commercial, too
completely lifted out of the atmosphere of romance and adventure in
which his mind has always pictured ideal sexual experiences; and the
consequence is that frequently he not only practises abstinence for too
long, but also develops inhibitions and fantasies which hardly conduce,
when the time comes, to a happy consummation of his first love-match.
And yet the world has grown so stupid in regard to all these matters,
and foolish romantic women’s voices have become so clamorous, that
there is an ever-increasing body of idiots who insist on the
desirability of men being virgins when they marry!
(G2) Another deep objection, from the standpoint of woman, to the
monogamic marriage, arises out of what is known as “maleness” in women.
According to Weininger this varies in degree with each individual,
and modern authorities on psychology have more or less confirmed
Weininger’s view.
For the reader unacquainted with the present knowledge on this point,
perhaps it would be as well to state plainly what results have been
obtained.
In the first place it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most
people that no one male or female is wholly masculine or feminine.
The stage of hermaphroditism through which all human beings are
supposed to pass in their early fœtal development, is never apparently
quite overcome, and the fully developed fœtus, as also the perfectly
developed child, retains in its constitution vestiges of a sex to which
its outward and primary sexual characteristics do not belong. These
vestiges of the other sex which survive are both physical and mental,
and according to their proportion in the individual body, determine the
character of their host. Thus a child who is to all outward appearance
a boy may yet possess elements according to which he is actually 25
or 30 or only 10 per cent female. A female child may likewise possess
vestiges of the other sex which constitute her 10, 20, 30 or even 40
per cent male.
Although, therefore, all men have a preponderancy of male elements, and
all women a preponderancy of female elements, each may possess a more
or less heavy percentage of the elements of the other.
In extreme cases these elements of the opposite sex cause trouble by
leading those who possess them to form desires and to lead lives so
conspicuously out of keeping with their primary sexual characteristics
as to make them obnoxious to society; but it should be remembered
that this degree of morbidity is rare, and that as a general rule
the modicum of _maleness in the female and femaleness in the male has
no such disturbing results if the other elements proper to the sex of
the primary reproductive organs in each individual find their normal
adaptation_.
Thus the maleness in the female has a tendency to manifest itself, more
especially when her sexuality is not fully developed or not actively
engaged. Little girls, for instance, are notoriously sadistic—sadism
being a derivative of the male reproductive instinct—as are also many
spinsters and some old women.
Femaleness in the male, on the other hand, tends to manifest itself
particularly in cases where the male reproductive instinct has been
stifled, or unhinged, or when his spirit has been ruthlessly broken.
Now it may be as well for the reader to know that the attitude of
the modern world is to fall down in a state of acquiescence before
this important fact of sex, without attempting to inquire whether the
importance with which it looms on the horizon of our lives is not
precisely due to the attitude of prostrate acceptance with which it is
met.
Particularly in England is the phenomenon of mixed elements
noticeable—so much so that foreigners call attention to it as something
exceptional.[60] But it is only noticeable in this marked degree in
England because, like all other manifestations of sex in this country,
it is ill-adapted. A well-adapted sexual proclivity does not cry aloud
and call attention to itself in this way.
Humbly as they may acquiesce in it, however, it is customary for people
in this country to speak disparagingly of the “male woman,” of her who
flaunts manly attire, affects a walking-stick, hunts like a man, and is
always the last to be drawn away from a drain or other refuge in which
some unfortunate fox or other hunted animal has run for safety. I know
of a case where such a woman constantly waits until long after dark in
order to catch or kill the fox that has thus hoped to save its life.
(Unconscious Sadism.)
Now it is all very well to inveigh against the existence of such
viragos, and to describe as morbid their manifestation of male sexual
characteristics, but, as a matter of fact, there is as a rule nothing
really morbid in their constitutions. And in any case, an attitude of
humble acquiescence before them, as if they were an imposition from
Providence, which must be suffered willy-nilly, is hardly the best way
of modifying either the disagreeable character of their proclivities or
tastes, or the evil to which these proclivities and tastes undoubtedly
lead.
I realize that in making this statement I am at variance with
practically every authority on the subject; but it is because in no
authority on the subject have I found a suggestion of what I am about
to say, that I venture to trust my own judgment, and provisionally to
adhere to it until such time as the authority who opposes it makes
allowances for all I am going to advance in defence of these so-called
“male” women.
In the first place, then, it may be pointed out that it would be absurd
to complain that a race is breeding women with manly traits in their
character, if the desideratum of that race is avowedly to breed people
of highly virile propensities. The mating of highly virile males with
women devoid of all trace of virility would surely only lead to a
depreciation of the stock. For the males, by having their seed diluted
by elements utterly unlike them, could not hope to be the fathers of
boys in any way worthy of them.
The rearing of women with strong male characteristics is, in fact,
always an advantage to a race that wishes to produce a fine virile
manhood;[61] for the dangerous diluent “effeminine”—to coin a new word
for a new notion—is thus reduced to a minimum.
Among the ancients Celts, Teutons and Slavs, than which few races have
been more virile, women, when necessary, used to fight side by side
with their men. It is said of the virile Similkameen Indians, that
“the women were nearly as good hunters as the men.”[62] The whole race
survived only by means of hunting. It was therefore an advantage for
the females to approximate to the men in their skill. By this means
a double strain of hunting virtues descended to the offspring, thus
leading to ever greater and greater refinement and specialization of
instinct and judgment.
From the reading of the biographies of great men also we are in a
position to determine to what extent the quality which to-day is
opprobriously referred to as female “masculinity” was present in
their mothers. Think of Schopenhauer, Byron, and, above all, of King
Alfred the Great, to whose mother history declares the monarch owed
everything! She could hardly have reared so manly a king, had she not
herself possessed some innate knowledge of manliness and masculine
virtue.
This manliness of women, therefore, far from being a disaster, is
rather a desirable trait, if a particularly virile race of men is
required. And since the existence of women with pronounced male
characteristics cannot possibly be a novelty in this world, it is
far more likely that the outcry against them, which is modern, is
due to modern conditions, than that they are truly and intrinsically
undesirable.
“But,” argue the man and woman of taste, “the masculine woman in our
society is surely disagreeable!”
I agree. But while I shall now endeavour to explain why she is, or has
become, disagreeable, I should like to repeat that she is by no means
the only example of a disagreeable sex-phenomenon in our midst; that
there are other phenomena just as obnoxious, and that all take their
root not necessarily in abnormality of an incurable kind, but in the
condition of ill-adaptation into which sex has fallen in this country—a
condition that sex-psychologists do not sufficiently reckon with when
they regard as pathological the unfortunate modern female who is either
sadistic, hostile to man, unnatural in her love and pursuit of women,
or blatantly and ostentatiously masculine in her tastes, her kit and
her interests.
The maleness of women, considered from the standpoint of marriage—which
is the only standpoint relevant to this chapter[63]—can be deprecated
only when it renders impossible, or more than usually difficult, the
cohesion of that valuable unit in society known as the family.
As this is not a work on the pathology of sex, I cannot deal with
cases of genuine physical and mental aberration in which a woman is
so intensely masculine that motherhood is quite out of the question.
I can only deal with those cases where male elements are present in
sufficient quantities in the female to avert serious dilution of virile
qualities in a stock.
Now in such cases marriage is not only possible, but can be quite
successful—or at least as successful as any marriage can be from the
standpoint of the individual—provided that the female elements in the
woman find complete and happy adaptation, and the male elements in her
are prevented from guiding her conduct and her judgment at the cost of
the female elements.
If the male elements in her are not prevented from guiding her conduct
and her judgment, the evil result will be twofold: (1) she will develop
her masculine proclivities at the cost of her female or maternal side;
and (2) she will come into early and bitter conflict with her husband.
Either one of these evil results is sufficient to upset the balance of
the unit known as the family.
What kind of man, then, is likely to be the best mate of the woman with
pronounced masculine elements in her constitution?
_The problem is to make her masculine elements recessive in favour of
her female elements._ It amounts to this, then—in what circumstances
is a woman likely to abandon her masculine elements as a weapon in the
struggle of life? In what circumstances is she likely to realize their
uselessness to her?
—Only, it may be said, when she has found them utterly useless; only
when she has learned to despise them. But when does this occur?—It
always occurs where the masculine elements belonging to the woman have
in a sharp conflict, or by gradual experience covering innumerable
small incidents, discovered superior, overwhelmingly superior,
masculine elements in the mate. It may never come to a conflict. The
superiority of the male elements in the husband may become impressed
upon her by repeated lessons, by small daily occurrences, that teach
her in spite of herself to trust his masculinity more than hers.
When this point is achieved, her masculine elements rapidly become
recessive, and thenceforward give no further trouble—nay, they may
cease to manifest themselves altogether.
For this end to be attained, however, the male—the husband—must be
a creature of overwhelming masculinity, against whom no masculine
elements belonging to any female could possibly measure themselves
without the certainty of absolute rout.[64]
In the same way it might be pointed out that the womanly man finds his
happiest and best adaptation with the female—the wife—of overwhelming
femininity; for then his female elements finding it impossible to
measure themselves against those of his spouse, quickly become
recessive and cease to give any further trouble.
But what actually happens to-day?
Our great past as a virile race has certainly left us an inheritance of
thousands of virile women, some of whom excel anything that any other
European country can produce; but alas! owing to the degeneracy of man,
caused by his bad health, his Puritanism, his bemeaning occupations,
and his absurd obsessions about chivalry, there are not the males to
hand with whom to mate these women.
When one of these women marries nowadays she must perforce unite
with a man who is utterly incapable of making her male elements
recessive; who, on the contrary, is himself so exiguously endowed with
masculinity that his wife not only has every temptation, but also every
opportunity, to express, assert, and impose her masculine elements upon
the family and himself.
But the continuous expression and assertion of male elements in a
woman, and of female elements in a man, at the cost of those elements
proper to their primary sexual organs, far from leading to happiness,
result in nothing but misery both mental and physical, while the
ultimate effect on the nerves is always disastrous.
If, however, there is nothing in her immediate environment to make her
despise her male elements, or to convince her that they can safely lie
quiescent, a woman’s very self-preservative instinct will not allow her
to abandon them to the process of recession, and the consequence is
that in thousands of marriages at the present day the wives are utterly
and deeply miserable on this account alone. Masculine men are lacking.
The great past of the race has produced generation after generation of
fine, stout-hearted women with a large percentage of virile elements.
But the mates for these remaining memorials of our whilom greatness
are no more, and thus these unfortunate women either wander the world
unmated, or if mated, suffer an ill-adaptation that is sometimes even
more cruel than spinsterhood itself.
To point to these wretched, unadapted virile women—whether married
or unmarried—as the legitimate butts for our scorn or our contempt,
however, is the acme of ignorance and stupidity. It is the degeneration
of man, the low ebb of his former greatness, that has left them
standing high and dry in conspicuous isolation; and if England’s
“trousered women” now strike the foreigner as one of the regrettable
features of our civilization, it is regrettable only in the sense that
it proves positively that this country once enjoyed a racial greatness
of which she can no longer boast, and of which these women are the
belated reminder.
(H) But the chief and most serious objection to the monogamic marriage,
apart from all the pain that it brings to individuals, male and female,
consists in the injury which, particularly at the present day, it does
to the offspring of each generation. From the standpoint of posterity,
indeed, the gravity of this charge can hardly be exaggerated.
It may seem a far cry to speak of the increase of indigestion and of
bad or defective teeth in connexion with the monogamic marriage, but in
practice this connexion is not so remote as it would appear.
The ideal condition for a child that is to be well-constituted and
flourishing in body and mind, is, in the first place, that its mother
should be left in peace during gestation, and certainly that she should
be left scrupulously alone during the period of suckling. From the
standpoint of the race it is of such supreme importance that a child
should be reared on mother’s milk, that everything should be done, no
stone should be left unturned, to secure if possible the certainty of
this condition.
With regard to cohabitation during gestation it is only fair to
say that opinions are sadly divided, some doctors maintaining one
thing, and others the reverse. If we require a standard, however,
we have only to study the lower animals, among which the female is
not even accessible during pregnancy. Whereas some doctors will
declare, however, that any cohabitation whatsoever during gestation
is most pernicious, all are unanimous in pronouncing against _normal_
indulgence at such times. But apart from everything that changeable and
uncertain science may periodically proclaim regarding this question,
it would seem obvious that cohabitation at a time when fertilization
is impossible cannot in any case have been Nature’s design; and if,
therefore, there remain the smallest doubt about the matter—as the
division of opinion among medical men reveals—surely the benefit of the
doubt ought, in all humanity, to be given to the expected offspring!
With regard to cohabitation after the confinement and during the seven
to nine months of suckling that should follow, there can, however, be
no doubt whatsoever. This _must_ be bad; for, seeing that it is of
primary importance that the child during these months should be able
to obtain mother’s milk, no risks should be run which can in any way
jeopardize the happy fulfilment of this condition.
At such times the mother should be left severely alone. She is happy,
exquisitely happy.[65] Her nervous system is concentrated on the one
important and essential object—that of providing for her infant child.
Any action or diversion that tends to disturb the attention of the
nervous system, or to shake this precious concentration upon the mammæ,
cannot therefore be too strongly deprecated.
What is the alternative? The mammæ find the nervous energy of the body
divided. The woman’s system is no longer that of a mother alone; it
has been recalled to its rôle as a wife. There may be conception or
there may not—at any rate, the frequent occurrence of children only a
year or thirteen months older than a brother or sister, shows how often
conception does take place in such circumstances—and the consequence is
that the suckling has to be removed from the breast, in order to become
the experimental victim of every kind of abomination in the form of
substitutes for mother’s milk.
To the ignorance of the young mother concerning artificial foods are
now added the ignorance of neighbours, the audacious and criminal lies
of commercial baby-food manufacturers, and frequently the ineptitude of
the local doctor. Against such a conspiracy of error—irrespective of
the fact that no substitute, however good, can possibly compensate for
the loss of mother’s milk—it is not surprising that the infant’s body
should rebel; and the result is a child who cannot by any conceivable
chance be saved from digestive trouble, whom nothing can cure of
digestive trouble, and who, by having alimentary disorders started so
early in life, reaches maturity not only with a strong bias in favour
of gastric and intestinal vices, but also—if indeed his teeth survive
so long—with every imaginable kind of dental disease, from caries to
pyorrhœa.
From mothers congenitally and constitutionally unfit either to have
babies or to nurse them, there will surely always come a sufficiently
vast contribution of unhealthy and undesirable babies to each
generation; but these, at least, no ordinary precaution can save,
and if their early upbringing only tends to promote a condition of
degeneracy already inherent in them, so that they find it difficult to
survive, we can only applaud this confirmation of a thoroughly moribund
tendency.
But in the case of healthy, positive women, admirably fitted to fulfil
all the functions of motherhood efficiently and pleasurably, anything
that interferes with this healthy functioning amounts to a national
and racial calamity, and it is to these I refer when I emphasize the
immense danger of cohabitation during the nursing period.
Now the monogamic marriage makes this sort of plague almost a natural
necessity, a sort of ineluctable scourge. It is impossible to ask a
normal, positive, healthy man to exercise sexual abstinence for sixteen
or eighteen months—that is to say, the nine months of his wife’s
pregnancy and the seven or nine months of lactation. Only Manicheans,
Puritans, or people thoroughly below par and quite devoid of virility,
could possibly think of recommending such a course. Psycho-analysis
has at last shown what all decent and clean-minded people knew about
prolonged sexual abstinence—that it is both wrongful and harmful. It
can only be thought of and practised by people who have either used
religious and alcoholic methods of sublimating their passions, or else
by people who are utterly and conspicuously undesirable; but in the
case of the latter it should be remembered that it is not abstinence
or so-called “self-control,” but semi-impotence. Where it is attempted
by exuberant, positive young men, who are neither geniuses in art,
philosophy or religion, it can only mean disease—possibly physical, but
certainly nervous.
The husband, therefore, in a monogamic marriage consisting of the
union of two positive, healthy people, finds himself on the horns of
a dilemma. If he be sound and normal he cannot dream of abstaining for
the number of months that would be necessary for his child’s welfare
(for even if he indulges in cohabitation during gestation, he still has
to face the seven or nine months of suckling, during which he _must_ at
all costs leave his wife in peace); and yet society (modern society)
and convention generally bid him rather ruin his child than practise
even the most innocuous form of virtual polygamy.
Of course the intelligent, thoughtful and good-natured man in such
circumstances turns to some sort of modern substitute for polygamy. But
the curse of modern civilization, its great blot and disfigurement,
lies in the fact that at this stage in his wise resolve, he must
perforce resort to secrecy, to deception, to concealment, to a
hole-and-corner liaison, which may and frequently does expose him to
every conceivable danger and expense—danger from disease if he be a
fool and unwary, danger from blackmail if he fall into the hands of
knaves, danger from ruin if he happen to have lighted upon unscrupulous
associates, and danger from a criminal prosecution into the bargain.
But in any case, however fortunate he may be in forming his liaison,
he is certain, if found out, to incur the moral indignation of all
the snivelling, worthless, ignorant and “respectable” people of his
circle, among whom the loudest in their outcry will be the spinsters
and the Puritans, of whom not one—_no not one_—can have or ever has had
the faintest beginnings of an understanding of any aspect of the sex
question.
This is how our society is organized. Its whole basis, its whole
prepossession, is directed stubbornly towards degeneration. Nothing
that points, however meekly, the other way, is any longer listened to,
much less observed!
Can it be wondered at, in the circumstances, that the average
unresourceful and timid man, prefers to remain strictly faithful to
his monogamic vows? Can it be wondered at that he prefers to ruin his
child’s constitution and temper?
This is the gravest charge that can be brought from the standpoint of
the race against the monogamic marriage, and it embodies the outline of
an explanation of perhaps half the physical and mental degeneracy of
modern times.
It seems necessary to remind the reader here, that all these strictures
against monogamy only apply to the healthy, normal, positive man and
woman. They do not, therefore, apply to half the existing population.
For in order that a woman may be thoroughly happy bearing and nursing
children, she must be healthy, well-constituted and positive, and
in order that a man may find it impossible to practise what the
modern Age arrogantly calls “self-control,” he must be positive,
healthy and exuberantly virile. To half the modern world this alleged
“self-control” is merely a euphemistic cover for the ease with which
they can forget the weak, barely audible call of their bodies; and to
an ever-increasing number of modern women there is precious little
enjoyment associated with any stage in the sexual cycle, whether it be
actual fertilization, gestation, parturition or lactation.
In discussing the value of monogamic marriage, therefore, and the
possible reforms that might be instituted to render it suitable for the
positive man and woman, it is hoped that none of the remarks I shall
make will be thought to apply to the vast crowds to-day who are able
to find in monogamic marriage a satisfactory, though perhaps tiresome,
adaptation.
But, in the first place, it may be objected that, since I find so
many serious difficulties in modern monogamic marriage, why do I not
straightway recommend its total abolition, and advocate polygamy, or
promiscuity, or polyandry, or total sexual anarchy?
I might certainly be tempted to advocate frank and open polygamy were
I not too deeply conscious of the very many serious and far-reaching
advantages that the ideal of the family, as at present held in modern
Europe, enjoys over every other kind of social unit designed to solve
the problem of the sexes.
As I have already stated these advantages, from the standpoint of
society, earlier in the chapter, there is no need to repeat them here.
Nevertheless, before proceeding, it might be as well for the reader
to glance at them again, so that he may the more easily follow the
modifications I am about to recommend.
The problem before us, therefore, is _how to maintain the monogamic
marriage and give it fresh life, while modifying it in such a way as to
meet the gravest of the objections that can be advanced against it_.
But before I proceed it may be as well to utter some words of warning
to those romanticists and sentimentalists who have doubtless been
offended by the strictures I have already pronounced against monogamic
marriage.
Let me tell them, therefore, that however much they may be persuaded
of the contrary, it is not I, with my clear and merciless criticism
of modern marriage, who am the bitterest enemy of that institution,
but they themselves, with their wilful concealment of all that I have
brought to light.
Modern marriage is now on the rocks. If it has drifted into this
perilous position it is, however, not because the question of its
advantages and disadvantages has been properly ventilated and
discussed, and the disadvantages corrected; but because it has been
persistently and almost maliciously overlaid with false sentiment
and bogus psychology, by these very romanticists and sentimentalists
themselves.
If, therefore, it is to be saved, as it should be saved, this end
can be achieved only by a blank refusal to shut one’s eyes to its
drawbacks, so that the latter may be rectified wherever possible; and
by a full and earnest advocacy of its advantages, however unromantic
and unsentimental these may appear to feverish modern sensationalists.
Before proceeding to the review of the specific objections outlined
above, the general criticism of modern monogamic marriage with which
the chapter opened must first be dealt with.
_Method of Meeting General Criticisms._
1. Stress should be removed from the alleged permanence of love and the
happiness of the marriage state, as far as possible, and laid on the
utilitarian aspect of matrimony.
2. The young people should be taught realistically that since some sort
of physical adaptation in sex is indispensable to the healthy adult,
monogamic marriage was designed as a means of meeting that need.
3. Its difficulties should be emphasized, and a happy issue shown to
be as difficult an accomplishment as the complexities of the contract
would lead them to expect. They should be told that in their search
for a mate they should show more concern about minimizing these
difficulties than about desiring to have “a good time.”
4. The responsibilities of a family should be understood, and the
wife regarded in her utilitarian aspect as a keeper of the home, as a
mother, and as a guardian of the home comforts; marriage itself, as
the sacred garden of the future of mankind, in which each party to the
contract has the privilege of contributing to that future.
5. Differences of temperament and tradition between mates should be
avoided. Since ill-health forbids our marrying into our own families
(the ideal match), the young must not forget that in going beyond
their families for a mate in order to contradict certain hereditary
taints—such as gout, or consumption, or cancer, or any other
constitutional vice—they need not therefore contradict the virtues
and abilities that their particular family line has cultivated; for
this leads to decline, and to the procreation of children who have no
character and no ability. They should seek, as far as possible, their
like in a strange family.[66] The policy of avoiding family taints in
too near relations should not be extended into a policy of seeking
opposites.
6. If by chance the expected disenchantment does not supervene in a
form intolerably acute, when marriage has been taught on these lines,
and the two young people discover that they do not necessarily become
surfeited of each other with years, then at least the surprise would
be pleasant, and not as it always is to-day, the sudden unpleasant
realization of complete disillusionment.
_Method of Meeting Specific Objections._[67]
(A1) People should be taught quite early how changeable they are. They
should be persuaded of the frangibility of their resolutions, vows, and
promises, and they should learn how deeply they are wedded to variety
before ever they celebrate their final and most fateful wedding.
(2) They should be taught that it is only the exceptions among mankind
that have that genius for love which can endure for a lifetime, and
they should be shown the hollowness of the popular assumption that
every one is capable of _une grande passion_; therefore, that to
arrange their lives as if they were one of these geniuses in love is
not only the grossest form of megalomania, but dangerous into the
bargain.
(B) The problem here is one belonging to the art of life. Those who can
practise this art, and contrive to make themselves always the desired
object of the spouse, have overcome one of the principal difficulties
of monogamic marriage. The French are perhaps the most successful
European people at practising this art—hence the high percentage of
happy marriages in France.
(C) If the approval of each party to the match is understood merely to
mean the recognition by each of the necessity of an adequate physical
adaptation, and the unconscious desire for this physical adaptation in
each is discounted from the enthusiasm felt for the other as mate, then
it will be seen that the residue, which will be a pretty tepid feeling,
is by no means the outcome of an overvaluation of the individual, and
the contempt need not arise.
In other words, teach the girl to subtract the need and the desire for
physical adaptation from her love of the man, and teach the man to do
the same in regard to the girl, and what remains will quickly be seen
to consist only of a strong personal regard, which can hardly lead to
the contempt that would otherwise result if the enthusiasm on both
sides were supposed to arise from the unaided charms of either party to
the match.
(D) The remedy here is the same as for (C). If a man realizes that when
a girl protests her undying love for him the bulk of the ardour she
feels is provoked merely by him as her physical adaptation—by him _qua_
male—and that his individual traits play only a minor part, he will
be less likely to believe that he is capable of provoking a life-long
passion because a girl approved of him as her mate. It is a simple idea
to grasp. Both the girl and the man should always reflect how much
nature is helping them towards their success. When the declaration of
life-long love came, it could then be estimated at its proper worth,
without either party fancying that any exceptional fascination in
themselves had been the principal power at work.
(E) It should be inculcated upon all, young and old alike, that
companionship is not to be sought with people whom, in view of peculiar
circumstances, one is bound to see every day and every hour of the day.
The sooner we free our minds from these foolish notions the better. A
man and a woman should seek companions of the same sex as themselves,
and outside their families. Then an hour with the mate—with the lawful
spouse—may come as a rest, as a respite, as a welcome spell of peace
when we need not say or do anything. But this moment of repose, of
speechless serenity, with the sound of someone breathing not three feet
away, should not be confused with companionship.
(F) As society is organized at present it is difficult to meet
this objection. Wherever possible the man should, of course,
have a concubine of some sort. Provided that the wife continues
child-bearing, at regular intervals, as she should, she cannot weary
of the relationship as hopelessly as he will. Women should be taught
to realize that the division of labour is so unfair, that they get so
much more entertainment out of sex than men do, that some compensating
feature ought to be introduced into the lives of the latter. The
importance of the act of fertilization alone to the man’s reproductive
instinct cannot be exaggerated. To woman, its importance is only equal
to the proportion it bears to the rest of the sexual cycle. To preserve
his peace of mind and health of body and nerves, therefore, the man
must be in a position to perform his one function with healthy desire.
The children he had from his concubine, if any there were, would not
necessarily rank in law with the children of his first wife.
(G1) In order to meet this objection it is imperative that we should
institute some sort of tasteful method of initiation into sex for
young men. Let the girls be initiated by their proper and natural
initiators—their husbands; anything else is simply modern nonsense; but
men should be properly and carefully initiated before marriage, away
from the dangers of commercial prostitution. This school of initiation,
however formed, would also serve, as it did with the Greeks, as a means
of preventing the evils of total sexual abstinence among the young men
who have to wait a long time for marriage.
The general ideal in modern England is that the eligible young man
should be what is called “clean-minded.” It cannot be disputed that
“clean-mindedness” is a very desirable and very rare quality. But the
way to set about securing it is the very reverse of that which the
bulk of modern English people would recommend. They would say, let the
young man practise rigorous sexual abstinence before marriage, let him
go in for sport and exercise “self-control.” Only thus can he remain
clean-minded.
But the very last means by which a healthy positive young man may
hope to attain to a clean mind is precisely the means advocated under
the general head of sexual abstinence. _The non-indulgence of the
sex-impulses in the vigorous young male is the means par excellence of
destroying clean-mindedness._
Sexual abstinence, even when accompanied by energetic exercise and
indulgence in sports, by chaining in the desires and wishes arising
from the young man’s reproductive instincts, causes them to become
ramping demons. It causes the imagination to become filled with wish
fantasies, often of a morbid kind. It fills the mind with obsessions,
always obscene and frequently revolting, and if not quickly relieved
must undermine the whole of a young man’s healthy mental and physical
attitude towards a normal sexual life. No mind residing in a healthy
young male body, practising sexual abstinence, can remain clean every
minute of the day, and even in the night it is disturbed by occasional
bodily protests in the form of dreams.
The dangers of not being clean-minded, however, are so great and so
far-reaching, and the risks run by the healthy total sexual abstainer
are so enormous, that it is high time that the truth about this matter
were more widely understood.
To clean the mind, the deep wishes of the body, which refuse to be
flouted, must be satisfied. To forget sex, in fact, the sex instinct
must be indulged. Freedom here, as in the case of any other appetite,
can only be attained by gratification.
It is true that permanent sublimation is also a possible alternative.
But unless a young man is destined for the Holy Catholic Church, who
would wish to sublimate his sex?
It necessarily follows from this, that clean-mindedness in abstinent
young men, as it is generally understood, is a pure myth, a complete
misunderstanding; and that if it is desirable that eligible young men
should be clean-minded (and I am of opinion that it is most desirable),
then the road thereto does not lie through the dark spook-haunted
swamps of sexual abstinence, but through the open sunny highways of
healthy sex gratification, secured from the dangers of commercial
prostitution.
(G2) This objection can only be met by the Herculean undertaking of
rearing a type of manhood richer in masculine traits of mind and
character, and possessed of more exuberant virility—a type, that is
to say, by the side of which virile women would immediately feel the
inadequacy of their male elements and would not be tempted to use them
as weapons. By this means alone can the male elements in the finest
women be made recessive.
At present the idea of the “manly” man is foolishly limited to one who
loves sports of all kinds, who believes in open-air life, and who,
while having a sense of humour, also wears about him an air of breezy
modesty. By this modesty is meant a disinclination to make any special
claims for himself.
But all women quickly discover the ease with which they become mistress
of the fate of such a man, and it is curious that, in spite of the
thousands of cases of such subjection on the part of this type of man
in English marriages, he still continues to pass as the “manly” man.
The man of will, the man of character, the man who wishes to administer
his own life and the lives of those dependent upon him, because he is
conscious of being fit for the responsibility, and repeatedly proves
this fitness,[68] is being born in ever smaller numbers every year.
It is the system of education in England that is at fault. It produces
a womanly will-less creature, with heavier muscles than the average
woman, but with less grit and less bite in him, with less pride and
less jealous love of responsible action and mastery than the average
girl has who is his partner at golf.
If this seems like calumny or exaggeration, let the reader watch the
career of any one of these alleged “manly” men of England, from his
school years to his tenth or eleventh year of marriage, and if in
_every case_ they do not behold a creature who has long abandoned all
self-direction, not to speak of direction of dependents, I invite him
to close this book at this point as the most unspeakable nonsense.
With such a man, woman’s male elements cannot possibly be made
recessive. But it should not be imagined that she is any happier on
that account. On the contrary, both wisdom and compassion would seem to
unite in advocating the return in ever larger numbers of exuberantly
virile men, if only for the sake of securing happier and fuller lives
to the bulk of modern women.
(H) Regarding, as I do, this objection as so serious as to constitute
the chief and most fundamental objection to monogamic marriage, I can
see no possibility of making the institution sound unless something
be done to meet it. We cannot hope that things will right themselves
with an evil like this at the root of our national life. Suppressing
the sale of commercial products fraudulently declared to be equal
to mother’s milk is not enough. Self-control is the counsel for
wax-figures. To be offended by a frankly polygamic solution and yet
to feel that no stigma attaches to women unable to suckle their
babies,[69] and to be conscious of no indignation at the horrors of
the present state of monogamy with prostitution, is wanton and brutal
hypocrisy. Those who are guilty of this hypocrisy have wished to run
the world too long.
* * * * *
I have now examined the monogamic marriage of the positive man and the
positive woman in all its more important aspects. Wisdom would seem,
at all costs, to advocate the salvage of monogamic marriage from the
wreckage of modern society. But before marriage can be saved and handed
on as a valuable institution to the New Age, it must be reformed and
established on a sounder basis. To continue along our present lines,
without correcting our attitude towards marriage and some of the most
rigorous customs that govern it, is simply to steer our course headlong
back into sexual promiscuity, anarchy and chaos. No reform of modern
marriage, or of the ideas that cluster about it, can possibly achieve
any good, however, which does not satisfactorily meet every one of
the objections I have advanced against it. To proceed, as we are now
proceeding, by making the dissolution of marriage easier, is only one
step farther in the direction of barbaric promiscuity. No readjustment
can avail that does not go to the root of the problems involved; and
although it may certainly be legitimate to inquire whether, at this
late hour in our torrential degeneration, it is worth while making any
reforms in anything, it does not alter the fact that if marriage is
to be saved, all the objections to it that have been raised in this
chapter will require to be fairly and seriously faced.
Since, however, the sex question is so fundamental as to be almost of
primary importance; since the building of the social unit, the ideal
family, constitutes the first elementary task in all sound social
organization, it is not impossible, fantastic though it may seem, that
wise and thorough reform in this department of life may alone prove the
best means of rescuing Western Civilization itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] When I use the word “unnatural” here, I should like it to
be understood as meaning “unnatural to human beings,” for, as we
know, “nearly all rapacious animals, even the stupid vultures, are
monogamous,” certain monkeys are so too; but no anthropologist would
argue that _monogamic marriage_ was natural to man.
[51] The proportion of those who do not wait, to those who do, may be
judged to some extent from the following figures:—
Legitimate and illegitimate births in England and Wales during the nine
years 1911-19.
Legitimate. Illegitimate.
1911. 843,505 37,633
1912. 835,209 37,528
1913. 843,981 37,909
1914. 841,767 37,329
1915. 778,369 36,245
1916. 747,381 37,689
1917. 631,189 37,157
1918. 621,209 41,452
1919. 650,562 41,876
[52] See Ch. Letourneau, _The Evolution of Marriage_ (London, 1891):
“Christianity, which taught that the earthly country was of no account,
and taxed with impurity all that related to sexual union, made marriage
a sacrament, and consequently an institution quite apart from humble
considerations of social utility.... We shall see how hurtful the
influence of Christianity has been on marriage, and we shall come to
the conclusion that in order to manage earthly affairs well, it is not
good to keep our looks constantly raised to the skies” (pp. 205-6). See
also p. 245: “Abandoning the modest reality, it [Christianity] lost
anchor from the first and was drowned in a sea of dreams. Marriage,
instead of being simply the union of a man and woman in order to
produce children, became mystic.”
[53] As we shall point out later, these romantic obsessions in regard
to matrimony are chiefly Woman’s work.
[54] See the interesting treatise entitled _The Grammar of Life_ by my
friend Dr. G. T. Wrench (Heinemann, 1908), p. 218.
[55] That is why the world’s greatest love stories—those of Dante and
Beatrice, Romeo and Juliet, and Heathcliff and the elder Catherine
(in _Wuthering Heights_)—are all stories of a love that _was never
consummated_. In poetry and fiction, as in life, it is felt that for
a great love romance to remain at its lofty level of passion and
desire, the couple enacting it must never have an opportunity of living
together as man and wife.
[56] Naturally these remarks do not apply to the large and
ever-increasing number of women nowadays to whom every stage in the
process of child-bearing, from the preliminaries to the weaning, is
a torment and a source of disgust. But such women are too abnormal,
whatsoever their numbers may be, and too sick and below par to be
called positive healthy women, or to be reckoned with in any discussion
regarding what is characteristic of happy and successful functioning.
They are the kind of women who can truly regard matrimony and maternity
as states of self-sacrifice.
[57] Of course this can only happen where the woman is inclined to
pronounced negativeness, otherwise the longing for children drives her
away from a husband who cannot or does not give them to her.
[58] The writer has known one case in which it lasted for years.
Sometimes, in extreme cases, where the girl is too decent to be
sacrificed for a lifetime, there is a nullity suit, and the man
produces doctors who declare that he is perfectly normal. Of course
he is perfectly normal! What is wrong about him is the whole of his
upbringing and the effects of absurdly Puritanical notions about sex,
acting upon a peculiarly sensitive nature. For such men are usually
extremely desirable and acutely sensitive. They cannot, however,
overcome the ridiculous prejudices that prevailed regarding sex in the
atmosphere in which they have been reared.
[59] It should be noted that this does not apply to working-class
women. The men of the working classes may be coarser and more brutal
than the men of the wealthier classes, but they are also very much more
normal, easy, natural, and gifted in the matter of sex, and from this
point of view generally make excellent husbands. They may sometimes
strike their wives, but they also know how to love them. The nullity
suits and the bad lovers are to be found in the so-called “upper”
classes.
[60] August Strindberg, in a letter written in the autumn of 1888,
refers to England as “a nation of bigots that has delivered itself
up into the hands of its women,” and later on speaks of “England’s
trousered women.”
[61] I mean here, by “male characteristics,” only such traits as can
be safely emulated and acquired by the female without the sacrifice
or impairment of her reproductive functions, or of the instincts and
virtues that derive from them (see chapter X).
[62] See _Journal Anthropological Institute_, Feb., 1892, p. 307. See
also Bancroft, quoting Heame (_Native Races_), Vol. I, p. 117, where
a North American Indian Chief of some nomadic tribe, speaking of the
women said: “There is no such thing as travelling any considerable
distance in this country without their assistance.” Evidently here too
it was an advantage to the race for the women to be as nearly masculine
in their characters as possible. Australian women, like Cuban women,
used to fight beside their men and were very formidable. The former,
when on the march, are said to have hardly troubled to halt for so
slight a performance as child-birth. The newly-born infant was wrapped
in skins, and the mother marched on with the rest.
[63] I shall deal with other standpoints in the chapter on the Old Maid.
[64] This solution of the problem of the manly woman, who is not
undesirable, will thus be seen to be the very reverse, the flat
contradiction, of that advanced by the decadent Weininger. He argues
that the male woman does and ought to marry the female man, and the
modern, decadent world, more or less agrees with him. But this means
an accentuation of her maleness, a triumph of her maleness, at the
cost of her femaleness—obviously an undesirable result, both from
the standpoint of the race and the family, the only two standpoints
from which the monogamic marriage has any meaning or can find any
justification.
[65] I remind the reader that I refer here to the healthy, positive
woman, all of whose bodily functions are a joy to her.
[66] See my more detailed discussion of this question in chapter VII of
my _Defence of Aristocracy_.
[67] The letters correspond to those heading each objection in the body
of the chapter.
[68] Such a man can be, and usually is, just as fond of open-air
exercise and sports as the merely “manly” man.
[69] The fact that at present no stigma attaches to loss of function or
failure to function in the human body, is one of the most conclusive
proofs of the degeneration in taste and instinct that Christianity
has brought about. It is interesting, however, to be told by a woman
emphatically that “the incapacity of a mother to nourish the babe she
has borne should be known for a mark of degeneracy—sign, too, that she
was unfitted to have borne a child” (see Arabella Kenealy, Op. cit., p.
214).
CHAPTER VIII
Breaches of the Marriage Contract and Divorce
(1) ANALYSIS OF THE MARRIED LIFE OF POSITIVE PEOPLE
In the chapter on Marriage we saw that the married state is a difficult
one for both parties, but that monogamy is more tolerable to the woman
than to the man, provided always that children are born regularly. It
was there seen that woman must not be falsely likened to man in the
claims she makes on monogamy for a perfect sexual life. The coitus is
relatively so unimportant to her, that the man himself, her husband,
holds only a secondary or tertiary place in her life. That which
chiefly matters to the healthy positive woman is that, at stated
intervals, her body should be allowed to experience the whole female
cycle of sex, from the coitus to the weaning of the child.
Indeed, woman’s unconscious demand for the experience of this whole
cycle is so persistent and clamorous that they may be excused who, like
Schopenhauer, perceive in it the importunate voice of the Will of the
Species (_Wille der Gattung_) resolutely demanding Life, and ever more
and more guarantees of its survival.[70]
It is owing to the secondary, tertiary, or, at any rate, minor position
of importance that her husband occupies in the life of a woman who
is bearing him children at regular intervals, that his individual
characteristics do not really require to be very striking in order to
prove satisfactory to her. It is for this reason that he must be a
brute indeed, or a drunken sot, or a maniac, if he is to provoke her
active hatred while child-bearing continues. Finding, as she does, her
principal pleasure in the experiences of motherhood—provided that he
behaves with average decency and earns a comfortable living—she asks
but little more.[71]
Short of impossible conduct on his part, therefore, it may be taken for
granted that it never occurs to the positive healthy married woman, who
bears children at regular intervals, to make any effort to seek another
love affair, and even if the opportunity for such a love affair should
come her way, and be set before her with all the persuasiveness that
deep desire in the other party can lend it, she will, as a rule, resist
it and let it pass by without very much of a struggle. She is finding
the consummation of her being in the life she is leading, and let her
husband be ever so besotted, ignorant, boring and uncompanionable, it
will never occur to her to go in search of another love.
This conclusion is, I think, borne out by the statistics of divorce
in England and Wales, where separations between people who do not
attempt to limit the family, is extremely rare. It is usually said
with reference to such cases that it is the children who “strengthen
the union.” This is the popular and even the learned opinion.[72]
The prevalence of this opinion, and the high authority behind it,
however, should not lead us to misunderstand the true nature of the
actual forces at work. It is to some extent true that the presence
of children does induce parents, who might be tempted to separate,
to think twice about it. The father pauses before he decides to
deprive his offspring of their mother, and _vice versâ_. But these
wholly impersonal considerations binding a couple together are as
nothing compared with the vital forces that are actually at work. The
impersonal considerations may weigh, but only if supported by the far
more potent promptings of healthy and normal conditions. Nor should
it be concluded too hastily from the low figures of divorce among
people who have large families, that the presence of children operates
in causing the parents to feel a deeper “love” for each other. It is
possible for a fruitful couple to be almost entirely indifferent to
each other, as many thousands are, and yet to remain together, partly
because of the impersonal considerations already referred to, partly
from pure conservatism, and also from fear of publicity, or scandal, or
a feeling of shyness, or a certain cynicism which leads them to prefer
the devil they know before the devil they know not.
We must not allow ourselves to be blinded by sentimental tears,
therefore, to the extent of supposing that offspring invariably
increase conjugal affection. A long observation of our fellow-creatures
convinces us, on the contrary, that the presence of children operates
in precisely the opposite direction, and that if we are going in search
of “romantic” love, lasting long after the first years of marriage,
we are much more likely to find it among infertile than among fertile
couples. Children, far from cementing the affection existing between
their parents, are rather inclined to supply its most potent and
infallible corrosive.
The alacrity with which a young mother becomes absorbed in her young
ones, the lightning speed with which all her activities, mental
and physical, concentrate upon her brood, their wants and their
development, is hardly calculated to effect that “cementing” which is
believed to take place in marital relations from the moment children
begin to appear.
Very soon after the birth of the first children there occurs in all
decent positive women a certain definition of the maternal side of
their nature, which tends to convert them ever more and more into the
nun, miser, or prophet type—that is to say, self-centred, impatient
of distracting forces, and fanatical. They listen to matters foreign
to the nursery and their children, as if they had been wakened out of
a dream or roused from some thrilling meditation. A certain vagueness
comes over them in regard to all matters not strictly domestic, which,
while it may please the wise and understanding husband, as furnishing
a conclusive proof of their perfect femininity, nevertheless can
hardly fail to inform him that his rank in the household has suffered
noticeable degradation.[73]
When he speaks concerning topics which interest him, he is no longer
listened to with the same attention—not to mention eagerness. Indeed,
he soon finds that strangers outside his home are very much more
inclined to vouchsafe him an attentive hearing than the spouse of
his heart, and more ready to give serious consideration to his more
thoughtful expressions of opinion. Now, it requires all the philosophy
and understanding in the world—particularly to the man who may cherish
certain ideals about marriage as companionship—to accept this secondary
position in the home of his own creating, without a feeling of
resentment or mortification. How, then, can the full realization of the
position be said to “cement” or “strengthen” the affection between the
couple?
It is true that the normal father acquires a deep fondness for his
children, and that this attaches him to the home in which he has
suffered his degradation of rank.[74] It is also true that, as the
children grow older and realize him as their father, he may enjoy a
fresh access of the very importance of which their arrival deprived
him. But, while all these facts are readily admitted, they can hardly
be used to prove that the presence of children “strengthens” the union
between the parents as lovers. _That_ has been shaken once and for all
beyond any hope of recovery. Economic reasons, the attitude of each
parent to the children, reasons of policy, etc., may now attach each
parent individually to the home; but that does not mean that the other
parent is the lasting attracting force.
Later on, when the children grow old enough to discriminate or to draw
comparisons, and the original dependence, which makes filial affection
so fanatical, is beginning to wane, certain members of the growing
brood may, and frequently do, exhibit preferences for one parent or the
other—preferences which nine times out of ten are reciprocated. The
more passionate the attachment between the parents and the children has
been in infancy and childhood, the more likely is this to occur. But
distinctions of this sort drawn by children in favour of one parent
only tend to increase the cleavage already existing; and wherever in
such circumstances an occasion for any divergence of opinion happens
to arise between the parents and sides are taken, as they must be
taken where preferences have already been mutually proclaimed, the
declaration of allegiance by becoming overt amounts to little less than
a frankly acknowledged feud with the other side.
Quite apart, however, from the possibility of particular children
appealing more to one parent than the other, and the cleavage which
such factions confirm or start in the home, children and their
multifarious wants are, in themselves, an inexhaustible source
of contention. Their particular foibles, their wilfulness, their
education, are matters which, while they are constantly to the fore
among the problems of the home, as constantly give rise to friction,
or, to say the least, to differences of opinion between their parents.
When once, therefore, one of the parents—the father—has naturally
and inevitably suffered so marked a degradation in rank that his
word, his opinion, his judgment, is no longer attended to with the
respect and eagerness which he encountered in his wife in their early
childless days, it is not surprising that discussions or arguments,
from being merely amicable exchanges of opinion, should degenerate into
acrimonious and heated quarrels—the husband resenting every minute
more and more the cavalier manner in which his views are rejected as
worthless by the “spouse of his heart,” the wife resenting every moment
more and more the presumption with which the mere _means to an end_,
this _sparking-plug_ and _breadwinner_, is daring to assume supreme
authority over _her_ brood, _her_ babes, the fruit of _her_ womb.
Now, in view of all this, can it any longer be maintained that this
element in the home—the children—actually contributes to the affection
between the parents? In the happiest cases the ardent love of the
father for one child, and the ardent love of the mother for another,
may attach each parent individually to the common hearth; but to argue
as the two judges, above quoted, argued before the Divorce Commission
of 1912,[75] that this proves that children “strengthen the union,” or
“keep it together,” without explaining more narrowly how they effect
this end, is to deliver the whole question over into the hands of the
romanticists and sentimentalists, who will not scruple to arrive at
the foolish conclusion that children perforce increase the affection
existing between parents.
I have stated the extreme case in order to make the nature of the
cleavage, in so far as it arises from the presence of the children, as
plain as possible. In all families it does not become acute, because
there is too much at stake; and much is therefore suffered in silence,
swallowed down or repressed, for the sake of the home. The only point
it is necessary to make clear is, that when it is also argued here
that the presence of children in the home does contribute to a very
great extent to the stability of that home, something very different is
meant from what sentimentalists and other muddlers are likely to infer.
I most emphatically do not mean that the presence of the children
increases the mutual love of the parents—nay, I would go farther and
say that it leads to exactly the opposite result.
What, then, is the precise influence of children?
My reply is, that in all homes where the wife is a positive, healthy
and desirable woman, the repeated birth of a child at regular intervals
thoroughly adapts the woman by giving her a full physiological and
spiritual life, and thus reconciles the principal member of the
household (as far as stability is concerned) to the monogamic state and
to the home.
She can afford to control her temper when she is enjoying the
perfect serenity of mind and body that complete adaptation brings.
She can afford to pretend devotion, for economic and other reasons,
to a creature who has long ceased from holding even that space in
her heart, which is occupied by her first baby’s smallest toe. She
can afford to put up with years, not to mention hours, of a boring
companion, seeing that he secures her this perfect serenity, and, by
his daily labours, guarantees her own and her precious children’s
survival. If she is clever, she realizes how much is at stake, and she
makes allowances for his peculiarities. If she is shrewd enough to
appreciate the true nature of her happiness, she does her utmost, in
order that her bliss may be uninterrupted, to delude him into thinking
that he is _not_ merely the fifth wheel of the family coach. And
while all the world points the moral that it is the children who have
“cemented” the affection between herself and her husband, she knows
perfectly well that this affection has long ago been transmuted into a
curious compound of which the principal ingredients are: a desire to
play a safe game, a deep attachment to her children impelling her to
secure by fair means or foul someone who will supply them with all they
need, and a patient toleration of a creature whom she does her best to
regard as something more precious than a necessary evil.
The fact that this curious compound appears to the outside world in the
false light of connubial affection does not disturb her, because, as a
rule, she is constitutionally and congenitally predisposed herself to a
romantic interpretation of phenomena, and eagerly seizes the tinselly
cloak the world gives her, in order to conceal the sordid truth.
In such circumstances the union might last for ever. The only event
that can bring it to an end is the demise of one of the parties to it.
The husband, actuated by habit, timidity, a sense of duty and
propriety, attached to his home by his deep affection for one or more
of his many children, and deluded both by the voice of the world and
by the repeated asseverations of his wife into believing that there is
a deep affection uniting them, endeavours to act up to the part, and
as a rule succeeds extraordinarily well. But is that all? There must,
of course, be something else. Just as the woman is induced to accept
the situation, because it provides her with the only prize that is
really worth securing in life—complete physical adaptation[76]—so the
man must also be deriving some deeper satisfaction from the position
than the mere pleasure of conforming to a social ideal. It is otherwise
inconceivable that he should persist in “playing up” to his spouse with
the histrionic zeal of a paid actor.
Truth to tell, the father of a large family is attracted to the
position he holds by very deep and very powerful appeals to his most
primitive instincts. But again, it requires emphasizing that these deep
and powerful appeals are as a rule quite independent of his attitude
towards his wife, and provided that she do not actively conspire to
displease or to harass him, they will continue to bind him to his home
long after all genuine affection for her has entirely subsided.
These appeals are: The sense of power he derives from the visible
extension of his own identity in his offspring, and: The silent tribute
that the presence of offspring makes daily and hourly to the deepest
source of his self-esteem—virile potency.[77]
Both of these appeals act secretly, and chiefly through the least
conscious functions of his mind, so that he may never be perfectly
aware of them. Nevertheless, they give rise to a constant feeling of
self-assurance and self-confidence which is pleasant and fortifying,
and which, being interpreted roughly by the conscious mind, appears to
his intelligent perception in the form of a very profound attachment
to his home and family. This pleasant feeling, like the complete
physical adaptation of his wife, also fills him with a certain calmness
and serenity which enable him to suffer kindly any exasperating
peculiarity in his spouse, to endure with patience her ill-concealed
indifference to him as being little more important than a sparking-plug
or breadwinner, and to meet in a conciliating spirit any opposition
with which she may encounter his plans for their children, or for any
other feature of their joint lives. It should not be forgotten either
that this feeling helps him to resign himself also to the conscious
depreciation in his own affection towards her.
The world speaks of him as “unselfish,” “devoted,” “self-sacrificing,”
“good-natured,” etc., and his children are reared, sometimes by their
mother, but always by strangers, in the belief that he is entitled to
all these epithets, because there are so many men who have not acted
as he has. He himself, however, accepts these epithets with a mild
pretence of modest deprecation, for in his heart of hearts he realizes
that somehow they ring strangely by the side of his intimate knowledge
of the deep satisfaction he has derived from the whole business.
Now statistics and legal authorities tell us that this kind of marriage
is the best, the most lasting, and the happiest kind of marriage. The
judges say that it is because “children strengthen the union” or “keep
the home together.” We have seen in what way a growing family effects
this end. We have seen that it has very little to do with the attitude
of the parents towards each other. Now we have to discover how it is
that, according to statistics, divorces are more frequent where there
are only one, two, or three children, and where child-birth may be said
to have stopped.
(2) UNHAPPINESS IN THE HOME OF THE POSITIVE COUPLE
In another chapter the positive woman has been called “the custodian of
Life”; we have already seen that Schopenhauer has graphically described
her unconscious insistence on experiencing the whole physical cycle
from the coitus to the weaning of the child as the Will of the Species
(_Wille der Gattung_) demanding more Life and thus achieving human
survival. We have also spoken of the voice of nature in her, clamouring
not only for Life, but also for Life’s multiplication.
These are only different more or less successful attempts at describing
that instinct which in the positive woman is paramount—the instinct
to employ her elaborate reproductive equipment effectively. The fact
that when this equipment remains idle the existence of the species
is imperilled, evidently led Schopenhauer to discern the unconscious
will of the species in the positive woman’s restlessness in awaiting
fertilization. But we should always be careful in using these
descriptions of woman, to remember that in her the end, which is the
multiplication of life, is quite unrealized by her conscious mind.
She acts in a way that brings about the multiplication of life; her
instincts impel her to achieve that end; but she is not intelligently
concerned with anything so remote as the will of the species or its
preservation.[78] She is much more concerned with her own personal
wishes, her own personal notion of pleasure, and her own sensations.
When once these are gratified, the fact that the demands of the species
are also satisfied is, as far as woman is concerned, merely a happy
coincidence, in which she can have but an academic interest.
Nevertheless, in judging of her conduct, and in drawing moral
conclusions from it, we must be careful to allow her the full benefit
of the view that, in acting as she does, she is securing the survival
of the species in ultimate fact. More than nine-tenths of the abuse
to which women have been subjected throughout the ages has been due
precisely to man’s omission to allow her the full benefit of this view.
The gratification of woman’s passions serves her own end, inasmuch as
it affords her pleasure—Yes!—but it also serves the purpose of the
race. That is the fundamental fact to remember.
In another chapter I have described how Life itself is woman’s hardest
taskmaster, and that her first impulse in all circumstances is to be
faithful to this taskmaster, even at the cost of infidelity to human
pledges.
(_a_) _Adultery of the positive spouse through absence of the mate._
Long absences of husbands, therefore, during wars, transoceanic
voyages, explorations, etc., should always be viewed in the light of a
rebuff to woman’s hardest taskmaster. The prolonged absence of the male
imposes idleness on the female’s reproductive organs, and, since the
best women are primarily faithful to Life itself, and only secondarily
so to their mates, it must follow that in all cases in which husbands
are absent for long periods, that the call of Life in positive women
becomes too imperious to be ignored—hence the thousands of wives who
were unfaithful to their husbands during the last war, both in England
and on the Continent.[79]
Ignorant, pious people, and even experienced Divorce-Court judges
expressed their horror at the thought that while their men were nobly
risking their lives in defence of “King and Country,” these women in
their thousands calmly sought fertilization elsewhere. But a woman’s
character as a woman would be almost forfeited if she did not act in
this way![80] Where else would you have her transfer her allegiance?
Would you invite her to break the whole valuable tradition of her sex
which has been consistently devoted to the multiplication of life, in
order to show allegiance—say to an oath, or to an ideal, or to a moral
precept? But even Schopenhauer himself, with all his detestation of
women, would defend them here, and say, “Surely the species is more
important than your trumpery moral codes, your ephemeral oaths, and
your pretentious ideals!”
The English world is almost comic in the light of its most cherished
illusions. It does not base its outlook upon the unalterable laws of
life, consequently it is constantly receiving the rudest shocks and the
most unpleasant surprises. The fact that so many thousands of women in
England and Wales were unfaithful to their husbands during the war came
as a shock to the dear Puritanical and ignorant old ladies, chiefly
unmarried, that rule public opinion in England.
Had they ever dreamt, or had they ever been told, that the best women,
the most desirable women, must be unfaithful to their husbands when,
through what cause soever, the latter are forcing them to be unfaithful
to Life itself, they might have shown less righteous indignation and
more understanding when the women of the country in their legions
turned adulteresses in war-time.
As it was, the phenomenon was quite unexpected, and proved a most
terrible blow to the national conscience. For it was realized only
too shrewdly that if thousands of these women were ultimately found
out, many more thousands must have escaped the discovery; and thus
the character of the nation seemed to have suffered very severe
deterioration.
Truth to tell, the parties to blame were not the women at all, but the
hopelessly vain men who were the co-respondents in the actions, and who
understood so little of female psychology that they interpreted these
adulteresses’ fidelity to Life and its multiplication, as a preference,
if you please, for themselves before their legal spouses. Not knowing
of the positive woman’s inveterate fidelity to Life, they arrogantly
imagined that their personal and irresistible attractions were the
cause of these adulteresses’ infidelity to their husbands.
They—these men—were the people against whom the world ought to have
inveighed; for the man who is capable of so misunderstanding the human
female as to flatter himself that it is his personal attractions that
are seducing her, when all the time it is the Will of the Species,
neglected by her absent husband, that is impelling her to go in search
of fertilization elsewhere, is not worth the rope with which he ought
to be hanged.
The mistake, as a mistake, is all the more monstrous, seeing that it is
the outcome of maniacal vanity. For no man who was not too much elated
by a woman’s attention to retain calm reflection, could ever be such a
fool as to imagine that his triumph over her husband was due to his own
personal charm.
There is no need, however, to labour the question any longer, if once
the true nature of woman be properly grasped; for then it is seen
immediately that, in the best and most vital women, fidelity to Life
must take precedence of fidelity to the mate, to a pledge, to an oath,
to a vow, to a custom, or to anything else.[81]
Would the reader perhaps have it otherwise? Would he have a race of
women reared (we are unfortunately not so very far from the attainment
of this ideal to-day) to whom the claims of Life are secondary—women,
that is to say, who are so constituted that they could hesitate between
Life’s call and some trumpery human convention? Would he have women so
constituted that their self-preservative instinct is more powerful than
their reproductive? Because that is what it amounts to. A woman who,
when confronted by Life’s call, can calmly discriminate between that
and her own safety, her own future, her own smug ease, and can proceed
to select the latter in preference to the former, is not a desirable
woman in the best sense, for she cannot be trusted to do the right
thing for the species in all circumstances. The spark of vitality in
her does not glow with sufficient ardour to compel her to serve Life’s
interests before her own. She is the kind of woman that is rapidly
coming into power in all classes above the working class, but hers is a
_bad_ character, not a _good_ character, for a woman to possess.
No, we want to keep the best women as they are. We do not want to tame
the life out of them. But since we cannot have it both ways, if we
insist on women remaining desirable—that is to say, faithful primarily
to Life itself, we must breed a race of men who understand them, and
who in the absence of their fellows on wars or expeditions can see
what is happening when young wives “make eyes at them.” Any man who in
such circumstances imagines he is irresistible and falls in with the
woman’s designs through sheer vanity, deserves a punishment very much
more severe than being mulcted in damages; he has qualified himself for
some disciplinary correction which ought at least to include a term
of hard labour. For it is not his understanding of woman alone that
is at fault—although this in a full-grown man would be unpardonable
enough—but his estimate of himself, which leads him to the gross
presumption of imagining himself capable of conquering another man’s
wife single-handed without the assistance of Life itself, pushing her
violently into his arms the whole time.[82] Why, he might just as well
flatter himself that a flea has bitten him, not because it was too
hungry to wait, but because there was something exceptionally delicate
or precious in the composition of his vile blood!
_Thus adultery, when the wife is the defaulter, is always a case of a
man betraying another man, and never that of a woman betraying her man.
Woman, if she is the right sort, remains throughout faithful to Life.
Only if she betrays Life does she cease to be desirable._
Continuing our consideration of the positive couple, we must now
examine the forces which operate in causing a woman to be unfaithful to
her husband while yet living and cohabiting with him in apparent peace
and happiness.
(_b_) _Adultery of the positive spouse through impotence of the male or
through childlessness._
If the positive female cannot tolerate long absences on the part of
the male without endeavouring to seek fertilization elsewhere (because
her equipment for Life’s multiplication is otherwise reduced to
inaction) it is obvious that, since male impotence is tantamount to a
complete absence of the male (from the standpoint of reproduction), she
can hardly be expected to tolerate it any more gladly.
Truth to tell, I have known cases of male impotence where the natural
modesty and fear of publicity in the wife prevented an action for
nullity and also all adulterous liaisons; both parties to the match
having advanced quite peaceably and resignedly to middle, and
ultimately to old age, without anyone, except the couple themselves and
their immediate relatives, knowing the truth;[83] and it is probable
that in many cases of childless marriages, in modern England, impotence
on the part of the male may be suspected as the cause, although the
wife may have been too timid or too shamefast to drag the misery of
their married life before the courts. But in almost all marriages
where this occurs without adultery on the part of the wife, it is safe
to infer that the female of the match is herself partly or wholly
negative, or that she has become so in process of time, otherwise it
is inconceivable that her timidity or shame should thus override the
deepest force within her, which, as we have seen, is the Will of the
Species for Life and its multiplication.
In the case of most positive and desirable women it is safe to argue
that, where the husband is impotent, either adultery or a suit for
nullity will be the inevitable result.[84]
Among the positive couples where, although the male may be potent,
childlessness is secured by some contraceptive method, for reasons
of economy, or because it is thought that three, four, or even five
years of connubial bliss without children will allow both parties to
have what is known as a “good time,” it is obvious that the toleration
of the positive female may last longer than in cases where the male
is impotent; but since the orgasm does not supply the female with her
complete sexual experience, it is equally clear that the state of
childlessness cannot last an unlimited time without causing trouble.
As, however, in these peculiar circumstances, the psychological
processes in the female, which lead her to adultery, are more subtle
than in the event of male impotence, I shall be obliged to enter into
them with more detail.
When the male is impotent the positive woman knows that this is so, and
she _consciously_ realizes the need of seeking fertilization elsewhere,
lest she remain childless for the rest of her life. This alternative is
presented plainly to her consciousness and there is no doubt about it.
In the case of the couple using contraceptives while cohabiting
affectionately together, however, the female is not conscious of a
desire to seek fertilization elsewhere. Not realizing clearly that, in
fact, her life is equivalent (but for the repeated orgasms) to that
of the married woman whose male is impotent, she has no _conscious_
motive or warrant for seeking fertilization outside her home. Very
few women indeed know that the orgasm forms such an insignificant
part of their sexual experience as to leave their bodies completely
unsatisfied and disappointed.[85] It follows, therefore, that if her
love for her husband be very deep and guileless, she may continue
living with him for years without taking any notice of other men. If
her positiveness persist, however, despite the deleterious influence
of the contraceptive habit, and she and her husband still continue to
pursue their policy of childlessness, she will eventually find that
other men do begin to interest her a good deal, although this interest
at first will appear to herself as entirely involuntary and innocent.
It will begin to show itself by a certain childish eagerness to see
her husband’s friends, to meet them at bridge, at golf, or at tennis.
She may suggest dancing lessons, or regular attendances at public and
private entertainments, where she can meet and talk with other men.[86]
All this time her affection for her husband will continue as strong
as ever, and she will not be conscious of his having declined in her
esteem by one iota. If the men she meets at this period in her married
life happen to be men of the world, they will note the eager interest
with which she looks at them, laughs at their clumsiest sallies, and
applauds their most trifling manifestations of intellect, and they will
be on their guard and remain punctiliously formal. If, on the other
hand, they belong to the modern herd of arrogant, overdressed townsmen,
whose only mainspring is vanity, and who find in the favour of a poor
starved female body the highest flattery that their stupid, fatuous
lives can offer them, they will fancy that this young wife’s eager
attention when they speak, and her delirious laughter when they attempt
to be witty, constitute a tribute to their intellect and wit. They will
flatter themselves that the little woman has been captivated by them.
And from that time onward the little woman in question will be in great
danger.
Now let us try to ascertain precisely what has occurred in the body of
the young wife in question, in order that we may follow and understand
her conduct.
We will suppose she has been married three or four years, and all this
time has been living in perfect concord with her husband. Occasional
differences there have been, of course; but they have been unimportant.
They have all turned, as is customary in English houses, upon the
ridiculous words “selfish” and “unselfish.” When the young wife has
wanted her way against her man she has endeavoured to make him yield
by giving him a guilty conscience over the matter, and calling his
opposition “selfish”; and when at last he has yielded, she has declared
both to his face and to the world, that he was the most “unselfish”
of husbands.[87] Likewise the man, when he has wanted to exert some
leverage upon his wife’s mind, has warned her that resistance on her
part would be “selfish,” and upon her yielding has admitted that she
was “unselfish.” But apart from these foolish verbal quibbles around
the utterly fantastic antithesis “selfish” and “unselfish,” they have
had no quarrels.
Meanwhile, however, although the husband’s sexual experience has
been complete, his wife’s has been of the most fragmentary order.
Her reproductive organs and functions, though repeatedly stimulated
as if their important business were about to begin, have been robbed
each time of the natural sequel to that stimulation. Despite hundreds
of alarms and starts, the complete cycle has never been experienced.
As a result, this large reproductive equipment has not only remained
idle, but in this very idleness has also been cheated again and again
of its legitimate expectations, when those expectations seemed most
certain of being fulfilled. These repeated rebuffs, together with
the continued inactivity of this important mechanism, has not been
suffered with impunity. Gradually, as the idleness came to be felt
more and more acutely, and the sense of physiological disappointment
became insistent, vague messages were sent up through the young wife’s
subconsciousness to her brain. These messages we can decipher without
any serious inaccuracy as follows:—“We are still idle; we are still
inactive. _When_ are we going to function? We ache to function.”
It must not be supposed, however, that these messages are deciphered
as accurately as this by the woman’s conscious mind. She is vaguely
conscious of the importunate calls from her dissatisfied reproductive
equipment; but she is aware of them only as _dissatisfaction_. Whence
they hail, what they mean, she has not the slightest idea. If you told
her that they amounted to protests from her inactive reproductive
equipment, she would probably feel so utterly outraged that she
would never speak to you or see you again. She would need to be a
psychologist herself to interpret them accurately.
Now it is when this vague feeling of dissatisfaction first becomes
insistent in her conscious mind that she proceeds to act upon it in the
manner already described (see p. 196).
Quite unsuspecting, her husband falls in eagerly with her plans. Truth
to tell, any such marked change in a young married woman is a very
serious sign; but the husband knowing nothing of these matters, and
concluding after a review of the last three years that he has perhaps
invited his wife to lead too dull a life, acquiesces with alacrity in
her schemes.
Now if we suppose that the new régime, with its constant round of
gaiety and variety, has lasted a further six months or a year,
and still nothing has happened—that is to say, the young wife’s
reproductive equipment is still inactive—a second and more dangerous
phase very rapidly sets in.
The young woman suddenly finds one morning or evening that she is
unaccountably exasperated by the way her husband fingers his tie
while he talks to her or to a friend, or by his habit of knocking his
pipe out against the iron of the grate, or by his manner of clearing
his throat, or by any other peculiarity which, twenty-four hours
previously, she was not even aware of having noticed particularly.
At first she is a little alarmed and suppresses her feeling of
irritation. She feels that it is unfriendly, and that he does not
deserve a rebuke for something so ridiculously trifling. Very soon,
however, after she has continued to note the exasperating peculiarity
for four or five days, her irritation begins to choke her, and she
feels she must express it. The next time she observes him doing the
fatal thing, therefore, she snaps sharply at him with a “Don’t, Harry,
you fidget me with that constant noise!” or “Don’t, Harry, you always
finger your tie in that ridiculous manner when you are talking—why do
you do it?” etc.
She has not the faintest suspicion that this irritation and
exasperation over a trifling aspect of her husband’s behaviour is only
a surface ripple of a very much deeper and more bitter exasperation,
down somewhere in her body; and the young husband, who is even less
conscious of the matter than she is, turns to her in a manner utterly
dumbfounded, and wonders what on earth can have happened.
He sees that she is serious. He has noted the strain of bitterness in
her rebuke and its threatening note of anger, and, if he is a man of
spirit, he points out to her that if she is out of sorts she had better
go to bed, but that it is absurd for her to start now, after four years
of marriage, rebuking him for something he has done regularly every day
of their married life.
This discussion may end in a serious quarrel—the first serious quarrel
in which words very much more stinging than “selfish” and “unselfish”
are used freely for the first time; and both may retire to bed utterly
bewildered by what has happened.
It is about this time that the young wife shows the eagerness described
above in her attitude towards other men. These men may be, and usually
are, a hundred times plainer, prosier and less potent than her husband;
but this does not disturb her. She looks into their faces as if in
their countenances alone she expected to find a spark of intelligence
or manliness. Her husband’s superior witticisms fall flat, while at
the grossest pun from his friends she contorts herself with laughter.
She organizes games, picnics, excursions, and even summer holidays, in
which some of her husband’s friends always contribute their share to
the entertainment. Quiet lanes in Devonshire alone with her husband
are no longer her ideal. She wants to organize a “jolly” party for the
holidays, and learn to dive and swim with the other girls and young men
of the party.
It is usually at this juncture that some prize fool of a man comes
forward, who, in his superlative vanity and his crass ignorance of the
true state of affairs, sets all the young woman’s restless eagerness,
and particularly her attentiveness to himself, down to the credit of
his own irresistible charm.
This sums up the psychology of all co-respondents. They are fatuously
vain, they are criminally ignorant of female psychology, and they
eagerly place to the credit account of their wit, their good looks,
their intelligence, and their virility, a so-called conquest in which
the part they have played is no more than that of an old horse’s leg
that is taken into a stagnant pond to catch hungry leeches with.
At all events, if such a dangerous fool happens to be in the
neighbourhood at such a juncture, and the young wife is thrown much
into his company, the chances are that, encouraged by his eager
acceptation of a situation in which his personal characteristics count
for nothing, she is likely to imagine herself both “loved” and “in
love”; and then nothing can save her from matrimonial ruin.
Her blind manœuvres will have achieved what her reproductive equipment
most ardently desired; they will have removed her from a male who
abused without satisfying this equipment, and will have thrown her
into the arms of a man who, though possibly inferior to her husband in
every respect (as she herself would have realized had her reproductive
organs been content), or at any rate not so very much superior to him
to justify all this fuss, was at least holding out to her reproductive
equipment a fresh promise of fertilization.[88]
And since fertilization is what the will of the species insists upon,
and woman is that will, she must be forgiven if, in the circumstances,
she goes over to the vain ass who imagines he has captivated her
affections. At any rate, she herself is in no way to blame. She
has been true to the power to which she owes all her fidelity. The
blame, if any, lies, in the first place, with her husband for having
deprived a positive and desirable woman of her full sexual experience
for a number of years, and for not having realized that this was
her trouble when she first became restless; and secondly, with the
co-respondent for having mistaken an exasperated woman’s longing for
fertilization—not for “companionship,” for “understanding” or for a
“kindred soul” as she has declared—for a triumph attributable to his
irresistible attractions. The illicit lover in this case, besides being
a vain fool, betrays his own sex in the man whose wife he robs.
In such cases a little knowledge of sex psychology will, as a rule,
save the situation. But so long as the world continues to be thronged
with jackasses who are ready to go hot all over with pride at every
woman’s smile, the ridiculous spectacle of a co-respondent in every
way the inferior, or at least no more than the equal, of the wronged
husband, will continue to be common in our midst.
The strange part of the whole affair is that the young wife’s notion
of promised bliss with the co-respondent is based entirely upon her
unconscious or bodily hope that fertilization is now sure to follow.
Unless it do follow, therefore, she finds herself a twofold dupe;
for she has exchanged a man to whom she is at least legally attached
for a man who in nine cases out of ten is either no more than her
husband’s equal, or his inferior; and she is no better off; because,
the moment the novelty of the situation will have died down, the same
dissatisfaction that takes its root in her rebuffed reproductive organs
will make itself felt again.
Now the above analysis of the workings of a positive married
woman’s mind in all cases of adultery resulting from physiological
disappointment, is typical, and may stand as the unalterable frame or
pattern which all similar cases may be made to fit. For it matters not
whether the marriage is a childless one, or whether it be one in which,
from motives of economy, child-birth has been stopped after the birth
of one, two, or three children; the phases which mark the approach to
adultery are always the same. And it may be said with perfect accuracy
that, where positiveness persists in the woman, and child-birth is
stopped while she is still too young for her reproductive equipment to
tolerate idleness gladly, some kind of unhappiness is bound to enter
the home, and as a rule this unhappiness will lead to adultery.
When we note in the statistics of divorce the comparatively high
figures shown for marriages in which there have been one or two
children only, therefore, we may take it that unhappiness began to
enter the home in the third, fourth, or fifth year after the birth of
the last child—that is to say, at a period when the idleness of her
reproductive organs was beginning to prove a source of intolerable
exasperation to the young female. And in these cases, as in the
classical instance detailed above, the same phases occur. There is the
same sudden interest in matters outside the home—either golf, tennis,
acting, bridge, dancing, a new religion, a new philosophy, or a Cause.
This brings the young wife into touch with a number of strange men,
and as her interest in these increases, she begins to be aware of a
vague feeling of irritation concerning certain aspects of her husband’s
person or behaviour, of which theretofore she had not been conscious.
Finally, she becomes infatuated with one of the strange men, and her
feelings for her husband suffer a corresponding change for the worse.
Then only cowardice, caution, or extreme devotion to her small family,
can possibly prevent her from compromising herself.
This is now the time and the place to consider whether there are not
perhaps other physiological and psychical conditions resulting from
deliberate childlessness, or from the deliberate limitation of the
family, besides those discussed above, which hasten the rupture between
the positive couple.
There are certainly many such physiological and psychical conditions,
and the foremost of these is the deleterious effect which the constant
use of contraceptives has upon the happy sexual relations of the
young couple. That there should be no known contraceptive which does
not in some way mar the complete happiness of marital intercourse,
will perhaps be regarded by some as a very wise dispensation of
Providence;—for certainly the best brains of all nations for many
thousands of years have concerned themselves with the problem, and it
seems astonishing that, so far, nothing really perfect should have been
discovered;—but at all events this fact goes a considerable way towards
making the marriage-bed of people who deliberately limit the family at
least a breeding-place of very serious trouble.
Secondly, the very fact that childlessness as an end is incessantly
present to the minds of the young couple—whether they have had no
children at all, or only one, two, or three—during the cohabitation,
constitutes in itself an influence which in time is certain to destroy
the savour of their relations at a pace commensurate with their
positiveness.
The reduction of any human function to the plane of sensationalism
alone has this strange result that, in the end, the very sensations it
provides tend to decline in intensity. It is as if sensation alone were
an insufficient psychical foundation to support the whole arch of any
permanent human interest or effort, and that where it is not correlated
with the feelings of power or purposefulness, it tends to crumble and
to perish.
The woman in such cases suffers even more quickly than the man,
because in her the physiological disappointment sings in chorus with
the psychical disillusionment. But in the man too ultimate anæsthesia
is inevitable; for, sooner or later, the fact that the natural
consequences of his act (offspring) are not forthcoming, will begin to
tell on his self-esteem and his sense of power, with which elements
more than half the savour of sexual relations must certainly have been
associated by his ancestors.[89]
A further psychological factor must be reckoned with, which has its
share in bringing about matrimonial difficulties in the state of
deliberate childlessness, or of the limitation of the family, and
that is the feeling of aimlessness that ultimately supervenes, when
any two people associate together without any further object in life
than that of eating, drinking, or making merry. This is not due to
the fact that eating, drinking, and making merry are in themselves
bad, as the Puritans would have us believe; but that they are at least
monotonous if unrelieved by any other interests. Life, as we have
seen, is repetition with a modicum of variation, and so is happiness.
Nothing that can introduce variety into the home of the young couple,
therefore, ought to be eschewed, for fear lest that lack of variety
should be realized which causes life to lose its interest and its
savour. Now children are obviously a constant source of variety in
the home. Each child, in its turn, gives the home a different aspect,
a different outlook, a different responsibility. Children, moreover,
give the family unit a superior aim and purpose, which increases in
importance with the number of the offspring. In this sense alone,
therefore, a state of childlessness or of family limitation (when the
number of children is small), in an ordinary home, where there are no
compensating features such as ardent artistic, scientific or religious
preoccupations, constitutes a dangerous state from the standpoint of
connubial stability.
Before concluding this discussion of the positive couple in relation to
divorce, which we propose to do with an examination of the statistics,
it will now be necessary to consider the circumstances under which the
positive man himself becomes unfaithful.[90]
From the statistics it would appear that more women than men go wrong
in a childless marriage. This is only what, from our argument, we
should have expected; because since the coitus represents a complete
physiological experience to the man, he is less likely to become
vaguely dissatisfied with childlessness than the woman. Nevertheless,
should the childless state be continued too long—that is to say, for
five, six, or more years—there are sure to arise certain indistinct
feelings of dissatisfaction in the man, which will cause him to
become restless and interested in other women. These feelings will
be the result of the total lack of those “appeals” to his primitive
instincts, which the regular procreation of children provides for
almost all men without exception. He will miss the sense of power
which he would derive from the material and visible extension of his
own identity in his offspring, and he will also feel the need of that
silent tribute which children would make to the deepest source of his
self-esteem—virile potency.
It should also be borne in mind that, where there are no children, the
man is more likely, owing to the absence of heavy responsibilities, to
indulge that inclination to varied sexual experiences, to which every
positive man is subject after some years of marriage. We have seen how
entirely man’s sexual experience depends for its savour upon desire—the
desire he feels for the object of his sexual passion. When, therefore,
through years of regular intimacy with his wife, this desire tends to
decline, there naturally follows a corresponding decline in the savour
of his sexual experience. To correct this he is tempted to go in search
of change, of novelty. Now, when this inclination arises in monogamic
marriages, it is frequently checked out of consideration for the
children, and more especially by the secret satisfaction derived from
their presence. Where there are no children, it is much more likely to
be given free rein.
Another factor which ought to be given due weight in the sexual
psychology of man, is his love of protecting and patronizing. The wife
who gives him a number of children not only makes a strong appeal to
this love in her own person but also in the persons of her offspring.
He becomes, figuratively, a huge buttress supporting the dependent
members of his family, and this gratifies the self-esteem of the
average simple-minded man, and in innumerable cases induces him not
only to accept the burden, but also to love it deeply and passionately
for giving him such a delightful and constant sense of real importance.
Finally, in the conduct of the man of high ethical development, there
will enter the factor of moral ideals. When once he feels his family
about him, he will be conscious of certain duties, certain obligations,
which will preclude all idea, all velleity, of not abiding by his
original pledges. This man will be able to live till the end of his
days with a woman, however much his feelings may have changed towards
her, and still give the world the impression of being a most dutiful
and most devoted husband. Temptation, sexual passion, the desire
for variety, will simply not enter within his purview. The moment
an irregular thought occurs to his mind, it will be, as it were,
“switched off.” It should, however, be remembered that when such men
are positive by nature, they will usually be found to practise in their
leisure hours some kind of sport (_hard walking_, _cycling_, _golf_,
_riding_) or industry (_carpentry_—true of thousands of Englishmen
to-day; _wood-cutting_, e.g. Gladstone and the ex-Emperor of Germany;
_stamp-collecting_ and _numismatics_—true of thousands of modern
Englishmen) or religious activity (_Christian_, _Spiritualistic_ or
other propaganda) in which much of their sex becomes absorbed.
In Chart I, I have given figures covering a period of twenty-one
years—from 1899 to 1919 inclusive, for England and Wales; and the
most important conclusions to be drawn from them at a glance are the
following:—
(_a_) The preponderance of divorces which occur as the result of
husbands’ petitions over those which occur as the result of wives’
petitions.
Bearing in mind the more insistent impulse to variety in sexual
experience which harasses the male throughout life, this preponderance
of husbands’ petitions only tends to show the extreme difficulty with
which women can tolerate either the premature cessation of child-birth
or no child-birth at all. For although it may be argued that in order
to obtain a divorce the woman must charge her husband with something
more than the mere indulgence of his craving for variety, and therefore
that proportions are misleading from this point of view, it should also
be remembered that, where there has been a transference of affection
with adultery on the male’s part, desertion would necessarily follow,
and therefore supply the minimum grounds for the woman’s petition.
CHART I. NUMBER OF CHILDREN AT TIME OF FILING PETITION OF DIVORCE.
————————————————————+—————————+———————+———————+———————+———————
| 1899. | 1900. | 1901. | 1902. | 1903.
_Number of +—————————+———————+———————+———————+———————
Children_ |H. W.[91]| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.
————————————————————+—————————+———————+———————+———————+———————
No children |175 147 |167 156|188 166|230 185|183 170
1 child | 97 83 | 80 84|129 91|140 115|105 133
2 children | 58 57 | 59 53| 93 57| 98 62| 76 75
3 to 6 children | 66 69 | 68 63| 86 67|131 65|128 70
Above 6 children | 4 14 | 6 9| 10 11| 9 15| 11 11
Number unknown | | 1 1| | |
————————————————————+—————————+———————+———————+———————+———————
| 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908. | 1909.
_Number of +———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
Children_ | H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.
————————————————————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
No children |178 147|180 167|201 161|169 182|198 235|213 197
1 child |110 116|114 137|120 127| 91 128|119 136|104 137
2 children | 78 82| 73 86| 73 80| 84 82| 86 67| 75 89
3 to 6 children | 97 66| 83 69| 62 78| 84 70| 82 71| 80 79
Above 6 children | 6 7| 3 5| 9 12| 6 7| 3 11| 3 6
Number unknown | | | 2 1| | 2|
————————————————————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
| 1910. | 1911. | 1912. | 1913. | 1914. | 1915.
_Number of +———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
Children_ | H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.
————————————————————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
Total successful | | | | | |
petitions |412 343|466 393|506 414|548 450|607 468|682 461
No children |412[92]| 408 | 444 | 493 | 496 | 491
1 child | 222 | 281 | 347 | 372 | 366 | 379
2 children | 146 | 201 | 193 | 194 | 241 | 248
3 to 6 children | 119 | 170 | 160 | 192 | 228 | 231
Above 6 children | 9 | 12 | 10 | 12 | 17 | 17
————————————————————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————+———————
| 1916. | 1917. | 1918. | 1919.
_Number of +———————+—————————+—————————+———————————
Children_ | H. W.| H. W.| H. W.| H. W.
————————————————————+———————+—————————+—————————+———————————
Total successful | | | |
petitions |781 382|1,044 379|1,807 516|4,076 1,009
No children | 563 | 660 | 1,043 | 2,338
1 child | 382 | 433 | 707 | 1,627
2 children | 231 | 307 | 488 | 930
3 to 6 children | 200 | 285 | 423 | 831
Above 6 children | 16 | 19 | 27 | 36
————————————————————+———————+—————————+—————————+———————————
CHART II. DURATION OF MARRIAGE UP TO TIME OF FILING PETITION OF DIVORCE.
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————
|1910.|1911.|1912.|1913.|1914.|1915.|1916.
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————
Less than 1 year | | 14 | 17 | 29 | 22 | 18 | 35
1 and over to 2 | 29 | 26 | 25 | 44 | 17 | 40 | 58
2 and over to 5 | 110 | 143 | 145 | 136 | 150 | 130 | 192
5 and over to 10 | 284 | 353 | 378 | 427 | 394 | 371 | 383
10 and over to 20| 369 | 418 | 440 | 481 | 583 | 618 | 577
Above 20 | 116 | 119 | 155 | 146 | 182 | 194 | 165
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————+—————
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————
|1917.|1918.|1919.
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————
Less than 1 year | 27 | 36 | 75
1 and over to 2 | 78 | 86 | 156
2 and over to 5 | 274 | 516 |1,171
5 and over to 10 | 482 | 858 |1,947
10 and over to 20| 667 | 930 |2,008
Above 20 | 177 | 262 | 405
—————————————————+—————+—————+—————
The high figures for faithless wives revealed in these statistics,
therefore, point to the extreme refractoriness of women under the
conditions imposed by modern economic pressure, which makes the
limitation of families an ineluctable rule in most homes. This is
furthermore confirmed by a comparison of the high figures given for
childless marriages, or marriages of only one, two, or three children,
with those given for marriages which have more than three children.
On the other hand, the proportion of husbands’ petitions to wives’ in
those marriages in which there are more than six children, leaves no
doubt that in most of these cases not the wife but the husband was at
fault, which is exactly what we should expect.
(_b_) It is interesting to note the steady rise in husbands’ petitions
during the years 1915-1919—all years of war: the figure 4,076 as
against 1,009 in 1919 constituting the most convincing evidence we have
of the difficulty with which women tolerate the lack of children or the
cessation of child-birth, even when it is due to the absence of their
husbands on what was believed to be a “Crusade.” It seems probable that
the bulk of these women must have been young, for the total number of
divorces for that year, in cases where there was only one child or
none, amounts to 3,965.
Of course, from my point of view, the value of these figures is
lessened by the fact that it is impossible to differentiate between
marriages of positive and negative couples; but perhaps the steadiness
with which certain characteristic proportions are revealed in them
compensates to some extent for this defect.
When we add to this Lord Salvesen’s evidence before the Royal
Commission on Divorce (1912), in which he declared that in Scotland the
proportion of divorces among childless couples was “immensely larger”
than that among fertile couples, it can leave little doubt in our
minds that, in order to be so constant and universal, this rule must
be based on unalterable laws taking their root in deep physiological
and psychological conditions, and that the sentimental and emotional
factors can be but surface phenomena accompanying rather than affecting
the operation of these laws. For, if we have been right in arguing
that the presence of children does not operate as a strengthener of
the union by cementing the _love_ of married couples, but by meeting
certain instinctive needs in their physical and mental constitution,
it is clear that the sentimental elements in the union are the most
insignificant—hence their inability to tide large numbers of positive
couples over the periods of physiological and psychical stress which
childlessness or the limitation of the family imposes.
(_c_) When we turn to Chart II and examine the figures given for the
duration of the marriage up to the time when the petition was filed
(for the years 1910-1919), we also note a fact that does not surprise
us, and that is the immeasurably higher figures given for the four
years lying between the fifth and the tenth years of marriage, than for
all other periods.
It is precisely during these four years that those two disturbing
forces which do most to mar modern marriages are most likely to begin
to operate, viz:—
(_a_) The irascibility of the wife as the result of the cessation
of child-birth; this irascibility showing itself in a decreasing
satisfaction with her home and her husband, and an increasing interest
in outside amusements and occupations, and in other men.
(_b_) The loss of desire for his wife, in the husband, which causes
him to seek other sexual experiences.
With regard to (_a_) it is obvious that during the sixth, seventh,
eighth and ninth years of marriage, most couples who are attempting to
limit their families will have ceased from procreating. They will have
had from one to three children, and will have decided to have no more.
The wife will therefore tend to become increasingly impatient with her
lot, and ultimately make a confidant of some idiot of a man, who will
interpret her marked attentions as a proof of his irresistible charm,
and the two will end in what the world is pleased to call “falling in
love.”
With regard to (_b_), six, seven, eight or nine years is a long
period over which to extend the average man’s desire for fresh sexual
experience, and in the event of a cessation of child-birth (which
means the use of contraceptives—always unfavourable to happy marital
relations) it is during these last years of his first decade of married
life that he is most likely to feel the ardent desire for a change.
The two factors (_a_) and (_b_) conspiring together soon force the
couple asunder, if they are positive, brave, and intolerant of
conventions and rules—hence, I believe, the high figures for the period
in question.
CHART III. DIVORCES ACCORDING TO PROFESSIONS.
————————+————————————+———————+—————————————+——————————+——————————
|Agriculture.|Mining.|Manufactures.|Navigation| Inland
| | | | and |Transport.
| | | | Fishing. |
————————+————————————+———————+—————————————+——————————+——————————
1908 | 26 | 17 | 168 | 14 | 42
1909 | 19 | 21 | 172 | 25 | 29
1910 | 22 | 11 | 118 | 18 | 38
1911 | 21 | 9 | 194 | 24 | 30
1912 | 24 | 17 | 211 | 38 | 21
1915[93]| 37 | 26 | 362 | 31 | 84
1916 | 28 | 24 | 310 | 43 | 60
1917 | 44 | 48 | 419 | 33 | 79
1918 | 61 | 95 | 744 | 63 | 204
1919 | 133 | 192 | 1,581 | 78 | 468
————————+————————————+———————+—————————————+——————————+——————————
————————+——————+————————+——————————————+————————————
|Trade.|Domestic|Professionally|Unspecified
| |Service.| Employed. |Occupations.
| | | |
————————+——————+————————+——————————————+————————————
1908 | 345 | 13 | 298 | 87
1909 | 253 | 10 | 244 | 110
1910 | 344 | 12 | 267 | 78
1911 | 366 | 12 | 320 | 97
1912 | 347 | 24 | 389 | 87
1915[93]| 381 | 11 | 361 | 79
1916 | 397 | 27 | 444 | 1
1917 | 446 | 18 | 545 | 73
1918 | 591 | 34 | 826 | 79
1919 |1,174 | 64 | 1,903 | 169
————————+——————+————————+——————————————+————————————
In Chart III we have the statistics for divorce, tabulated according to
the occupations of the husbands. Now, according to the 1911 census, the
figures given for the total number of males engaged in three out of the
nine categories is as follows:—
Professional callings 367,578[94]
Agriculture 1,140,515
Mining 1,039,083
If we compare these total figures[95] with the corresponding figures
given for the divorces in each category, we see the enormously high
percentage of divorces that occur in the professional classes, as
compared with both the mining and agricultural industry, and although
in accounting for this conspicuous difference we have to bear in
mind the facilities, chiefly financial, for procuring divorce in the
professional classes, we are nevertheless confronted by a disparity
which requires some explanation.
When, however, we consider the greater prevalence of birth-control
among the professionals, with the inevitable unconscious disaffection
that it introduces among the wives of that class; when, also, we
reflect upon the more artificial circumstances in which this class
lives, and the higher and less natural demands that its spouses make
upon each other; when, moreover, we remember the greater irascibility
and nervousness, together with the usually lower passion, of all people
engaged in the more intellectual pursuits of life, which make them more
prone to chafe under the many vexations to which married life gives
rise, and less likely to attain that physiological serenity which is
the pre-requisite of all solid contentment, these statistics seem to
confirm the conclusions at which we have arrived, and, on the whole,
to support the analysis we have made both of the marriage tie itself,
and of the factors that conspire to loosen it.
* * * * *
Having dealt with divorce in so far as it concerns positive couples,
I have now to deal with it in its relation to the negative man and
woman. My present task is, therefore, by far the more difficult of the
two, seeing that the moment we leave the uniformity of natural law
and the regularity of indomitable forces, we find ourselves in a maze
of possibilities, which, while they defy enumeration owing to their
extreme multiplicity, also elude all effort at classification because
of the infinite combinations and permutations that low health and
eccentricity are capable of producing.
It must be clear that the moment the driving force of healthy, normal
passion ceases to be the motive actuating male and female, the vagaries
of human conduct are no longer calculable. One knows what in certain
circumstances a healthy passionate animal will do. It is impossible to
foretell what an unhealthy or unpassionate one will do.[96]
To describe all the possible complications that will ultimately lead
a negative couple into the Divorce Court, or cause them to seek a
judicial separation, or induce them to conclude that they would be
happier living apart, is therefore beyond the powers of any human
being. The negative man and woman, like the invalid or the eccentric,
must remain an enigma, because natural laws and forces no longer
operate normally or calculably in them.
Nevertheless, it is possible, in a rough way, to outline certain
features which are more or less common even to sub-normal people, and
from which, therefore, certain general rules of conduct may be inferred.
For instance, we may say of negative men and women that:—
(_a_) The physiological promptings of an instinctive and organic kind
are never likely (as with their healthier brethren) to weigh very
heavily with them. (The ethereal lovers who believe that marriage is a
union of souls.)
(_b_) The sentimental and intellectual aspects of a sexual situation
are more likely to determine their conduct than its vital or
reproductive aspects. (The lovers in most modern novels, in which
“Luvv” is supposed never to have bodily union as its aim, but only
companionship, or sweet words, or pure affection, or a life of
“unselfish” mutual service, or some other high-falutin’ nonsense.)
(_c_) The force of passion being no longer the ruling determinant in
them, such factors as vanity, caution, cowardice, and even indolence,
may dominate the sex impulses and direct conduct to their own ends.
(The bulk of hasty marriages made during the war were of this nature,
vanity both in the man and the woman giving rise in each individual to
such elated feelings that these were mistaken for depth of passion.)
(_d_) The intellectual attitude towards love, and the passions which
it tends to assume, may cause negative people to _imitate_ without
_feeling_ the behaviour of their more passionate fellows and their
love affairs, thus producing a false but fairly accurate image of true
passion. (The actors in modern society, all of which are by no means
professional histrions.)
Dealing with (_a_) first, it must be fairly obvious that where
physiological promptings are feeble, deep bodily disappointments, and
particularly rebuffs to the reproductive system of the women, can be
tolerated very much more placidly than where physiological promptings
are imperious.
Thus all negative women are likely to endure for a very much longer
period a childless marriage, or a marriage in which child-birth has
ceased in the first four to six years, than are their positive sisters.
In all “happy” marriages of this kind, therefore, which have only
terminated with the demise of one of the parties, negativeness may
certainly be suspected in the woman, and, since like tends to attract
like, also in the man.
When, therefore, unhappiness supervenes in such a home, other causes
must be sought than the secret and unconscious revolt of the woman’s
reproductive equipment, or the man’s fiery need for sexual variety.
Negativeness being the outcome of an atonic condition of the body,
or, at least, of the genital organs, and negative women being less
likely to function properly than their more positive sisters, there
will naturally arise a tendency, in all such matches (owing to the
small amount of pleasure and gratification that is derived from the
whole of the physical side of marriage and motherhood), to discount the
physiological side, and to exalt only states of the soul and the mind.
These people will have the old maids of all Puritanical communities
with them when they cast scorn upon the pleasures of the body; and as
their number is increasing daily, the chorus of body-despisers grows
steadily louder and louder in all the countries enjoying Western
Civilization.
The women in these matches are likely to confound motherhood with
self-sacrifice and martyrdom, and their husbands to confound the
birth of a child with the threat of financial ruin. Science, costly
and inefficient science, helps them at every step, and when finally
child-birth stops, which is never too soon (for the women in any case),
and nurses and perambulators take their leave, science remains to
the last to try to repair or neutralize the debility that unwelcome
fertility has left behind.
In their most private moments the women of such matches speak of the
“horrible sensuality” of men, and of the havoc this sensuality has made
of their lives; and in thought and in action they incline to everything
that emphasizes the soulful or spiritual side of life. They cultivate a
taste for extremely soulful literature or poetry (Maeterlinck’s _Serres
Chaudes_, for instance) and tend to gravitate towards those forms of
Christianity that are most quintessential.
Divorce, if it is ever resorted to by such couples, is usually the
fault of the husbands. They may at length manifest a desire to have
a breath of air untainted by sickness or debility, and in that case
usually become entangled with a woman quite as negative as their wife.
The women hardly ever go further than to cultivate an apparently
ardent but platonic attachment to some poet, musician, or other
artist, to whom they write long soulful letters, full of hints about
a non-physical kind of bliss in love, which they have longed all
their lives to experience. But in a large majority of cases, negative
couples of precisely this kind tend to finish their days more or less
tiresomely together, each bewailing the fact that such a white elephant
as the body ever became associated with the more “exalted” spiritual
side of man.
In regard to (_b_) it can only be said that the type is so very
prevalent that it is becoming almost the _norm_ of modern civilization.
Its principal characteristic is that both the male and the female
tend to choose each other for reasons which are as remote as possible
from the body. The men of this type choose “clever,” “artistic,”
sylph-like, narrow-hipped “sweet” women, with thin slender hands,
spiritual interests, and probably a history of some intestinal
irregularity in their past. The women, while aspiring to a high ideal
of health and manliness in their mates, have not the instinct to pick
out the passionate man, but usually select one, who though he may be
big of body and limb, intellectual and “breezy,” is quite fireless,
unpassionate and dull.
The couples belonging to this type can also endure childlessness or
a cessation of child-birth with almost perfect equanimity; the man
being very much more concerned about the figure he is cutting as a
chivalrous, sporting mate, who observes the rules of “cricket” with his
spouse, than about any other aspect of their married life. He studies
with asinine perplexity the so-called inscrutable complexities of
his wife’s mind, and is always making “allowances” and preaching the
doctrine of give and take. His great charm, according to modern values,
is the fact that he regards women as utterly incomprehensible. Women
are so powerful nowadays in determining opinion, and have so often
and so emphatically called the men who show some insight into women’s
nature “prigs,” that at the present day both women and men unanimously
call any man who voices penetrating views about _woman_, an out-and-out
prig. In fact, in order to be a prig it is necessary to have shown some
ability in analysing the true nature of woman.[97]
The women in such unions very frequently outstrip their male companions
in mental nimbleness, and this disturbance of the proper balance
frequently leads them, in their vague discontent, to become prominent
exponents and defenders of all those claims of sex-equality and
sex-levelling, which have agitated the home life of northern European
countries (where most negative people are to be found) for the last
hundred years. The spectacle of their lady-like and unobtrusive
male, there can be no doubt, is usually the first incentive towards
these kinds of activities, and, seeing that they have the constant
substantiation of their claims in the tame animal with whom they
cohabit, it is not surprising that they frequently enter into “Woman’s
Cause” with a conviction and a fervour very much more intense than the
more academic enthusiasm of the old maid who is usually their associate
in the movement.
Indeed, it not infrequently happens that the “male” of these militant
women is himself an active collaborator in his wife’s public work, and
so complete is their intellectual and sentimental agreement on the
question, that he will echo her words with the docility of a parrot.
The type (_c_) is also common enough and is growing more plentiful in
all classes of society. It is the negative type which approximates most
to the passionate, tragic type of real life and fiction; because, while
it possesses no deep passions, its extreme vanity makes it capable of
the wildest excesses.
In all the possible situations of married life, this type never
consults any other arbiter than vanity, and it is only when its
caution, cowardice or indolence can overpower its vanity that the
latter does not decide the issue.
Having no real deep passion to direct them, the men and women of
this type are actually drawn into marriage in the first place solely
from motives of vanity, because the state of being betrothed is a
state of (1) supreme importance, (2) conspicuousness, (3) intense and
unscrupulous mutual worship, and (4) romantic glamour.
Their marriage is likely to be the least stable of all marriages among
negative people, however, for the moment their vanity ceases to be fed,
or humoured, they are likely to weary of an association that affords
them ever less and less of the joys of their engaged days. Lacking
the sound physiological promptings which make a fully-adapted life
sufficient for their happiness and serenity, they become restless the
moment (1) adulation declines from the quarter of the spouse, (2) the
attention of their world ceases from being concentrated upon them,
and (3) that feeling of exaltation which filled their breast during
courtship—and particularly on their wedding day—shows signs of waning.
The woman in this kind of match finds out soon after marriage that
while she has become the mistress of her own home, she is living in an
atmosphere which, compared with that she had grown accustomed to in
the days when her matchmaking mother directed her life, and during the
months or years of her courtship, is depressingly deficient in appeals
to her vanity.
Her husband is securely bound to her by law. His first raptures are
over, and the two seem to be settling down to a hum-drum existence, in
which those deep thrills of yore seem entirely to have gone from her
life. But precisely those thrills were the breath of her nostrils. All
the joys of marital intimacy with the man she “loves” do not make up
for the loss of that. Her body is not tonic or vital enough to provide
any comfort for the exaltation her vanity once afforded her.
She therefore contrives so to modify her hum-drum existence as to
restore to it some of the atmosphere of her late adolescence and the
days of her courtship. She goes in search of company; she insists on
men coming to the house. She sings, or acts, or goes in for sports—all
with a view to restoring that atmosphere in which she became engaged.
In the end, she easily finds some idiot of a man who will be ignorant
and vain enough to court her, and when this happens she will at last
breathe deeply again.
These courtships which the vain negative woman contrives to bring
about, in order to feed her vanity, may or may not lead to adultery.
Frequently they do, because, although she is certainly not actuated by
passion in contriving them, she may by chance light upon a paramour who
is passionate, and then, in order to prolong the farce, she finds she
must yield to his importunacies. Indeed, unless she do yield, the whole
of the realistic nature of the love affair, which she has done her
best to impart to the experience, will be destroyed. Thus, despite her
lack of real passion, this kind of vain adulteress frequently finds
herself in the Divorce Court, with the most damning evidence against
her, when all the time she has never desired the illicit consummation.
What was necessary—nay, essential—to her, was the breath of adulation,
not the final embrace of the procreator. She wanted a life that was a
long courtship, because courtship is the time when vanity receives its
strongest appeals. As, however, she could hardly simulate _une grande
passion_ without actually appearing desirous of the consummation, her
first marriage is ruined.
Very frequently indeed these women do not allow the consummating step
to be taken. Not being at all disposed to it physically, their caution,
their cowardice, and their indolence easily get the upper hand, and
they ultimately disappoint their expectant lover; but as a rule
this happens only when they have squeezed him dry of every possible
flattering epithet and attention.
But, the reader will object, as far as behaviour and results are
concerned, where is the difference here between the negative woman
acting on the impulse of vanity, and the positive woman acting on the
impulse of passion?
To judge from the evidence heard in the Divorce Court, the difference
is admittedly slight. There is the same dissatisfaction with the home
and the mate, leading to the same longing for amusements and activities
of all kinds which promise a chance of variety. In actual practice,
however, the differences are marked. The positive woman goes about
the business with more solemn, even sullen determination. She does
not smile, laugh, and frivol about it as the negative woman does. The
latter betrays her immediate aim, which is the satisfaction of vanity,
by her extreme enjoyment of every step along her irregular path. She
enjoys the mere means to an end, which supply the gratification that
her vanity needs. The former, having only the end in view, accepts the
means as a necessary preliminary, but these means obviously leave her
much more unmoved than they do her negative sister.
Thus negative women are notoriously what the French call _grimacières_.
They proclaim their true nature by the perpetual grin that distorts
their features throughout the whole period in which they receive
attentions from their worshipper. Deep passion does not grin in this
way. It is either too deeply stirred, or it is too shy, to make an open
exhibition of its feelings. Besides, it is greatly agitated and anxious
about the issue.
The vain, negative woman, moreover, is always conscious of an observing
public when she is in the company of her admirer, and her triumphant
glances at onlookers in such circumstances are a sort of challenge to
them to contemplate her in the full intensity of her joy. Part of the
gratification of her vanity consists in drawing the envious looks of
other women upon her. Hence, too, her perpetual grin, a good deal of
which is meant for public notice. The positive woman, on the other
hand, is too deeply interested, too seriously concerned, to be able to
give a thought to the onlookers. She may even shun the crowd. In her,
everything is subordinated to the principal end she has in view.
The vain, negative woman, moreover, because she does not really desire
the man who happens to be worshipping her, will brook no breach of
manners, of chivalry, of steady worship from him. She is constantly on
the alert and vigilant. She keeps him up to the mark, and will quickly
rap his knuckles if the incense he is burning at the altar of her
self-esteem is the least bit stale, or burns with only a moderate fury,
or is swung with any sign of diminished zeal. The passionate woman, on
the other hand, will bear anything from the man she really desires,
except—absence.
The vain woman’s hatred is roused, not by a refusal to cohabit with
her, but by a noticeable lameness in her worshipper’s flattering
fluency. _She hates those who wound her vanity, not those who cheat her
will to Life and its multiplication._ She will become homicidal only if
she is made to look small or ridiculous, not if she is left sterile.
She loathes situations in which she cannot make a display of her bliss.
The positive woman, on the other hand, longs for privacy and secrecy,
and forgives nothing less easily than a lack of virile ardour in her
male pursuer. He may be silent to the point of dumbness, inarticulate
to the point of being unable to apologise when he spills his soup over
her dress at table;—all these things she overlooks if he has the first
pre-requisite of Life, which is virile ardour rising to impatient and
restless importunacy. On the other hand, the worshipper who spills his
soup over his negative mistress’s dress in a restaurant or any public
assembly, would thenceforward be loathed on that account alone. Because
it is mortifying to one’s vanity to be made ridiculous in public.
The negative man of this class is of the cold Don Juan type, who
gratifies his vanity more than his sexual appetite by repeated
conquests. He too soon tires of his wife and of his home. He does this
all the more readily, seeing that his marriage itself has usually
been quite an unintended consummation on his part of one of the many
flirtations his vanity led him into in early manhood, and that he has
been chafing ever since it was finally settled at the thought of the
many conquests he might have made before taking the final step.
His nostrils, too, yearn for the hot breath of adulation. He is a
tormentor of positive women, because he can so readily hold himself
aloof at the last station before the terminus.
If this man becomes unfaithful, it will be because his enormous vanity
has overcome his caution. In order to extract the last and most
enthralling confession from a young woman’s heart—which will cause him
to reach his highest pinnacle of exaltation—one day he will go too far,
either in his protestations or in his caresses,[98] and then, if he is
dealing with the kind of girl or woman who knows of no facile retreat
from such avowals, and who is really in earnest, he will find himself
impelled in a direction and to an end which he can truthfully swear he
never had in contemplation at the outset.
The fact that the law of England deals too lightly with this kind of
dandified scoundrel (for such men almost always dress well) is due not
merely to the fact that, generally speaking, it is grotesquely lenient
to correspondents as a class, but also to its inability to distinguish
between the adultery of the negative man and woman, whose misdemeanour
is the outcome of vanity alone, and whose ruin of another’s home is,
therefore, wanton and unnecessary, and the adultery which is the
outcome of genuine passion, and which, therefore, partakes far more of
that quality of human action which is elemental and inevitable.
This man only becomes tragic under a snub. He finds no infinite
resource in a deep knowledge of his own value, and is, therefore,
incapable of self-consolation when shown the cold-shoulder. Hence the
woman who does not fall in with his scheme of mutual worship, incurs
his homicidal loathing. She destroys his _joie de vivre_, his very
_primum mobile_, the source of his will to live. His career is a series
of escapes from female fires he has deliberately kindled; but he is
always more ready to forgive a burn than the fuel that refuses to flare
up under the power of his bellows.
Before concluding section (_c_) perhaps it would be advisable and
also helpful to give a brief analysis of the psychological forces
which impel the negative, vain man and woman along their career of
vanity-gratification at all costs. For, while to understand them will
be in a measure to exonerate them, it will also serve as a means of
recognizing their type when we see it.
Now the fundamental truth to be grasped about vanity is that it is
always found in conjunction with modesty. It is the intense modesty of
the vain person that forces him to gratify his vanity at every turn.
What, then, is modesty? In ultimate practice it amounts to an inability
to set a value on oneself, an inability to place oneself according to
one’s worth in the graduated hierarchy of human beings. The modest man
waits to be given his place, to be told where he stands, to be priced
and valued by his fellow-men. Compliments mean a good deal to him,
because, since he has no settled opinion of himself, they promote his
self-esteem. In short, his self-esteem fluctuates according to his
receipts in compliments and abuse. And since his good spirits depend
largely upon his self-esteem, his spirits may also be said to fluctuate
according to these receipts. Unlike his proud brother, he does not hold
a good or poor opinion of himself because of an inner conviction of
his worth, which is settled; he holds it because he has been _modest_
enough to wait for the world to give it to him.
But this makes him entirely dependent upon his fellow-men for his
knowledge of his worth, and consequently for the condition of his
spirits. By throwing him always upon the judgment of his fellows for
his opinion of himself and his good spirits, his modesty therefore
tends to lead the modest man into the constant practice of trying to
_seduce_ his fellow-men to such an opinion of himself as will not
cause his spirits to suffer. He covets good opinions, because on them
alone can his self-esteem, and therefore his good spirits, thrive.
In order to enjoy that comfortable feeling of satisfaction which
promoted self-esteem affords, he is constantly tempted to persuade his
fellow-men into giving it to him. This makes him amenable, and what the
modern world calls “lovable,” because he glows under compliments, and
becomes pliable and susceptible to influence, and by the side of him
his proud inflexible brother appears to the modern world as cold and
inaccessible.[99] The vain man asks: “What did So-and-so say of me?”
or “What did So-and-so think of me?” And according to the answer he
receives he is either happy or depressed.
The proud man does not care what So-and-so thinks of him. He is not
concerned with public opinion. He knows his own good and bad points,
and no views about himself, entertained by his fellows, can modify that
knowledge one way or the other. Consequently he is not always busy
trying to seduce his circle of relatives, friends, and acquaintances
into a good opinion of him. This makes him stiff, independent,
unamenable, and dignified—in fact, everything that the modern world is
least able to tolerate with patience.
The modest man lives in his neighbour’s views of himself. He depends
on them for his self-esteem, and therefore for his _joie de vivre_. On
these views he measures his worth. It is only human, therefore, that he
should be anxious to make them as favourable as possible.
Now it is this constant effort to make these views as favourable as
possible, and the pleasure he feels over the success of his efforts,
that constitute the characteristic known as “vanity,” for which the
modest man is notorious. It is obvious that when no other deeper
motives interfere—as in the case of all those people whom I call
negative, and whose physiological or bodily promptings are hardly
audible—vanity very soon becomes the only mainspring of action. It
constitutes the only tribunal before which life’s alternatives are
drawn for examination; and, according to whether vanity promises to
be gratified or not by a certain course, that course is adopted or
rejected.
When I say, therefore, that these vain, modest and negative people
approximate nearest to the passionate, tragic type, it will readily
be seen why this must be so. For to snub or to withhold your good
opinion from the vain man or woman, is not only an offence in itself,
it also deprives that man or woman of self-esteem for the time being.
They depend on your good opinion of them for their good opinion
of themselves. Not to give them your good opinion is, therefore,
tantamount to destroying their _joie de vivre_ for the time being;
it amounts to depriving them of their mainspring, which is gratified
vanity. But this is as good as killing them. Until they can find
someone, or think of someone, who can cancel out your poor opinion of
them, by a more exalted opinion, they are, therefore, desperate. They
hate with a homicidal hatred (vain people never forgive anyone who has
mortified their vanity), and this makes them tragic. Tragedy among vain
negative people is always to be traced to wounded vanity, and never to
passion. The constant mistake made by the modern world is to confound
the passionate crime with the crime that arises from vanity.[100] But
the passionate crime is of a different order of rank altogether. It is
always a crime arising out of an affront against Life itself, whereas
the crime that springs from vanity is always the result of the much
more insignificant fact that somebody’s good opinion of himself has
been assailed.[101]
In class (_d_) we also have a very large and growing section of the
population, particularly among the middle classes. It consists of
people, not unlike the former, but who know exactly what real passion
does, and how it does it, and who proceed to ape it in every momentous
incident of their lives. They are negative and therefore have no
genuine promptings from passion; but they read and observe a good deal,
and they emulate their passionate fellows with a pertinacity worthy
of a better purpose. They will fall in love, marry, commit adultery,
divorce, and even commit murder, provided that they can convince
themselves that each successive step has been taken in the grand style.
And, as they proceed through their various metamorphoses, they watch
themselves with the double interest of participators and spectators of
a great drama.
* * * * *
Of the whole negative class it may be said that they are radically
unstable in marriage, because they are not actuated by any natural
passion or impulse, and therefore do not become _wedded_ to any
environment where their instincts find perfect adaptation. On the
other hand, however, they are frequently able, owing to this very
lack of natural passion, to endure for a lifetime matrimonial unions
which would be intolerable to the positive type for a month, and this
accounts for the fact that, in England particularly, there are so many
peaceful lifelong unions of couples who are childless and doomed to
childlessness.
The most constant characteristic of all negative people, however, is
this, that they are always prepared, and able, to silence the natural
passions (because in them these forces are so feeble) and to direct
their conduct according to any conceivable rule other than that of
these natural passions. Thus opportunism, vanity, an eye to the main
chance, love of display, histrionic tastes, indolence, caution,
cowardice—each one of these factors may at different moments direct
their lives; but true passion certainly never will, and the very
fact that it cannot, they will dress in every form of high-falutin’
euphemism. They will call their lack of passion, self-control, or
strength of will; they will describe it as ordinary common decency;
they will even have the impudence to call it simply “good breeding,”
and sometimes they will have the duplicity and arrogance to call it
purity.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] See Chapter 44 of the _Ergänzung zum vierten Buch_ of the _Welt
als Wille und Vorstellung_. In _La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée_,
by C. Lombroso and G. Ferrero (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1896) the authors,
wishing to emphasize the same fact, say very plainly: “C’est le besoin
de l’espèce, le besoin maternel, qui pousse la femme vers l’homme,
l’amour féminin étant une fonction subordonnée à la maternité” (p. 107).
[71] See _ante_, p. 148. See also Lombroso and Ferrero, Op. cit.
(p. 112): “Psychiquement, l’amour de la mère se greffe toujours et
l’emporte sur le besoin du sexe.”
[72] See Sir Bargrave Deane’s evidence before the Royal Commission
on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, 1912, para. 1163: “My impression
is that it is a very serious question—this absence of children—to
the married life, and I believe you will find (I am certain it is so
from my experience this term) that if there are children it keeps the
home together, and they both work together.” Lord Salvesen (Judge of
Court of Sessions, Scotland), speaking before the same Commission, and
discussing the statistics as to childless and fruitful marriages, said:
“I draw this inference, that I think they show where there are children
the union is strengthened, and parties are more unwilling to have it
dissolved” (para. 6214 of the Report).
[73] In addition to the engrossing character of the rôle of mother, and
the tendency it has to invade every controlling centre in a positive
woman’s nature, we should also remember that, inasmuch as man is only
important to woman as a means to an end, his importance must diminish
_pro rata_ as the end tends to be achieved and visibly materialized in
the form of the growing family.
[74] The modern man’s chief safeguard against becoming a complete
nonentity in the home is, of course, his hold on the purse-strings.
This procures him a sort of perfunctory regard.
[75] See footnote, pp. 179, 180.
[76] Buffon in his _Discours sur la nature des Animaux_ makes the
following profound remark which English people as a whole would do well
to take to heart: “_Amour, pourquoi fais-tu l’état heureux de tous les
êtres, et le malheur de l’homme? C’est qu’il n’y a que le physique de
cette passion qui soit bon; c’est que, malgré ce que peuvent dire les
gens épris, le moral n’en vaut rien_” (see _Oeuvres Complètes, Tome
3me_, Paris, 1837, pp. 21-22).
[77] As a proof of this, behold the aggressive exultation of the
ordinary man over every fresh addition to his family.
[78] So far from being conscious of the will to the multiplication of
life, it frequently happens that women do all that is required in order
to achieve fertilization, and yet protest that they do not wish to have
children, or that they do not care for children.
[79] The ancient Hindus, from whose great wisdom nothing was hidden,
not only openly recognized this fact, but made special provision for
it. In the _Book of Manu_ there were special periods of absence allowed
for husbands, beyond which their wives were no longer forbidden from
seeking fertilization elsewhere (see Book IX, verse 76). It should be
borne in mind, however, that a very large proportion of the women who
committed adultery during the war did so out of vanity rather than out
of passion. The preponderance of negative women in England makes the
passionate crime a much rarer occurrence than is generally supposed.
See explanation of the rôle of vanity in adultery in the second half of
this chapter.
[80] Even in regard to the legendary Penelope we have to remember that
tradition relates certain facts about her that cast some reflection
upon her normality. Why, for instance, was she thrown into the sea by
her parents? Both of her parents came from Sparta, and the Spartans
did not scruple to destroy abnormal children. In fact, they regarded
it as a religious duty to do so. At the very beginning of her life,
therefore, some suspicion is cast which entitles us to question whether
she can have been as desirable as the numbers of her suitors leads us
to believe. Further, we may quite pertinently inquire what it was that
ever induced Odysseus to spend twenty years of his life away from his
wife, unless there were some secret and profound reason. It is true
that his adventures are presented to us in the narrative as being
forced upon him. But who has ever known an adventurer whose adventures
were not inevitable?
[81] The realism and methodical certainty with which adultery was
expected in the wife by the absent husband both in antiquity and
the Middle Ages is shown (1) by the general attitude of wonder
and admiration maintained towards Penelope, and (2) by the famous
_ceintures de chasteté_ in which the aid of the locksmith was enlisted
in order to safeguard an absent husband’s honour.
[82] The fact that during the war numbers of married women were thus
served by men very much older than themselves, only shows how, as his
years increase, a foolish man’s vanity sets ever greater store by a
female’s favours. It is too easily forgotten that when a man is a born
fool, old age does but increase his foolishness; it does not, as most
people suppose, turn bad wine into good.
[83] In one case this occurred, despite the fact that all the woman’s
relatives and friends constantly urged her to rid herself of her
useless mate by fair means or foul.
[84] The _Laws of Manu_ make special provision for a woman who is
childless owing to her husband’s fault.
[85] A good deal of the pseudo-scientific literature of their day
even tells them that the orgasm is just as important to them as to
the male, and lays such stress upon it that they may be forgiven for
misunderstanding its real value to their lives.
[86] Women of a slightly more intellectual mould of mind generally
become interested in some public movement or Cause, or begin to take up
a new religion or philosophy, or express the desire to go in for acting
at this stage. But the same forces are at work in them as in the woman
described above—that is to say, their old environment having failed
to procure them the whole physiological cycle which they need, their
instincts urge them blindly to seek a fresh environment.
[87] Women are particularly prone to endeavour to rule in the home by
means of this trick of giving their spouse a guilty conscience, and
they do not mind much what words they use or abuse to achieve that
end. The word “selfish,” however, is a very convenient word for this
purpose, particularly if they happen to be dealing with a man who
believes, as they do, that it has a meaning and that this meaning is
offensive.
[88] All this time she may have been protesting _consciously_ that
_she does not want children_ and that she is quite happy without them.
It is her blind instinct and the impelling force of her dissatisfied
reproductive organs that have been driving her (despite her conscious
disinclination or indifference to motherhood) into situations in which
she can be fertilized.
[89] To this anthropologists may object: What about the Australian
Bushmen who did not associate the coitus with reproduction? True; but
they knew that children came with marriage, although they did not know
that the coitus had anything to do with their appearance. And the fact
of being a married man would thus become inextricably mingled with the
condition of paternity.
[90] Among the reasons given for the wife’s unfaithfulness there are
of course a few that apply also to the husband. These the reader will
readily pick out, and they do not require to be re-stated here. To give
one example of these common reasons, however, I would remind the reader
of the effect of the continued use of contraceptives on happy sexual
relations.
[91] “H” signifies husband’s petition: “W” signifies wife’s.
[92] Unfortunately these figures were unobtainable, as for the previous
years, distinct for husband and wife.
[93] Figures for the years 1913 and 1914 unobtainable.
[94] Priests of the Holy Catholic Church not included.
[95] As they include unmarried men, they are somewhat in excess of the
correct figures for families, but the proportions between them would
not be so very much affected by the omission of the unmarried.
[96] It is this omission to draw a sharp distinction between the
proclivities of flourishing health and those of lack of health or of
sub-normal health, that vitiates the arguments and conclusions in
such books as Otto Weininger’s _Sex and Character_, and essays like
Schopenhauer’s on _Woman_ and _The Metaphysics of Love_. This omission
is more particularly fatal to-day when negative people are becoming
very much more numerous than positive people.
[97] The reason why women live in such dread of the man who can see
through them, and endeavour to heap every kind of ignominy upon him, is
that in their alleged “mystery” lies their power over the average man,
and that their sentiments and insistence on a sentimental view of their
sex, all help to furnish their arsenal with the weapons they can wield
most effectively against man in general. The wonder is that they have
been able to impose _their_ view of the penetrating man upon the mass
of British mankind.
[98] The same lack of caution probably led to his marriage; for, in
view of the negative character of his constitution he is not likely to
marry in order to meet the deep bodily need St. Paul speaks of.
[99] Truth to tell, the proud man is disliked nowadays. There is no
place for him. The whole of the modern world is run and organized
on such lines, that only the vain man and woman are regarded as
desirable. The bulk of modern men are of the modest-vain type, who purr
contentedly when their fellows smile upon them; hence the enormous
increase in futile and meaningless orders and badges of honour in
recent years, and the stampede there is to obtain them.
[100] In his _House of the Dead_, Dostoiewsky lays some stress on the
frequent occurrence of vanity in criminals. See particularly Chapter I.
[101] It is this fact that makes the judgments of vain people so
unreliable and worthless; because a vain person always judges all
people, not according to their true worth, but according to the
satisfaction his vanity has derived from them. Thus a genius who
mortifies a vain man’s vanity (or a vain woman’s vanity) is called a
“fool,” a “detestable fraud,” a “stuck-up, pretentious prig,” etc.,
etc. On the other hand, the fool who knows how to flatter is regarded
as intelligent, understanding, perspicacious, knowledgeable, etc.,
etc., by the vain person. The whole of modern opinion, based as it
largely is upon vain impulses, thus becomes quite worthless.
CHAPTER IX
The Old Maid and Her Relation to Society
One of the first facts to be remembered about the spinster, whether
she be a positive or a negative woman, is that she is an abnormal
being—just as the celibate priest is abnormal, and just as any
non-reproductive adult animal is abnormal—and therefore that her
impulses must inevitably find their adaptation in an abnormal manner.
This may be an unpleasant fact, and it may seem a hard thing to say;
but we are not concerned here with what is pleasant, kind-hearted, or
courteous. Our concern is much more to approach as nearly as we can
to the truth on this matter; and since the phenomenon of spinsterhood
is well known, to deal with it in a manner that will be useful to all
those who wish to arrive at a better understanding of it.
Modern people have grown so emotional and sentimental as to truth
in general, that it is becoming more and more difficult to deal in
a straightforward way with subjects having unpleasant associations,
or likely to lead to unpleasant conclusions, without incurring all
kinds of imputations that are utterly irrelevant to an honest spirit
of inquiry. The moment they leave the investigation of such obviously
harmless subjects as chess or bridge, and turn their attention to human
nature, modern people feel that the pursuit of truth must or ought to
be directed more by a constant regard for good feeling, politeness and
pleasantness, than by any rigorous endeavour to arrive at facts.
For instance, when the ordinary middle-class person of the present
day hears it said that spinsters are abnormal, cannot help acting
abnormally, and must therefore constitute an abnormal influence in
society, he finds it difficult to resist the temptation to object
indignantly: “Oh, but it isn’t their fault if they are spinsters—why
say such hard things about them?”
It never occurs to such a person that the business of discovering
the facts about a certain phenomenon is not an undertaking that can
be trammelled by considerations either of gallantry or drawing-room
etiquette, nor is it embarked upon with the object of apportioning
praise or blame. The contention that it is not the spinster’s fault
that she is a spinster, therefore, is no more relevant to an inquiry
into spinsterhood, and ought no more to influence us in the conclusions
at which we arrive concerning spinsterhood, than the fact that the germ
of tuberculosis is not responsible for being the germ of tuberculosis
ought to influence us in our inquiry into its relation to pulmonary
phthisis.
I am quite prepared to admit without further ado that there are
hundreds, possibly thousands, of noble and eminently desirable women in
England to-day who have remained spinsters from deliberate choice. I
have no doubt that if I had been a woman and had entertained anything
approximately like my present opinion of modern men, I too would
have remained a spinster, maybe from sheer nausea.[102] The majority
of modern men are so very much below even a modest idea of what man
should be, they have been so much besotted and debilitated through
generations of unmanly labours and occupations, that it is not merely
conceivable that many women should prefer not to condescend, it is
almost inconceivable that any woman can be found who imagines she has
found her match. Let us clearly define, however, what we have set
ourselves out to investigate. We have not undertaken in this chapter
to show the multifarious reasons why a woman may elect spinsterhood
as her rôle in life. We have undertaken the more important task of
discovering her relation to society when once the rôle of spinster
has been assumed. Whether she has remained a spinster from deliberate
choice, therefore, or whether she is a spinster owing to the loss of
her fiancé at sea or in a railway accident, matters but little. The
fact is that, as the result of circumstances which may or may not have
been beyond her control, she has remained unmarried. As a spinster she
will inevitably develop characteristics more or less true to type.
These characteristics will exercise some influence on her own life
and that of others. It is this influence that we propose to consider,
irrespective of the causes which brought the spinster herself into
being.
From the outset, therefore, it is as well for everybody to bear this
in mind in regard to spinsterhood in general, namely, that since the
spinsters of any country represent a body of human beings who are not
leading natural lives, and whose fundamental instincts are able to find
no normal expression or satisfaction, it follows, on _a priori_ grounds
alone, apart from any question of evidence, which we may ultimately
find for or against, that the influence of this body of spinsters on
the life of the nation to which they belong, must be abnormal, and
therefore contrary to the normal needs and the natural development of
that nation. Moreover, since the abnormal, when it is not supernormal,
tends constantly to gravitate into the morbid, it is not inconsistent
with this principle, but rather a necessary conclusion from it, to say
that the presence of a body of unadapted spinsters in any nation must
exercise a morbid influence upon the life of that nation.
The attitude of the average thinker to this conclusion is, as a rule,
to shrug his shoulders and to exclaim: “What would you do with them,
poor things? They must live!” Certainly. And it is precisely because
they must live that they cannot help exercising a baneful influence on
the life of the community. The fact that modern society can offer no
satisfactory solution of the surplus-woman question does not justify
us in overlooking the evils which are the outcome of surplus women in
our midst. The fact that we can devise no adaptation for them, does
not relieve us of the duty of investigating the nature of the evils to
which their non-adaptedness gives rise.
To concentrate upon the economic aspect of the question, and to say
as many do, that provided these surplus women can support themselves,
the problem of their lives, and the difficulty of their evil influence
upon their nation, is entirely solved, is simply to draw a red
herring across the path of our inquiry. For self-support is not even
the consummation of the life of _man_. How then could it be the
consummation of the life of _woman_, in whom a very much more elaborate
equipment than man’s for a definite calling, demands a far more
complicated range of bodily activities than any to which an occupation
providing merely self-support can possibly lead? Self-support is never
more than a means to an end. The needs of a full and complete life,
therefore, cannot be met by self-support and the industry by which it
is achieved.
Neither is it any satisfactory reply to the question, How can we
correct or eliminate the evils of spinsterhood? to point to the number
of spinsters who are doing what is called “useful work.” In the first
place, it is always wise when such a plea is advanced, to inquire into
the “useful” work in question, in order to discover (_a_) how much of
it has been rendered necessary by the very existence of spinsters in
large numbers, (_b_) how much of it is the creation of the spinsters
themselves in their resolute insistence on acquiring some importance,
(_c_) how much of it is actually harmful, (_d_) how much of it is not
essentially woman’s work at all. Finally, when these questions have
been gone into with sufficient care, we find ourselves back at the old
objection that, however useful the employment may be at which spinsters
may be working, since it cannot thoroughly adapt them (except in the
event of its conforming to two additional conditions which shall be
discussed later),[103] it must leave them still abnormal members of the
community, and therefore a morbid influence.
I propose to discuss the whole question of spinsterhood from the age
when, in healthy girls, the condition begins to prove noticeably
deleterious to health and spirits, to the time when, if marriage has
not taken place, no fertilization can occur.
I therefore have for my subject the general question of spinsterhood,
from the time when a virgin reaches the age of twenty-five, to the time
when she is fifty or more. And very naturally I propose to concern
myself not with spinsters in the legal sense, but only with spinsters
who are entitled to the epithet _intacta_.
Proceeding along the accustomed lines, spinsters shall accordingly be
classified as follows:—
(1) Positive virgins.
(2) Negative virgins.
—that is to say, (1) those whose bodies and instincts say “Yea”
emphatically to life, and who will brook no negative compromise; and
(2) those whose bodies and instincts are not sufficiently vital or
sanguine insistently to demand the fulfilment of their destiny.
It is necessary to make this sharp distinction again, because it is the
only way to be clear regarding the diversity of characteristics which
are to be found among spinsters of all nations and climes.
In Chapter III, I dealt with the question of the origin of instinctive
desire, or bodily impulse or wish. I showed how it arose from two
possible sources:—
(_a_) An ancestral habit, leading to a predisposition to perform
certain actions in a certain manner, or to function in a traditional
way in complete conformity with the lines laid down by previous
generations within a species.
(_b_) A certain correlation of bodily parts or organs, the possession
of which in itself is sufficient to suggest and to enforce a particular
course of conduct in its owner.
I showed that the blind will to function in a certain way, and the
impulse to seek the means of functioning in a certain way, must arise,
provided that these two conditions are present in an individual, and
that his body is in a sufficiently tonic state for these conditions to
operate normally.
Now in a woman the blind will to function as a mother finds its source
in:—
(_a_) The long line of female ancestors who _must_ have been mothers,
and who therefore have established an ancestral maternal habit on the
female side, which reaches the individual female with a considerable
amount of accumulated momentum through the generations that have
preceded her.
(_b_) A certain correlation of bodily parts—the large amount of space
taken up in the female body by the organs connected directly or
indirectly with procreation, the importance of these organs, and the
elaborate nervous organization contrived to bring these organs into
effective and harmonious action when once the proper start has been
given.
(1) In the unmarried woman, therefore, whose body is sufficiently
healthy and tonic to act normally, there are two forces incessantly
impelling her to the employment of her important reproductive organs,
of both of which forces she may be and usually is, childishly
unconscious: they are (_a_) her ancestral bias or habit, and (_b_) the
correlation of her bodily parts. The more perfectly formed she is and
the more healthy she is, the more importunate will these forces be, and
the less inclined will they show themselves to be put off without a
struggle.
This woman or girl I shall call the positive spinster—that is to say,
the type of unmarried female who says “Yea” emphatically to life,
and whose tendency will always be to favour those opportunities,
circumstances, and directions in her life which promise to lead her to
motherhood and the normal functioning of her body.
(2) In the unmarried woman, however, whose body is not sufficiently
healthy or tonic to act normally, there are the same forces present,
driving her to employ her reproductive organs; but the insistence of
these forces not being very great, the drive is hardly felt, or not
felt at all. The ancestral habit, although the same of course, speaks
with a fainter voice, and the correlation of organs which are less
tonic and less healthy perforce generates a less impetuous impulse.
This woman or girl I shall call the negative spinster—that is to say,
she is the type of unmarried female who either says “Nay” emphatically
to life, and who will not hasten to seize opportunities that promise
to lead to motherhood, or else she will be listless and apathetic
about the whole matter, unconsciously so, and therefore consciously
uninterested, unmoved by any of its aspects.
These two types of spinsters will now be examined separately.
(1) THE POSITIVE SPINSTER
She is usually a great conscious sufferer, sometimes both mentally
and physically; for, while she possesses the physical equipment for
marriage in a highly tonic condition, with all the potential virtues of
the mother, this equipment and these virtues never have the opportunity
of deploying their power.
She may, at the cost of great pains, develop other virtues and other
adaptations; but the fact to be remembered about her is, that the
functions for which she is best fitted and the virtues which are most
essentially hers, cannot be used in her life.
Whatever else she may become—_that_ is always her second calling. Her
true vocation will have been missed. What perfection soever she may
attain in her second calling, will always be inferior to that which she
would certainly have shown in the calling for which she was primarily
and chiefly endowed.
In addition, however, to the extra fatigue, worry, pains and distaste
always connected with pursuing a vocation not primarily one’s own, she
herself will always feel and reveal the disillusionment and bitter
regret of one who is conscious of having been designed for something
different. The mood of the artist whom circumstances have compelled to
adopt accountancy for a livelihood, will be her constant mood.
In addition to being a person pursuing a wrong vocation, in this sense,
however, she will feel something more than the artist who is doomed to
accountancy. She will feel “out of it,” as the popular expression has
it—outside that which is most thrilling, most enthralling, and most
universally interesting, outside the main _Stream of Life_ itself.
All of us, as we look around and behold our big cities, our municipal
authorities and their offices, our streets, our traffic on those
streets, our railways, our Parliament, our system of Judicature, our
industries, our commerce, and finally the land beyond with all its
agricultural and mining activities; all of us who can with one sweeping
glance comprehend the immensely vast and intricate activities which
go to make a modern nation, have sometimes a lucid moment when we can
abstract from the wild and confusing tangle of our environment the idea
of the _purpose_ for which it is all there, the idea of the _force_ for
which it is organized—in short the underlying _fact_ which gives the
city, the country beyond, and all the activities we see, a sense, a
genuine meaning.
This purpose, this force, this fact, is the _Stream of Life_ that runs
through our organized State, and to which all these activities, all
these complex conditions, do but minister. The factory is thus beheld,
not as an end in itself, but like art, like railways, like the bus
service and the Government, it is only an instrument serving the most
important thing of all, the Stream of Life, Human Life.
Now it is precisely from this most important thing of all that the
spinster feels herself most radically and hopelessly severed. She
may minister to it indirectly, through the factory, the municipal
or Government offices, the studio, the nursery or the scientific
professions; but her importance will be commensurate with the relation
she bears to it. She is one step removed from the main stream, she does
not directly flow with it; before the most important thing on earth,
the thing that gives everything else its sense, she is and can only be
a spectator. This is the additional anguish she must feel as a creature
cheated of her proper calling. The artist with whom we have compared
her, who suffers the mortifying experience of pursuing a vocation
(accountancy) not his own, may after all be flowing with the Stream of
Life, and form part of it. The additional anguish of being “out of it,”
in this sense, he need not necessarily feel. He experiences only half
the spinster’s spiritual distress.
Nor will it necessarily console her, or reconcile her to her relatively
unimportant fate as spectator, to point to the pain, the passion, the
disappointment, the hardships, the disease and the poverty that lash
the main Stream of Life like a flail. If she is honest, she will tell
you just what everybody else feels—that she would risk all these things
to be in it.
But there is yet something more she endures, which the artist doomed to
accountancy is spared. Provided he be wise and observes the essential
rules of hygiene and sound diet, there is no reason, despite his
abandoned mission, why his body should suffer very severely. While he
may deplore his wasted capacity for art, he may nevertheless live a
healthy sexual life and become a happy father.
The positive spinster, on the other hand, cannot well escape the
physical penalty of her total sexual abstinence. The rebuff offered
to her reproductive system by the long, endless wait is neither
passed over by Nature nor forgiven. Such elaborate preparations as
have been made in her body for a specific consummation cannot end in
nothing, without certain very definite reactions, which it is neither
fanciful nor fantastic, but rather helpful, to describe collectively
as a profound _physiological disappointment_. The fact that this
physiological disappointment does not enter consciousness as a
disappointment has nothing whatever to do with its reality.
The energy that has been waiting and waiting to be used endeavours
to discharge itself. Since it cannot find the customary and normal
channels of discharge, it disperses itself erratically along any
channel that it can find—usually the nerves—and it does this angrily
because of the impetus it has acquired through being checked. The
thwarted instincts show their revolt in internal conflict with the
other instincts of life, and may be so powerful as to convert a
girl hitherto consistently yea-saying into a radical nay-sayer,
or a suicide.[104] Hence the strong tendency to suicide in very
positive girls between the ages of fifteen and twenty, when the
passions are most impetuous, and waiting leads to the maximum amount
of conflict.[105] The fact that the number of suicides among women
increases where their occupations bring them in contact with men, and
that the same association with men also increases their tendency to
lunacy and criminality,[106] supports the view that the physiological
expectancy, by being increased owing to the presence of a strong sexual
stimulus, leads to a greater conflict when it is disappointed.
The discharge of the sexual energy along nervous channels may lead to
every variety of neuropathic symptoms. The woman may become the victim
of phobias, obsessions, melancholia, morbid self-contempt, or morbid
self-esteem (narcissism), facial tics, other spasms, insomnia, vicious
secret habits, and hallucinations. Owing to the fact that other parts
of her body, away from her sexual organs (the throat, œsophagus, or
bowel, etc.), may attempt to find compensation for the inexperienced
sexual sensations, she may find a morbid pleasure in consuming
highly condimented foods, or foods which she can swallow in a bulky
bolus[107]—bananas, new bread, pastry, insufficiently masticated hard
foods, such as bread-crusts, apples, and even raw vegetables. This
propensity, while quickly inducing indigestion, may, by giving a false
appetite, cause her to be taken for a glutton. A case has been known
of a girl who, addicted to this method of pseudo-sexual satisfaction,
used to employ artificial means of vomiting up her food, like the more
dissipated Romans of old, in order to be able to enjoy a fresh bout of
swallowing.[108] The effects of this kind of abuse upon the alimentary
canal may well be imagined, and even where it is not carried to
extremes, must in the long run lead to all the most distressing forms
of chronic dyspepsia.
Furthermore, the instinctive effort which every woman will make, in
cases of vague physiological distress, to conceal her bodily misery
from her friends and relatives, frequently leads to consistent
affectation. It is not necessary that the nature of the bodily misery
should have reached consciousness in order that affectation, as a
means of concealment, should be indulged in. It is sufficient that
the physiological distress should have been communicated vaguely as
_distress_ to the brain. From the moment this has occurred there will
be a tendency in all brave women, who incline to show a bold and
happy face to the world, to practise every kind of affectation. Their
speech, their voice and even their laugh will strike their friends as
over-strained or peculiar. Some will habitually make strange grimaces,
others will smile in a set, exaggerated way, or over-emphasize their
horror at objects disliked and their pleasure at objects approved. The
affectation may even affect their gait, so that they will walk with
a bold manly stride in which an unconscious attempt will be made to
demonstrate to the outside world excessive self-assurance and happy
adaptation, in order to conceal the reverse of these feelings which are
agitating their spirits. As time goes on these affectations will become
fixed habits that no training and no changes in environment can remove.
There may be attempts at sterile compensation, taking the form of
an excessive fondness for children, or a desire to fondle or to
have power over them. This is particularly obnoxious, and entirely
justifies psychologists like Dr. E. Jones in strongly deprecating
the too exclusive teaching of children by unmarried teachers.[109]
It may look very sweet to behold the spinster of from twenty-five
to forty manifesting her affection for a child and kissing, nursing
or instructing it. But when it is remembered that the spinster in
question is not merely giving herself very well-defined pleasure by
the immediate touch of the soft downy skin of the child, or by the
sense of power over it, but may also be rousing in the child itself
certain pleasurable feelings, or certain notions, that do not fail to
become registered on its memory, and may induce either regrettable
sexual precocity or a distorted view of life,[110] the behaviour of
the spinster appears in a less innocuous light. Nevertheless, it must
be admitted that such attempts at sterile compensation by unmarried
women are hard to prevent; for the spinster’s action at such times is
quite unconscious, and she is usually so far from realizing what she is
doing, that if you were to enlighten her upon her conduct she would be
both indignant and disgusted. There can be little doubt, however, that
the spinster’s strong predilection in favour of the teacher’s calling
is largely due to this blind pursuit of some kind of power over the
young.
There may also be attempts at compensation with members of the same
sex—not necessarily in the form of vicious unnatural relations, but in
the nature of patronizing friendship with younger girls. Spinsters in
the wealthy classes who organize and direct girls’ clubs are usually
seeking compensation of this kind, and receive a tremendous amount of
credit for humanitarian motives, of which they are entirely innocent.
Nevertheless, the misinterpretation of the crowd, which takes their
action to be humanitarian, is eagerly seized and adopted by them,
because it helps them to give a definite description to the merely
_compensatory_ character of their interest in the club, which even they
themselves do not, of course, understand.
Among the more wealthy spinsters, there may also be attempts at
compensation through frankly humanitarian propaganda, through the
endowment or enriching of humanitarian institutions, or through
humanitarian labours. This is usually expressed by a very deep concern
about the welfare of animals, or the poor, or the babes of the poor,
_or anything over which the assumption of power constitutes an easy
and uncompromising matter_. We should remember that the relationship
of mother to child derives more than half its exquisite pleasure for
the female from the fact that it is a relationship of almost absolute
power. This instinct to wield power, therefore, which forms an
essential factor in female psychology in its relation to the helpless,
and which explains the regret most mothers feel when their children are
first able to run about and become independent, has to be reckoned with
in the psychology of the spinster. If it cannot in her find its normal
expression, it will seek compensation in every possible way, and since
humanitarian interests offer an uncompromising outlet for its exercise,
humanitarian interests are naturally in very great favour among the
spinsters of all classes.
Intimately connected with humanitarian pursuits, particularly when
they are adopted with frenzied resolution, is however another and
less inviting psychological factor. The theory that males and
females contain in their constitution certain elements, more or less
accentuated, of the other sex, is now so widely accepted that it has
become a commonplace in all speculations upon the sex question. Now
among the characteristics which most frequently manifest themselves in
women of marked male tendencies is a proneness to sadistic expressions
of the sex instinct. The habit of teasing among hysterical girls, and
even among female children not yet pubescent, is a sign of this.[111]
In the normal life of the married female these sadistic impulses become
sublimated either by the action of the stronger male upon her psyche
and physique (which draws the masochistic elements in her to the fore)
or by the natural expression of her power over her baby or babies. In
the unmarried female, or the female without offspring, these sadistic
impulses have to be repressed or curbed. The peaceful and orderly
expression of them in modern society is hardly possible. But we are
told by psychologists that an overpowered instinct asserts itself in an
obverse character.[112] In spinsters, therefore, we should expect the
sadistic elements _in the happiest circumstances_ to become inverted
into intense humanitarianism.[113]
This explains why we so frequently encounter middle-aged spinsters
whose hard metallic faces and cruel cold eyes seem so utterly out of
keeping with their ardent participation in humanitarian movements
of all kinds. I remember one occasion when I happened to call on a
lady of this kind. I was appalled by the terrifying hardness of her
features, and yet, I must say, I was not in the least surprised when,
in the course of the conversation, she asked me (I ought to mention
the district where she lived was a very hilly one) whether I did
not suffer at the sight of the _poor_ horses in the neighbourhood.
These women, who frequently have hearts of stone, nevertheless find
compensation for the repression of their sadistic impulses in the
exercise of the most ungovernable and most obsessional humanitarianism
and sentimentality, but while their neighbours and the local clergy
applaud their lives to the echo, no one has the smallest inkling of
the true nature of the phenomenon. A child would tell at a glance
that these humanitarian and sentimental ladies were not radically
kind by nature, and those who live with them every day would probably
confirm the child’s first impression; but such is the distrust in
England of what the eye can read, and so great and instantaneous is
the respect for humanitarian zeal, particularly when it is backed by a
heavy banking account, that these women frequently die leaving a big
reputation for warm-heartedness behind them.
The fact that this feverish humanitarianism and sentimentality are
frequently most mischievous in their effects and create a number of
national abuses, besides involving the expenditure of large sums of
money on what are frequently the least desirable and least promising
elements in the nation, is concealed beneath the dramatic munificence
of the wealthy spinster’s life.[114]
In the wealthy classes, as the result of their superior cultivation,
the compensation frequently takes an active intellectual form, and
when, owing to the vague consciousness of enduring a great grievance
(common to most positive spinsters who have not successfully sublimated
their reproductive instincts), misanthropy supervenes, there may
arise a very pronounced sex-antagonism, leading the spinsters who
have developed it to engage in pursuits, or in intellectual pastimes,
where they feel they can clash with men, or where they know they can
resist or impede men in the natural business of their lives. Spinsters
seeking this kind of compensation frequently derive great satisfaction
from misogamist meditations. They will display a morbid interest in
arguments against marriage, in the statistics of insanity or disease
among married women, and in the evidence of excessive parturition
(leading to debility) among the wives of the poor. They will exercise
their influence to convert young girls to misanthropy, to misogamy,
or at least to an indifference to men; and if they can achieve this
end, under a religious cloak (which is not difficult with passionate
young girls of eighteen, whose “vague voluminous and powerful feelings,
if afforded means to do so, settle down and concentrate on a single
object,”[115]), they justify themselves on the score that they have
led such young girls into paths of purity and devotion.[116]
It would be impracticable here to deal with all the possible
manifestations of sex-repression in the female celibate. They have been
discussed very fully by other authors, and in detail they would serve
no purpose in this book. I have contented myself with hinting broadly
at those morbid results of sex-repression in the positive virgin which,
while not leading to definite lunacy or insanity, are yet common enough
to demand consideration in a discussion upon the spinster’s relation to
society; but let not any reader imagine that in the outline given above
there has been any desire to dwell upon the black side of a picture
which from whatever angle it be viewed cannot at best be a pleasant
one. There is a good deal of strong feeling among the majority of
people to-day against the belief that sex-repression need necessarily
have _bad_ results. These people say that the school of psycho-analysts
have grossly exaggerated the facts about the phenomena, and have drawn
an unnecessarily lurid description of them. But surely the question is
one concerning which it would be suicidal in a scientist to exaggerate
or overstate his case. Is it not after all common sense?
Years ago—or to be precise in the year 1840—de Quincey, comparing the
mental diseases that arise from excessive expression with those that
come from insufficient expression, or the non-expression, of deep
sensibilities, wrote as follows concerning this matter:
“Amongst the Quakers (who may be regarded as a monastic people)
anomalous forms of nervous derangement are developed, the secret
principle of which turns ... upon feelings too much repelled and driven
in. Morbid suppression of deep sensibilities must lead to states of
disease equally terrific, and possibly even less tractable; not so
sudden and critical it may be, but more settled and gloomy.”[117]
This anticipates most of what modern psychology has discovered about
repression, and can be applied just as legitimately to repression in
the physical as in the psychical sphere. But a very much earlier record
of the same common-sense view about repression, or non-expression of
natural appetites and sensibilities, is to be found in Aristotle’s
_Poetics_, where the doctrine of _catharsis_ constitutes the kernel of
all that modern psychologists would claim in regard to this particular
aspect of civilized humanity.
As the life of the individual female is prolonged, and the _tone_ of
her reproductive organs depreciates through the deleterious influence
of long idle waiting, there occurs an abatement of the unconscious
influences impelling the positive spinster to seek a fuller life.
A sort of passive adaptation to abnormality takes place in which a
balance is attained, and the restless and more afflicting symptoms
become accordingly less acute. But, with the decline in sexual vigour
and alertness, there is a corresponding falling off of good spirits,
hopefulness, and the love of life, and frequently there supervenes a
pronounced distaste for human concerns or a general depression, which
makes the spinster the proverbially embittered female of popular
tradition. The more positive she was at the outset, the more likely is
this revulsion of feeling to appear in an intolerable form—hence the
common occurrence of embittered spinsters on the Continent, where women
are, as a rule, more positive than in England.
Indeed, it can usually be taken for granted that where Nature has been
thwarted without any dire results, Nature was not originally very
strong, or not assertive enough to offer very severe resistance. The
presence of thousands of very cheerful and completely adapted spinsters
in England, therefore, far from being a good sign, is in reality a very
deplorable one; for it argues that in them Nature was not powerful
enough to offer any determined fight before allowing herself to be
completely conquered.
There are but two possible exceptions to this rule, and they occur
where the reproductive instinct has been subjected to the process
known to psychologists as _sublimation_. This innocuous transmutation
of the sex appetite and emotions may be effected either by means of
Christianity (religious fervour)[118] or Alcohol (dypsomania). When
either of these potent sublimators of the sex impulse has come into
operation, it is no longer safe to argue from the spectacle of a
cheerful and happy spinster of middle age, that in her Nature was not
very strong from the start. But, again, the fact should be emphasized
that with the spread of enlightenment on the one hand, and the general
decline in vigorous health on the other, these hitherto unfailing means
of sex-sublimation are becoming ever less and less accessible to the
women of the nation. A generation has arisen on whom the fundamental
tenets of the old faith have lost their hold, and in whom, therefore,
it is becoming ever more and more difficult for Christianity to become
a burning substitutive passion; while this same generation can no
longer undertake the alcoholic cure, owing to the fact that human
health is no longer what it was.[119]
Before proceeding to a discussion of the negative spinster, I now
propose to consider one aspect only of the positive unmarried girl of
the poorer or working classes.
There can be little doubt that in her case, very much more frequently
than in the case of the well-to-do spinster, compensation is sought
in some kind of illicit relation to the males either of her own class
or of the class above. The statistics of prostitution alone show what
an enormous contribution the women of the poorer or working classes
make to the ranks of the courtesans in Europe; and seeing what the
alternative usually is—that is to say, a life of drudgery unrelieved by
any brighter element and aggravated by all the evils of unsuccessful
repression—it is not surprising that among the more positive girls of
the poorer classes, particularly in towns, there are many who go to
swell the army of fast women.
But at this point it will be necessary for me to digress a little in
order to make quite clear my own standpoint in regard to this very
vexed question of prostitution. For it is only an evil in modern
Western Civilization because people insist on making it so.
Our civilization stands or falls as a whole. The intricate adjustments
which constitute its fabric, and the minute ramifications that wander
in all directions from every centre in its complicated organization
to every other centre, and sometimes to every other civilization,
lend to its various parts a character so interdependent and mutually
subservient, that it is no longer possible to lay hold of any important
portion of it, with a view to condemnation, without thereby condemning
the whole.
The comfortable and short-sighted people who, from the security of
their smug homes, point a finger of censure at prostitution, therefore,
have not as a rule the imaginations or the knowledge to realize that
in so doing they are bringing an indictment against the whole order of
society, including their own pathetic fastnesses of bourgeois luxury
and morality.
If prostitution exists on a large scale in modern Europe, and
prostitution is wrong, then the civilizations of modern Europe are
wrong, and it is fatuous to point to the most obvious sore, when the
whole pig is diseased. Nobody nowadays denies, perhaps, that the whole
pig is diseased? Then it is absurd to moan over this one sore.
But why is so much fuss made precisely about prostitution on its sexual
side? There is the prostitution of healthy rosy-fingered youth in
hundreds of other walks of life, and nobody, or scarcely anybody, stirs
to point it out. The young girls who to-day are sent by their parents
at the age of sixteen to twenty to bow their heads for forty-three
hours a week before a typewriter, or a ledger, or a stamping, cutting
or folding machine, get ill just as quickly, lose their beauty just
as surely, and grow depressed and spiritless just as rapidly, as
the sexual prostitute, and they get only a sixteenth or less of the
prostitute’s entertainment out of life into the bargain. Watch the
career of the girl who sells herself to the modern taskmaster of
commerce or industry! Could anything be more tragic? Could any satyr
bring about grosser degradation of health and spirits? What sympathy or
horror or righteous indignation can you rouse in the moral toads, who
inveigh against prostitution, by pointing to the rounded shoulders, the
loveless life, the listless eyes, the bloodless cheeks and hands of the
typewriter or other machine drudge? None!
They reply that the typist’s worn-out looks, her lost beauty, her faded
youth, her hopeless expression and outlook, are _not_ the result of a
life of immorality, _therefore_ she is honourable, therefore she need
not be rescued, therefore everything is all right, therefore nothing
need be done.
But enough! The wide-awake will see at once that there is cant in
the very frown that is vouchsafed to sexual prostitution—_cant_, the
inevitable ingredient of every movement and every counter-movement in
these islands.[120]
The evils of prostitution are no greater and no more tragic than
those of any other form of exploitation of the individual. That which
unnecessarily aggravates the horrors of the public courtesan’s life in
England is not necessarily the natural consequences of the life itself,
but the whole attitude of the community and of the legislature to the
question of prostitution in general.[121]
Society in England seems resolutely determined not to face and answer
the question: Is prostitution necessary or unnecessary? If it is
necessary to the kind of civilization we have evolved, then the only
honourable, the only humane, the only magnanimous course to take, is
to face it bravely and honestly, and do all we can for those women who
are contributing their lives to a public service, just as we do all we
can for soldiers and sailors in war-time, and for all public workers
who perform useful and dangerous duties for the public weal. If it is
unnecessary, then steps should be taken to find out why it continues
to exist, what flaw in our social system accounts for its survival,
despite the fact that it is superfluous; and how that flaw can be best
removed.
The general consensus of opinion among European legislators and
the European public must be to the effect that prostitution is
necessary. It is inconceivable that it should be allowed to survive as
flourishingly as it does in England and on the Continent, if public
opinion and the legislators in each country could find no excuse for
it. What is still more inconceivable, however, is the diabolical
hypocrisy of a public, which at the same time tacitly assents to it as
a social need, and yet covers with shame and contempt those who devote
their lives to making it possible.
Truth to tell, there are many grave reasons why prostitution[122] still
constitutes a necessary adjunct to our topsy-turvy, hare-brained social
system, and as long as it remains as topsy-turvy and hare-brained as
it is, the prostitute will continue to be indispensable. In view of
this fact, it is but rational, not to mention humane, to regard with
more solicitude and charity those who from what motive, or through what
circumstances soever, supply the means for its existence.
I will touch but lightly on two aspects of society which seem to
contribute chiefly to the causes making prostitution a public
necessity. I refer to (_a_) the virgin ideal in marriage, or
_parthenogamy_, and (_b_) the economic system which compels thousands
among the men of the struggling classes to marry at a date very
much later than their physiological development would indicate as
reasonable.[123]
(_a_) In order to preserve the custom of parthenogamy in conjunction
with (_b_) it is obvious that there must be some safety-valve, some
outlet for the expression of virile passions, which while being
normal is capable of safeguarding a certain large body of virgins
annually, and of preserving them from pre-connubial amours. The fact
that, at present, this safety-valve or outlet, though countenanced by
society, is entirely neglected, despised and concealed by the public,
and is thus allowed to breed many evils which are not necessary to
prostitution _per se_, is not so much a reflection on the prostitute
as upon the administration which leaves this department of social life
utterly uncared for and unorganized.
(_b_) Apart altogether from the fact that late marriages resulting from
economic pressure necessitate the existence of some relief measure
which will preclude the deleterious alternative of repression, or
unnatural vice, in young men; for the adolescent, as we have seen in
the Chapter on Marriage, it is highly desirable that there should be
some school, some opportunity for experience in sexual relations, as
there was in ancient Greece, for instance, in which the young male, in
addition to finding the means of healthily delaying marriage, may also
acquire that mastery in the mysteries of life without which his future
marriage may very seriously suffer. It is one of the most scandalous
features of modern society that, while this relief measure and this
school are allowed to exist, nothing is done to protect either the
women who supply its personnel, or the young men who resort to it, from
all the worst consequences of promiscuity and vice.
The old moralists or moralizers of the nineteenth century, now thank
goodness rapidly becoming extinct, used to justify this scandal by
arguing that the dangers attending the recourse to the prostitute
served a good purpose in two respects: (1) They offered a strong
inducement to sexual abstinence among young men, and (2) they cast
the well-merited stigma of shame and disease upon those women who
ministered to these young men’s ungovernable passions.
It is now no longer possible either medically or psychologically to
support (1), consequently the cold-blooded moral inference in (2)
falls to the ground. The evils of abstinence among men are certainly
in this country more serious than those of indulgence, while the evils
resulting from a total absence of experience in sexual matters among
young men are perhaps the worst of all.
The present obvious duty of civilization, therefore, short of so
revolutionizing society as to make parthenogamy a thing of the past,
and late marriages unnecessary, is to see that the sexual relief
measure and school that the modern world provides for its young men are
placed upon a sounder, a purer and a more humane basis, free from the
ignorant bias of puritanical busy-bodies, and secured from the dangers
that now attend them.
It only remains now to say a word on the position of the prostitute
herself. From the psychological and physical point of view the sadness
of her plight does not reside, as the Puritans of England suppose,
in the moral turpitude of her lot, or in her loathing of it—for that
is simply high-falutin’ nonsense.[124] It resides in the fact that
her very taste for her calling, or the very desire that drew her into
it—that she herself in fact—is a physiological misunderstanding. Her
calling, like that of the childless married woman, presupposes that
she will have to cry “Halt!” to a physiological process in her being,
which only finds its first step in the coitus. By a false analogy with
man’s sexual life the orgasm, which to woman is only the beginning of a
long cycle of sex-experiences which end with the weaning of the child,
is the only part of the female cycle which is vouchsafed her. Like the
barren woman, she is denied the whole of the subsequent stages of the
cycle, so rich in delightful experiences to her, and continues like a
man to confine herself to orgasms—orgasms _ad infinitum_.[125]
It is this that constitutes the sad side of the prostitute’s life. If
she have a tragedy, this is her tragedy. But for fear lest, prompted
by vague moral prejudices, we feel tempted to make too much even of
this aspect of her life—generally overlooked, by the by, in all
dissertations I have read about her—we should remember that she shares
this sad experience not only with thousands of spinsters, but also with
thousands of married women who, from some cause or other, frequently
economic pressure, are compelled to remain childless.[126]
From the national point of view, the feature about modern prostitution
(apart from the evils incidental to it which are preventable) which
is most strongly to be deprecated, is the fact that, since it is from
working-class girls that its ranks are largely recruited, the danger
is that it is upon the most temperamental and most positive of these
girls—upon the most desirable of these girls, therefore—that the
temptation to illicit relations with men is likely to exercise the most
potent influence.
(2) THE NEGATIVE SPINSTER
I now come to the consideration of the negative spinster, and when once
I shall have dealt with her, a few remarks about the characteristics
common both to the positive and negative spinster will conclude the
chapter.
The negative spinster, unlike her positive sister, is not a great
conscious sufferer from her condition. She may ail as the result of
constitutional debility incidental to the inferior vitality which
causes her to be negative; but, from the absence of that element in her
life which consummates a woman’s destiny, she will not be conscious of
suffering very severely.
The physical equipment for marriage, and the traditional impetus
derived from the ancestral habits of her sex, are both present in
her, but their urge is faint, the inner voice, far from being loud
and insistent, is barely audible, and she is harassed by little of
that importunacy on the part of her reproductive organs which compels
her sister either to adapt herself normally to life, or else to seek
compensations and to develop acute nervous symptoms in so doing.
Her own and her friends’ failure to recognize the true nature of
her condition, however, frequently, if not invariably, leads to
misinterpretations of her precise value as an individual which are as
gross as they are dangerous—_gross_ because they apply moral values to
a condition that is primarily physical, _dangerous_ because they lead
the rest of the world into a misunderstanding concerning the importance
of a normal sexual life to the individual, and the worth of life
generally.
These misinterpretations, particularly in England and America, usually
take one or all of the following forms:
(1) Miss A, the negative spinster in question, may regard herself, and
be regarded by others, as _above_ the ordinary impulses of her positive
sister, so that she and others may draw a moral from her condition,
and argue that, by means of exercising sufficient _self-control_,
and preoccupying the mind sufficiently with “elevated” thoughts, the
sex-impulse is easily overcome without any dire results whatsoever.
(2) Miss A may regard herself, and be regarded by others, as too “pure”
for sexual impulses, so that, far from needing to repress or suppress
the fleshy “demons” within her, she soars to an altitude too lofty to
be reached by them.
(3) Miss A may regard herself, and be regarded by others, as
_indifferent_ to men, so that she is able to assume an attitude of
philosophical detachment towards the main stream of Life, which she
contemplates from a distance as a mildly amused and sometimes scoffing
spectator.
(4) Miss A may convince herself, and convince others, that
sex-impulses, because they do not happen to be noticeable in her,
are a pure—or rather, an impure illusion. She may argue, and induce
others to argue with her, that the power of these impulses is absurdly
exaggerated by modern psychology, and that she herself is the best
proof of this absurd exaggeration.
As I have pointed out, these misinterpretations are gross, and they are
also dangerous. They are gross, in the first place, because they take
no cognizance of the fact that Miss A is a different creature from her
positive sister, an inferior and a less tonic creature, and secondly
because they give what is really a lamentable condition a falsely
enviable character by concealing its true nature beneath a number of
high-falutin’ euphemisms.
This procedure is dangerous for the following reasons:
(_a_) The Miss A’s of this world, particularly of this English world,
are increasing at such an alarming rate that very soon Miss A will be
the normal woman, and by being held up as the normal woman and the
normal ideal, will mislead the ignorant regarding the most valuable
type of woman.
(_b_) To regard a person as _above_ a normal human passion, when she is
constitutionally and congenitally beneath it, is to lend a power and an
influence to degenerates which must contaminate the national outlook on
all that is desirable in life.
(_c_) To be deceived into imagining that Miss A has achieved by
self-control what her inferior physique has made inevitable is again to
grant her a quality which, by becoming associated with her type, loses
all its instructional worth, besides attributing to her a spurious
value.
(_d_) To accept Miss A’s alleged “purity” as a fact is to remove from
purity all its positive, potent value. The pure virgin is she whose
pride and self-mastery together have protected her from condescending
except to the man who has thoroughly captivated her heart, her
imagination, her sense of the ideal, and her body. But Miss A is not
pure in this sense at all. She is simply _virgo intacta_ because no
deep instinct, no deep impulse, no wild desire, has ever driven her
forth to seek her normal adaptation.
(_e_) To accept Miss A’s mild amusement at life as that of a creature
who, having tasted and tested all life’s joys, concludes that they are
worthless, is to run the danger of scorning life without the advantage
of Miss A’s inferior physique to help one—an experiment which, if
one is positive, can only lead to disastrous results. The fact that
Miss A’s influence on young girls may lead many to try the experiment
is one of the most perilous consequences of the negative spinster’s
existence in our midst. She, in her own person, constitutes a lure
to the negation of life’s joys, to the contempt of the body and its
demands, and to the disdain of the other sex, which is next door to
sex-antagonism. Her mind is merely an instrument seeking intellectual
justifications for her body’s inferiority.
So much for the misunderstandings of the negative spinster’s true
nature, and their corresponding dangers. We may now examine her outlook
a little more narrowly, in order that we may recognize her when we meet
her, and measure her various boasts at their proper worth.
She will usually gravitate almost automatically to the Christian
Church, and become an eager exponent of its principles and an ardent
supporter of its work. She will do this, not because, like her positive
sister, she will require to sublimate impetuous reproductive instincts,
that _will_ find expression, but because the negative character of
the Church’s teaching will naturally appeal to her, and strike her as
offering to people like herself a philosophy which might have been “cut
to measure.”
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that
is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”[127]
“Flesh is death, Spirit is life and peace. The body is dead because of
sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If ye live after
the flesh, ye shall die, but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the
deeds of the body, ye shall live.”[128]
“For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.... So
then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”[129]—And so on _ad
infinitum_.
These texts will appeal to her. They will help her to a conviction,
to which she is already predisposed—that she is more godly than her
positive sister, and superior to the rest of the fleshy world. She will
notice that “body” in the text from _Romans_ is spelt with a small b,
whereas Spirit appears in the pompous parade dress of a capital letter.
She will understand this perfectly. She instinctively thinks of her
body with a small b, and of her great, lofty spirit with a capital S.
What effort is it for her to mortify the flesh, seeing that her own
flesh came to her half mortified by nature? (See Gal. v. 24.)
Like the positive spinster, she is conscious of her own unimportance,
of being cut off from the main stream of Life, consequently she exerts
every effort—even at the risk of making herself a perfect nuisance—to
prove herself _most_ important. She will try to be foremost in the work
of the Church, in the work of the parish, or in the work of the Borough
Council. If she be wealthy she will endow special missions, and back
missionaries with more zeal, but with a far more disastrous result,
than that with which most people back horses. What does she know about
the virtues, the good order, the content, the peace of Indian women,
Chinese women, or the females of the Mohammedan harem? She lives in
a country, England, where there is more misery, more disorder, more
sickness and more misunderstanding in connexion with sex than in any
country on earth; and yet by means of her wealth she is determined to
guarantee that this same misery, chaos, sickness and misunderstanding
shall be spread by her minions, the missionaries, to every quarter of
the globe.[130]
She will interfere with anything and everything, quite irrespective of
her qualifications, provided she can leave no doubt in anybody’s mind
as to her extreme importance.
Unlike her positive sister, who is generally too busy mastering or
sublimating her sex-impulses to think of much else, she will watch the
world of the flesh with perfectly unconscious but bitter envy. She will
think, as St. Paul did, that it were good for them if they could “abide
even as I,” and all her activities, all her influences, all her money,
will be directed towards favouring her type and its multiplication.
She will tend to spend her time with the people over whom it is easiest
to exercise power—the sick, the crippled, the blind, the very poor,
the inmates of prisons, and the very aged or the very young. She will
profess that she loves the poor, never dreaming that it is the power
that is so easily exercised over them that is sweet to her. She is
of course hopeless at self-analysis, and even when these facts are
pointed out to her, she is intellectually too dishonest to acknowledge
their truth.
While professing a love of all humanity, she will secretly cherish
a loathing for men, for, where all sex-impulses are absent, the
natural and radical hostility of the sexes (as seen in healthy little
boys and girls, and in animals) finds its full expression. She will
always suspect men of grossness and brutality, and never realize the
staggering brutality of her own thoughts about them, and her own secret
wishes regarding them. Whatever their politics or patriotism may be,
the hearts of all decent positive females are so tortured by war and
the death of men that war involves, that during a long tragedy like the
last War all warm-hearted women longed only for one thing, and that was
the conclusion of hostilities at the earliest possible moment. Not so
the negative spinster. She perceived in the war a means of expressing
her loathing of men under the noble mantle of patriotism, and she did
not scruple to go so far as to agitate for its prolongation as long as
possible.[131] These women could be seen during the war eating their
breakfasts with gusto, while their newspaper, folded to present the
Roll of Honour to their view, was propped up against the milk jug.
But where the negative spinster most thoroughly deceives the world
is in her cheerfulness and general absence of any signs of faulty
or unhappy adaptation. People behold her and are wont to exclaim,
“See, here is a woman who has had none of those experiences which
psychologists assure us are so essential to the happiness of the
female, and yet she is the embodiment of good cheer and general
contentedness!” True! But such people do not know how to distinguish
the negative from the positive spinster, and by confounding the two
assume too readily that it is possible, when sex-impulses have been
impetuous and insistent, to have ignored and flouted them without any
more serious result than a pleasant, contented, and thoroughly peaceful
smile.
The distressing fact is that the number of these women who in England
cheerfully survive a life in which their most important organs and
instincts have been wholly neglected and spurned, is increasing at such
a rate that there is hardly a circle in England that cannot boast of
one or two of them. And seeing that their existence is only possible
where reproductive impulses are low, atonic, and seriously below
standard, their increase is one of the surest indications we possess of
the declining vitality of our race.[132]
Although, in the negative spinster, the sex-impulses are hardly
audible to her consciousness, she reveals in her actions many of the
motivations of her positive sister. On a lower key, for instance, she
may seek compensations of all kinds for the absence of sex-expression;
the only feature that will distinguish her behaviour along this
line from that of her positive sister will be the inferior zeal or
fanaticism with which she enters into the particular compensatory
occupation or activity adopted.
She may show the same fondness for children, but in an attenuated
form; she may reveal the same delight in acquiring power over them,
both bodily and spiritually; she may manifest the usual sadistic
tendencies, with their inverted correlatives, humanitarianism, extreme
sentimentality, and hyper-sensitiveness, and she may show the same
general misanthropy, overlapping her sex-antagonism. In the negative
spinster, however, all these symptoms are likely to be very much more
faint than in her positive sister; nevertheless, she is just as likely
as the latter to die honoured and respected by her Church and the
community, for the “unselfish” humanitarianism of her life, and the
warm-heartedness she showed to everything that was feeble, degenerate,
botched, sick, very young, very aged, dumb, blind, poor or utterly
helpless.
(3) THE POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE SPINSTERS AS BREAD-WINNERS AND
INDEPENDENT FUND-HOLDERS
The thousands of spinsters of all classes who are now achieving
“independence,” both in commerce and industry—not to mention the
professions[133]—naturally only increase the acuteness of the economic
difficulties which make their self-support a necessity; for, by
competing with male labour they only aggravate the severity of the
struggle, and increase ever further and further the age at which men
can safely undertake matrimony. In this sense alone the influence of
the spinster on our economic life is a very serious one.
If, in heightening the fury of the economic war, she achieved her
own adaptation and contentedness; if in complicating the economic
difficulties of large societies, she achieved any specific result,
valuable to the community and unobtainable without her, her presence
would be as much a boon as is that of the mother, or any other active
contributor to the main stream of Life. But, seeing that she neither
succeeds in securing her own happiness, nor in promoting the happiness
of the society in which she finds herself—for, apart from nursing,
domestic service and certain trades connected with drapery and women’s
and children’s apparel, it is difficult to point to any extra-domestic
occupation that is typically women’s work—it is doubtful whether she
may not be regarded as a burden on the community and an aggravation of
its already enormous problems.
It should not be forgotten that industry, commerce, the professions and
the Civil Service are but institutions organized for the purposes of
Life. The main stream of Life certainly runs through them, and derives
its security, its relative permanence and its fluency from their
harmonious functions, but they exist for Life, and not Life for them.
It is Life that is important, the channels through which it flows are
only significant, as auxiliary to the main purpose.
Now the spinster, by being wholly divorced from any direct connexion
with the main stream of Life, for which society and the Empire exist,
is severed from the most important phenomenon on earth that can justify
existence. The next best course is to obtain an indispensable foothold
in the machinery that makes the stream of Life, as we have said, more
secure, more permanent and more fluent. The moment, therefore, it can
be shown that the spinster can lay no valid claim to this one remaining
indispensable foothold, but rather that she only clogs, impedes and
retards the machinery that assists Life, her last justification for
existence vanishes; and whatever the work may be that she is doing,
however “useful” it is, we fail to make out her claim to toleration
the moment it can be shown (1) that the work would be done as well
or better by a man or a married woman, (2) that she is not assisting
but only retarding the machinery that makes the main stream of Life
possible.
_In short, it amounts to this_: Society does not exist for the
spinster. Life does not flourish when it is cultivated too luxuriously
in its cul-de-sac ramifications. The main stream is too important.
But there is another and even sadder aspect to the entrance of women
into the arena of commercial, industrial and financial occupations.
One of the greatest tragedies of life for modern women is precisely the
havoc that these occupations have made of modern men. The Alcibiades
type of man, the complete man, the man who, while he can wield a sword
as well as anyone, can also sob over a sonnet, direct a difficult
transaction with shrewdness and sound judgment, be an ardent lover,
a dutiful father, and also a being capable of wisely directing and
ordering his womenfolk at every juncture of their lives, is now
extinct. The versatility of gifts and catholicity of tastes which once
characterized the normal man, has been destroyed by two hundred years
of occupations that are not only emasculating and besotting, but alas!
also specializing. All men nowadays are specialists, and frequently
specialists in the most dehumanizing form of labour. The Leviathan of
Commerce and Industry, Trade and Finance, by compelling them to eschew
other interests and other activities, has reduced the gamut of their
capabilities and their tastes to the limits necessary for making them
contented workers in one of the many narrow and monotonous ruts of
modern life, and _pari passu_ with this metamorphosis there has also
occurred a corresponding decline in physical and particularly in sexual
vigour.
But until recently women had escaped this influence. The very dullness
and specialization of men, which frequently makes women despair of
meeting the male of their dreams (who still continues to be the
“complete man”), had until quite recently not infected the female.
The reader will object that because the bulk of women in the past were
engaged in more domestic duties, it does not follow that these duties
were not besotting or dehumanizing.
This is not really true. The women who advance this view are generally
lazy and frivolous, and prefer to pay even the price of their own
besotment, in order to get out every day and meet clammy-fingered
clerks in stuffy offices.
The work of the home differs in many ways from the work of the factory
or the office, and always to the advantage of domestic pursuits.
In the first place it is work done for the personal ends of the worker
herself, and not for some one, or some company of people, with whom she
has not the smallest personal concern.
Secondly, it is done in her own time and in her own way.
Thirdly, an enormous amount of it is of such a nature that it is both
soothing and wholesome, while it also allows of meditation, thought and
that most precious of lost pastimes, communion with self.
Fourthly, when done efficiently and with a good heart it is so soon
dispatched that it allows of a good deal of leisure, and,
Fifthly, it is never of that nerve-racking nature which, while
demanding unremitting attention, also destroys attention owing to its
lack of interest and all personal value.[134] Now, however, that women
have become active competitors with men in those very occupations to
which modern men owe the principal features of their degeneration, it
cannot be expected that the female of the species is going to escape
any more happily than her male has done the worst consequences of
besotting and specializing labour; and it is therefore inevitable that
in a few generations we shall witness the evanescence in woman of that
catholicity of tastes and interests and that versatility of gifts which
has until lately differentiated her from her male companion.
We shall also witness in her that same bodily degeneration that has
come over man, and yet it is difficult to see how or when the movement
that now leads women to engage in these pursuits can be arrested. The
fact that this movement was largely initiated and supported by that
body of unattached females roughly grouped under the heading “Surplus
Women,” cannot well be denied; but it does not follow from this that it
is a permanent evil in our midst. For, if the problem of the surplus
woman, and of those who are misled by her, be attacked along lines
which have as their ultimate aim the marriage of all women, it does not
seem impossible that something may be done to arrest a tendency which,
from the standpoint of woman’s future, must be bad, and which, from the
standpoint of the future of the race, is nothing less than alarming.
The surprising feature about this movement which during the last
fifty years has led the bulk of girls and young women into the very
occupations to which modern man himself owes his besotment and
miserable limitations, is that those who become the victims of it—that
is to say the vast majority of women workers in Commerce, Industry, the
Civil Service and the Professions, enter joyously, and almost with a
whoop of triumph into the various callings with which they achieve what
they claim to be economic independence. Not only that, but those who
contemplate the procession of them marching into these callings, stand
and applaud and congratulate each other on the spectacle.
It is true that millions of these women in later life have the
intelligence to realize the mistake they have made, and to measure
with some approach to accuracy the deterioration it has effected both
in their minds and in their bodies in one generation. It would be too
much, perhaps, to expect young girls to anticipate these results,
when they first leave their homes to earn their own livelihood; but
what leaves one marvelling is the fact that the older elements in the
population do not seem to understand the doom which will inevitably
overtake this female army and its descendants, and that far from making
any attempt at driving it back, they shout vociferously and applaud it
as a desirable and excellent phenomenon of modern life.
The cynic may reply “All the better! You say that 200 years of
commercial, industrial and office occupations have deteriorated man,
so that modern woman has very naturally learnt to despise him. Very
well, then, if women now suffer a similar amount of deterioration, the
balance will once more be restored, and all will be well.”
All those who can derive some comfort from this reflection, in the face
of modern tendencies, are welcome to it. But to those who, like myself,
realize that hitherto the rapidity of our degeneration has been to some
extent checked by the comparative aloofness of one sex from the worst
influences of modern civilization, and that henceforth, instead of one
stream of degeneration we shall have two which will become confluent
at marriage, the future does not seem to be a very bright one, nor
does it hold out any promise of producing, from the human elements it
will contain, the individuals capable of initiating a counter movement
sufficiently powerful to arrest the tide of degeneracy that threatens
to sweep everything of value away.
With regard to the fund-holding wealthy spinster, it may be taken as a
general rule that she cannot fail to be anything else than a burden to
the community to which she belongs.
She is not only a cul-de-sac, or a blind-alley of the stream of Life,
where the forces that have produced her come to a dead stop, but she
is also the means of damming up a portion of the community’s wealth
in produce and labour in that cul-de-sac. She herself, her household
expenditure, her retinue, and her disbursements for humanitarian and
religious objects, exact a toll on the community, very little of which
is substantially helpful to the fluency or security of the stream of
Life.
He who has travelled much over England does not require to be
reminded of the countless villages and towns where the most imposing
and well-appointed private residence or residences are the homes of
precisely this kind of spinster. I could name half a dozen villages
myself off-hand where by far the most commodious and luxurious house
is the property of one, two, or three spinster ladies. About them in
smaller and conspicuously meaner houses are the other inhabitants of
the village—small families with parents struggling to make both ends
meet, with children frequently underfed and underclothed, but all of
them belonging to the main stream of Life, and constituting the only
justification there is for the existence of the very town and village
itself, the Church, and all the machinery of social life. The spinster
ladies from their wealthy fastness, with its carriage drive, its troop
of servants, its rich solid furniture, and its overfed animals, look
down upon the busy scene about them. They are not part of it, but
merely spectators drawing their profit, their life’s blood from it.
Their untutored minds, guided by local clerical influence, actively
study every means by which they can throw a cloak over the glaring
superfluousness and nothingness of their lives. Deeply conscious, as
the best of them are, of being cut off from the main stream of Life,
and perhaps a trifle piqued by the thought that, besides being severed
from it, their presence there, in the best house for miles around, is
really only a means of impeding the machinery facilitating the flow of
the stream, a means of causing friction in its movements, they make
frantic and resolute efforts to demonstrate their “importance” to those
around.
What their self-esteem, their very self-respect imposes as a duty
upon them, is to make a dramatic and incessant exhibition of being
_important_, to make a very deceptive pretence of belonging to the
main stream of Life itself. Hence the untiring energy with which they
enter into all the village or town festivities which have a public
charity for their object; hence the zeal which they show at all Church
festivals, and the regularity with which they contribute to religious
and charitable institutions both local and distant.
For all this they are looked upon, even by the ignorant villagers
themselves, as delightful and exceedingly valuable members of the
community. Nobody seems to peep beneath the elaborate manœuvres by
which they contrive to “cut a prominent figure.” Nobody seems to see in
their concern about other people’s business and welfare the conclusive
proof that they are straining every nerve to justify an existence
which, on final analysis, they know in their heart of hearts to be
utterly and criminally unjustifiable.
George Meredith is one of the few thoughtful and non-socialistic
writers who have had the courage to say what they felt about this
class of parasites on the community. In Chapter XXIII of _One of our
Conquerors_ he speaks of these “comfortable annuitants under clerical
shepherding, close upon outnumbering the labourers they paralyse at
home and stultify abroad.”[135] But since his references to them occur
in a work of fiction they are hardly elaborate enough to be telling, or
frequent enough to have aroused comment or to have formed the basis of
a doctrine.
Certainly one does not require to be infected with socialistic or
communistic views to feel that the vast number of these spinsters’
mansions all over the country is a bane rather than a boon. From no
political point of view, whether monarchic, aristocratic, oligarchic,
democratic or socialistic, is it possible to justify them, and since
the very energy which they devote to their humanitarian form of
sex-compensation is frequently as misguided as it is only a partial
remedy for the harm they themselves are doing, they constitute a
portion of the community that must be honestly and utterly condemned by
every far-seeing thinker on the subject.
To reply to this by a shrug of the shoulders and the question, “What
would you do with them?” is simply foolish. The first great reform
consists in getting them to be regarded no longer as a harmless or
beneficent section of the community, but as a dangerous and intolerable
bane. Once this transmutation of public opinion has been achieved, it
is not a difficult matter to decide what should be done with them.
I invite any reader to take a walking tour through this country of
England, and to count the number of such parasitic females he can
find in a month’s tour. I invite him to note the grandeur of their
establishments compared with the meanness and poverty of those about
them who really belong to Life’s main stream, or are directly assisting
it; and if that experience does not convince him of the dangerous
futility of the class as a whole, he must be possessed of very singular
views concerning the proper organization of social life.
Even on their death-beds these creatures do not cease to scourge the
community to which they belong; for in the very agony of death they
bequeath their wealth and dispose of their other property in a manner
which, while it is usually thoroughly ill-advised, constitutes but one
last fierce effort to stamp the belief in their importance for ever on
the minds of those who survive them.
You are entitled to pity these women for their virgin lives, for the
serious unadaptedness of their condition, and for their lifelong and
secret conviction that they are useless; but to defend their existence
as if it were _not_ a burden, as if it were not a dangerous scourge in
our midst, would be to refuse to recognize the truth about the matter,
and this truth, however unpleasant and disturbing, can be dealt with
only if it is honestly recognized and faced.
The less wealthy among them, right down the scale to the level of those
who have only £300 a year of their own, are certainly less baneful and
onerous, seeing that they dam up less of this world’s goods in their
particular cul-de-sac; but the ultimate cumulative effect of their
combined existences constitutes an imposition not much more tolerable
than that of their wealthier sisters.
Nor should it be forgotten that a not inconsiderable portion of the
harm resulting from this peculiarly British scourge consists in the
amount of false opinion, perniciously erroneous judgments on all
things, and distorted spiritual influences, which annually emanate from
these spinsters’ homes, and which, backed as they frequently are by the
power of wealth, are spread abroad with all the prestige and pomp that
opulence can impart.
The English outlook, and English opinion generally, are to a great
extent contaminated by this spinster influence. Our politics are
no longer immune from it; our policy both at home and abroad is
largely infected by our atmosphere surcharged both with the breath
and the ideas of spinsters. Our literature is to no small extent
governed by their taste,[136] our newspapers are obviously designed
to offer no affront to their morbid sensibilities, and our stage is
entirely governed by their criticism. Feminism, with all its worst
consequences, is largely their creation—the child of their idleness and
their superfluous wealth; and if Feminism has spread so far, and become
a creed so universally and almost unconsciously accepted, it is due
largely to this large class of powerful, misguided and idle unattached
females.
They constitute a malignant power, because they are a body bound by
no responsibilities; they pursue an erratic course directed entirely
by their abnormal emotions and crazy outlook on life, because in the
first place they are abnormal, secondly because they are unguided
except by those whose advantage it is to mislead them, thirdly because
they are limited by no close family ties in the expenditure of their
wealth during life or in its disposal after death; and finally they
are a wasteful and squandering body because in their frantic efforts
to coerce their contemporaries into believing they are important,
they shrink from no extremes and no excesses in order to take up as
conspicuous and prominent a place as possible in their small world.
* * * * *
CONCLUSION
If we have correctly stated the peculiar mental attitude and physical
condition of the unmarried woman in our midst, and from this statement
have drawn the correct inferences concerning her influence upon
the community, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that permanently
unmarried females are on the whole an element in society which cannot
be regarded as very desirable.
For it is above all important to remember this—that even if we have
been wrong in our enumeration of the occupations that spinsters can
properly and usefully fill, and even if the list we have given may be
materially increased, the fact that the spinster is usefully occupied
does not remove the principal feature of her condition which exerts
an abnormal influence on society, that is to say, her radical and
inevitable abnormality both of mind and body.
Even if we have been wrong in our deductions concerning the heightening
of the economic struggle through the presence of spinsters in excessive
numbers in the professions, commerce, industry and trade, this
principal objection still stands, and it leaves us no alternative but
to consider means and ways of mitigating it.
The fact that in Great Britain the number of surplus females—that
is to say, of women who, all things being equal, cannot possibly
marry—amounts to 2,000,000 or about 5 per cent. of the population,
makes the problem of the old maid so acute, for this nation at least,
that it is impossible not to regard it as perhaps the gravest with
which legislators have to deal. For, on this basis alone, that it
is the business of every government to secure the maximum amount of
successful adaptation to the governed, the question appears to be one
which legislators can hardly shelve with impunity.
Of these 2,000,000 surplus women, it may be only just—humiliating as
the argument may be to our national pride—to argue that possibly half
are negative; that is to say, that 1,000,000 are so constituted as to
be undisturbed by their semi-moribund sex-instincts, and that a sexless
life is not merely tolerable but actually necessary to them. These
may possibly achieve contentedness by means of suitable work combined
with strong Christian influence. It is conceivable that they may even
succeed in wholly sublimating their reproductive instincts. There
still remain, however, the 1,000,000 spinsters, or 2½ per cent. of the
population, whose resistance to sublimating influences is likely to be
stubborn, and whose misery is likely to be proportionately greater—not
to mention the unhappiness they must inevitably bring, directly upon
those about them, and indirectly upon the nation at large.
The Holy Catholic Church in the Middle Ages wisely offered asylums to
this section of the population, and even more wisely organized these
asylums on lines which enabled the spinsters taking refuge in them to
find a natural vent for their surging desire for sex-compensation, in
all kinds of sentimental and humanitarian work among the sick, the
aged, the poor, etc., in which they were able to exercise power over
precisely that kind of person over whom sway is most easily obtained.
But what was peculiarly beneficial in the Catholic system was that by
this means it acquired a hold upon these women. It was able to direct
both their energies and their opinions, and thus act as a lightning
conductor protecting society from the fury of their sex-compensatory
efforts, both in their activities and in the expression and imposition
of their views. In cases where it took charge of their money, this
wealth became an instrument in the hands of a powerful and wise
organization, instead of being simply a weapon for a spinster’s whim.
But what has modern society to offer of a similar kind?
The hospitals can absorb only a small fraction of the 2,000,000 surplus
women, and domestic service can do little more. For, even if we take
these two classes of occupation as accounting for 1,335,368 unmarried
women[137] in England and Wales alone, we must remember that a very
large proportion of these do not remain in the work permanently, but
leave it for marriage at a comparatively early age. In either case
we could not affirm that either nursing or domestic service offers
any special chances for sex-sublimation. There is certainly a greater
chance of sublimation in hospital nursing, but the profession is
overcrowded as it is, and no attempt has been made to bring it wholly
under the wing of the Church.
The truth is that modern life, while it certainly offers occupations in
abundance to women and girls, makes no provision, or very little, for
those women whose work ought at once to keep them busy, and give them a
full life—that is, effectually transmute their sex-instincts.
What course should we recommend in order that the nation’s life might
absorb greater numbers of these unmarried women with the view of
properly adapting them?
In the first place it seems eminently desirable to emphasize more than
we have emphasized in the past the ideal of matrimony for every woman
up to a certain age, and to bring home to parents that marriage is
what they must seek for their daughters and what they must train them
for.[138]
This would have the beneficial effect of introducing a more resolute
effort towards marriage as an end, both in the activity of parents and
their children, which would lead to more restless endeavours being
made, than are made at present, to find suitable mates for eligible
daughters[139]—endeavours that should be prompted by sufficient
energy not to halt even at the shores of the native land.[140] These
endeavours, assisted by a Government service and the consular system,
would allow of an incessant flow of girls of fair fame to our colonies
and dependencies, and might be coupled with legislative measures for
the prevention of too heavy a flow of foreign virgins into this country.
The Government ought to keep as keen an eye on the marriage as upon
the labour market, and just as it now protects the native workman from
unfair competition resulting from excessive immigration, so it ought
to protect the unmarried females. The higher the percentage of females
in the country, the more stringent should the regulations become
forbidding young female immigrants of what class soever.
Secondly, all work, such as teaching, the practice of medicine and
law, etc., in which, according to the most reliable psychologists of
the day, the presence of unmarried women, far from being helpful (as
offering a new and essential contribution to the knowledge on the
question), only complicates the existing difficulties, and, as in the
case of teaching, is directly harmful to the children taught, should
be exclusively reserved for men, poor married women, or middle-aged
widows, as might also with advantage many occupations both in industry,
commerce and the Civil Service. This would have the effect of relieving
economic pressure, and of facilitating early marriages.
Thirdly, the Government should be carefully advised concerning those
callings which are best calculated to offer unmarried women complete
adaptation—that is to say, occupation and sublimation of the sex
instinct—and the legislature should do all in their power to encourage
women, particularly of a special type, to enter these callings.
Fourthly, when once public opinion had become convinced (which it
is very far from being to-day) that the “annuitant” spinster is at
all events, and in any circumstances, a bane, legislation might be
introduced to limit her powers and discourage her excesses, which would
go an appreciable way towards mitigating the harm she does.
Fifthly and finally, everything should be done to revive the mediæval
system of respectable and honourable sequestration for old maids,
in institutions whose functions would be at once religious and of a
kind to provide an outlet for the sex-compensatory impulses of the
positive and negative spinster. By this means they might be not only
thoroughly adapted, but also in a position to have their activities,
their opinions, and (in cases of wealthy people) their wealth, wisely
controlled by a broad policy beneficent to the nation as a whole.
It is, however, very doubtful indeed whether anything whatsoever will
be done to relieve the nation of what, in the mildest language, can be
regarded as little less than a spiritual and material scourge.
Modern society is so thoroughly and deeply saturated with feminist
prejudices and ideas, and the sentiments which most promote feminine
power and feminine tastes are so universally popular both in the Press
and in modern literature generally, that anyone who speaks on the sex
question with an honest regard for reality, and with a non-romantic
understanding of its fundamental features, is not only foredoomed to
a cold and even hostile reception, but every year finds it more and
more difficult to obtain a fair and exhaustive hearing. For, as we have
already said, the growth of Feminism has been so steady and insidious,
that thousands of men and women to-day are Feminists without knowing
it, without ever having questioned it.
A cold feverless appreciation of the radical principles underlying
the relations and the nature of the sexes, whether in fiction or in a
textbook, is now practically certain to be decried, and to be regarded
as a literary _faux pas_, and while in Byron’s days it brought a man
into evil odour, at present, after one hundred years of Progress, it
completely discredits him.[141]
It is not probable, therefore, that anything contained in this chapter
is likely to be read with sympathy or with comprehension by the
modern world; but if it conveys to a few isolated and lonely spirits
the message that they have been waiting for, and makes them feel
perhaps that, although they may not be on the eve of a deep national
antifeminist (_not_ anti-feminine) movement, they are at least not
entirely alone, it will have accomplished all that its author can
possibly expect.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] In the _Laws of Manu_ (Bk. IX, 89) there is a passage which seems
to show that spinsterhood of this kind is specially recommended by the
religious Founder of Brahmanism. In Bk. IX, verse 89, we read: “But the
maiden, though marriageable, should rather stop in her father’s house
until death, than that he should ever give her to a man destitute of
good qualities.”
[103] See p. 248.
[104] See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., p. 105), where, referring to the
vital impulses of woman, she says: “When these are not expended, as
is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living and beloved
things, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic aberrations.”
[105] “With reference to the marked predominance of female suicides
[in England] over male suicides in the 15-20 age period, Ogle remarks
that this is also ‘the only period in which the general death rates,
as shown in the Registrar-General’s returns, is higher in the female
sex, and also is marked, as the census returns for 1881 show, by an
exceptionally higher rate of lunacy (exclusive of idiocy or imbecility)
for females than for males.’... In France, the chief age at which men
commit suicide is from 40 to 50, while for women it is between 15 to
20.” (Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, pp. 382-383.) The census of 1911
also gives higher figures for female than for male lunacy—a difference
of 10,000, and these are chiefly unmarried women. The unmarried
numbered 54,223, the married 21,299, widowed 9,229.
[106] H. Ellis, Op. cit., p. 388: “There are some who believe (Dr. H.
Campbell amongst them) that although the number of women of all ages
who commit suicide is less than the number of men, many more women than
men contemplate suicide habitually, i.e. many more women than men are
suicidal, although they may not always carry it into practice.”
[107] The facts collected by the psycho-analysts, Freud and Dr. E.
Jones, on this phenomenon were not new to me. I had already observed
them in numerous cases, and my observations on the point were but
confirmed by the psycho-analysts’ theory of the transference of
orgastic sensations from the genitalia to other parts of the body.
[108] See Martial, III, 82, 9; also _Senecae Dialogorum Liber_ XII, 10,
3. While Hugo Blümner in his _Römischen Privataltertümer_ (1922), p.
399, gives a brief description of this practice.
[109] See _Papers on Psycho-Analysis_ (London, 1918), p. 599. In regard
to this question parents are also entitled to ask what influence the
spinster’s outlook on life has upon their children, particularly upon
their daughters. It is impossible entirely to divorce from one’s
moral influence upon children the prejudices and prepossessions of
one’s particular position in life, and one’s general attitude towards
fundamental problems. Now, since the spinster’s particular position in
life is an abnormal one, it is questionable whether she can help her
influence from imparting something of her own abnormality. When we bear
in mind that, according to the census of 1911 there were 187,283 female
teachers in England and Wales, 171,480 of whom were unmarried, the
gravity of this aspect alone of spinsterhood cannot be denied.
[110] And neurosis in later life.
[111] “The most serious manifestation of disordered conduct in hysteria
is, however, the development of the appetite for teasing—for giving
pain and annoyance to others” (see Charles Mercier, M.B., _Sanity and
Insanity_, London, 1890, p. 215). Long after Mercier wrote this his
views were confirmed by the school of psycho-analysts. I give the
reference to Mercier to show that the fact was observed before the
psycho-analysts, so much detested in certain quarters, had come to the
fore.
[112] See Dr. Wrench’s _Grammar of Life_ (Heinemann, 1908), p. 76.
[113] Freud deals with this point in many places in his works. See
particularly his _Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Vierte
Folge_ (1918), Chapter III (_Die Disposition zur Zwangsneurose_), p.
117.
[114] The harm, however, does not cease with the work of the spinsters
themselves. Their influence in this direction has become a national
evil. Volumes could be filled with examples of this false and
short-sighted humanitarianism, but the following case, taken from _The
News of the World_ on Jan. 1, 1922, at a time when rates in almost
all parishes in and around London were anything between 17_s._ and
20_s._ in the £, is typical of thousands of others. “Rochford Board of
Guardians, Essex, are confronted with the problem of dealing with a man
who is both a leper and insane. The patient is a native of Mauritius.
It was stated at a Board meeting that the man lived for some time in a
cottage in a rural parish, and his wife looked after him, but she was
unable to do so any longer. Formerly the man was in the Leper Colony at
Bicknacre, Essex—an institution carried on by the Society of the Divine
Compassion, assisted by the Sisterhood of St. Giles—but his mental
state was such that he could not remain there. Asylum authorities who
were approached refused to accept the case, and the Board of Control
supported them in their attitude. It was also stated that the Ministry
of Health would not deal with the matter. Consequently the man had to
be cared for by the Guardians. A building was prepared for him, and
efforts made to secure three male nurses, though only two have been
obtained. The cost of three nurses is twelve guineas a week. Eventually
the Board decided to send a deputation to the Ministry of Health.” The
influence of the spinster’s frantic and unthinking humanitarianism is
recognizable here.
[115] See Mercier, Op. cit., p. 220. The author continues: “They
[the feelings in question] take the shape of religious emotion,
and expression for them is found in observance of ceremonial and
in devotion to a ritual.” The fact that the first initiation into
religious fervour of this kind frequently starts by the young
girl’s wild adoration for an older woman—her school mistress or her
Sunday-school teacher—is not mentioned by Mercier, but it is important.
[116] Large numbers of the women in the Suffrage movement were of
this type. Nor is it possible to exonerate such women entirely from a
charge of jealousy of the young girl, when their efforts are obviously
directed towards making her, like themselves, ill-adapted, discontented
and physiologically miserable.
[117] See _The Collected Works of Thomas de Quincey_, Vol. VIII, p.
349. The author proceeds: “Accordingly it is amongst the young men and
women of this body that the most afflicting cases under this eccentric
type occur. Even for children, however, the systematic repression of
all ebullient feeling must be perilous” ... etc.
[118] For an interesting discourse, uninfluenced by the recent
psychoanalytical school, on the connexion between sexual and religious
emotion, see Mercier, Op. cit., pp. 220-223.
[119] Thus Dr. E. Jones argues (Op. cit., p. 217), “Civilization has
reached, or is on the point of reaching, the limit, beyond which
unguided sublimation can no longer be successfully maintained.”
[120] See Byron’s letter to John Murray, Feb. 7, 1821: “The truth is
that in these days the grand ‘_primum mobile_’ of England is _cant_;
cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral; but always
cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. This is the
fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those who can
only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say _cant_ because it is
a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon human actions;
the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer and more divided
amongst themselves, as well as far less moral, than they were before
the prevalence of this verbal decorum.” This was written a hundred
years ago, and is still true to-day.
[121] Dr. Vintras and Parent Duchatelet both concur in representing
English prostitution as about the most degraded and at the same time
the most irrevocable.
[122] Throughout this discussion I mean by prostitution not any form
of illicit hetero-sexual relations but commercial and promiscuous
unchastity.
[123] Speaking of the prostitute Lecky says: “But for her, the
unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not
a few who, in their pride of untempted chastity, think of her with an
indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and despair.
On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions
that might have filled the world with shame” (_History of European
Morals_, London, 1899, Vol. II, p. 283).
[124] Let all who doubt this consult the literature on the subject
(even our own _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th and 11th editions), and
also consult people who have been engaged in rescue work.
[125] It is for this reason that a man who gives a girl an illegitimate
child is really more kind and merciful than the man who seduces her
while taking precautions to prevent issue. But it will take some time
before the world can possibly be expected to see the matter in this
light.
[126] Those who, like Lombroso and Ferrero, argue that prostitutes
are born, and that there is a specific class of women, which may be
called potentially whorish from birth, will naturally join issue with
me, and deny that the childless fate of the prostitute is her severest
penalty. I cannot accept the evidence that I have read, however, in
_La Femme Criminelle et la Prostituée_, to show that prostitutes are a
class of women apart (as regards primary and secondary characteristics
and instincts). I feel very much more inclined to agree with Emile
Faguet, who thinks that all prostitutes start their illicit amours
with a strong monogamic bias, and that it is only subsequently that
circumstances drive them to promiscuity. See _Le Feminisme_ (Paris,
1910), p. 254: “La vérité est que la prostituée née est excessivement
rare.... Les autres prostituées sont des femmes qui out commencé par
être monogames comme leurs sœurs, et qu’une première déchéance a jetées
dans la classe des femmes pour tous.” Thus Faguet concludes (p. 255):
“La prostituée, j’ai cru le montrer, est un être dénaturé.” This I
believe to be much nearer the point than Lombroso’s elaborate thesis.
[127] John ii. 15, 16.
[128] Rom. viii. 6, 10, 13.
[129] Rom. viii. 6-8.
[130] Her behaviour in this respect will be dictated not only by an
instinctive desire to spread a negative doctrine broadcast as an end
in itself, but also by a feeling of very real and very stubborn envy
towards all those who can enjoy a side of life from which she is
completely shut off. This envy may extend even to her attitude towards
young women of all classes, so that she will do everything in her
power, under the cover of philanthropic motives, to keep them from such
pastimes as flirtation, from actually falling in love, or from spending
what she believes to be “too much time” in the company of the other
sex. See also p. 246 _ante_.
[131] It is true that the negative spinster was not alone in this
support of the war from secret sex motives. The old men of all nations
also saw in the war a golden opportunity of expressing their natural
secret hatred and jealousy of the young males of their circle, and,
whether consciously or unconsciously, seized on the patriotic motive in
order to vent these passions. The flood of letters that poured into the
_Times_ office from sexagenarians, septuagenarians and octogenarians,
imploring the authorities to continue the war at the time when there
was some talk of peace, was an expression of this unconscious but
radical loathing of young men by the old.
[132] See, however, the exceptions mentioned on p. 248 _ante_. For a
woman’s confirmation of the fact that negative women are increasing in
England, see Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit.), pp. 82-85, and many other
passages.
[133] The number of women workers (married and unmarried) in 1911
was 4,830,734. Of these about 1,500,000 were employed as domestic
servants and hospital nurses. In 1917 the total was 5,889,734. About
173,000 of this increase came from domestic service, so that the total
for domestic servants and nurses in 1917 would appear to have been
1,827,000.
[134] It should also be borne in mind that work outside home
necessarily throws men and girls constantly into each other’s company.
Unless, therefore, a certain degree of subnormality in the sexual and
emotional nature of each sex be presupposed, they cannot work side by
side without having their attention diverted and their nerves harassed,
by the constant provocation of sex stimuli to which they cannot and
must not respond. To assume indifference and callousness here, as
modern business, commercial and official employers do, is, however,
to take for granted that the modern generation of young men and girls
are sufficiently below par to be able to resist being thrown together
constantly without being distracted by each other’s presence. But this
is not only an insult to the best among the young people, but it is
also placing a premium on the subnormal; because the latter alone are
able to overcome the difficulty with ease; and thus happy survival or
success is reserved nowadays to those types which are least desirable
from every point of view except that of the Puritan.
[135] Later on in the chapter he even comes very close to my own view
of the matter, and of the fatal detachment of these females from the
stream of Life when he asks “whether the yearly increasing army of the
orderly annuitants and their parasites does not demonstrate the proud
old country as a sheath for pith rather than of the vital run of the
sap.”
[136] Let anyone attempt to write a novel or any kind of popular work
that does not pander to their sentimentality and their distorted views
of life, and see how much success he will have. They have established
their ascendancy in England by such steady and insidious means, that
three-quarters of our population, including our leading critics and
publicists, are not even aware that Feminism is their ruling creed.
They reveal it, however, in every word they write on the sex question.
[137] According to the last Census there were in 1911 55,286 unmarried
women engaged in nursing (including midwives), 57,952 engaged in
domestic service in hotels, 1,172,449 engaged in domestic service in
private houses, 22,789 engaged as day girls, and 26,900 engaged as
charwomen in England and Wales alone.
[138] On this point also the wisdom of the ancient Hindus should be
an example to us. In the _Laws of Manu_ (Book IX, verse 4) we read:
“Reprehensible is the father who gives not his daughter in marriage at
the proper time.”
[139] Now, the dread lest a daughter should not be self-supporting
at twenty-one leads parents in all poorer middle-class families to
sink all thoughts of marriage and making her fit for marriage beneath
the consideration of providing her with a calling. The ideal of
independence for women, from being pursued for purely economic reasons,
has come to be pursued for its own sake, as if independence were in
itself a desirable condition for the female. But even if we concede
the point that dependence on certain modern men amounts to ignominy,
we should not allow the argument to assume a shape which must identify
woman’s chief source of happiness with her relation to the man to whom
she becomes related; and we ought always to correct it by considering
that, in the long run, man is only a means to an end where woman
is concerned, and that independence which is achieved without the
experience of motherhood, even if such independence saves the woman
from association with a third or fourth-rate man, is only equivalent to
clutching at the shadow to let the substance go.
[140] See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., p. 126): “Feminist leaders have
shown themselves deplorably indifferent alike to biological and to
sociological law. Losing sight of the truth that the intrinsic and
eternal function of Humanity is Parenthood—and more particularly
Motherhood—they have made, all along the line, not for the true
emancipation of woman but for her commercialization, merely.”
[141] Speaking of the hostile attitude of most women towards his Don
Juan, Byron wrote to Mr. Murray on October 12, 1820, as follows:
“The truth is that it is _too true_, and the women hate everything
which strips off the tinsel of _sentiment_; and they are right, as it
would rob them of their weapons.” Again writing of Madame Guiccioli’s
dislike of Don Juan, he says (July 6, 1821): “It arises from the wish
of all women to exalt the sentiment of the passions, and to keep up
the illusion which is their empire. Now Don Juan strips off this
illusion.... I never knew a woman who did not protect Rousseau, nor one
who did not dislike De Gramont, Gil Blas, and all the comedy of the
passions, when brought out naturally.”
CHAPTER X
The Virtues and Vices of Women
Whether we appeal to folklore, to the proverbs of the nations, or
to the earliest legends of mankind, we invariably encounter in the
traditional wisdom of humanity judgments upon woman which are more
or less unanimous in condemning her bad temper, her disloyalty, her
dishonesty, her vanity, her malice and her indolence. The very attitude
of the common people towards witchcraft, after the Reformation, points
to a curious popular readiness to believe in the evil influences
of the female; for the fact that aged women and not aged men were
the suspected parties in the persecutions against supposed cases of
necromancy, is significant, even if we deny the validity of the charges
that were brought against these unfortunate wretches. In another
work[142] I have dealt with the two principal legends of antiquity—that
of Pandora and that of Eve—in which woman is specifically identified
with the introduction of evil on earth, and I shall have to return to
this subject here; for it cannot be merely a coincidence that in these
oldest of human myths there is this connexion between woman and evil.
In the _Law Book of Manu_, which represents ancient Hindu opinion, the
character of women meets again with the same charges. We read:
“Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through
their natural heartlessness, they become disloyal to their husbands,
however carefully they may be guarded in this world.
“Knowing their disposition, which the Lord of creatures laid in them
at the creation, to be such, (even) man must strenuously exert himself
to guard them.
“When creating them, Manu allotted to woman (love of their) bed, (of
their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wroth, dishonesty,
malice and bad conduct.”[143]
Lombroso and Ferrero actually regard deception as being “physiological”
in women. They ascribe it to her weakness (which makes it necessary for
her to rely on craft to achieve her ends), to her periodical functional
disturbances, to her modesty, to the pretences necessary to acquiring
an ascendancy over man, to the duties of maternity, and to one or two
other inevitable circumstances in her life.[144] In Chapter VII of
their work, they adduce the testimony of such acute psychologists as
Flaubert, Balzac, Zola, Schopenhauer, Weininger, Molière, to support
their contention that in woman lying is instinctive. We might add
Shakespeare, Luther, Byron, Nietzsche, La Bruyère, and many others
to the list. No matter where we turn, or to whom we refer, we find,
more or less, the same verdict. It lies recorded even in an Arab
proverb,[145] just as it lies, though perhaps more obscurely, in most
of that “tinsel of sentiment” with which, utterly false as it is, woman
insists upon veiling the natural relations of the sexes; while we
must not forget that for hundreds of years a great and very profound
people—the Mussulmans of Europe and Asia—have denied woman a soul.
The evidence of profound psychologists, the substance of myths, the
content of national proverbs, the personal experience, in short, of
all those who have learnt to know women generation after generation,
all point to this conclusion, that there is a certain duplicity and
unscrupulousness in their nature, against which it is only a matter of
ordinary caution for man to be on his guard.
On the other hand, in all countries with a modern, democratic outlook,
where woman’s influence is in the ascendant, and where men are inclined
to a pronounced romanticism of thought, there is no quality, no jewel
of human virtue, too priceless for woman to be thought worthy of it.
Perhaps the most radical attempt to contradict the tradition of ages,
concerning woman, and to cast suspicion for ever upon all those who
might venture to criticize her adversely, was made by that gallant
but, alas! henpecked English “philosopher,” John Stuart Mill, than
whom no writer is perhaps more responsible for the sudden access of
strength that the Feminist movement acquired in the latter half of
the nineteenth century in England. And, before proceeding with our
inquiry, it will be necessary to pause in order to deal with his views
and to dispose of them; for, since they represent the _maximum_ that
can be said on the other side, in accomplishing this, we shall have
dealt vicariously with most of what has been advanced as scientific
argumentation against the verdict of the rest of mankind.
John Stuart Mill admitted that all his writings, except his Logic, were
as much his own work as that of the lady, Mrs. Taylor, who ultimately
became his wife. He was not ashamed to acknowledge that Mrs. John
Taylor was “in part the author of all that is best” in his writings;
and speaking of his treatise on _Liberty_, Mr. W. L. Courtney says it
“was written especially under her authority and encouragement.” The
same author referring to the famous work _The Subjection of Women_,
which is going to occupy our attention, writes: “Mill’s share was the
result of discussions and conversations with his wife.”[146]
Now, quite early in this book on women, the following important remark
occurs: “What is now called the nature of women is an eminently
artificial thing—the result of forced repression in some directions,
unnatural stimulation in others.”[147]
The ingenuity of this sentence, its plausibility in the eyes of
ignorant and prejudiced people, and its dark innuendo, make it one of
the most astonishing utterances that ever issued from the lips of an
alleged philosopher. If it be more than an insincere attempt to quash
all discussion and inquiry regarding the subject for ever, it can mean
only two things.
(1) The word “now” definitely restricts the allegations concerning the
nature of women to the present age. “What is _now_ called the nature
of women,” therefore is implicitly contrasted with what was _once_
called the nature of women. The first possible meaning of the sentence
is therefore as follows: “As compared with what used to be called
the nature of women, what is _now_ called the nature of woman is an
entirely artificial thing.”
In order to dispose of this first possible meaning, we have only to
reply to Mrs. Taylor (for it is obvious that Mill would only have
referred us to her if we had addressed ourselves to him), that, as
the present view of woman’s nature does not differ entirely from
the traditional and ancient view—where there exists no difference
between the two, we may presumably postulate eternities, or constant
factors. And, so long as we abide by those characteristics, in which
the testimony of the present age concurs with tradition and hoary
antiquity, we escape, even if we do not respect, her ruling.
(2) The words, “an eminently artificial thing,” are surely a begging
of the question. Everybody, even the most be-Taylorized thinker,
ought to be able to see this. For, it may be asked, what at present
can be called natural and what can be called artificial in civilized
man and woman? Is it natural to wear clothes, or is it artificial?
Is it natural to use implements instead of our fingers at meals? Is
it natural to speak English? Two thousand years ago no one on earth
spoke English. In the days of Caractacus, if anyone had stood up to
address a crowd in English, he would have been suspected not only of
artificiality, but of dangerous insanity. Is the speaking of English
now artificial? This is not quibbling. We are bound to suspect
insincerity in anyone who, at this late hour, uses the distinctions
“artificial” and “natural” of civilized man or woman—particularly
when they do so without giving us exact definitions of these words.
Many thousands of years ago in Egypt, a certain woman, the wife of
Potiphar, Pharaoh’s captain of the guard, cruelly betrayed a man who
flouted her advances. Similar cases have happened since. We are all
familiar with the saying: “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”[148]
Is this tendency in woman to retaliate upon him who scorns her,
the mortification she feels at his rebuff, artificial or natural?
Popular tradition in many countries tells us that women are habitual
liars. Lombroso points out that their weakness, relative to man, has
induced them to use craft and deceit to achieve their ends. Is woman’s
weakness relative to man natural or artificial? If it is natural, is
her tendency to use craft and deceit also natural? If her weakness
is artificial, when and how did it become so, and when and how did
prevarication come to her support?
Those who are acquainted with _The Subjection of Women_ will probably
reply that Mrs. Taylor, or Miss Helen,[149] did feel it incumbent upon
them to state a little more precisely what they meant by the use of
the word artificial; for Mill proceeds to write as follows: “It may be
asserted, without scruple [fine scruples these!!!], that no other class
of dependents have had their character so entirely distorted from its
natural proportions by their relations with their masters.”[150] This
means that a “true,” a “natural” woman once fell into man’s hands, and
that since that time she has been distorted out of all recognition.
But we may very relevantly ask Mesdames Taylor, how, when and where
they have had the unique privilege of coming across this wholly “true”
and “natural” woman? Presumably, she was not only a “true” woman, but
also a “truthful” woman; she was not only a “natural” woman, but a
guileless, honest woman, devoid of all malice and vanity—in fact quite
unlike the woman Manu knew, or the woman Adam knew. At what period in
history did she appear and fall into the distorting hands of man? By
what scientific process have Mesdames Taylor acquired any knowledge
of her? We only know of woman as she is seen to-day, in history, in
the literary remains of antiquity, and in savage tribes. Whence comes
this alleged “true” and “natural” woman, beside whom the woman we know
is only a distorted caricature? To postulate a norm that is wholly
hypothetical, and then to argue that by the side of that gratuitous
creation, the woman that we know, and have seen mirrored in history, in
the tradition of mankind, and in the work of our acutest psychologists,
is a monstrous distortion, may prove a useful means of clouding the
issue, but can hardly be allowed to pass as an argument. And the
fact that Mill, the logician, the critic of Spencer and Sir William
Hamilton, wrote this, and the whole of the remaining paragraph, surely
demonstrates how very far he was from being himself when he wrote this
particular book.[151]
We therefore deny the possibility of any second meaning to Mesdames
Taylor’s sentence, except this, that, like “true” women in argument,
they are trying to foist a spurious distinction upon their opponents,
with their two words “artificial” and “natural,” so that henceforth
all those who allege anything but pleasant things about women, may be
promptly gagged with the retort “Artificial!”
A little later on in his _Subjection of Women_ we read the following:
“For, however great and apparently ineradicable the moral and
intellectual differences between men and women might be, the evidence
of their being natural differences could only be negative. Those
only could be inferred to be natural which could not possibly be
artificial—the residuum, after deducting every characteristic of either
sex, which can admit of being explained from education or external
circumstances.”[152]
In this sentence it is difficult not to discern the voice of the
female collaborator in two distinct vibrations: the general sentiment
and the irrational argument; for, apart from the fact that it amounts
practically to a drastic and final veto against all such discussions as
the one I am engaging in at the present moment, it relies upon wholly
specious but plausible biological phraseology for its persuasiveness.
In it, moreover, we not only find a reiteration of the counterfeit
argument, but also an attempt to dress it in a delusively scientific
garb.
According to the evolutionary hypothesis, about which Mrs. and Miss
Taylor must have known (for they moved in circles where these matters
were discussed, and _The Subjection of Women_ appeared eight to ten
years after _The Origin of Species_) it is impossible to say precisely
what is and what is not the outcome of external circumstances in
women. In fact it is ridiculous to speak of a possible residuum
after the influence of external circumstances has been deducted. The
evolutionary hypothesis postulates a method according to which it is
conceivable that biological transformations have occurred in the past.
This method can be summed up in the following words: The survival of
the fittest (the best adapted to life’s circumstances) through the
operation of natural selection. But this very law presupposes the
action of environment on the organism. It may make every allowance
possible for an innate power in the organism to evolve along certain
lines (Darwin gave some weight to this factor), but it must reckon
with the influence of external circumstances notwithstanding. In fact,
“adapted to environment” is exactly what is meant by “fit,” and no
more. In the light of this theory—and this is the only accepted theory
with which they could have been familiar—what becomes of Mesdames Mill
and Taylor’s supposed “residuum,” when once the results of external
circumstances have been deducted? It may mean nothing at all. It may
mean the original protoplasm from which all life is supposed to have
sprung. It may mean a remote member of the anthropoid ape class, or an
antediluvian squirrel.
It was, however, never intended that it should undergo so severe an
inspection. It is simply one example, flagrant but instructive, of a
woman’s “natural” duplicity or dishonesty. If accepted, it makes all
inquiry into the nature of man and woman, even on the broadest lines,
utterly impossible. If taken seriously, it renders every conclusion you
can possibly draw concerning that nature utterly invalid. —And this,
indeed, is its precise intention. This is exactly the function it was
expected to perform. Mrs. Taylor and her daughter could hope to achieve
no more by it.
Advance any opinion on woman’s nature, consonant or not with a sane
view of the women of to-day, the women of history, the women of myth,
and the women of tradition, and immediately Mrs. Taylor would shoot
up from behind her neatly framed and quasi-learned sentence, and
declare that your opinion was quite incompatible with her alleged and
hypothetical “residuum.”[153] All argument was thus stifled for ever,
all discussion, all inquiry, all belief! But what did Mrs. Taylor
care? With all those who were susceptible of being duped by her verbal
conjuring, she had achieved this remarkable success, that she had
silenced them on the subject of her sex’s vices and virtues.
These sentences, and many more like them, constitute the burden of the
argument in _The Subjection of Women_, and make it not only valueless,
but also dangerously misleading. The pamphlet remains the most unhappy
record of Mill’s character as a thinker.
It is impossible here to examine this hermaphrodite pamphlet line
by line; but the fact which makes the disingenuousness of these
early lines so monstrous is that the remainder of the book depends
upon them, evolves necessarily from them, and falls entirely to the
ground if it be deprived of them. When, therefore, it is remembered
that this book has exercised a potent influence over half a century
of English life,[154] and that its principles have formed the basis
of many hundreds of books of the same kind, and of a movement
which ultimately fixed the coping-stone into the arch of stupidity
supporting our political life, we cannot too severely condemn, not
only the carelessness of a man who could so imperfectly distinguish
senile sentimentality from his duty to the public, but also the
unscrupulousness of two full-grown females who could take advantage
of an old man’s blind infatuation in order to mar books, written under
his own signature, with the dialectical tactics of contentious and
indignant housewives.[155]
Even if we examine the historical value of the ostensibly historic
basis of Mill’s contention, we find it entirely unsubstantiated by
fact. Mill says: “What is now called the nature of women is an entirely
artificial thing—_the result of forced regression in some directions,
unnatural stimulation in others_.”
Taken up by a thousand angry female voices, this came to mean
at the end of the nineteenth century that, if women were _as
they were_—inferior to man in intellectual power, in honesty, in
reliability, in social instincts, in taste, etc.—it was because
throughout their history as a sex they had been oppressed and deprived
of the opportunities of improvement.
Now, even if the first part of the sentence were true (and we have
already shown how false it is), the latter part remains utterly
untenable.
The fact that women throughout their history have had to play the part
of mothers, and therefore to stay very much at home, cannot be meant as
the artificial factor in their evolution. We cannot therefore conceive
of Mrs. Taylor’s having been so palpably foolish as to suppose that
it was their motherhood that constituted this “forced repression”
and “unnatural stimulation.” Have there been “forced repression” and
“unnatural stimulation” in other respects—at least in the history of
our race?
Men of the J. S. Mill school say that you can trace women’s bondage
throughout the ages, that you can see how they have been withheld both
from places of responsibility and from opportunities for intellectual
development ever since the dawn of history. But is this a fact? Is the
evidence in favour of this view? Personally, I am convinced that the
evidence is entirely against it.
Within the limits naturally described by their destiny as mothers,
we can, on the contrary, positively assert that, at least in England
and France, nothing—no obstacle, no restriction and no harsh measure
whatsoever have stood in the way of women’s development.
Throughout the whole of its history, our people have been careful to
place no barrier in the path of women’s advancement. It is rather the
other way; everything has been done to enhance and to promote their
importance.
Speaking of the early Teutonic tribes, from which we partly sprang,
Tacitus emphasizes the prominent rôle that was allowed to the women
for generations. “They neither scorn to consult them, nor slight their
answers,” said Tacitus. “They even believe that a certain sanctity
and prescience characterize the female sex. We have seen Veleda ...
long revered as a deity by many. Aurima, besides, and many more,
were formerly treated with the same veneration, but not with slavish
adulation, nor as if they were goddesses.”[156] Speaking of the
neighbours of the Suiones, the Sitones, Tacitus says, they “differ in
submitting to a female ruler; so far have they degenerated, not only
from liberty, but even from slavery.”[157] Gibbon, after referring
more particularly to those women in the early Teutonic tribes who
were revered as goddesses, goes on to say: “The rest of the sex,
without being adored as goddesses, were respected as the free and equal
companions of soldiers; associated even by the marriage ceremony to a
life of toil, of danger and of glory.”[158]
“Even more marked than among the Teutonic and Frisian races,” says Dr.
Browne, “was the recognition of women in the early Celtic races, whose
blood—somewhat diluted—is in our veins.”[159] Two hundred years before
the coming of Christ, in the league between Hannibal and the Celts,
there was the following clause: “If the Celtae have complaints against
the Carthaginians the Carthaginian commander in Spain shall judge it.
But if the Carthaginians have anything to lay to the charge of the
Celtae, it shall be brought before the Celtic women.”[160]
As regards the women of Anglo-Saxon England, the evidence of their
freedom and high cultivation is so voluminous that it would be
impossible to quote it in detail. We have only to mention such names
as Rowena, Guiniver, Bertha, Ethelburga, Eanfled, Redburga and
Osburga[161] the mother of Alfred the Great. Editha, the consort of
Edward the Confessor, appears to have been a remarkable woman. The
Saxon historian, Ingulphus, speaks highly of her learning and her
domestic gifts, while Edith, or Alfgith, Harold’s wife, seems to have
been at least a creature of refined sentiments. We also know that
all mixed monasteries in Anglo-Saxon times were ruled over by able
women.[162] “In 694 five Kentish abbesses were present at the Council
of Beckenham and signed the decrees above all the presbyters,”[163] and
Anglo-Saxon women also became the heads of monastic institutions in
Thuringia. Dr. Browne tells us, moreover, that 1250 years ago those of
our English ancestors who could afford it sent their daughters to Paris
to be educated.[164]
With the arrival of the Normans, the already important position of
women could but be still further enhanced; for, the Normans having
attained to an even higher grade of civilization, brought with them
the notion, created and taught by the troubadours and minstrels of
France and Italy, that the softer sex was entitled, not only to
the protection and tenderness, but also to the homage and service
of all true knights.[165] Certainly if Emma, wife of Ethelred, and
subsequently of Canute, represented the type of Norman women, they
must have been a remarkable breed. I do not attach as much blame to
her, as some are inclined to do, for sacrificing the interests of her
children by her first husband to those by her second marriage with the
Danish conqueror—and this seems the gravamen of the charges brought
against her, even by Edward the Confessor; for we have to remember two
circumstances in mitigation of this charge: (1) Her possible greater
love for her second husband; (2) His ascendancy over her, to which it
is a credit to her to have yielded, and consequently the likelihood of
his having been himself responsible for her attitude to the children
of the first bed. In any case, the fact that Edward the Confessor
himself fell at her feet imploring her pardon with tears, after she had
successfully passed through the ordeal of walking barefoot unscathed
over nine red-hot ploughshares in Winchester cathedral, in order to
clear herself of the charges brought against her by her foes; and the
fact that he submitted to the discipline at the high altar, as a
penance for having exposed her to such a test of her innocence, are, to
my mind, overwhelming evidence in her favour. On this score, alone, I
feel safe in concluding that she must have been a remarkable woman not
only for her own time, but for all time.[166]
In the Middle Ages, therefore, women may be said to have enjoyed
a position, not only of untrammelled freedom, but of exceptional
honour. Matilda of Scotland, Adelicia of Louvaine, the third Matilda,
Berengaria, Eleanor of Castille, were creatures who could only have
deployed the qualities they did deploy, in an age in which every
opportunity was afforded for female education and development. And,
indeed, Mill himself sees an objection to his argument here;[167] for
all historians are unanimous. Women were voting in municipal elections
in France as early as 1316 and 1331. Guizot, writing of the women
of the Middle Ages, says: “_Quand le possesseur de fief d’ailleurs
sortait de son château pour aller chercher la guerre et les aventures,
sa femme y restait, et dans une situation toute différente de celle
que jusque’là les femmes avaient presque toujours eue. Elle y restait
maîtresse, châtelaine représentant son mari, chargée en son absence de
la défense et de l’honneur du fief. Cette situation élevée et presque
souveraine, au sein même de la vie domestique, a souvent donné aux
femmes de l’époque féodale une dignité, un courage, des vertus, un
éclat qu’elles n’avaient point déployés ailleurs, et elle a, sans nul
doute, puissamment contribué à leur développement moral et au progrès
général de leur condition._”[168]
We know that women surgeons were quite common in the Middle Ages;[169]
Queen Philippa had one, Cecilia of Oxford[170]; the Middle Ages also
produced many women writers; while there is even reason to believe that
the ordinary duties of motherhood—which presumably Mill and his female
authority would have regarded as part of the factors making for women’s
subjection—were evaded by certain mediæval mothers.[171]
When we come to more recent times, with the more plentiful material
that lies to hand, we are able to demonstrate beyond a doubt that, if
ever women had limitations forcibly imposed upon the development of
their intellect or character, it was certainly not in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. In France in 1576 they were voting for the
elections of the States-general, and in the same century they held
seats in the States Assembly of Franche-Conté. As regards protection of
the female in France in this and the following two centuries, it was
rigorous to the point of being inhuman. In 1579 there was a law that
made rape a capital offence.[172] In 1709 a certain Sieur La Gravigne
was condemned to capital punishment for having seduced a girl with whom
he had eloped; in 1712 a member of the Paris Parliament was ordered to
pay 60,000 livres damages (or 200,000 francs) for breach of promise,
and in 1738 the Parliament at Dijon condemned the Marquis de Tavannes
to death for having eloped with a Demoiselle de Bron.[173]
Miss Alice Clark has gone to great pains to collect some of the
evidence that may be adduced on this subject, in so far as England of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is concerned, and speaking
of the women of the sixteenth century she says: “The ladies of the
Elizabethan period possessed courage, initiative, resourcefulness and
wit in a high degree. Society expected them to play a great part in the
national life and they rose to the occasion; perhaps it was partly the
comradeship with their husbands in the struggle for existence which
developed in them qualities which had otherwise been atrophied.”[174]
Of the women of the seventeenth century, she has shown how many
were their opportunities of becoming self-reliant, versatile and
resourceful. “At the beginning of the seventeenth century,” she tells
us, “it was usual for the women of the aristocracy to be very busy
with affairs—affairs which concerned their household, their estates,
and even the Government.... Among the nobility the management of the
estate was often left for months in the wife’s care.... In addition to
the household accounts, those of the whole of Judge Fell’s estate at
Swarthmore, Lancashire [_circa_ 1670-1680] were kept by his daughter
Sarah.” These accounts “show that the family affairs included a farm,
a forge, mines, some interest in shipping and something of the nature
of a bank.... A granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, the wife of Thos.
Bendish, was also interested in the salt business, having property in
salt works at Yarmouth in the management of which she was actively
concerned,”[175] etc., etc.
“A book might be wholly filled with the story of the part taken by
women in the political and religious struggles of the period,” says
Miss Clark. “They were also active among the crowd who perpetually
besieged the Court for grants of wardships and monopolies or
patents.”[176]
“From the women who begged for monopolies which if granted must have
involved much worry and labour if they were to be made profitable,”
continues Miss Clark, “we pass naturally to women who actually owned
and managed businesses requiring a considerable amount of capital.
They not infrequently acted as pawn-brokers and money-lenders.... The
names of women often occur in connexion with the shipping trade and
with contracts.... Women’s names appear in lists of contractors to the
Army and Navy,”[177] etc., etc. In short, I cannot do better than refer
the reader to Miss Clark’s excellent treatise; and should he leave it
still thinking, with Mesdames Taylor, that the _Subjection of Women_ is
clearly demonstrated at least by the life of the seventeenth century,
he will have formed an opinion strangely at variance with the facts
adduced.
Now, in the face of all this evidence—and I do not pretend to know,
much less to have adduced, a hundredth part of it—in view, moreover, of
the prominent part that women, even of the most obscure origin, played
in the literature of the eighteenth century, and the independence with
which they moved in society, how can it any longer be maintained,
with any semblance of honesty, that there has been, as if from malice
aforethought, a male conspiracy to achieve the subjection of women?
In trying to explain away certain female characteristics, which are
as unanimously testified to to-day as they have been in all ages of
history, by ascribing them to a distortion of “true” or “natural”
woman—whoever or wherever she may be—as if woman were only just at this
moment coming into her own, as if in fact she were only just emerging
from a dark and stifling obscurity that had stunted her, Mill and his
followers are guilty of a deliberate lie. They imply that which it is
incumbent upon them to prove, and they do so with the full-throated
sentimentality of romanticists, who cannot be quite sensible, who
must have a tear in their eye, and a lump in their throat, when they
pronounce the word “Woman.”
But the falsehood, palpable as it was, succeeded by means of its
flattering innuendo, in convincing every woman in Great Britain,
who had reasons for being discontented and disgruntled. Indeed, so
flattering was the innuendo, that even if the alleged subjection was
not a historical fact, it was felt that at least it ought to have been.
And what was this flattering innuendo in Mrs. Taylor’s falsehood?—It
was this: That if hitherto women had produced no outstanding work,
no epoch-making masterpiece in the arts or in the sciences, if, in
fact, European women had not been so very different from the women of
tradition and antiquity, it was not because men were specially gifted,
or radically different from them, but simply because European women had
been stunted by oppression!
This was much too fascinating a lie ever to be suspected or distrusted
by the overweening champions of Women’s Rights, either in the late
nineteenth or the early twentieth century; hence the eager speed with
which it was swallowed down—hence too Mill’s inordinate popularity! A
large majority of women, it is true, were a little too thoughtful, or
a little too well informed, to be duped by it; but the disgruntled and
arrogant minority won the day.[178]
It is perfectly true, of course—indeed nothing could be plainer—that
man, throughout the ages, even of European history, has been unable
to relieve woman of those duties which, as a mother, and therefore as
a homekeeper, have necessarily devolved upon her;[179] but neither
has he been able to relieve himself of the duties of the soldier, the
sailor, the hewer of wood, and the drawer of water. Nobody in his
senses, however (unless he were infatuated with a second Mrs. Taylor),
would argue that because man has been unable to relieve woman of those
duties, therefore he has distorted her “true” nature.
For the truth is, the fact remains (securely as Mill was blinded to
it) that even in those departments of social life which for centuries,
almost from time immemorial, have constituted practically the
undisputed domain of woman—woman’s Empire, woman’s peculiar field for
enterprise and initiative, where her independence and supremacy have
been unchallenged—in cooking, clothing and child-care, such ineptitude,
such inability to improve, such gross and stubborn stupidity have been
shown, that only when men took over these departments of knowledge, as
special branches of study, was there any sign, any hope, any certainty
of progress being made.
Even if we were so easily hoodwinked as to be led to admit that
woman’s relative intellectual inferiority, her lack of creative and
inventive ability in other spheres, did not constitute a natural
sexual characteristic, but were the outcome of a deliberate attempt
on our part to withhold from her the opportunities of acquiring
ability in those spheres, how are we to explain the marked deficiency
of intelligence and initiative which she has shown as a sex in the
elaboration and perfection of those arts or sciences, such as cooking,
clothing, and child-care, which have practically been her exclusive
domain for ages? Here she was supreme. Here she was entirely free and
untrammelled. By now she could have converted each of these pursuits
into an exact science. She has had the time, the hereditary bias, and
the accumulated knowledge of tradition, all on her side. And yet, as
we know, it was only when men took these departments in hand, that
they began to wear the aspect of properly regulated and scientific
occupations.
To-day the high authorities, the only authorities, on cooking are all
men. To-day, if a woman for some reason or other is unable to nurse
her new-born child, she cannot turn to the traditional wisdom of her
sex,[180] she cannot even turn to a classical work on child welfare
written by _one_ member of her sex, she must turn to man; for the
high authorities on this subject, at the time of writing, are all men
like Dr. Eric Pritchard, or else women who have learnt all they know
directly from them. To-day, every fashion, whether of men’s or of
women’s clothing, is entirely the creation of the male mind. A group
of men in England direct the former, and a group of men in France
autocratically prescribe the latter.
The only circumstance that could possibly make me regret the death of
a woman like Mrs. Taylor, many years before my own birth, is that it
has rendered me unable to confront her with these facts, and to ask
her how she accounts, or how she would have made poor Mill account,
for this colossal, incurable and wellnigh incredible lack of ability
in thousands of generations of women, in occupations where they had
everything their own way for centuries.
In England, in the Middle Ages, a proverb was current to the effect
that “God sent us meat and the devil ordained the cooking of
it.”[181] The cooking of food, which has remained in the hands of
women for a longer period in England than in France, is, in England,
notoriously atrocious. The clothing of women, which in England is
more remote from the male focus of inspiration than in France, is in
England proverbially inferior—despite fashion-books and a constant
cross-Channel stream of British fashion-spies. While the fact that
child-welfare centres are being opened up everywhere (inspired
originally by male doctors, and the results of male research), in order
to teach women how to take care of their babies, is surely proof enough
of the abysmal ignorance into which the traditional mother of history
has sunk, regarding a calling which has been her own exclusive field
from the beginning of time, and which she ought to have perfected at
the very dawn of history.
If Mill had, with one masterly shake of his muddled head, removed
those soft pink fingers from his brow, he might possibly have seen
all this, and have left his MS. in some conspicuous place where his
wise housemaid (who consigned Carlyle’s _French Revolution_ to the
flames) might have done the same by his own _Subjection of Women_. But
with characteristic confusion he mistook erotic vividness for mental
vision, and thus added one great intellectual blunder to the many which
contributed towards forming late nineteenth-century opinion.
* * * * *
Unlike man, whose nature is more variegated and more subject to
variation, woman is possessed of a _primum mobile_ that we can
recognize—that is to say, she is actuated by a mainspring, a ruling
motive, that we can observe in operation. As we have seen, this _primum
mobile_ constitutes her the chief custodian and preserver of Life,
and the chief promoter of Life’s multiplication. In fact, these two
functions constitute her principal importance, and endow her with
her great power and her great value. Everything else in woman is of
minor significance. If, therefore, we assume at this stage in our
treatise—for the point has been demonstrated often enough—that the
positive woman’s incessant and unconscious impetus is in the direction
of Life and its multiplication, we may expect to find in woman all the
virtues that guarantee the survival of the species, and all the vices
which Life itself reveals in the pursuit of this same object.
Seeing that the pursuit of Life and its multiplication is in Nature an
activity that is untrammelled by any moral consideration whatsoever, we
may ask ourselves, whether in view of the difficulty of improving upon
Nature’s methods in this respect, and in view, moreover, of the fact
that woman is a child of Nature, we are not justified in recognizing in
woman a _primum mobile_ that is also completely a-moral.
If we are so justified, then it follows that all woman’s deeper
characteristics, as Nature’s characteristics, are not moral but
immoral, not social but unsocial, not lawful but lawless.[182]
Let us proceed to examine this statement more narrowly. A woman’s
deepest characteristics are termed by us unmoral. What does that
precisely mean? We have admitted that what constitutes woman’s greatest
value and her greatest power is that she is the chief supporter of
the vital functions—the promotion and preservation of Life. If,
therefore, she is also immoral, it must mean that, in the fulfilment
of her destiny, she has often to run counter, as Nature does, to our
standard of moral integrity. Therefore, that if she were moral, this
would be a hindrance and an obstacle in the way of her destiny. But how
will she reveal this immorality, or a-morality?—My reply is, in being
like Nature utterly unscrupulous in the means she adopts to achieve
her vital end—that is to say, more intent on the vital end than on
anything else, such as truth, honour, justice, fair-play, etc., etc.
For morality means scruples, it involves the necessity of regarding
scruples as obstacles in the way of certain actions. If, therefore, we
can show that woman, like Nature, is unscrupulous in her promotion and
preservation of Life, we will have gone some way towards establishing
the fact of her immorality.
Before, however, we proceed with this inquiry, we should like to remind
all readers, who at this point may begin to feel their cheeks mantling
with indignation, that, since from the optimist’s point of view it is
desirable for the human species to survive, a very high sanction indeed
prevails over woman’s vital unscrupulousness, however surprising and
unexpected its consequences may prove to be.[183] For instance, if, as
we hope we have already abundantly shown, woman’s chief and deepest
concern is the multiplication and preservation of life, it is obvious
that, when confronted by a situation in which a lie will secure her
vital end, and one in which truth will defeat it, she will naturally
and instinctively choose to lie—not because she necessarily prefers
to lie, but because _she is more concerned about the end in view than
the means she adopts to achieve it_, and every lie to her is a “white”
lie that secures her vital end. If then from a vital indifference to
truth she ultimately reveals an ordinary indifference to truth in the
common and less vital circumstances of everyday life, we must blame,
not a fundamental perversity of her nature, which would seem to suggest
that moral obliquity is a deep-rooted and ineradicable element of her
psyche, but a self-preservative characteristic of the race which,
though manifesting itself, as it were, unnecessarily and provokingly
in everyday affairs, nevertheless, if absent altogether, would prove
the most serious menace to the survival of humanity. In the form of a
simile we might say that, just as the good army marksman annoys us
when, in peace-time, he disturbs our quiet moments with his incessant
revolver or rifle practice, and his insatiable desire to “pot” anything
and everything, yet we applaud and defend his love of his fire-arm and
his skill with it, when, in time of war, he and his like defend our
homes and ourselves by “accounting” for numbers of the enemy.
Is that clear? In plain English, to take an extreme case, if a girl
is to be equipped with that ability for wiles and small deceptions
which, despite adverse circumstances, are to enable her to secure a
lover and a husband and a large family early in life; if, moreover,
she is to be prepared to go to extreme lengths to defend and promote
the welfare of her children (as all good mothers are), and also to
secure their survival and success over the heads of other and possibly
more deserving or better children (as all good mothers are prepared
to do[184]); if, moreover, in her relations with her husband and her
children, she is to display that tact and diplomacy which always secure
her the victory in domestic negotiations; then, it seems to me, we have
a creature whose special gifts will extend beyond her family and its
vital concerns, and invade all the other circumstances of her life,
and who will inevitably practise wiles and small deceptions in those
conditions where life, its multiplication and preservation are not
necessarily in question.
The fact, however, that such a creature may be detected again and again
in some act of unscrupulousness, not necessarily concerned directly
with Life, or some vital interest, does not mean that she is perverse
or depraved for the sake of perversity and depravity, as ends in
themselves, but simply that her vital unscrupulousness cannot well be
confined to the business of Life and its multiplication, and cannot
exist as a useful characteristic of her being, without manifesting
itself in conditions and circumstances where no vital consideration is
at stake. In other words, if you are to have a good house-dog, who will
protect you from burglars at night, you must warn your milkman and your
dustman, although they have no dishonest intention in entering your
garden, not to go too near him, for his useful characteristic is bound
to manifest itself in circumstances and conditions where its usefulness
is not vital.
When from folklore and myth, from national proverbs and tradition,
and from the text-books of the oldest religions, therefore, we learn
that woman is two-faced, or false, or treacherous, or disloyal, while
we cannot expect these sources of information to give us also their
reasons for their verdict, we have at least a hint that something
deeper is in question than an obliquity of mind. For one would have
thought that centuries of schooling would have eradicated these
characteristics from women, and that if they have failed to do so,
something more essential to woman’s nature than a mere perversion of
mind may be suspected. Neither is it enough to point, as Lombroso
does, to woman’s relative weakness, to her periodical functional
disturbances, to her modesty, etc., to account for a trait so
universally attested.[185]
The positive woman who is disloyal to her absent husband is not
disloyal from weakness, she is disloyal owing to the vital impulse
of her large and important reproductive organs, which, after a spell
of idleness, clamorously demand employment. The woman who lies about
her age, or about her antecedents, or about any other circumstance
of her life, in order to secure a husband or a lover, does not do so
because she is relatively weaker than the man she wishes to secure, but
because, again, her unconscious mind urges her to procure fertilization
at all costs.
The unfairness of the attitude of most psychologists and other men to
the phenomenon of unreliability and deception in woman, consists in
the fact that they condemn it without understanding it; while those
who neither condemn it nor understand it stubbornly, stupidly, and
sentimentally deny it in the face of all the overwhelming evidence
in proof of its existence. But when once you admit that duplicity
and disloyalty in women are part of a vital principle making for the
multiplication and preservation of life, and serving the best interests
of the species, you are no longer even entitled to condemn those same
characteristics when they happen to operate in circumstances and
conditions inconvenient to yourself. You cannot always expect to have
it both ways, and if the species profits by a certain principle in the
female, it must expect to pay for that principle somewhere, somewhen.
To attempt to make woman perfectly honest and upright would therefore
be to attack the most vital impulse within her[186]—that impulse which
causes her to be eager to the point of unscrupulousness in securing
and preserving a multiplication of life. And yet there are many wise
fools, both men and women, who have solemnly set themselves that
object, and are striving to achieve it by every means in their power.
If we observe Nature herself engaged upon the same task that
constitutes woman’s principal concern in life, we observe the same
unscrupulousness. Nature stops at nothing to achieve this end. All
means are good to her: rapine, deception, falsehood, usurpation of
rights, bullying, stealth, robbery, invasion, and complete indifference
to quality and desirability.
Life in Nature is a continuous process of inter-racial and intra-racial
struggles for power and supremacy, with no principle, except the one of
“more life” in each race or species, governing the whole. Every species
behaves as if it alone had the right to exist on earth, irrespective
of all other claims. The fact that there are more species of parasites
than of any other kind of organism shows that this universal process of
rapine and deception is pursued without any natural exercise of favour
for what, from the human standpoint, can be called desirability. The
parasite kills the human genius just as readily as it kills the cow,
and the locusts devour the food which is the only sustenance of the
ewe and her lamb. Without scruple, and without favour, Nature’s one
cry is “Life!” and evermore “Life!” and whether the success of the
struggle falls to what we should call the “nobler” species, or to the
“inferior,” is a matter of utter indifference to her.
When men like Weininger, Lombroso, Havelock Ellis, and many others,
inveigh against Nature turned woman, and see the same unscrupulousness
concentrated on one form of survival—human survival—the fact that
they do not trace this characteristic to a positive and vital source
makes their moral condemnation of women worthless and unworthy of a
scientific thinker.[187]
In woman I recognize some of the principal virtues that make for a
continuance of the human species on earth: (1) Unreflecting constancy
to the demands of Life;[188] (2) Untiring interest in the processes of
Life and its multiplication (which in its minor ramifications lead to
that intense concern about all human affairs, which, in opprobrious
language, is called “a love of scandal-mongering”); (3) A capacity
for desperate bravery in defending or succouring human life; (4) A
capacity for single-minded devotion to her own offspring (which in its
minor ramifications often manifests itself in the virgin, and in the
spinster of all ages, as a single-minded devotion to a purpose, to an
idea, or to a cause); (5) A capacity for bodily purity, or chastity,
which in the more passionate type of woman is based upon an instinct
to withhold herself until her heart and her affections are captured
(this in its spiritual ramifications leads to intellectual obstinacy,
conservatism, or fanaticism. Thus a woman’s citadel of opinions, like
her bodily citadel, is only liable to capitulation when her heart and
her affections are engaged).
These five cardinal virtues of woman constitute her eternal claim to
glory and to respect; in each of them she is a natural mistress, a
gifted virtuosa. They are of so much value, of so much moment, to the
human species, that they overshadow every catalogue of foibles and
vices that has ever been drawn up against her by a Weininger or a
Schopenhauer, and she who possesses them can afford even to forgive
a Weininger or a Schopenhauer. Noble as they are in themselves, they
can claim in addition the highest possible sanction and testimonial
that it is possible for a human character to receive—the sanction and
testimonial of Human Survival itself, without which no virtue on earth
can hope to last or to prevail, and by the side of which the mere
applause and approval of one or many generations of men is but as a
pair of bellows puffing in the wind.
To appreciate these virtues of woman at their proper worth, however,
a stronger and more vital generation of people is needed than any
that has appeared, in England at least, for the last 250 years. The
very fact that, at the present day, the general concensus of opinion
among men would accord to women quite a different set of virtues, is a
sufficient sign of the degeneracy that has occurred.
To-day, for instance, a Parliament of Englishmen or Anglo-Saxons
would, in enumerating woman’s virtues, speak about—(1) Her moralizing
influence on Society;[189] (2) Her unselfishness (whatever that may
mean!); (3) Her powers of self-sacrifice (this is the result of sick
values and a confusion of thought—see pp. 77-79); (4) Her intuition
(a great myth, the outcome of woman’s habit of saying the first thing
that enters her head, and which, according to the laws of chance,
must be right sometimes); (5) Her humanitarianism (a mischievous
misunderstanding)—all weak, or at least, fictitious qualities, that no
full-blooded woman would ever do anything more than pretend to possess,
and which made Huxley say “that woman’s virtue was man’s most poetic
fiction!”
If, however, we choose to dwell on the five cardinal virtues that
derive directly from the great vital impulse within her, and to think
of the many useful minor virtues that spring from them, we have a list
which, if it is less goody-goody than the above, is both hardier and
more compatible with reality.
From (1), which we call the _Unreflecting constancy to the demands
of Life_, we can see the following as derivatives: (_a_) Woman’s
constancy to the circumstances (and therefore to the man) who
enables her to meet the demands of Life. (_b_) Her intensely keen
sense of self-preservation, when the danger threatening her is
not life-promoting. This accounts for her caution, her sagacity
in suspecting the unfamiliar, and her over-anxiousness in public
thoroughfares, or on railway platforms, on board ship, and in the
neighbourhood of restive horses, etc. (_c_) Her quick recognition
of the fact that a given environment cannot procure the demands of
Life—hence her mobility, tractableness, docility, amenability, and
readiness to follow at great personal risk, until such time as she
has found the environment that can procure her the demands of Life.
In all communities where marriage is difficult owing to a superfluity
of women, girls thus show a tendency frequently to change their
environment, and are quite unconscious that in so doing they are
pursuing tactics which are calculated to enable them to meet Life’s
demands. Thus, they will leave home to study Political Economy, or
Sculpture, and when that fails they will change over to child-welfare,
or to nursing, and if that fails they will try secretarial work—giving
as their reason at each change, that the previous work “did not satisfy
them.” If economic pressure compels, they will of course be forced to
remain in one occupation, whether it satisfies the demands of Life or
not; but those who can afford it, will, as a rule, be restless until
they find an environment which promises them fertilization. (_d_) Her
ability to put up with any number of inconveniences and discomforts,
provided that the demands of Life are procured for her—hence her
stoicism in poverty, or any other kind of distress, despite the fact
that her children share it; hence her cheerful courage in those vital
inconveniences connected with an existence in which the demands of
Life are being met—illness, the incessant clatter of many children,
the hard work that a number of children imposes upon a poor female
parent, etc., etc. (_e_) Her ability to treat all life emotionally.
The very quality of unreasoning or unreflecting constancy to the
demands of Life, involves an impulsive attitude towards them. I used
the word “unreflecting” purposely. It is because woman does not pause
to reflect whether it is proper, or expedient, or right, that she
should perform a certain action to meet the demands of Life, that she
can be so thoroughly relied upon to perform it punctually. If she
reflected, it would presuppose hesitation, therefore delay, therefore
possibly inaction. But it should be remembered that this attitude is a
purely emotional one, and since the business of Life, with the various
relationships the family creates, is largely a matter of the emotions
too, and not of the reflective or reasoning faculties, it follows that
the tradition or history of woman’s mental life is largely confined to
the play and the exercise of the emotions. Life, as far as normal woman
is concerned, is a matter of affection, of attachment and devotion,
first to the man of her heart, and lastly to the children of her blood.
Where she may be expected to be practised, gifted and versatile,
therefore, is precisely in this sphere of the emotions; for they alone
are capable of directing that unreflecting form of action that the
demands of Life impose upon her. A mistress of feeling, therefore, we
cannot expect her to be so perfect at reflection.[190]
From (2), which we call the _Untiring interest in the processes of
Life and its multiplication_, we can see the following derivations:
(_a_) Woman’s helpfulness and readiness to be of use in all those
circumstances in a neighbour’s, friend’s, or relative’s home, in which
she comes in close contact with Life’s most serious business, at
moments of child-birth, serious illness, and death, and particularly
at moments of great domestic upheavals, such as times of serious
disagreement, and all tragic occurrences, between couples. The
fact that these virtues necessarily involve such an all-embracing
interest in human affairs, that a love of scandal is an almost
inevitable counterpart of them, is not difficult to see. The evils of
scandal-mongering, however, are grossly exaggerated. All decent, humane
and humanity-loving people revel in scandal, and I have never yet met a
woman who was worth knowing who was not an inveterate scandal-monger.
“The proper study of mankind is Man,” said Pope, and he was entirely
right. But what is scandal-mongering, and the exhaustive discussion
of one’s acquaintances, relatives and friends, but an essential
description of that “proper study”? Husbands who do not sympathize
with their wives’ love of scandal, and who refuse to join with them in
expatiating on tittle-tattle, are usually inhuman and narrow men, such
men as make good engineers, good mathematicians, good chemists, and
good sailors or explorers. These men will expect their wives to listen
breathlessly when they discuss sport or some other futile subject as
remote as possible from humanity, and yet will show impatience if their
wives discuss the marital relations of their next-door neighbour. (_b_)
This virtue makes women very observant of little odd characteristics
in their fellow-creatures. And if women are, as a rule, such good
mimics and imitators, it is due partly to the earnestness with which
they observe other men and women (the other reason for their power of
imitation I shall give under (5)). Women will frequently draw wrong
conclusions from the traits they have observed—this I do not deny—but
the interesting point is that they usually observe the traits.
From (3), which we called _Desperate bravery in defending and
succouring human life_, we can see the following derivatives: (_a_) The
readiness to incur mortal risk for a child of their own (quite common);
for a husband (very rare, except in early days of marriage when
children have not yet arrived); for a loved human creature of any kind.
(_b_) A certain foolhardy and reckless daring in engaging overwhelming
odds for the sake of achieving a vital purpose (a woman will assault
a man twice her size and three or four times her strength at such
moments). (_c_) A capacity for a fierce unrelenting hatred towards
enemies, deceivers, or betrayers of those she loves. (_d_) In the
realm of the spirit, a readiness to perform a mad feat of intrepidity
to defend or promote an idea (Miss Emily Davison in that marvellous
rush at the King’s horse in the Derby of 1913.[191] We loathed the
cause for which she fought, but we honoured and admired the fierce
single-mindedness with which she and the other militant suffragettes
fought for it).
From (4), which we call _A capacity for single-minded devotion to her
own offspring_, we can see the following derivatives: (_a_) Woman’s
unswerving tenacity of purpose in serving and ministering to those she
loves. (_b_) Her indefatigable industry on behalf of those who depend
on her, so that she is able, like a horse, to work herself to death,
provided she loves and knows she is loved. (_c_) In the spiritual
realm, her capacity for fanatical adherence to a cause, to a belief,
to a faith, and her corresponding fierce antagonism to those who
oppose that cause or faith. (_d_) Her pride in her own offspring and
her consequent tendency to undervalue or to dislike the offspring of
others. When this sentiment is stimulated to its zenith by the fact
that the offspring of others happen to be the offspring of the former
possessor of her man’s love, you get the staggering cruelties of the
stepmother. Thus in woman’s nature does good merge into evil, and evil
merge into good.[192]
It is certainly in this _capacity for single-minded devotion to her
own offspring_ that, generally speaking, the greatest beauty of
woman’s character is revealed; and to one who has experienced it in
all its perfection and intensity, there is perhaps some pardonable
difficulty in speaking about it either with calm or with moderation.
The very effort of seeking, in writing, a suitable expression for his
feelings in this matter may well seem to a man to subject them to a
limitation and temperateness which he can hardly regard as sincere;
and, ultimately, in the coldness of the printed page, he can perceive,
at best, but a poor travesty of the sentiments he wished to convey.
Everything connected with this virtue is at once so useful to the race,
and so unique and unforgettable as an individual experience, that
it seems only fitting to pause for a moment here to dwell on one or
two of its most stirring features. Passing over the first months and
years when the only force between helpless, pitiably dependent life,
and death—or at least neglect—is precisely this mother’s instinct,
this jealous care, when inarticulate infancy can neither acknowledge,
return thanks for, nor, what is perhaps more perplexing, realize all
the thousand and one services that are cheerfully performed in order to
promote its growth and its comfort; passing over, too, those moments
of the silent watcher, of the sleepless sentry, in which, during
times of danger, every breath is a prayer, and every smile a song
of thanksgiving; we would like more particularly to concentrate upon
that period of early childhood, on that age of babbling tongue and
unsteady gait, when most of that which is to be of use in life, and
indeed most of that which is never to be forgotten in life, is learnt
at the mother’s side. Not that we would wish to reduce by one iota the
importance of the former period, the most wonderful aspect of which
is, perhaps, the joy that is felt by either side in simply playing its
appointed rôle; but rather because in the latter period both parties
are conscious of this same joy, and are in a position to prolong it,
transmute it and preserve it, until long after that age when the
positions become reversed, and dependence has begun on the side of the
once protecting mother.
There is in the child of a good mother, a spirit so confiding, so
receptive, so perfectly trustful, that possibly at no other age are
the pre-requisites for sound education more completely present than in
those first years of life at the dawn of which a fold of the mother’s
skirt still offers a substantial amount of support to legs that are
learning both bearing power and balance. What happens then, and how it
happens, will, of course, never be properly recorded; for lessons are
given and lessons are learnt without sufficient conscious effort on
either side for the method to be made a subject of exact knowledge. But
the result is gradually made manifest by the marvellous transformation
of an inarticulate little animal, whose whole horizon is bounded by
food, sleep and apparently purposeless limb-exercises, into a creature
that can express its wishes, demand explanations of the things about
it, learn to recognize the first rules of decent behaviour, and, what
is more, shed its own fresh light on the problems of existence; and, if
what it learns later on may, from the standpoint of material utility,
bear a more imposing and less chaotic aspect, certainly nothing it has
failed to learn at this period will ever be acquired at any subsequent
stage of its existence. It cannot be said that it has mastered any
definite system of thought, or that it has memorized any particularly
striking fact; it may not even have learnt the very patience and
gentleness which its mother has constantly exhibited in her care of it.
Nevertheless, it has learnt things which, in solemn truth, can be said
to be little short of priceless.
Let it not be suspected, however, because we can find only vague
phraseology for our purpose, that we wish to claim for this early
education an indispensable character that it really does not possess.
What is it then that makes it almost impossible to give a more
narrow description of it without losing all grasp of its magnitude
and importance?—It is the fact that, from this education are derived
those qualities of heart and mind which, though hardly ever referred
to at critical moments in a man’s life, are nevertheless among the
most serviceable and powerful of life’s weapons. The man who has had
a good mother has learnt to feel a certain confidence in his own
unaided efforts, because the best in him has been diligently sought,
encouraged, and brought to the fore; he has acquired a certain vigorous
sanguineness and courage because, having started life so well, in such
a glorious morning of sunshine, he is conscious of stored-up warmth
within him, upon which he can fall back in his moments of loneliness,
gloom and trouble; but, above all, he has been launched forth into the
world with at least one solid experience, one ineffaceable impression
of human kindness and human beauty, and this, while it gives him a
perpetual criterion of value and criticism, shielding him from the
specious and the base, also prevents him from ever feeling that despair
and doubt about himself and his fellows which in moments of deep
tribulation paralyses effort and precludes the possibility of hope.
This is what the equipment amounts to, with which a loving mother
can endow her son. Quite apart from the joys that are derived from
deep filial emotions, and from that unique relationship of a mother
to her son, these are among the chief benefits that the relationship
necessarily involves. Most of the great men in history owe their
greatness partly to this equipment; most of the great men in
history—Schopenhauer, Byron, de Quincey—whose relationship to their
mothers was not ideal, reveal in their works the effects of this
deficiency; and he who ventures to question that here, indeed, I have
laid my finger on what is quintessential in the education that a good
mother gives to her child, and incapable of satisfactory substitution
by any other means in her absence, is one of those unfortunates from
whom life has withheld this most precious of all her blessings.
It is here that woman excels; it is here that she can defy all
competition, and it is in this rôle that the best in herself, and some
of the best in mankind, is developed and sustained. Anything else
that she may do must be always second best to this; and those who, by
misrepresentation and appeals to vanity, persuade her while she is yet
quite young that there are callings better than, or at least as good
as, motherhood for her, are enemies not only of woman, but also of the
species.
From (5), which we call _A capacity for bodily purity or chastity_,
which is based upon an instinct to resist fertilization until heart
and affection are engaged, we can see the following derivatives:[193]
(_a_) Woman’s tendency to a certain rather becoming dignity and
pride, which come to their zenith at the moment of the most heated
appeal made by the lover who has failed to engage her heart and
affection. This on the spiritual side leads to a power of renitency
against conviction and persuasion, which frequently makes of woman
a most powerful and reliable ally in a secret movement, or in a
secret intrigue. (_b_) Since the demands of Life make it necessary,
when once woman has abandoned her attitude of chaste resistance, to
yield wholly and unreservedly to the male, there is in all women a
certain sequaciousness, a certain docility, a marked predilection in
favour of subservience and subordination to those who have engaged
their affections, which makes of woman the most naturally constituted
follower, disciple, servant, that it is possible to find. On the
spiritual side, it makes her acutely subject to guidance and direction,
to receptivity, to suggestion[194] and to imitation. But seeing that
sequaciousness, imitation, whether in regard to opinion, mannerism or
fashion, is the reverse of original production, and involves an absence
or a weakness of the initiating power of personality, we are bound to
recognize in woman, as a direct consequence of her necessary physical
and psychological surrender, when once the attitude of chastity has
been abandoned, a lack of originating power, a lack of that prehensile
attitude of mind which seizes and does not wait to be seized, and
which is behind all male emancipation, aggression, originality and
inventiveness. This, indeed, is the other reason which under (1)
we said we had yet to give for woman’s power of imitation.[195]
Thus Arabella Kenealy calls the sex-instinct “in the normal girl,
_responsive_ rather than _initiative_.”[196]
From this fifth virtue, which, when the attitude of chastity is
abandoned, becomes converted into subjection and submission, are
thus derived woman’s suppleness, her plasticity, her promptness to
assimilate and to form herself according to another’s pattern, and her
ability to adapt herself to circumstances.
In all these derivatives of the five cardinal virtues of woman we
can trace the indirect but certain connexion with the vital _primum
mobile_ in her nature, which is her deep concern about Life and its
multiplication. On the same principle, therefore, it ought to be
possible to enumerate the cardinal vices of woman and their auxiliary
manifestations. For if a creature’s virtues are the outcome of its
instincts, its bodily formation and the functions it has to perform,
its vices must surely have a similar origin.
In the positive woman[197] only those vices may be recognized which are
inseparable from her functions as a promoter and preserver of life, for
all the other vices she may or may not have in common with man.[198]
Those that are constantly characteristic of her are:—
(1) Duplicity and an indifference to truth; (2) Lack of Taste; (3)
Vulgarity; (4) Love of petty power; (5) Vanity; and (6) Sensuality.
These six cardinal vices have been recognized in her in all ages; they
have been censured and deplored; but no one so far, to the best of my
knowledge, has ever traced them to a basic vital principle within her.
No one has ever said of them, for instance, what I say of them—that to
attempt to eradicate them from her nature would amount to an attack on
the most solid guarantee we possess of human survival.
While discussing the derivative and minor vices that descend from these
six cardinal vices, I shall, however, also show the connexion of the
latter with woman’s innate vital principle, as in some cases this is
not obvious at first sight.
No. 1—Duplicity and an indifference to truth—has already been discussed
above, and its relation to the will to Life abundantly demonstrated.
Let it suffice, therefore, to point out that an additional proof of its
inveteracy in woman is to be found in the tinsel of false sentiment
that women particularly have drawn over the natural relations of the
sexes—a tinsel which not only promotes marriage and parenthood by
concealing their sordid and tiresome side from the young male, but
which also prevents both sexes in most nations from detecting this
less prepossessing side of matrimony throughout their whole lifetime.
If the reader wishes to test which sex really values this tinsel of
false sentiment as its own, as its most powerful weapon, let him
attempt to tear it away from the relations of the sexes in the presence
of both women and men, and then he will see from the unreasoning
fury he provokes in the former which sex is most to blame for its
existence.[199]
Again, women are notorious for their tact and presence of mind in
embarrassing situations;[200] indeed, the tactfulness or “diplomacy”
of women is so well known in France that it has become proverbial. “_On
arrive par la femme_,” say French “climbers,” whose ambitions exceed
their gifts and who have to rely on diplomacy to achieve their ends.
But the presence of mind which is but the necessary mental condition
for saying the right word, for turning away wrath, suspicion, or
envy, for assuaging mortified vanity, and for making people forget
their shortcomings, is in reality only an essential pre-requisite of
successful falsehood. Let the “lying” be as white as you choose in
tactfulness and diplomacy, it matters little; what is important is to
remember that neither tactfulness nor diplomacy is possible without the
essential equipment of the born and resourceful liar—this equipment
being an ability to say something, at a moment’s notice, which is not
the natural or obvious reaction to a given stimulus or provocation.
Little girls show this ability quite early, and easily outclass boys
in the celerity with which they discover a plausible and innocent
explanation for a reprehensible act in which they have been caught
red-handed.[201] The fact that women are difficult to deal with under
cross-examination is well known among lawyers, and their skill in
drawing red-herrings across the path of any enquiry directed against
themselves, makes them stubborn and evasive witnesses at all times when
they have anything to conceal.[202]
No. 2. Woman’s fundamental lack of taste is the fact to which, in my
_Man’s Descent from the Gods_, I ascribed the two myths of Pandora
and Eve, in which woman is depicted as being the cause of the fall of
man, and of the introduction of evil on earth.[203] I demonstrated
this fundamental bad taste by pointing to women’s inability to select
and recognize the best men, and their general preference for inferior
men—the reason of this preference being the greater facility with
which the latter are ruled and made amenable to women’s love of petty
power. I also showed that this bad taste is rooted in the attitude
of the mother to her child, which, consisting as it does, chiefly in
a delight in the exercise of petty power over a helpless creature,
causes women not only to prefer the baby in long clothes before the
full-grown child, but also frequently to prefer the crippled or the
physiologically-botched child before the hale and hearty one, because
of the former’s more permanent helplessness. I showed also how women
prefer lap-dogs before large dogs for the same reason, and reminded
the reader that the Romans wisely left it to the father to decide
which of his children should survive and which should be suppressed,
because they knew that women, having no taste, and being guided only
by what most gratified their lust of petty power, could not be trusted
to make such a decision wisely. I also ascribed to the prevalence and
ascendancy of women’s views and sentiments nowadays the fact that the
world was growing so ugly and degenerate (physically); for only if we
assume the woman’s attitude of irrational tenderness to cripples and
the physiologically botched, can we regard them with anything else than
loathing and impatience.
What I did not do, however, in _Man’s Descent from the Gods_, was to
show the connexion between woman’s fundamental bad taste, or lack of
taste, with the vital principle within her, and this I shall proceed to
do now. This, however, will not prove difficult, for it amounts simply
to emphasizing woman’s profound likeness to Nature, in blindly pursuing
Life and its multiplication, at all costs.
If we think of the immensely precarious situation of the new-born
infant or animal, its lack of all means of protection, of mobility,
and of procuring nourishment independently, its lack of warmth, and
frequently of the very equipment for preserving warmth (clothing in
the human infant, and fur and feathers in the young animal and bird
respectively), we realize at once the immense importance to the species
of an instinct in the mother which makes the provision of all these
deficiencies a joy, a passionate need, in fact a delight worth fighting
for. If the new-born creature is to be preserved, and the species
is to survive, there must be no possible loophole, no conceivable
crevice or chink, in the armour of the natural instinct, through which
any doubt, any hesitation whatever, may enter, as to the immediate
urgency and desirability of succouring it. The moment in the life of
the young creature is too critical, the situation is too precarious.
Here you have pitiable helplessness, pathetic dependence, extreme
vulnerability. The future of the species depends upon these unreliable
qualities being turned into reliable ones by the only creature in the
young one’s neighbourhood who, while being necessarily present at its
birth, is in a position to offer first aid. If then there were any
excuse or pretext for indecision, any humming and ha-ing over the
question of desirability, the “best of the brood,” the “most promising
of the litter,” etc., life’s very future would be in the balance, the
precious instinct which secures the safety and the survival of the
young creature would be undermined, or at least no longer impelled
unreflectingly to do the right thing in the right way. There must be
an uncritical unreasoning impulse to succour, to warm, to protect, and
to feed, otherwise the speed, the precision and the earnestness with
which these functions have to be performed would be fatally impaired,
disastrously hampered. Let the struggle for existence be ever so
severe subsequently, one thing must remain assured and inviolable, and
that is that the mother’s instinct must not have any excuse to fail,
it must not even be able to pause to question, to pick or to choose.
Discernment, at this moment, would make survival doubtful; but there
cannot be, there must not be, any doubt.
Besides, if organic evolution be true, it depends upon the operation
of three factors: (1) The survival of the fittest through the action
of (2) Natural Selection, with (3) occasional appearance of variations
from type.
Now, if the female of the species is to exercise discernment before
she succours her young, if her action is to be deliberative and not
impulsive, what becomes of those variations which, when happy, lead
to a new development of the species, or actually to a new variety
of species? Happy variations are just as odd—_qua_ type—as unhappy
variations. But if the female’s instinct is to preserve life, it will
preserve one just as passionately as the other. Discrimination would
prove fatal to both. The very process of organic evolution, if it be a
fact, therefore depends upon the lack of discrimination in the motherly
instinct, and the hypothesis of organic evolution certainly assumes it.
This instinct in the female to succour young life of any kind,
therefore, is useful to Nature’s scheme. It is an indispensable factor
in Nature’s plan. In the lower animals it is demonstrated by the ease
with which a female of one species can be made to act as foster-mother
to the young of another. Books on natural history mention many such
cases: cats that have reared leverets and young squirrels,[204] hens
that rear ducklings, and the classical natural instance of birds
like the Pipit, the Water Wagtail, etc., rearing the young of the
cuckoo.[205] The latter, of course, is a parasitic abuse in Nature,
of the female’s undiscriminating instinct to succour; but it is
nevertheless, an excellent example of the fact I have been trying to
establish.
It is true that in the human species this lack of discrimination in
the female operates as a preserver both of desirable and undesirable
varieties; but, as in all modern civilizations, the father is no longer
allowed, as he was by ancient Sparta or Rome, to override the female’s
lack of taste in this matter, and unsuccessful variations from type are
more common than geniuses, it follows that the female’s point of view,
now that it is supported by the State and public opinion, must lead to
the survival of a vast number of undesirable human beings in our midst.
Thus, although the human female’s instinct is seen to be a vital
one, and though her lack of taste must be regarded as part of the
general scheme of life, it must tend nowadays to an enormous amount of
degeneration.
This, however, is not precisely our point. The facts we wish to
establish are, in the first place, that in woman’s rôle of mother, the
blind instinct to succour, to protect, and to preserve the helpless
creature that she bears is of vital importance to the race; and,
secondly, that this blind instinct necessarily involves a deep-seated
and incorrigible lack of taste. The fact that subsequently—that is to
say, when the undesirable offspring, be it cripple, cretin or idiot,
grows up—it is frequently cherished by the mother more than her whole
and hearty children, is but a confirmation of the point I am attempting
to make; for it shows that what appeals to the true mother, and what
according to our whole argument must and ought to appeal, is not the
particular excellence of a given child, not its claim to any particular
form of desirability, but simply its _helplessness_. And, since in
the cripple, the cretin and the idiot helplessness is prolonged to a
much later age than in the healthy child, it is the former to which
unsophisticated and simple-minded motherhood naturally inclines.
The consequences of this fundamental and vital lack of taste in women
are, of course, considerable.
When we read in Manu’s _Book of Laws_ that “women do not care for
beauty,”[206] when Lombroso and Ferrero, in discussing woman’s taste
state that “_en général, la beauté et l’intelligence la laissent
indifférente_,”[207] and when we find Rousseau saying “_les femmes en
général n’aiment aucun art, ne se connoissent à aucun_,”[208] we feel
inclined to object, because we know of individual instances of women
who have shown a marked feeling for beauty. Neither Lombroso, Manu nor
Rousseau tells us, however, that their respective statements only refer
to a specific and superficial manifestation of a deep and unalterable
law. When once we realize that law, we see that these men must be
right—not, however, because individual women have shown an indifference
to beauty, but because the sex as a whole has no taste, and that,
wherever discernment for beauty is pronounced in a woman, she either
diverges from type or has undergone some special educating influence.
We are better able to understand now why the forms of art have all
been man’s invention, although they have sometimes been successfully
imitated by women (in the novel),[209] and why clothes, even those
that fill the wardrobes of women, are all derived from an original
masculine designing centre in London or Paris. We can also see why
women are so prone to select and to associate with the worst and most
unpromising type of men,[210] why they have no _flair_ (except on the
sexual side, and even that is by no means infallible) where men are
concerned, and why even their palates and their stomachs have never
assisted them in the development of the culinary art, when they had it
entirely in their own hands. But let us remember again that we cannot
have it both ways, and that if we educated tastelessness away in women,
we should be undermining one of the most valuable and fundamental of
female instincts, the consequences of which alone can we safely hope to
correct, without attempting to eliminate their cause.
No. 3. Woman’s _Vulgarity_ might be supposed to arise from her natural
absence of taste. But, truth to tell, it is the outcome of a different
basic principle in her. Many men have been conscious of it, but none,
as far as I have been able to discover, has shown how essential it is,
and how necessarily it derives from the vital functions of the female
nature. Besides, there is a substantial difference between a lack of
taste and vulgarity. The former is a defect, a _minus_. The latter is a
definite quality which operates as a determined bias in an unrefined,
rude and low direction. A person lacking taste may by a fluke select a
tasteful thing. A vulgar person can in no circumstances be refined. It
is not necessarily low, or rude, or unrefined in the mother to prefer
the crippled or cretin child before the healthy one—that is simply
tasteless. We could not call the mother vulgar because she prefers her
child in long clothes before her grown-up child in knickerbockers. The
grown-up child makes a stronger appeal to taste, owing to the greater
harmony of his proportions, his articulateness, his intelligence,
and his greater command over his body and its movements; but as the
mother is chiefly attracted by helplessness, it is the child in long
clothes that she prefers. The appeals to taste do not affect her. It
is tastelessness, therefore, and not vulgarity, that elects the child
in long clothes. Thus we see there is a distinct difference between
the two, and the one cannot derive from the other. It can aggravate
the other, add to its seriousness as a social evil, complicate and
multiply its errors, but it cannot spring from it. We call that person
vulgar who constantly and consciously avoids those things that bear the
hall-mark of cultivation, or refinement, or careful selection, in order
deliberately to pursue, select, value, and cherish those that bear the
stamp of coarseness, brutality and baseness.
Now woman constantly overlooks and avoids the former and as constantly
pursues the latter, and we hope to show that she cannot help acting in
this way—in fact, that in so doing she is obeying a vital instinct.
The records of the lives of artists reveal one singular fact most
impressively, and that is the frequency with which they have had to
associate with immoral women, or women of the working classes: Heine,
Gœthe, Rodin, Van Gogh, Wagner, etc.; they are all alike in this; so
much so, indeed, that Weininger, with his customary superficiality,
thought fit to assert that “great men have always preferred women of
the prostitute type.”[211] Weininger is wrong—great men have not always
preferred women of this type. The point is, however, that women of the
prostitute type, or women of the proletariat, are the only women who
will, as a rule, have anything to do with great men when, as in the
case of Wagner, Heine, Van Gogh, and Rodin, their beginnings are poor,
inconspicuous, and uncertain. These artists at the outset, like many
hundreds of other great men, were _unsuccessful_. That is the important
fact as far as the sexual side of their life is concerned. Unsuccessful
men find it quite difficult enough to prevail upon women of their own
station in life to associate with them, but to get them as wives is
out of the question. This accounts for the fact that great men are so
frequently thrown upon the company of courtesans and women of lower
rank.[212]
Woman has no primary interest in a great or artistic man, she does not
prefer him to a successful and rich soap-boiler, and what is more, she
never knows he is great until the world acknowledges him as such. In
fact she is not in the least concerned with refinement of interests or
with cultivation of mind in her mate. She is only deeply fascinated
by the great man and the artist when he is a material success.
Otherwise, not only does his extra refinement and cultivation leave her
indifferent, but his very poverty repels her.
Woman, by her very nature, is bound to take this attitude. She is
compelled, therefore, to be vulgar. What is the rationale of her
conduct?
It is obviously as follows: Woman, like the female butterfly, the
female house-fly, or the female horse-fly, has the very vital and
useful instinct to deposit her eggs only there where there is a sound
promise of food, and ample quantities of it, for the support of the
larvæ that are to be reared from them. To consider other matters here
would obviously imperil not so much the mother herself as her future
offspring. Æsthetic considerations must therefore be barred. It is not
the best-looking repository, or the most refined, or the most learned,
or the most artistic, that is sought, but that repository which
promises the richest food-supply for the coming brood. In the insect it
is the leafy tree,[213] the towering dung-heap; in the human female it
is the man who shows some substantial promise of being able to support
the family that will come, and support it, moreover, in circumstances
similar to those in which the wife herself has been reared. Thus the
struggling artist, the struggling scientist, and the ambitious but
penniless politician—though each may be a genius in his way—repels the
true and normal woman of his own class. Their spiritual gifts count as
nothing, and since woman has no _flair_ for greatness, and cannot with
certainty pick out the great man before the world has applauded him to
the echo, it is only when they have become a material success that the
female of their own or a superior station in life will look at them.
Now this is obviously a very useful and a very vital instinct in woman.
From the standpoint of the species nothing could be more laudable
than this anxious preoccupation with the future of the offspring. But
it amounts to this, that by their nature women can have no primary
concern about those things that bear the hallmarks of cultivation, of
refinement and of greatness, and that, therefore, they are essentially
_vulgar_.[214]
If in the Europe of to-day, and in all countries like Europe, it is
material success alone that is regarded as of the highest value, and
if money is the principal hall-mark of power and prestige, it is due
to the ascendancy of women in our midst. Women cannot take any other
point of view, and where their influence tends to prevail, as it does
particularly in England and America, there you will find the worship
of cash the principal religion of the community. It is true that women
fall at the feet of great men and artists when they become famous. When
I was private secretary to Auguste Rodin, the great sculptor, at a time
when he was making anything from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds a
year, women were his principal visitors. They flocked to his studio
and to his private house at Meudon as to an Oxford Street drapery
sale. But, as he used to say, they left him in peace in his dirty
little studio in La Rue des Fourneaux at the time when he was poor and
struggling.
It is indeed one of the most pernicious results of woman’s ascendancy
in any society, that this vulgar pursuit of mere material success
(because it provides the surest provision for the offspring) tends to
become general,[215] and it is a sign of woman’s subordination in the
Hindu community, for instance, that there the most respected caste is
the poorest caste.
To-day this vulgarity can be detected in every aspect of our lives.
Everything, every consideration of refinement, is overlooked, provided
that money be present. And the man who kills most female hearts is
he who can throw a rich fur round his capture and whirl her off in
a sumptuous Rolls-Royce. This to the normal decent woman is simply
irresistible. She will abandon any mere artist for this experience. And
though in later years, when the latter has become great in a worldly
sense, she may deplore her error of judgment, she has no gifts that
enable her immediately to gauge his worth, and thus to foretell his
ultimate position.
It is interesting to note that neither Heine, Nietzsche nor Van Gogh
ever became a material success until long after his death. But Heine,
Nietzsche and Van Gogh were singularly free from the sort of female
persecution that harassed Rodin and Wagner in later life, and certainly
not one of them ever had a successful association with a woman of his
own station or class.
Indeed, so deeply rooted is this love of material success in women that
it manifests itself in those who have long ceased to be able to bear
children. Thus wives who have passionately loved their husbands will
learn to dislike and despise them intensely if owing to some unhappy
turn in their fortunes they become material failures. Daughters will
also manifest a pronounced dislike towards fathers who, for their
station in life, have been inadequate material successes. I once heard
a daughter of a peer talk most bitterly about her father, because he
was a failure from the financial point of view. A woman will forgive
anything in her man—adultery, cruelty, obesity, and stupidity,—but she
cannot and will not forgive material failure.
The ramifications of this fundamental and vital vulgarity in woman
are, of course, manifold. We have only to think of the ostentation of
wealth, of the insistence upon the insignia of wealth and material
success by women (diamonds, pearls, furs, fine external domestic
appointments, etc.), and of the stampede for wealth and success in
modern, women-ridden society. We have only to think of the commercial,
industrial and financial immorality of modern societies, all of which
are the direct outcome of the maniacal struggle for that hall-mark
which alone means power and prestige in an effeminate community.
Individually this vulgarity ramifies in woman as an inability to pursue
refinement, unassisted or undirected; as a readiness to sacrifice
refinement or else the fruits of cultivation, to any other sordid end,
and as an inaccessibility to the finer nuances of thought. That is why
the notion “Lady” is such absurd nonsense. It is the grossest and most
palpable fiction. No “lady” has ever existed or will ever exist. As
Napoleon said, “Women have no rank”;—we have seen why this must be
so.[216]
No. 4. Woman’s _love of petty power_ is obvious and hardly requires
demonstrating. It arises from the species’ urgent need of some adult
animal which, when the offspring is born, will take an instinctive
delight in looking after it. Apart from the pleasant sensations that
the healthy female—whether animal or human—derives from suckling,[217]
there must also be an instinct which makes it a pleasure to nurse, to
fondle, and to tend the infant of the species. This instinct can be
examined under its two aspects, either as a love of petty power or as
a love of dealing with something pathetically helpless. And, indeed,
if some of the deepest chords in the female’s being were not moved by
helplessness, where on earth should we be? What would become of our
babies and our children?
As far as her relation to the child is concerned, therefore, there can
be no doubt whatsoever concerning the utility to the species of woman’s
love of petty power, and away from the child it is revealed in a
hundred different ways: woman’s pronounced preference for lap-dogs, her
fondness for teaching (when children play at school it is invariably
a little girl of the party who plays the part of teacher),[218] her
_conscious_ preference for the grown-up schoolboy as a husband (that
is to say, the man who is easily led by the nose), her tendency to
desire to give advice to relatives and friends, in everything, so
that virtually she directs their lives (this is admirably depicted by
George Eliot in her descriptions of Maggie’s aunts in the _Mill on the
Floss_), and finally her tendency to excessive self-assertion and to
interference with other people’s concerns.
It is only in its ramifications that this vital instinct in woman has
a deleterious influence if it is not kept in check; for her desire
for petty power is always out of all proportion to her capacity for
wielding any power whatsoever. For instance, in its tendency to make
her favour the grown-up schoolboy type of man as a husband, it acts as
a distinct drawback to the race. Because, although he proves an easy
man to rule, he is by no means a desirable type from the standpoint of
virile virtue. He is the type called “Promethean” in my _Man’s Descent
from the Gods_—that is to say, a man who has no mastery of life, very
little depth or understanding, and who is gifted with the qualities
of the lackey rather than of the leader. The prevalence of this type
of man to-day, together with the paucity of men of the masculine and
leader type, is another sign of the extent to which women are having
their own way. He is a man who knows nothing about women, but he is
usually athletic, breezy and fond of games—i.e. he is harmless. The
fact that he now stands as the pattern of the “manly” man reveals the
influence of the female standpoint in our modern communities, as does
also the fact that the other type of man (the masculine and manly type
who understands woman, and who shows that he does) is now vilified
everywhere as the “prig.”
Truth to tell, woman is less happy with the grown-up schoolboy type
than with the latter type, but this she only finds out later. Her
conscious choice, supported by the values of the age, inclines her
to the type over which she can exercise petty power, and this man,
who believes in “chivalry,” who believes in playing “cricket” (or
“playing the game”) with his womenfolk, and who accepts the whole of
the tinsel of false sentiment that women have succeeded in drawing
over the natural relations of the sexes, has become the beau ideal of
Anglo-Saxon society.
Ultimately, of course, woman suffers excruciatingly, not only as
an individual, but also as a whole sex, when this type of man
becomes supreme; because, since he has no mastery over life, and no
understanding of life’s problems (the sex problem is only one of the
many he actually creates), the societies in which he prevails gradually
get into such an appalling muddle, and reveal in all their aspects such
a tragic absence of the master mind, that life in all its departments
becomes ever more and more difficult. A century in England of the
prevalence of this type of man has brought us to our present hopeless
plight, and yet there are very few men, and no women, who seem to be
aware of the fact that it is the prevalence of this alleged “manly” man
that is to blame.
A moment’s thought, of course, reveals at once how ridiculous even the
terminology of this womanly ideal of man really is; for truly “manly”
men are not ruled by their women. And yet, in the most successful
novels of the day, in the most exalted circles of the land, and in the
hearts of all unsuspecting virgins, he continues to be upheld as the
paragon for all times and climes.
This is what we have had to pay for woman’s point of view becoming
paramount.
Do not let it be thought, however, that the cure would consist in
curbing, uprooting or correcting woman’s love of petty power. This
should not be attempted for one instant, even if it were possible.
Woman’s love of petty power is much too valuable to the species to be
tampered with. The only practical cure would be the breeding of a type
of masculine men over whom woman’s love of petty power could not avail.
Thus woman’s lack of taste on the one hand, her vulgarity and her
love of petty power on the other,[219] are all seen to be exercising
a deleterious and dangerous influence on modern society. They are
harmful because they exert a continuous pull downwards against the
aspiring efforts of the age; they are dangerous because they may
lead to a degree of degeneration from which it may prove impossible
ultimately to recover, and they are difficult and delicate to handle
because, while they are persistent and incorrigible, they are, as we
have seen, too vital to be tampered with without jeopardizing the
survival of the species.
What in the circumstances is the solution?
The only advisable solution lies in the direction, not of changing
woman—that would be suicidal to the species—but in limiting her power,
in controlling her influence. Feminism, therefore, which aims at the
opposite ideal, is wrong—wrong to the root. There must be a revulsion
of feeling, or we perish. Woman must be re-defined. Her sphere must
once again be delimited and circumscribed, if her vital and precious
instincts are not, in their effort to extend “out of bounds,” to drag
us steadily down into the abyss.
If woman were happier as she is, than with her influence controlled,
if Feminism had brought bliss instead of anguish to millions of women,
there might be at least one remaining argument—a purely hedonistic
one—in favour of this nineteenth-century madness. But seeing that
this is not so; in view of what every one now knows and can see and
feel with his own unassisted senses, that woman has grown every day
more wretched, more neurotic, and more sick, with every advance that
Feminism has made, the last and only possible word remaining in its
favour, the plea even of hedonism, is shown to be as inadmissible as
the rest.
When, therefore, we read in the old canon of the Brahmins, “He who
carefully guards his wife, preserves the purity of his offspring,
virtuous conduct, his family, himself, and his means of acquiring
merit”[220]; when we read “Day and night women must be kept in
dependence by the males of their families ... her father protects
her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth, and her sons
protect her in old age, a woman is never fit for independence”;[221]
we shall surely be taking a very heavy onus of responsibility upon our
shoulders if we declare this policy madness and our own wisdom. Is
there anything beyond our own prejudice to show that we are more wise
than the Brahmins were? Is there anything in the organization of our
society to show that it is more successful than that of the Brahmins?
If we choose to interpret these texts merely as the unjust doctrines
of a race “hostile” to women, it should be incumbent upon us to prove
that, in point of fact, our women are happier in their anarchy than
those women are or were in their Brahministic order. But, truth to
tell, the Brahmins were a very wise race, a race that meant to last
longer than we mean to last, and which, in fact, has achieved a degree
of permanence far exceeding that which any European race has achieved,
or can hope to achieve, unless it make a rapid _volte-face_ in almost
all its most cherished beliefs.
No. 5. Woman’s _Vanity_, I take it, is not open to question. If no
other proof of its pre-eminence in her were available, we should find
one in her universally reported modesty; for, who says modest, says
also vain.[222] Since, therefore, no one has yet contested the modesty
of women, I may take it that her vanity is by implication generally
accepted too.
The ramifications of this vice in her are to be found in her tendency
to inordinate jealousy (which arises from her incessant desire to be
the centre of attraction and her intolerance of rivals in this desire);
in her love of honours, titles, badges, etc. (hence her incessant
spurring on of her mate to obtain them, and her impatience with him
if he fails); in her tendency to adopt only showy or conspicuous
callings in which tangible and visible results, and speedy applause,
are sure to be obtained. (Thus Havelock Ellis says: “It is difficult
to recall examples of women who have patiently and slowly fought
their way at once to perfection and to fame in the face of complete
indifference, like, for instance, Balzac.... It is still more difficult
to recall a woman who for any abstract and intellectual end has fought
her way to success through obloquy and contempt, or without reaching
success, like a Roger Bacon, or a Galileo, a Wagner or an Ibsen”);[223]
finally, in her constant and deep concern about her appearance, her
clothes, her hair, and her neighbour’s clothes and hair, and her love
of flattery. This latter derivative of her basic vanity is perhaps
the worst of all, because it means that women, as a rule, are always
governed in their likes and dislikes, and in their appreciation of
their fellow-creatures, not by a recognition of the latter’s intrinsic
worth, which they sum up once and for all, but by the manner in which
their fellow-creatures treat them. A woman does not ask herself, what
is the precise character of So-and-so, and value him accordingly. Her
instinctive question is, how did So-and-so treat me? He may be an
inferior man who dances attendance upon her and treats her well, he may
be a knave; she will always prefer him before the worthy man who treats
her with indifference. Madame de Staël’s adverse opinion of Napoleon
was not formed until Napoleon had systematically and thoroughly snubbed
her. But Madame de Staël’s adverse opinion of Napoleon is not valuable
as an index to Napoleon’s true character; it is only valuable as an
index to the way Napoleon treated her. Likewise with our “good Queen
Bess,” it was not Leicester’s desirable qualities that so much endeared
him to her; for he was a bigamist, a murderer, an incompetent and
cowardly general, and a bad governor of men, as his experiences in the
Netherlands proved; but the fact that he was an arch-flatterer. Even
the ingenuity he displayed in designing his presents to his sovereign
and lady love, reveal an unusual knowledge of woman’s weaknesses.
Elizabeth’s treatment of Admiral Lord Seymour, whom she made a Privy
Councillor, was also not based upon an estimate of his true worth,
but upon the way in which he treated her; for the man was a convicted
defaulter. See also her ridiculous behaviour with Sir James Melville
in 1564 (recorded by himself) and her humiliating victimization by Dr.
Dee, the alchemist.
The most cursory study of any woman’s opinion about her
fellow-creatures will always reveal the same fact, that they are not
based at all upon the intrinsic value of people, but on the way people
treat her. This is a comparatively harmless trait so long as woman
has no power; the moment, however, that she is placed in a position
of wielding power, her errors of judgment affect public life, and she
only accepts those men as her ministers, advisers or directors who
can prostrate themselves with the best grace at her feet, and appeal
most irresistibly to her vanity. Her choice of a fellow-creature may
of course be right by a fluke, as for instance when he combines with
general ability the power for fulsome flattery (Benjamin Disraeli); but
otherwise it is almost sure to be wrong.[224]
These ramifications of the fundamental vice of vanity in woman are, I
presume, disputed by no one. It only remains, therefore, to show that
here again we are concerned with a vital instinct which, while it may
require curbing by man, is too precious to be uprooted or suppressed.
For what, after all, is this vanity in woman but the outcome of her
natural impulse to attract the notice of the male—to speed up, that is
to say, or to make certain of, the act of fertilization, which can only
be consummated when a male has been captivated? If the female played
the aggressive and prehensile rôle in the sexual act, she would only
need to pursue and to overpower as the male does. Since, however, she
plays the passive, receptive and submissive rôle, her only means of
securing and expediting fertilization is to draw the male to her; and
this instinct in the human female naturally manifests itself as a deep
concern about her own personal appearance and its powers of provoking
flattering attention. If intellectual brightness can add to the power
she is thus able to exercise, and she has the gift for developing
intellectual power, she will do so in order to add to the glamour
of her person. That is why it is never safe to argue from a woman’s
intellectual pursuits that she is truly interested in the subjects
she is studying. It is far wiser to wait until she has given some
unmistakable proof of the purity of her motives. This, however, rarely,
if ever, happens.[225]
Since, however, in a contest between attractions, native beauty and
native endowments generally play a greater part than dress or acquired
intellectual smartness, it will generally be found that women are more
bitterly jealous of each other’s bodily gifts than of each other’s
wardrobes, wealth or wisdom. But woman does not consciously consider
the benefit of the species, although she is constantly working for it.
Thus when she is vying with other women in the business of attraction,
she realizes the enormous advantage enjoyed by the rival who has the
best physical endowments, and since it is her own fertilization that
is alone important to her, her jealousy of the other woman or women
may quite easily drive her to homicide, if she can hope to achieve a
speedier triumph by this means.
Apart from sexual matters, this characteristic in the female manifests
itself generally as a desire to shine, or to outshine, and to be the
centre of an admiring or, at least, attentive group. Tiresome as this
propensity is, particularly when a wife shows it to a marked degree,
it should never be forgotten that it has a vital origin, and therefore
that it should be treated with patience and toleration. A little kindly
and timely explanation to a woman of one’s own circle will generally
enable her to realize how foolish she has been making herself appear;
and the moment she realizes this, and begins, with the aid of your
explanation, to notice the self-assertiveness of other women, and its
reasons, she will be on the high road to understanding the wisdom of
your rebuke.
As a general rule it is best to teach women through the example of
other women; because their natural loathing and contempt of other women
is such, that if you can once convince your wife, or your daughter,
that she is behaving, or has behaved, like a certain other woman, whom
she has had opportunities of observing with disapproval, the chances
are that you will have cured her spontaneously of the objectionable
trait which it was your desire to suppress.
This fact, however, should be carefully noted in regard to female
vanity, and that is that _normally_ it is only a means of luring the
male. When once the male has been lured, and the woman is passionate
and positive, vanity is flung to the four winds, and passion will
induce the woman to accept even insults from the man she loves without
ceasing from loving him. The negative woman, on the other hand,
whose vanity is never smothered by passion, cannot accept an insult
from anyone. She hates the lover who does not keep up to the mark
in worshipping her. Since she is never carried away by passion, she
never forgets to ask herself the constant question—what sort of figure
_she_ is cutting in the affair; and this makes her very sensitive to
adulation, neglect and insults.
No. 6. Woman’s _Sensuality_ will be stoutly denied, not only by women
themselves, but by all sentimental and women-ridden men. Owing to
the lies told by the writers of the J. S. Mill type, most modern
Anglo-Saxons have got it into their heads that woman has acted as a
moralizing influence on man, and has thus led to a curbing and taming
of the sensual impulses of humanity; in fact that civilization is
largely her work.[226] With such false doctrines in their minds, it is
naturally difficult to convince such people that woman is sensual; for,
with cerulean-eyed innocence they exclaim: “How can sensuality moralize
mankind?” True enough, it cannot; but the mistake is to suppose
anything so fatuous and absurd as that women ever advanced morality
by a hair’s breadth. I think I have shown sufficiently cogently that
when they do exercise any influence “out of their proper bounds” it is
only in order to spread their bad taste and their vulgarity. How then
could their effect on humanity’s civilization and cultivation have
been anything but a retarding one? The truth is that woman’s direct
influence in most civilizations has been but small, and where this
direct influence has been felt, whether acutely or insignificantly, it
is always unfavourable.
But let us not suppose that on that account sensuality is an evil.—On
the contrary, it is one of the greatest mainstays of life. Without
sensuality we could not advance from one generation to another; without
a love of the flesh and its joys human nature and the animal creation
would come to an end in half a century. In this sense, seeing that
to-day we are all Puritans—if not in deed, at least in thought—I have
the best possible proof of how little woman has influenced civilization
for the good. For woman is chiefly sensual. If then she had influenced
civilization for the good, she must have checked Puritanism. Because
even if we admit, as we must, that her sensuality must be kept within
proper bounds by man, we are forced to inquire how it is that the
whole of Western Europe, and all countries like it, are Puritan to-day,
if woman has exercised any influence on the evolution of society, and
that influence has been a good influence.
The reader may reply that this proves that woman is _not_ sensual.
But I invite him to consider the process of bearing and rearing
children. Surely it is from start to finish—from the coitus to the
weaning—a sensuous process; and in that sense woman’s sensuality is
entirely laudable. When once this sensuous process ceases from being
pleasant in all its stages, disease is present, and the species is in
danger of extermination.[227] This danger may be remote, but it must
be recognized. Now, how can we expect a creature to find pleasure in
a sensuous process lasting over such a long period of time unless
sensuality plays a great part in her constitution?
The only point we have to settle here (since we have placed sensuality
among woman’s vices) is at what point does her sensuality become
vicious. Now let it be thoroughly understood that two-thirds of our
middle-class and certainly three-quarters of our wealthiest classes can
hardly produce a positive woman among them, and, therefore, that there
can be no question of sensuality in the women of these sections of the
community. To be sensual a woman must at least be positive; she must at
least have healthy and tonic organs, both of alimentation, etc., and
of sex; hence, we shall not be thinking of the bulk of British women
when we proceed to show how the natural and laudable sensuality of the
positive woman becomes a vice.
Like all the other vital qualities of woman—her tastelessness, her
vulgarity, her love of petty power, and her vanity—sensuality only
becomes a vice when it is out of hand. It is, therefore, in greatest
danger of becoming a vice when men have conceded overmuch liberty to
their womenfolk, and where woman, by having her own way, can indulge
her proclivities without limitation. But this is the state in which we
find ourselves in England to-day, and if it were not for the fact that
three-quarters of our women are negative (that is to say, too unhealthy
and too atonic in their alimentary, sexual and other organs to derive
any pleasure from their functions), sensuality would be one of the
worst vices of the times.
How does it operate harmfully when once it has become a vice through
positive women having their own way? It operates as a vice by breaking
up the family unit, by unduly exhausting the menfolk of the nation,
by leading to promiscuity and thence to disease, by making woman the
only subject whether of agreement or disagreement among men, and by
elevating to the first place among the virtues a caprine degree of
masculine potency.
The way of arresting this vice, however, is not, as our ancestors
of the seventeenth century thought (and did), to eradicate woman’s
sensuality and to make her negative; for that is tantamount to
destroying a portion of her vitality, and of her valuable vital
impulses. The only remedy, here again, is to circumscribe woman’s
powers, and to place each woman under the tutelage of some responsible
man. But in order to do this successfully you must have the men who
can undertake the charge. Besides, is it not too late to speak of this
now? Has not the wrong remedy, the rearing of negative and non-sexual
women, gone too far? I doubt whether, in view of humanity’s infinite
possibilities, anything could have gone too far. But the revulsion
of feeling that would be required to alter our present condition in
suchwise as (1) to rear a majority of positive women once more, and
(2) to rear the men who could take charge of them and account for
their actions appears, as things are, to be so remote that, although
everything is possible, it is doubtful whether precisely this thing is
probable.
Certainly the choice taken by our ancestors cannot have been the
right one.[228] It cannot be right to suppress a vice by eradicating
or detoning the vital principle that causes it[229]; and now that we
have the fruits of this method about us, in our millions of negative
women, it may reasonably be asked whether we do not see the necessity
of starting a counter movement which, while it will increase the
proportion of positive women in our midst, will also and concurrently
rear the men who can take charge of them.
“Day and night woman must be kept in dependence by the males of their
families,” says Manu, “and if they attach themselves to sensual
enjoyments, they must be kept under one’s control.”[230]
* * * * *
Thus we have seen that both in her virtues and her vices woman is
entirely the creature of _vital_ impulses. Her virtues, like her vices,
arise from principles within her that are valuable—nay indispensable,
to the species. Furthermore, we have seen that her vices are not vices
in their origin, but only become so when certain vital principles
within her get out of hand, or find expression in a way they were not
intended to adopt. To attempt to correct these vices by extirpation
is dangerous, seeing that to do so is to ruin instincts upon which
the race depends for its survival.[231] If therefore society is to
be protected from women’s vices, and the future of mankind guaranteed
against the deteriorating effect of woman’s spiritual influence, the
only practical remedy that does not menace the species is to emulate
the great wisdom of the Orient, and to place woman once more under
man’s charge. To attempt any other method, such as the one advocated by
the Feminists for instance, is, as we have seen, to involve one of two
difficulties: either the need of eradicating some of woman’s most vital
principles in order to make her liberty innocuous to society (this we
have already partially done with regard to her sensuality), or else
the necessity of suffering the gradual deterioration of life through
her influence, if she remain uncontrolled. Either alternative is bad;
because in either event the ruin of civilization is a mathematical
certainty. You cannot eradicate woman’s most vital principles
without destroying her usefulness, and yet you cannot tolerate her
deteriorating influence if her vital principles are allowed to get out
of hand. There remains, therefore, but the alternative of restoring
women to the charge of men—an alternative which involves the denial,
the overthrow, and the rout of Feminism.
The only difficulty we can see in the way of this desirable reform, is
the absence of the men who would be capable of carrying it out. For
women themselves are already half-convinced that Feminism is wrong, and
that J. S. Mill is actually the pernicious liar I have shown him to be.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] See _Man’s Descent from the Gods_, chapter VIII.
[143] Book IX, verses 15, 16, 17.
[144] Op. cit. p. 135. “_Mais si le mensonge est un vice très répandu
dans toute l’humanité, c’est surtout chez les femmes qu’il atteint
son maximum d’intensité. Demontrer que le mensonge est habituel,
physiologique chez la femme, serait inutile: cela est consacré par la
croyance populaire._”
[145] “There are three things that cannot be trusted: a king, a
horse, and a woman; the king tyrannizes, a horse escapes, a woman is
perfidious.”
[146] See _Life of John Stuart Mill_, p. 162.
[147] See _The Subjection of Women_, chap. I, section 7.
[148] The observation occurs in Congreve’s _Mourning Bride_, at the
end of the 3rd Act, and is put in the mouth of Queen Zara. The precise
words are:—
“Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”
[149] W. L. Courtney (Op. cit.) tells us that portions of the
_Subjection of Women_ were written by Miss Helen Taylor (Mill’s
step-daughter).
[150] Op. cit., section 18.
[151] See Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 32), footnote: “This is
a question on which Mill has endeavoured to confuse the issue for his
reader, first, by representing that by no possibility can man know
anything of the ‘nature,’ i.e. of the ‘secondary sexual characters’
of woman; and secondly, by distracting attention from the fact that
‘acquired characteristics’ may produce unfitness for the suffrage.”
[152] J. S. Mill, section 20.
[153] Cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright, who, in speaking of Mill’s
hypothetical natural woman, says (Op. cit., p. 5): “Instead of dealing
with woman as she is, and with woman placed in a setting of actually
subsisting conditions, Mill takes as his theme a woman who is a
creature of his imagination. This woman is, _by assumption_, in mental
endowment a replica of man. She lives in a world which is, _by tacit
assumption_, free from the complications of sex.... It is in connexion
with this fictitious woman that Mill sets himself to work out the
benefit which women would derive from co-partnership with men in the
government of the State, and those which such co-partnership would
confer on the community.”
[154] The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D., calls Mill’s _Subjection of
Women_ “admirable.”
[155] A certain French writer, despite a wholly mistaken admiration
for J. S. Mill, is nevertheless bound to admit, in reference to
Mill’s _Subjection of Women_ and his strangely wild and unreasoning
infatuation for Mrs. Taylor, that: “_Il n’en est pas moins curieux et
remarquable que, sous l’aiguillon de ce sentiment, cet esprit froid, si
fort, si durement logique, ait pris sans hésiter cette attitude._” See
_Psychologie de la Femme_, by Henri Marion, (Paris, 1903, p. 257). In
his _Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers_ the Rev. R. H.
Hutton, M.A., writes as follows on Mill’s relation to Mrs. Taylor; “His
passionate reverence for his wife’s memory and genius—in his own words
‘a religion’—was one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he
could not possibly make to appear otherwise than extravagant, not to
say an hallucination, in the eyes of the rest of mankind.” (See Vol. I,
p. 173.) See the same work for some sharp and well-deserved criticism
of Mill’s _Utilitarianism_.
[156] _Germania_, chap. IX.
[157] _Ibid._, chap. XLV.
[158] See _Decline and Fall_, chap. IX.
[159] _The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times_, by the Rt. Rev.
G. F. Browne, D.D., p. 12.
[160] Browne (Op. cit.), p. 12. The women of the ruling class in
Britain at the time of the Roman subjugation of the island, were
also distinguished for their cultivation; such women, I mean, as
Cartismandua, the earliest British queen to be mentioned in history,
Boadicea, and Martia, surnamed Proba, whose laws were ultimately
confirmed, and partly adopted, by King Alfred and Edward the Confessor.
[161] The only reason why these last two did not share the honours of
royalty with their husbands was because of the crimes of the Queen
Edburga who had poisoned her husband.
[162] Browne (Op. cit.), p. 23.
[163] _Ibid._, p. 23.
[164] _Ibid._, p. 23.
[165] See _Lives of the Queens of England_, by Agnes Strickland. Vol.
I. Introduction.
[166] We have only to think of the enormous amount of faith and intense
inward conviction that the successful survival of such an ordeal must
mean, in order to realize that Emma of Normandy must have possessed
qualities that are extremely rare even among the women of to-day.
[167] _Subjection of Women_, chap. I, section 9. Henry III’s wife and
mother of Edward I, although perhaps extravagant and reckless, enjoyed
an excellent education.
[168] _Histoire de la Civilisation en France_ (Paris 1846), Vol. III,
pp. 332-333.
[169] See Lacroix, _Science et Lettres au Moyen Age et à l’époque
de la Renaissance_ (2nd Ed.), p. 169, where the author, speaking of
the beginning of the fourteenth century, says: “_Bien des femmes ne
donnaient confiance qu’à des personnes de leur sexe pour des opérations
d’une nature délicate._”
[170] See Mary Bateson, _Mediæval England_, p. 286.
[171] See G. S. Coulson, M.A., _A Mediæval Garner_, p. 58.
[172] See Emile Faguet, _Le Féminisme_, p. 173: “_Quand on songe que
la coûtume de Bretagne et que l’Ordonnance de Blois de 1579 (executive
dans tout le Royaume) condamnaient à la peine de mort, les hommes
coupables de rapt!_” As to the spiritual side of the seventeenth
century, on the other hand, we have only to think of Molière’s
_Précieuses Ridicules_ and _Les Femmes Savantes_, each of which plays
caricatures the then existing phenomenon of the learned woman.
[173] Faguet, Op. cit.
[174] See _Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century_, p. 41.
[175] Alice Clark, Op. cit., pp. 14-18.
[176] _Ibid._, Op. cit., p. 25.
[177] Alice Clark, pp. 28-31.
[178] Weininger agrees that it is wholly erroneous to suggest that
hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development
of their mental powers (see Op. cit., p. 72), but, as usual, the
support of his contention is feeble and unconvincing.
[179] Miss Clark is of the opinion that even in these domestic duties
she was not altogether unassisted by men in former times, as the
following passage shows: “On the other hand it may be urged that,
if women were on the whole more actively engaged in industrial work
during the seventeenth century than they were in the first decade
of the twentieth century, men were much more occupied with domestic
affairs than they are now. Men in all classes gave time and care to the
education of their children, and the young unmarried men, who generally
occupied positions as apprentices and servants, were partly employed
over domestic work. Therefore, though it is now taken for granted that
domestic work will be done by women, a considerable proportion of it in
former days fell to the share of the men.” (Op. cit., p. 5.)
[180] If she does so, it only means disaster. As late as a generation
ago, if she happened to be in India, she was put to no trouble
whatsoever; for the custom there, in such circumstances, was for the
European mother to seek out a native mother who could act as wet-nurse.
The fact that this almost invariably meant—as every Anglo-Indian will
tell you—the death of the native woman’s own child, was cynically
overlooked by the British occupiers of India.
[181] Paul Lecroix, Op. cit., pp. 370-371.
[182] Weininger comes to the same conclusion. See Op. cit., pp. 150-151
and 196. But he does not give the same reasons as I do. His conclusion
is much more of a guess than mine is, and therefore makes one suspect
that he was actuated by strong prejudice.
[183] Weininger (Op. cit., p. 346), who maintained that “it cannot be a
moral duty to provide for the continuance of the race,” was an avowed
pessimist, and, being unable therefore to find a higher sanction for
woman’s immorality, perforce condemned it. We who believe that there
is no duty more sacred than to provide for the continuance of the
race, naturally take the other view, and though recognizing woman’s
unscrupulousness in furthering the survival of the race, recognize the
high sanction which her immorality thus acquires.
[184] Cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p. 46): “It would be
difficult to find anyone who would trust a woman to be just to the
rights of others in the case where the material interests of her
children, or of a devoted husband, were involved. And even to consider
the question of being in such a case intellectually just to anyone who
came into competition with personal belongings like husband and child
would, of course, lie quite beyond the moral horizon of ordinary woman.”
[185] Schopenhauer in one of his Essays (see the _Parerga und
Paralipomena_, Vol. II, Chap. XXVII) also speaks of women’s
“instinctive cunning” and “her ineradicable tendency to falsehood,”
as the outcome of her weakness, but never hints at any deeper, or
more positive cause. Speaking of woman’s character as being given to
injustice, he says: “_Er entsteht zunächst aus dem dargelegten Mangel
an Vernünftigkeit und Ueberlegung, wird zudem aber noch dardurch
unterstützt, dass sie, als die schwächeren, von der Natur nicht auf die
Kraft, sondern auf die List angewiesen sind: daher ihre instinktartige
Verschlagenheit und ihr unvertilgbarer Hang zum Lügen._”
[186] Not a little even of our “Good” Queen Bess’s success as a
ruler was due to her unlimited capacity for lies. Speaking of Queen
Elizabeth, J. R. Green in his _Short History of the English People_,
says: “Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the Queen’s diplomacy
seems to us now, tracing it as we do through a thousand despatches,
it succeeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year that
was gained doubled Elizabeth’s strength. Nothing is more revolting
in the Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, than her shameless
mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion
and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in
Christendom.” (Chap. VII. Section III.) And later on in the same
chapter he says: “As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes
of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in
a sense of contempt.” Even her most distinguished minister, William
Cecil, Lord Burleigh, was a most incorrigible liar and rascal.
[187] It is true that Havelock Ellis, when discussing woman’s tendency
to ruse and deception, is careful to say that “to regard the caution
and indirectness of women as due to innate wickedness, it need hardly
be said, would be utterly irrational. It is inevitable, and results
from the constitution of women, acting in conditions under which they
are generally placed.” (Op. cit., p. 196.) But this is a very long
way from my position, according to which woman’s tendency to ruse and
deception is a constant, positive and life-promoting instinct.
[188] As I have shown in Chap. VIII, this constancy supersedes, and
frequently defeats, her constancy to man.
[189] See Lecky, _The History of European Morals_; Buckle, _The
Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge_; Herbert Spencer,
_Sociology_; etc. Emerson asks, “What is civilization?” and replies,
“It is the influence of good women.”
[190] See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., p. 105): “No matter to what
degree she may acquire masculine characteristics and aptitudes, she
remains, at core, a creature of instinct; not of reason. As a creature
of instinct she is invaluable to life—because Life is moulded upon
instinct.”
[191] This occurred on the 4th of June, and Miss Davison died, as the
result of her action, on the 8th of June at 4.50 p.m. at Epsom.
[192] This is not generally understood. The cruel stepmother is
universally reviled in fable, in fiction, and in real life; but truth
to tell, the very fact that she is a bad stepmother shows how deep her
mother’s instincts must be. I have known one or two such stepmothers,
and have always found them the most excellent mothers. In fact a good
stepmother may always be taken to mean a bad or indifferent mother.
This is so little realized by most people, that I believe I am the
first person in history who has ventured to defend the bad stepmother
on these lines. On the contrary, the whole tendency of the modern world
is to deprecate the bad stepmother and to honour the good stepmother.
In this way are woman’s best virtues being undermined.
[193] This is in addition to the derivatives already given in the first
mention of this virtue.
[194] See Baudouin’s confirmation of this in his interesting work
_Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion_. (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.)
[195] See Henri Marion (Op cit., p. 79). “_Les filles sont aussi plus
imitatrices que les garçons, quoique l’instinct d’imitation soit
remarquable chez tous également. Selon Mlle Lauriol ‘les filles imitent
et singent mieux que les garçons.’ Il semble qu’elles remarquent
mieux ce qu’on dit et fait devant elles et qu’elles y prennent plus
d’intérêt; le répéter et l’imiter est un de leurs plaisirs les plus
vifs. Elles y excellent d’autant plus qu’elles créent, inventent et
innovent moins._”
[196] Op. cit., p. 234. See also p. 177: “The sex-instinct in woman
having had its origin in surrender, retains much still of this primal
element.”
[197] It is naturally impossible to discuss or enumerate the many vices
that may or may not fall to the share of the negative woman; for they
would consist of all the positive woman’s vices, _plus_ those vices
that come with subnormal health, and _minus_, of course, sensuality.
Negative women can at least pride themselves on this _minus_.
[198] No reference will be made to those vices that result from a
thwarting of her natural instincts—such vices as cruelty, gluttony, and
drunkenness; for most of these were discussed in the Chapter on the Old
Maid.
[199] Byron has already been mentioned in this volume as one who also
detected women as the creators of this tinsel of false sentiment.
Michelet and Alphonse Daudet were among the Frenchmen who saw eye to
eye with Byron on this point. Daudet said: “_La femme deteste l’ironie
qui la déconcerte et qu’elle sent être l’antagoniste des enthusiasmes
et des rêveries de l’amour._”
[200] See Havelock Ellis, Op. cit., p. 196: “Whenever a man or a woman
are found under compromising circumstances, it is nearly always the
woman who with ready wit audaciously retrieves the situation. Every
one is acquainted with instances from life or from history of women
whose quick and cunning ruses have saved lover or husband or child. It
is unnecessary to insist on this quality, which in its finest forms is
called tactfulness.” See also Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol.
II., p. 358. See as a magnificent poetic representation of this power
in women Byron’s _Don Juan_, Canto I, stanzas CXLII to CLXXVIII. The
latter stanza is worth quoting in full. It is as follows:—
“A hint, in tender cases is enough;
Silence is best; besides, there is a _tact_—
(That modern phrase appears to me sad stuff,
But it will serve to keep my verse compact)—
Which keeps, when push’d by questions rather rough,
A lady always distant from the fact:
The charming creatures lie with such a grace,
There’s nothing so becoming to the face.”
[201] Speaking of little girls Henri Marion says: “_De même les
observateurs n’hésitent pas à déclarer les petites filles moins
parfaitement droites que les garçons, en général, plus compliquées,
plus diplomates, plus fertiles en petites roueries, plus inclinées à
biaiser, à broder, à inventer, tout au moins à aranger et amplifier....
Surtout quand elles veulent mentir, elles sont plus habiles que les
petits garçons, se troublent moins, ont plus de présence d’esprit
pour soutenir un premier mensonge._” Op. cit., p. 86. Monsieur Marion
adduces Mgr Dupanloup and Mlle Lauriol as his authorities for this view.
[202] Finally among the great thinkers of Europe who have held the
view that women are indifferent to truth, and incapable of rectitude,
I would further mention Rousseau, Diderot, La Bruyère, and that great
genius Kant, who, in his _Ueber Pädagogik_ coldly conjures fathers to
enforce truthfulness in their children because “mothers have a tendency
to attach but little importance to it.” His exact words are (p. 108 of
the Königsberg 1813 Edition), speaking of children’s habit of lying,
“_Des Vaters Sache ist es, darauf zu sehen, dass sich die Kinder dessen
entwöhnen; denn die Mütter achten es gemeiniglich für eine Sache von
keiner, oder doch nur geringer Bedeutung._”
[203] See Chapter VIII of that work.
[204] See White’s _Natural History of Selborne_. Letters LXXVI and
“Observations on Quadrupeds.”
[205] The researches of ornithologists during recent years sufficiently
prove that the female cuckoo lays her egg upon the ground, and then
deposits it in the nest of a bird whose egg resembles the one she has
just laid.
[206] See chap. IX, verse 14.
[207] Op. cit., p. 121. See also Weininger, Op. cit., p. 250.
[208] Letter to d’Alembert.
[209] Among other reasons accounting for woman’s dependence on man for
art-forms is her lack of originality.
[210] See my _Man’s Descent from the Gods_, chap. VIII.
[211] Op. cit., p. 226.
[212] One or two exceptions will occur to the reader’s mind, such as
Mahommed and Benjamin Disraeli; but these are not really exceptions,
because in each case the woman was rich enough to compensate for her
husband’s impecunious and unsuccessful condition.
[213] See W. S. Coleman, M.E.S., _British Butterflies_, p. 4: “Prompted
by a most remarkable instinct, and one that could not have originated
in any experience of personal advantage, the female butterfly, when
seeking a depository for her eggs, selects with unerring certainty the
very plant which, of all others, is best fitted for the support of her
offspring, who, when hatched, find themselves surrounded by an abundant
store of their proper food.”
[214] The reader is probably aware that celibacy was not always the
rule among the clergy of the Holy Catholic Church. It was only enforced
by law during the fourth century A.D. Now, it is my theory that it
was this instinctive vulgar predilection of the female in favour
of material success that was partly responsible for compelling the
authorities of the Church ultimately to make celibacy a duty among
the clergy. Because as the bulk of them were, by virtue of their
profession, poor, it was impossible for them to find women of their
own station to marry them, and in consequence they were thrown on the
lowest women, or the prostitutes, of the time. To avoid the abasement
of the ecclesiastical body by this inevitable law, the authorities
therefore prescribed celibacy. H. H. Milman, D.D., in his _History of
Latin Christianity_, admits that celibacy was enforced among the clergy
to save the Church from degeneration, but he gives as a reason that
ecclesiastical matrimony would have led to the holy office passing from
father to son, and thus to grandson and great-grandson. Why this should
necessarily have led to degeneration is not clear, unless he assumes,
as I do, that the clergy would have had to marry beneath them. See Vol.
IV (Ed. London, 1864), pp. 17-18.
[215] That acute thinker, Schopenhauer, realized this, and spoke of the
harm that women do to modern society by stimulating the most sordid and
ignoble ambitions of men. See Essay, _Ueber die Weiber_, in the 2nd
Vol. of the _Parerga und Paralipomena_, chap. XXVII, para. 369.
[216] An intelligent working man once said in my presence, “Almighty
God made woman, and money made ladies.” I have wondered ever since
whether the deep wisdom in this remark was original, or whether there
is any national saw embodying this sentiment.
[217] In White’s _Natural History of Selborne_ there are some
interesting and illuminating remarks on this point. See Edward Jesse’s
edition (London, 1898), pp. 223 (Footnote) and 333.
[218] See the Chapter on the Old Maid.
[219] This, by the by, was recognized by Pope. See his _Moral Essays_
(Epistle II, To a Lady):—
“In men, we various passions find;
In women, two almost divide the kind;
Those, only fixed, they first and last obey,
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.”
[220] _The Book of Manu_, chap. IX, verse 7.
[221] _The Book of Manu_, verses 2 and 3.
[222] For the necessary relationship of vanity and modesty, see Chapter
on Divorce, pp. 223-225 _ante_.
[223] Op. cit., p. 211.
[224] A vain man is just as dangerous when he has power; because he too
judges his fellows only according to how they treat him.
[225] This tendency to add to personal attractions by cultivating
intellectual interests is more particularly suspicious in the mature
virgin, and in the young married woman who is either childless or has
ceased to bear children. In both the waxing unconscious desire for
fertilization calls forth the instinct to use every possible weapon to
draw attention.
[226] See, for instance, Lecky, _History of European Morals_, Vol. II,
p. 379: “Morally the general superiority of women over men is, I think,
unquestionable ... they are more chaste both in thought and act” [!!!].
See also Vol. I, p. 145: “Sensuality is the vice of young men.” There
is scarcely an English book on this subject that does not reiterate
this insane legend. See also footnote on p. 308 _ante_.
[227] Nature evidently intended it to be pleasant in all its stages:
for all bodily functions, when healthy, are pleasant; their very
pleasantness seems to be part of the design of preserving life on
earth. He who has watched a female cat, as I have often done, from the
moment of fertilization to the day when the kittens are weaned, can no
longer entertain any doubt that the enormous amount of unpleasantness
that civilized women have to undergo, in the process of child-bearing,
is all the result of degeneration and disease. A female cat purrs even
while the kittens are being born.
[228] For a description of how our ancestors deliberately created
a majority of negative women, see Chapter V of my _Defence of
Aristocracy_.
[229] This method of going to work, which is the method of amputation,
is always the first adopted by weak and stupid people. It is easier to
amputate and suppress than it is to master and to organize. Hence there
is an element of impotence and dull-wittedness in the counsel, “And if
thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee” (Matthew
v. 29, 30); “And if thy right hand offend thee” do ditto.
[230] _Book of Laws_, IX, 2.
[231] Rousseau was groping towards this truth when in _Emile_, Book V,
he said: “_Vous dites sans cesse, les femmes out un tel et tel défaut
que nous n’avons pas. Votre orgueil vous trompe; ce seroint des défauts
pour vous, ce sont des qualités pour elles; tout iroit moins bien si
elles ne les avoient pas. Empêchez ces prétendus défauts de dégénerer,
mais gardez-vous de les détruire._”
CHAPTER XI
Women in Art, Philosophy and Science. The Outlook. Conclusion
From what has been laid down in the previous chapter, it will have been
seen that, in the economy of Nature, the female of the species has been
endowed with very special qualities which, while they are indispensable
to the survival of life, also give her a very definite character,
different from that of the male and susceptible of alteration only at
the peril of the species.
Woman, at her best, has been revealed as a creature, who, without
exaggeration or fulsomeness, may be called the Custodian and Promoter
of Life. If this is the rôle in which she is at her best, it therefore
follows that, in any other rôle she undertakes, she will display her
second best, or her subordinate, side. A creature cannot wantonly do
violence to her nature and proceed along lines foreign to the strongest
forces that have been evolved in her, and yet hope to achieve the same
virtuosity as when she had nature and the tradition of her line both on
her side. To repeat the simile already used in this work, as well might
you expect a fly to walk with the same facility on its antennæ as on
its legs.
_A priori_, without examining the evidence for or against our
contention, we should expect to find that in Art, Philosophy and
Science, which are pursuits exacting qualities frequently antagonistic
to the natural pre-requisites of woman’s rôle as a Custodian and
Promoter of Life, woman can at best only make an inferior display, even
if she make any display at all.
This, as the reader will agree, is surely not a matter of opinion, it
is one of facts, and the facts can be verified. What would the logic of
the most carefully argued thesis signify, if all about us we possessed
the evidences of women’s unquestioned mastery in Arts, in Philosophy,
and in Science?
This is true enough, and in this respect, the verdict of facts is
final. In science and philosophy, says Havelock Ellis, “it is not
simply that women are more ready than men to accept what is already
accepted and what is most in accordance with appearance—and that it
is inconceivable, for instance, that a woman should have devised
the Copernican system—but they are less able than men to stand
alone.”[232] Whether we turn to metaphysics, epistemology, and
the other departments of abstract thought, astronomy, physics, or
mechanics; whether we turn to medicine, chemistry, philology, geology,
physiology or any other of the more modern sciences, or whether we
turn to architecture, sculpture, poetry, or painting, the names that
really count, the figures _that are milestones_ in the history of these
human pursuits—and this is the ultimate criterion—are all names of male
performers. There should be no need to elaborate this point. Anyone
acquainted even slightly with the history of any art or science, is in
a position to accept it without demur. Think what we embrace in the
subjects mentioned, when we pronounce the names of Aristotle, Bacon,
Hobbes, Kant, Nietzsche, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Pasteur,
Lyell, Grimm, Pheidias, Michelangelo, Titian!
It is not legitimate, as we have seen, to argue that men have
distinguished themselves more than women in all these fields
_because_ women have been suppressed and wilfully stunted. In this
respect the Feminists have wished to prove too much, and in doing
so have overreached the truth. Specialization of function must be
accompanied by specialization of instinct, impulse, and outlook. The
highly specialized functions of woman in the long line of evolution,
therefore, must be taken into account, in any inquiry into the striking
disparity existing between her performances and man’s, in such
important departments of life as Art, Philosophy and Science. And if,
by taking the said specialization into account, we are able to explain
this disparity, what need is there of a hypothesis so very much at
variance with historical fact, according to which it is claimed that
the difference between the intellectual capacities of man and woman are
the outcome of a warping or of a stultification of the female mind,
somewhere and somewhen, in the development of the race?
In connexion with this differentiation of the sexes from the standpoint
of their respective capacity in matters of artistic production, it
should, however, always be borne in mind that the positive man is
distinguished from the positive woman (_vide_ Chapter IV) by the
possession of a developed social instinct which, in itself, is a
sufficient basis for all his powers of order and arrangement. The
relative importance of the social instinct in man—that instinct
to which everything in the nature of civilization and ordered
human society is to be traced—its power in him to act freely and
independently of the reproductive and self-preservative instincts, and
sometimes even to act against them (as in its control of male lust and
its recognition of the responsibilities of that lust) is certainly an
important factor in man’s superiority over woman in the matter of art
production. For Art is not only a social function in the sense that it
is an expression of one man’s feelings to another, it also partakes,
in the forms it adopts, of those elements of order and arrangement
which reach their highest manifestation in the ordering and arranging
of society.[233] Men, as social animals, are therefore possessed of
the necessary sex tradition to produce great artists; whereas women,
as pointed out in Chapter IV, not only have no sex tradition in the
forming of society, i.e. in the creative aspect of the social instinct,
to which order, form and arrangement belong, but they are also too
much overpowered by one instinct (the reproductive) to allow their
rudimentary social instinct free play. As I have already shown, woman
only inclines to art, therefore, when (_a_) her reproductive instinct
is prepared to stand aside, because it is not as strong as it might
be, owing to some flaw in her ancestry or in the tone or correlation
of her bodily parts; or (_b_) she wishes to wield an extra weapon in
attracting the other sex.
In the first case, she turns to art at the bidding of a genuine impulse
to it, arising from a real whisper coming direct from her rudimentary
social instinct, in which case her reproductive instinct may be
considered as imperfect, suspect, lacking in vigour. In the second
case, she turns to art at the bidding of her reproductive instinct,
which urges her unconsciously to adopt one of the arts temporarily as
an extra feather with which to distinguish her from the ordinary crowd
of females about her.
It is, however, probable that to woman’s lack of a strong sex tradition
in the free exercise of a social instinct, the unimportance of her
performances in the arts is largely due; and seeing that a more perfect
equipment in this direction must mean the disturbance of her instincts’
balance, and the suppression of her reproductive in favour of her
social impulses, it is not likely that, if the human species is to
survive, we shall ever witness such a readjustment of woman’s instincts
as to render great female artists a possibility.
The reader may wish to point out that the acceptance of the theory of
organic evolution hardly allows us to deny that some transformation of
woman along lines that would make her able to become a great artist,
philosopher or scientist is surely possible. According to this theory
there can be no limit to the possible metamorphoses which a deliberate
and consistent change in environment and in habit might produce in a
number of generations; and, given the will thereto, the end is probably
not beyond human achievement. There is some plausibility in this
objection; but, as in the matter of the virtues and vices of women, it
may well be asked: (1) Whether it is a desirable end, (2) whether the
price paid for its achievement—the volatilizing of women’s subservience
to a concern about the concrete demands of life—can be afforded by a
race already somewhat exhausted from the standpoint of vital instincts,
and (3) whether the experiment could possibly be made on a sufficiently
large scale, for a sufficient number of generations, to bring about a
modification of the sex as a whole.
To transform the whole of the female sex in civilized countries in
the hope of bringing forth a female Michelangelo or a female Kant,
would seem a hazardous and very laborious experiment, with but a
doubtful reward as its object; and seeing that the experiment might
and very probably would involve a dangerous depreciation of woman’s
vital instincts, the endeavour to philosophize with women might quite
conceivably end in racial and social suicide.
There is, however, a grave difficulty in the way of any such
experiment, a difficulty that would probably foredoom it to failure
from the start; and that is the probability that the appearance of
such minds as Michelangelo’s or Kant’s in the male sex is due to
a male characteristic which can by no human means, selectional,
educational or otherwise, be transferred to woman. I refer to masculine
variability. It is probable that the appearance of all great men is
to be ascribed to the law of the greater variability of males than
females, and that it never will be possible to achieve in woman that
large gamut of endowments which separate, say, a Newton from an average
suburban-dwelling newspaper-and-cabbage-fed clerk. The fact that while
this greater male variability produces geniuses superior in every way
to the highest woman, it also produces male fools whose standard of
stupidity is far and away higher than any that woman has ever reached,
is not denied; but we are bound to reckon with it notwithstanding.
And if, as biologists assure us, the extreme variability of man is
the ultimate cause of the genius, then it seems unlikely that in the
experiment above outlined, anything more could be achieved than the
deterioration of woman as woman.
Apart from woman’s natural lack of originality, and her absence of
initiative, or of that spirit of bold and confident conviction—all of
which derive from her necessary rôle in the relation of the sexes—her
indifference to truth is what chiefly incapacitates her for scientific
pursuits, as it does for all undertakings where truthfulness is of
pre-eminent importance; while her constant subjection to her emotions
makes her an untrustworthy judge of all those facts or questions, to
which she may be inclined to bear an emotional relation.
Anyone who has an extensive knowledge of women—even of the most
cultivated among them—is aware of how constantly they are guided in
their conclusions concerning what is true by hedonistic considerations.
Indeed, it is the most difficult thing to persuade a woman, even of the
most obvious truth, if that truth strikes her as being too unpleasant
to be comfortably assimilated to her previous stock of knowledge.
In addition to her vital indifference to truth, therefore, woman’s
emotions add a further disability to her nature in this department.
Her convictions are so intimately and unconsciously interwoven with
her deepest interests and long-cherished beliefs, that if, to accept a
certain truth, these convictions have to be outraged, she prefers to
reject that truth as unacceptable. In this sense, woman’s thinking is
largely feeling, and her thoughts are largely sensations.[234] The
more emphatic and stubborn a woman is in any belief, the more strongly
you may suspect that she has not facts, but emotional reasons for
holding it.[235] That is why women are so notoriously bad at giving
reasons for their opinions, and why they are so untrustworthy as judges
of matters of fact, where impartiality is a pre-requisite. A woman
Feminist, for instance, will emphatically claim (I have actually heard
a body of them claim this) that the music of Dame Ethel Smyth is equal
to any that has been composed by the best male musicians, and she will
reiterate this claim and press it the more aggressively and stubbornly
the more you try to appeal to her reason with the view of showing her
the absurdity of her position. Now the cause of this is not the female
Feminist’s _intellectual_ conviction that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music
is actually equal to the best male music, but her strong emotional
desire that it should be so; and this strong emotional desire makes
her utterly unfit to express an impartial opinion upon it. The truth,
which is that Dame Ethel Smyth’s music is by no means equal to the
most superior male music, is too unpleasant to be accepted: therefore,
without any further ado, it is rejected as untrue.
It is enormously difficult for a woman to divorce her wishes, her likes
and dislikes, from her beliefs and from her conclusions; and this, in
addition to her natural indifference to the truth, and her lack of
originality, is enough to explain the fundamental unsuitability of her
sex for any scientific pursuit.[236]
These characteristics of woman’s mind ought, of course, to exclude her
from any function in which impartiality and unemotional judgments are
pre-requisite. We ought not to dream, therefore, of placing women on
juries, or of making them judges of anything except the most trivial
and impersonal questions; and consequently it is perhaps the best proof
of our stupidity, or rather of our subjection to female influence,
as a nation, that women are not only allowed to sit in our principal
governing bodies, but also on our juries. That gross miscarriages
of justice are bound to follow, is a prophecy that anyone can make
now, and with absolute confidence that he will prove right. In fact,
although at the time of writing, it is hardly more than a twelvemonth
since women have been sitting on juries, a gross miscarriage of justice
has already occurred.[237]
When, therefore, we hear that on February 24, 1922, Mr. Justice
Coleridge, in welcoming four women on the Grand Jury at the Surrey
Assizes, said he was satisfied that the administration of justice
would be strengthened by women on Grand Juries, we can only shrug our
shoulders at the vagaries of the senile—or anile?—judicial mind. (He
was apparently seventy-one when he expressed this view.) We should
have liked to ask him, on what evidence he, as a judge, based this
utterly unwarrantable opinion. Had he any evidence? If he had none,
why did he, as an expert trained in the sifting of half-truths and
untruths from Truth, ever allow himself to make such a wild statement?
If he had evidence, where did he get it from? We can condone his
senile slobbering over four strange ladies in his court and under his
immediate patronage, but he might at least have confined the expression
of his sentiments to less harmful amenities than the remark he actually
made.
Verily the emotionalism of our bench of High Court judges is one of the
many dangers menacing our civilization; for it furnishes a proof that
Feminism and effeminacy are invading the very quarters where they do
most harm—that is to say, those quarters on which the nation depends
for impartiality and coolness of judgment.
It is perfectly possible so to change a woman as to convert her
into a creature who might be as impartial as a slot machine or a
ready-reckoner; but, before this could be achieved, so many of her
vital characteristics would have to be destroyed, that the process of
education would amount to a training in degeneration, dangerous both to
the species and to human life in general.[238]
To employ her, however, in functions demanding characteristics the
very opposite of those which are the most vital in her; to place her
in a position in which she has to display a love of truth, a lack of
emotion, and a capacity for thinking as apart from feelings of desire,
like or dislike, is to anticipate this training in degeneration before
it has effected its results, and thus to make justice, and every other
public function in which she takes part, a pure and unadulterated farce.
In opposition to the sentimental septuagenarian of the Surrey
Assizes, therefore, we prophesy with even more conviction than he
could possibly feel, that the administration of justice will only be
_weakened_ by women on Grand and all other juries.
In reply to those Feminists who are inclined angrily to dismiss all the
above as the outcome of prejudice, or whatever else they may imagine
has animated me in writing it, it would be interesting to ask them
how _they_ propose to account for woman’s inconspicuous part in Art,
Philosophy and Science, unless they are prepared to accept as real some
of the disabilities which I have shown to be derived from the most
vital elements in female nature.
They cannot now argue that it is due to the systematic repression of
women’s capacities by men, because this _canard_ is no longer believed
by anybody. They can hardly argue that it is due to the frequently
adverse conditions of women’s life; because we know that some of
the greatest geniuses of history were not only born in conditions
unfavourable to high achievements, but also produced some of their
finest work while still struggling with adversity. If they are not
prepared to ascribe the fact to a natural difference between the sexes,
which, in view of its being part of the economy of life, it would be
dangerous to disturb, _what_ is their position?
The fact that women possess certain powers of mind peculiar to
themselves alone, which enable them frequently to hit at a truth
beneath its many disguises, and to appear to guess when they really
only _see_ or _feel_ the correct answer to the question, has been
asserted and claimed too often to be passed over here without some
comment. And we are the less inclined to leave it unnoticed, seeing
that both tradition and the wisdom of antiquity take it for granted.
This power is usually called intuition. It is an immediate road to
knowledge, instead of a mediate one. Without reasoning or analysis, the
intuitive person _perceives_ the truth.
In the sense of its being an _immediate road to knowledge_, however, I
should doubt very much whether it could be proved that woman possesses
intuition. The number of her guesses being infinite, it is only natural
that occasionally they should be right.[239] But, in any case, even if
we did grant that woman possessed intuition in this sense, we could
not claim that she is alone in this possession. All great male poets
have possessed it: Heraclitus, Theognis, Shakespeare, Gœthe! When Gœthe
perceived the true morphology of the human cranium, after looking at
a skull, he saw intuitively a fact which the science of a subsequent
Age was only able to prove at the cost of much labour and research.
Likewise, when the poet responsible for the opening chapter of Genesis
wrote down the order in which the organic world appeared on earth, he
perceived intuitively a fact which thousands of years afterwards the
analysis and reasoning of science confirmed. We have not on record
any such profound scientific fact that was originally discovered
intuitively by woman. If, however, women really possessed intuition, in
the sense of a power that enabled them immediately to perceive a hidden
or hitherto undiscovered truth, the records of the sciences would
surely be full of such cases; and we should expect to find the history
of every science to consist of an early _intuitional_ period in which
all the fundamental great truths were discovered by women, and a later
_substantiating_ period, in which these female discoveries were proved
and confirmed by the analytical and rational faculties of the male.
This, however, is not what the history of any science reveals. It
frequently records cases of correct guesses on the part of male poets
and thinkers, which subsequent generations of male scientists have
confirmed; but, to my knowledge, not one such case of a woman.
Nevertheless, we are bound to treat with some respect a tradition
of such hoary antiquity as is this one concerning woman’s peculiar
mental powers, and although we may doubt whether they may be truly
characterized by the one word intuition, it is at least incumbent upon
us to find a better word, or to explain how the tradition arose, and on
what feature of the female psyche it is based.
The most striking instance of the recognition by the ancients of
special spiritual powers in woman, is the employment of virgins as the
voices of oracles. The Oracle of Delphi, for example, which was the
most celebrated of all the oracles of Apollo, employed a virgin in this
way, and she was known as the Pythia of the Temple. Whenever the oracle
was consulted she was led by the _prophetes_ to her seat on the tripod,
and then, under the influence of the vapour arising from the chasm
under her feet, she would fall into a state of delirious intoxication,
and utter the sounds which contained the revelations of Apollo. Until
about the end of the third century B.C. this virgin was usually a
young girl taken from some family of poor country people. About this
time, however, a certain Thessalonian named Echecrates is supposed to
have seduced her, and thereafter she was replaced by a woman of fifty
or over. Three such virgins were constantly employed at Delphi in the
heyday of Hellenic civilization, and the pronouncements of the oracle,
although they frequently contained prophecies of a very definite kind,
were so consistently wise and true, that it is impossible to deny at
least some mysterious power behind their inspiration.
Modern rationalists, like the Greek rationalists of old, have scoffed
at the supposed mysterious power that resided in these virgin mediums,
but it is easier to scoff than to explain, and the task of dismissing
them as a fraud is simpler than that of explaining how a wise people
like the ancient Greeks could have maintained their faith in them for
generations, if there had not been a genuine element of divination in
their many pronouncements.
Other oracles were served by women, in addition to that at Delphi, and
among these we may mention the Oracle of Apollo at Tegyra, the Oracle
of Apollo at Argos, the Oracle at Deiradiotes, and the Oracle at Patara
in Lycia.
Whatever the powers were that the mediums used, I, at all events, feel
disinclined to doubt their truly mysterious quality, nor do I believe
that this mysterious quality was in the nature of a fraud engineered
and practised by the priesthood. If the mediums and their peculiar
functions were the only instance we had of occult powers being used
for prophecy and divination, through the instrumentality of virgins,
I should feel more inclined to side with the sceptics. But, seeing
that we have in the mediæval belief in the magic of witchcraft further
evidence of a popular traditional notion that occult powers of a sort
can reside in woman; seeing, moreover, that we have such staggering
cases of mysterious virginal inspiration and second sight as that which
is typified in the history of Joan of Arc, we can but maintain a humble
attitude of mind, and until such time as greater knowledge is given
us, readily admit that here there is something outside our philosophy
which, while it cannot be denied, is yet akin to what, for lack of a
better term, we may call the Unknown.
When we are told by psychologists, therefore, that in the matter of
psycho-therapeutics women reveal greater suggestibility than men;
when Baudouin tells us[240] that in applying his system of cure by
auto-suggestion, Coué has met with speedier results among women than
men, the most we can do, at the present state of our knowledge, is
perhaps to suppose that there exists in woman an easier and readier
contact with the unconscious mind, that women are therefore able
to communicate with greater success than men with that mysterious
reservoir of strength and life, now designated vaguely as the
Unconscious, and it is in this power that we must seek an explanation
of the miraculous phenomena with which, for millenniums, women have
been traditionally associated.
In any case, it must now be obvious that it would be a mistake to
call this power _intuition_, i.e. an immediate perception of objective
scientific truth; because tradition and history alike give us no record
of objective scientific facts that have been discovered by women in
this way. It would be more accurate, for the present, to regard it as
a sort of _clairvoyance_, a power of presaging an event, by _feeling_
correctly the significance of antecedent circumstances or perturbations
preceding the event. Presumably every event in history is but the
inevitable bursting of a mine, the various trains of gunpowder to which
may be accurately located and recognized some time before the explosion
takes place. Given a degree of sensitiveness that feels one or more of
the existing trains, before their presence is even suspected by the
remainder of mankind, and correctly traces their course to an ultimate
goal, and the presentiment that a perturbation will sooner or later
occur at that goal, must follow with more or less intensity.
How this presentiment or feeling becomes conscious, how the virgin
Pythia of Delphi _felt_, for instance, that the Persians would one
day plunder and burn the Temple of Didyma, and accurately prophesied
the event some time before it happened, it is impossible to say; as
well might we try to explain the accurate weather prognostications of
snails, of swallows, or of the monkeys on the rocks of Gibraltar. This,
however, is certain, that a kind of second sight is frequently given to
women, particularly to young virgins (probably owing to their condition
of acute apprehensive-and sensitive-ness); but whether it will ever be
explained as a sort of feeling intelligence of the periphery of their
bodies, or of their sight, or of their ears, or definitely located in
a peculiar function of their psyche, it is at present impossible to
say.[241]
In conclusion, however, I must, for the sake of the reader unacquainted
with the history of this aspect of the human mind, call attention to
the fact that men, too, have been known to possess these very powers.
It is in no spirit of hostility to women that I here add this reminder
of a well-known fact, but simply with a view to saving myself from
misinterpretation.
The feminist reader, who will imagine that the bulk of this book,
instead of having been dictated by a feeling of deep friendliness
to women, is really the work of prejudice, will halt here, and feel
perhaps a certain disappointment. Here was I, at last, generously
according a unique psychical power to woman, and lo! I now proceed to
add that even this peculiar gift is not peculiar, and that she shares
it with man.
Alas, yes! The truth must be admitted. The most we can say is, that
women perhaps possess it more frequently, more normally than men; but
that men have possessed it, and will continue to possess it, cannot, I
fear, be denied.
The ancients, whose wisdom in these matters is our first hint of the
existence of such occult powers in humanity, were perfectly well aware
of this fact. The oracles at the Hill of Ptoon, at Claros, at Olympia,
and in the Oasis of Lybia (Zeus Ammon), and many others, were all
conducted by men, while that of Zeus at Dodona, was conducted by men at
first, and only in later times by women.
The records of the Jewish race and of the Middle Ages are full of
instances of men whose “clairvoyance” was well known, while in the
East, the employment of men in functions where powers of divination and
clairvoyance are essential, is almost universal.
Whether these facts justify the ultimate conclusion that, while man
includes woman, woman does not include man—that while all that is woman
is man, all that is man is not woman, it is perhaps a little difficult
to say. At all events, it is my belief that the truth resides very
near, if not actually in, this statement of the relation of the sexes;
and although I claim no originality for it as it stands, I think it
helpful in explaining briefly much that will probably be eternally true
about this relation.
* * * * *
The Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races have little of the seer in their
constitution. They are better at meeting and enduring disaster than at
foreseeing and forestalling it. They are suspicious of prophets and
prophecy, because they have none of the gifts that would enable them
to indulge in vaticinations themselves. Not being possessed of any
capacity for divining the ultimate bourne of current tendencies, they
doubt very much whether it is possible for any man to foretell that
bourne, or to describe it in anticipation. They are completely wedded
to the doctrine of experience. “What you have not experienced you
cannot possibly know,”—this is the ultimate epistemological doctrine of
these two races. The consequence of this is that they are constantly
in the precarious position of him who, knowing nothing of poisons, and
being quite unable to predict their possible effect, has to wait for
the consequence of having partaken of strange drugs before he can know
whether they are good for him or not.
Such an attitude would be excusable at the dawn of history, at the
beginning of human life, or in the Garden of Eden. It seems quite
inexcusable in the present Age. And yet, although the Anglo-Saxon and
Teutonic races have the whole of the accumulated history of civilized
mankind, and the whole of the tradition of humanity, at their command,
they still persist in demanding individual experience of everything,
before they will pronounce upon it.
The fact that in such circumstances one may quite easily _die_ of
experience, or at least fall into a hopeless decline as the result
of it, never seems to occur to them. They go blundering on, refusing
to learn from the lessons of previous civilizations, and determined
to allow every possible experience of mankind to work its worst
consequences upon them, as if these consequences had never been heard
of in the world before.
It is so with Democracy, and it will be so with Ochlocracy. These
things have been tried before. They are known, and have proved fatal
to the civilization that tried them. But what is that to the Teuton
and Anglo-Saxon? He has no personal experience of their evils, and is
therefore determined to stake the fate of his civilization on trying
them.
Even without actual experience of their evils, either in the present or
the past, it would be simple for anyone, equipped with only a little
insight and wisdom, to foresee exactly whither democracy will lead,
whither it must lead, whither it cannot help leading; for you cannot
conduct any institution with a committee consisting of everybody,
without condemning that institution to immediate or ultimate disaster.
Democracy has only to be thought about for a few hours, in order to be
dismissed as the most stupid of all forms of government. Even if other
civilizations had failed to try it, even if democracy were a hitherto
unexplored field, a moment’s reflection would be sufficient to enable
one to condemn it as utterly hopeless.
Such, however, is the constitution of the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon
mind, that the people of these races will require to see their
civilization in ruins about them, as the result of their experiment
with democracy, before they will be prepared to alter their opinion
on the subject of democratic institutions, and agree to label them
“Poison” for all time.
What is true of democracy in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon countries, is
also true of Feminism. It is possible to say now quite positively that
Feminism is stupid and wrong. It is possible to prophesy with complete
certainty that Feminism will only aggravate the disasters already
overtaking civilization. To anyone who feels that the arguments
advanced in this book cannot be cavalierly dismissed as negligible,
it must be plain that modern humanity’s experiment with Feminism, by
striking nearer to the roots of Life, is perhaps even more dangerous
to civilization and to the race, than Democracy itself. But let no
one who feels disposed to take this view imagine for one moment that
the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton will therefore stop the experiment of
Feminism here and now. To the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton, Feminism is
an unexplored experience. However mad, however dangerous, and however
mortal it may be, it will therefore be allowed to proceed until its
danger and its deadliness are apparent to all. The fact that, by that
time, it may be too late to reverse the engine, too late to repair the
havoc wrought, does not disturb the Teuton or Anglo-Saxon mind for one
minute. To lock the stable door after the horse has gone, to label
“Poison” an emptied phial, are practices so common, so habitual in
England, and in all countries like England, that it would be romantic
to hope that any halt will be called in the modern stampede in favour
of Democracy and Feminism until long after their worst consequences
have become plain to the meanest intelligence. This fact, however,
would not be sufficient to exonerate anyone like myself from all blame,
if he omitted to raise his voice above the roar of the stampede, to
try at last to call attention to its dangers. For, even if I may fail
to gain the ear of my own countrymen and all those who resemble them,
I may at least have the satisfaction of warning off those who have not
yet become involved in the colossal errors of Western and particularly
Anglo-Saxon civilization.
The outlook, then, is decidedly depressing. It seems almost certain
that the experiment of Feminism, far from being arrested, will be
pursued further and further. Not until its worst consequences begin to
be understood by the dullest inhabitants in Great Britain, is it in the
least likely to be regarded as a possible mistake; and, seeing that
England and America—not to speak of France and the northern countries
of Europe—have it in their power to set an example to the rest of the
world, it is probable that the harm it will do will be world wide and
deep seated before anything in the nature of a revulsion of feeling
begins to make itself felt.
The prospects of an immediate revulsion of feeling in this country are
not very hopeful. There are indeed signs of such a movement; but, in
my opinion, it is too feeble, too sporadic, and too unreasoning to be
effective.[242] It is very much more likely that Feminism will enjoy
a fresh access of power and popularity in the near future, than that
it will meet with any serious reverse; for almost everybody to-day is
an unconscious feminist. Every journalist, novelist, poet and public
man, with but few exceptions, takes the first principles of Feminism
for granted. No one seriously doubts, for instance, that woman has
exercised a beneficent influence over civilization; the absurd idealism
which represents woman as the unselfish, self-sacrificing, partner in
human life, is almost universally accepted. Everybody is inclined to
regard man as the unmoral (non-social or anti-social) and woman as
the moral (social) sex, and to hold the sexes as otherwise perfectly
equal. And as long as these false ideas prevail, it cannot be a matter
of surprise that modern man should have come to the conclusion that
the more women’s influence is made to prevail, the better the world
will be. It is true that there are still a number of intelligent and
healthy people who are prepared to enlighten the world on the danger of
this tendency; but their voice can hardly be heard above the clamour
of the other side. In fact, the victory of the Feminist standpoint is
so complete, that success in any field to-day presupposes a certain
deep and sometimes quite unconscious sympathy with Feminist ideals.
All those who fail to confirm this tendency, all those who attempt
to tear away the tinsel of dangerous sentiment and sentimentality
that now adorns the female of the species, and to raise a masculine
voice of protest against the absurd idealization that disfigures and
distorts and will ultimately ruin her, finds the whole front of modern
criticism, modern prejudice, and even modern philosophy against him.
The chances are, then, that before another century dawns, we shall
see women as judges, women in holy orders, and even women as Cabinet
Ministers. But by the time this comes about, if it should come about,
it is to be hoped that the influence of Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic
countries will have sufficiently declined in the world, for their
example to be no more than a sign-board, a warning and a danger-signal,
to inform other nations of the fatal peril of following in their wake.
The reforms suggested in this work, for the purpose of curtailing
the power of women and of instituting saner and healthier views of
marriage, are hardly likely to be adopted while the influence of
Feminists remains in the ascendant; for the possibility of greater
happiness and greater health resulting from such reforms could hardly
be admitted by a public which, through being largely under the
direction of Feminist sentiments on the subject, must take a romantic
rather than a realistic view of the relation of the sexes. Indeed,
the probability is that the views regarding marriage, and the laws
regulating it, will grow steadily more and more insane as the century
advances and the more deeply we sink into Feminism; for the increasing
influence of women in every sphere, including particularly politics,
can only tend to falsify and destroy every natural relation and every
sound institution of social life. With perfect confidence, therefore,
we can prophesy an increasing degeneracy of life in England, that will
reach its lowest point with the zenith of feminine influence; but
whether at the end of this tragic cycle there will remain sufficient
health and sanity in the population to help towards a recovery of its
former greatness, and towards a reaction that will prove salutary, is
a question that we should require a Pythia of Delphi to answer for us.
The same remarks apply to the reforms suggested in the chapter on the
Old Maid. Not until England has suffered very much more cruelly than
she has suffered hitherto, can we hope to see reforms introduced which,
for their initiation, would require not only the defeat of Feminism,
but also a state of mind entirely purged of feminine, romantic, and
anti-male influences. But this moment is still a very long way off. The
fibre of the nation will require to be very substantially stiffened
before these happenings will be descried even on the most distant
horizon, and it is feared that this stiffening process will be achieved
only by the fierce lesson of a cruel disaster. Nothing else will
convince people that the road has been a wrong one.
* * * * *
I have now come to the end of my undertaking. I have called my work
_A Vindication_, because I sincerely meant it as a book friendly in
spirit to the female sex, and one in which the worst that can be said
about them is shown to be but the outcome of their best, or at least
but the result of a misuse or abuse of their best. I have attempted
to show that their virtues, like their vices, are all derived from
the unalterable vital instincts which their evolutionary rôle, as the
mothers of the race, have gradually implanted in them and fixed in them
for ever. Not the smallest suspicion of hostility or bitterness towards
women has animated me in writing one line of the preceding pages. It is
my conviction that those who misunderstand women, who wish to make them
more negative, and who flatter them into the belief that their present
and traditional inferiority to man is not natural but “artificial,”
are the true enemies of womankind. It is they who are now contriving
woman’s unhappiness, and who, in conspiring to rob her of the greatest
joys of which her body and spirit are heirs, distract her attention
from their nefarious scheme by holding before her prizes which, in the
ripeness of time, she herself recognizes as mere baubles.
The possibilities of human nature are so incalculable, and the freaks
of adaptation so manifold, that it is by no means impossible to
destroy the woman in woman and to convert her into a creature in which
masculine instincts and aspirations come into constant conflict with
a non-masculine physique and a non-masculine racial history. As an
ideal achievement this is not impossible. The only question humanity
has to decide is whether such a metamorphosis is desirable; whether
in the interests both of woman herself and the species in general,
such a transformation will be for the good. It is true, as we have
seen, that it will never be possible to rear female geniuses equal
to male geniuses, because these extremes in men seem to be due to a
purely masculine tendency to greater variability; but a more modest
programme of masculinization is certainly not impossible. Make woman
honest, upright, straightforward, however; make her impartial; make
her scrupulous; make her the reverse of vulgar; destroy her love of
petty power, her vanity and her sensuality; and what, in sooth, will
you have achieved? You will have undermined the very instincts that
Nature has implanted in her to secure the survival of the species at
all costs, and in the face of everything. If that is desirable, if
that is an ideal worthy of our aspirations, then certainly let us
do all in our power to realize it. If, however, it is possible to
entertain the smallest shadow of doubt concerning the wisdom of this
course; if by the exercise of a little humility we can question whether
our nineteenth-century or our twentieth-century ideals can possibly
be more profound and more far-sighted than the eternal sagacity of
Nature; if there are still reasons for feeling that it is not woman as
I have described her in these pages, but man himself—man as we know
him in this post-war Europe of 1922—who is really in direst need of
transformation; then, it seems to me, that it is above all important
to pause and carefully to take our bearings before we make this daring
plunge; for we cannot now with any pretence of honesty or good faith
claim that it is a plunge into the unknown.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[232] Op. cit., pp. 210, 211.
[233] For a detailed discussion of the relationship of the painter,
sculptor, poet, architect and musician to the great social builder and
artist, see my Introduction to _Van Gogh’s Letters_ (Constable & Co.,
London).
[234] See Lecky (Op. cit., vol. II, p. 360). Speaking of women he says:
“They are little capable of impartiality or of doubt; their thinking is
chiefly a mode of feeling.” See also Buckle (_The Influence of Women on
the_ _Progress of Knowledge_), the whole argument of which is to the
effect that woman’s thinking is emotional. Weininger also says (Op.
cit., p. 100): “With the woman, thinking and feeling are identical,”
but this testimony is not nearly as valuable as that of the two former
writers, who can in no way be suspected of misogyny.
[235] On this whole question cp. Sir Almroth E. Wright (Op. cit., p.
35): “Woman’s mind attends in appraising a statement primarily to the
mental images which it evokes, and only secondarily—and sometimes not
at all—to what is predicated in the statement ... accepts the congenial
as true, and rejects the uncongenial as false; takes the imaginary
which is desired for reality, and treats the undesired reality which is
out of sight as non-existent.”
[236] With the softening of men in an effeminate civilization, women
are, of course, not alone in holding this attitude to truth. Many
men, even among the most cultivated, are unable to-day to separate
pleasantness from truth; for to do so implies a control of emotion by
reason which is not the forte of modern mankind. Not only men writers
during the war, but also politicians, proved beyond doubt their own and
their male audiences’ inability to regard truth rationally; and at the
present time you are quite as likely to be flatly contradicted by a man
as by a woman, if you enunciate an unpleasant truth before an ordinary
crowd.
[237] _Vide_ Press reports of the William Harkness case, particularly
the comments published, after Harkness’s execution, in _The News of the
World_ for February 26, 1922.
[238] Arabella Kenealy was tending towards this conclusion when she
wrote (Op. cit., p. 155): “The woman of average brain, however, attains
the intellectual standards of the man of average brain at cost of her
health, of her emotions, or of her morale.” I would suggest “and”
instead of “or” in the latter part of the sentence.
[239] Anyone who attempts to keep a record of his wife’s, mother’s or
sister’s so-called “intuitive” statements, will soon realize how few of
them reveal an accurate power of immediately perceiving truth.
[240] See several passages in his _Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion_.
[241] The fact that certain organisms in the animal kingdom use senses
which, as far as we can tell, have neither sight, taste, smell,
hearing, nor touch, for their basis, is shown by W. S. Coleman in his
_British Butterflies_. The manner in which the males of the Kentish
Glory Moth, for instance, are attracted to the female, when she is
sometimes more than a mile away from them, is utterly unknown, and
Coleman is compelled to refer it to a sort of clairvoyance. (See pp.
28-29.)
[242] It is largely animated by commercial and industrial rivalry, and
this sort of opposition to Feminism is too contemptible to inspire much
enthusiasm.
INDEX
ACTORS, the, in modern society, 214
ADULTERY, committed by the artist when he marries, 89;
in case of positive woman due to long absence of husband, 189;
caused by vanity, 189 _n._, 219;
during war-time misunderstood by fools, 190, 191;
of the woman owing to her husband’s impotence, 194;
in positive woman due to childlessness, 202
AFFECTATION, a sign of misery in spinsters, 240
ALCOHOL, a sublimator of sex, 248
ALFRED THE GREAT, the masculinity of his mother, 158
ANÆMIA, pernicious effects of, in the positive girl, 116, 117
ANGLO-SAXONS, their lack of insight, 361-3
ARISTOTLE, his doctrine of catharsis, 247
ART, only a weapon in the hands of positive women, 65, 66;
all forms of, man’s invention, 325;
why women turn to, 349
ARTIST, the, often ruined by his success with women, 85;
commits adultery when he marries, 89
ATHLETICS, pernicious effect of, on the positive girl, 113-5
BIRTHS, table of legitimate and illegitimate, 128 _n._
BODY, the, thrilled by sexual union and also by order, 58-60;
the joys of the healthy, never pall, 87;
care of the, in positive girls essential, 117;
the, ruined by Puritanism in both rich and poor, 118;
the joys of the, most important in life, 149
BYRON, unhappy married life of, 143;
the masculinity of his mother, 158;
on cant, 250 _n._;
attitude of women towards his Don Juan, 279 _n._;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316;
on women and false sentiment, 319 _n._
CALVIN, hostile to life, 11;
altogether negative, 13 _n._
CANT, _see_ Introduction.
The inevitable ingredient in every movement in England, 250;
Byron on, 250 _n._
CARLYLE, unhappy married life of, 143
CATHOLIC CHURCH, honest and practical regarding superfluous women, 32;
its wise organization of spinsters, 274, 275.
CELIBACY, in the Catholic Church enforced by poverty, 329 _n._
CHANGE, a necessary tonic in life, 140
CHARLES I ruled by social instinct, 45
CHILDLESSNESS, as an end destructive of conjugal happiness, 204;
its bad effect on the husband, 205, 206;
a cause of divorce, 207-10;
longer endured by the negative than the positive woman, 215
CHILDREN, positive if healthy, 13, 14;
healthy, the best pattern for the positive man, 15;
the seriousness of positive, 15, 16;
positive to everything, 18-20;
their restless energy, 37;
their misrepresentation of their restlessness, 38;
their unconscious motives, 39;
the object of woman’s eternal gratitude, 42;
their healthy contempt of sickness and deformity, 101;
their taste should be guided along healthy lines, 101, 102 _n._;
the regulation of the procreation of, the object of marriage, 138;
a consolation to the wife for decline in her husband’s
affection, 148, 149;
a separating force in marriage, 149;
no bodily consolation to the father, 149;
during regular bearing of, a woman rarely tempted to leave her
husband, 179;
years do not necessarily increase love between the parents, 180-4;
frequently a source of friction, 183;
much more important to the wife than the husband is, 185;
not consciously desired by the dissatisfied wife, 201 _n._;
necessary to introduce variety into the home, 205;
the pernicious relations of spinsters with, 241
CHRISTIANITY, logically condemns sex and advocates eternal life, 4, 5;
responsible for decadent doctrines, 102 _n._;
teaches nonsensical doctrine of “union of souls” in marriage, 137;
and thus responsible for degeneration, 139;
responsible for degeneration, 176 _n._;
a sublimator of sex, 248;
attractive to the negative spinster, 258
CLEANMINDEDNESS, destroyed by sexual abstinence, 173;
only obtained by healthy gratification, 174
CLEVERNESS, exaggerated value attached to, nowadays often leads to
unhappy marriages, 85
COHABITATION, pernicious during gestation and suckling, 163-5
COLBERT, ruled by social instinct, 45
COMPANIONSHIP, impossible in marriage, 147
CONCUBINE, necessary for positive young man, 172
CONSCIENCE, a guilty, merely costive, 18;
woman tries to rule man by giving him a guilty, 197 _n._
CONSTIPATION, bad effects of, 115
CONTEMPT, inevitable in modern love-matches, 143, 144
CONTRACEPTIVES, unknown to the body, 75;
because they cause sterility lead to adultery in the woman, 195,
196;
deleterious effect of, 203, 205 _n._, 211
CO-RESPONDENT, the, a vain fool, 191, 193;
the, always vain, 200;
his vanity, 211;
far too lightly treated in England, 223
COURTSHIP, should be an adventure, but to-day is not, 142
CRIMINALS, the vanity of, 226 _n._
DAVISON, Emily, her marvellous rush at the Derby, 312
DEATH, the necessary counterpart of sex, 3
DEGENERATION, of modern man, 161 (_see also_ Introduction);
the object of society to-day, 166
DEMOCRACY, has been proved fatal to civilization, 362
DE QUINCEY, on the evil effects of repression, 246;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316
DESIRE, killed by gratification, 141
DICKENS, CHARLES, unhappy married life of, 143
DISCIPLINE, of healthy children most difficult, 20;
the object of, 21
DISRAELI, ruled by social instinct, 45;
an able man capable of fulsome flattery, 338
DIVORCE, rarer where there are many children, 180;
high figures for, in cases of small families, 202;
majority of petitions made by men, 207;
some statistics of, 208;
childlessness a cause of, 207-10;
chart of, according to professions, 211;
higher percentage of, in professional classes, 212;
of the negative couple, 216
DOMESTIC work, value of, 266
DON JUAN, the cold, 222
DOSTOIEWSKY, on the vanity of criminals, 226 _n._
EDUCATION, in England produces womanly men, 175
ELIZABETH, Queen, her vanity, 337, 338;
her success as a ruler largely due to her unlimited capacity for
lies, 315 _n._
EMMA OF NORMANDY, a remarkable woman, 292, 293
ENGLAND, full of negative and asexual women, 53;
lacking in positive men, 97;
disregard of the body in, 112, 113;
men made negative in, for 270 years, 119;
her “trousered women,” 156 _n._, 162;
large proportion of negative women in, account for adultery out of
vanity, 189 _n._;
public opinion in, chiefly ruled by Puritanical old ladies, 190;
co-respondents treated too lightly in, 223;
marriage in, often peaceful through negativism, 227;
women less positive in, 247;
cheerful spinsters in, a bad sign, 248;
prostitution most degraded in, 251;
hypocritical attitude towards prostitution in, 252;
more misery and disorder in, connected with sex, than anywhere
else, 260;
full of homes owned by wealthy spinsters, 269, 271;
cooking in, atrocious, 299;
and clothing inferior, 300
ENGLISHMAN, less positive than the Frenchman, 92;
has less social instinct than the Frenchman, 92, 94;
increasingly negative, 94;
his negativism, 119;
his erroneous views of woman’s virtues, 308
ETERNAL LIFE, doctrine of, hostile to sex, 4
EXUBERANCE, high sexual, often accompanies superior spiritual
gifts, 84;
lack of, makes both men and women unhappy, 96;
sexual, not required in modern industrial slaves, 96
FAMILY, the, created by monogamy, 135
FATHER, the reasons of his attachment to the family, 186, 187
FEMALE, the positiveness of the, almost unbreakable, 22
FEMALENESS, in the male due to snubbed sex and broken spirit, 156
FEMINISM, a phenomenon of male degeneration, 35 (_see also_
Introduction);
the ruling creed of English journalists and writers, 272 _n._;
largely the creation of wealthy spinsters, 273;
the creed of the age, 278;
to be condemned even from the hedonistic point of view, 335;
rout of, essential, 345;
stupid and wrong, 362;
bound to be given a trial in Anglo-Saxon countries, 363, 364;
likely to grow stronger, 365
FLAPPER, the courage of the healthy English, 105;
helped by her vanity, 106
FOOD, joking over, a sign of negativeness, 15
FOOTBALL, bad for men, barbarous for women, 114
FRANCE, old maids in, always unbearable, 112
FRANCIS, ST., of Assisi, ruled by social instinct, 45
FRIENDSHIP, requires change and separation, 140;
affords recreation, 146, 147
GIBBON, on the importance of women among the Teutons, 280, 291
GIRL, the first meeting of the positive, with a possible
mate, 80, 81;
her disappointment to-day, 81;
foolish prejudices that mislead the positive, in the choice of a
mate, 82;
the French, always watched, 92;
the English, less positive than the French, 93, 94;
the positive, often disappointed in marriage, 95;
tragic plight of the positive English, 97;
the conflict between her body and modern ideals in the positive
English, 104;
her self-contempt and pessimism, 105;
only the positive, makes the hateful spinster, 111;
the negative, makes a cheerful old maid, 112;
the positive, often ruined by athletics, 113;
care of her body imperative, 117;
the positive, converted to negativism by her husband, 118, 121, 122
GOOD, definition of, in a positive sense, 10-12, 53
GREECE, schools for initiation into sex in, 253
GREEKS, schools for initiation into sex among the, 172
HEALTH, means pleasurable functioning, 151
HERMAPHRODITISM in both sexes, 155
HINDUS, their healthy teaching about marriage, 102 _n._;
their wise regulations for wives separated from their
husbands, 189 _n._;
their provision for women childless through husband’s
fault, 194 _n._;
destined their daughters for marriage only, 276 _n._;
description of woman in their sacred book, 280, 281;
on woman’s disregard for beauty, 325;
the poorest caste the most respected among the, 330;
their wisdom in controlling their women, 325, 336, 344
HOMOSEXUALITY, admired by Weininger but condemned by the author, 53
HUMANITARIANISM, an outlet for the spinster’s love of power, 242;
merely inverted sadism, 243;
the harm done by, 244
HUSBAND, the saviour of his wife’s body, 107
HUXLEY, on woman’s virtue, 308
ILL-HEALTH, in girls due to waiting for marriage, 110
IMPUDENCE, the, of those who imagine they are capable of feeling and
inspiring undying love, 145
INDIAN women, cynical treatment of by British, 299 _n._
INFERTILITY, danger of, to married life, 195-203
INSTINCT, defined, 43, 44;
the three fundamental instincts, 44;
the social, rules men like Napoleon, Charles I, Nietzsche, etc., 45;
the self-preservative, rules cowards, anarchists, unscrupulous
plutocrats, etc., 45;
the reproductive, rules Woman, 46;
the self-preservative, suspended during courtship, 89-91;
the social, keeps reproductive, in control, 91
INSTINCTS, sound, necessary for positiveness, 14
INTUITION, in women and great men, 356
JOAN OF ARC, her mysterious powers, 358
JOHN THE BAPTIST, ruled by social instinct, 45
JUDGES, effeminacy of present-day, 354
LADY, no such thing has ever existed, 331
LAUGHTER, not a characteristic of positiveness, 16;
shrill, the social noise of Puritan countries, 17;
the only positive form of, defined, 17
LEUCORRHŒA, bad effects of, 115-7
LIFE in Nature quite tasteless, 306
LOVE, illicit, some penalties of, 128;
defined, 128;
society’s lie regarding permanence of, 129;
permanent only in very rare cases, 130;
may be an excuse for an illicit union but not for marriage, 139;
only lasts if it is unconsummated, 141 _n._;
the delusion of lasting, 142;
not necessarily deeper between parents of a large family, 180, 181
LUNACY, in females chiefly among the unmarried, 238 _n._
LUVV, the right spelling for the maudlin modern idea of the nobler
sentiment, 143;
the corrosive of monogamic marriages, 143;
as described in modern novels, 214
LYING, “physiological” in women, 281;
in women vital and essential to life, 302-5
LYTTON, Lord, his unhealthy influence, 101 _n._
MALE, the, naturally prehensile, 120
MAN, cannot mould woman, 27;
but can make her miserable and ill, 29;
modern, less positive than woman, 23;
a means unconsciously exploited by woman, 42;
not generally ruled by reproductive instinct, 46;
an amputation from Life, 55;
reproductive instinct not universally predominant in, 55;
social instinct most important in his life, 56;
woman a temptation to the positive, 67, 69;
practically asexual after performing the sexual act, 68;
guided by social instinct to support woman and child, 68;
the modern public school athlete a torture machine for
women, 82, 83;
guided by values in his choice of a mate, 98, 99;
the positive, ruined by Puritanism, 152, 153;
the positive, misled by Puritan values, 100, 102;
duty of the positive, to give woman a clean conscience in regard
to sex, 107;
degeneration of, 161 (_see also_ Introduction);
the rarity of the male, in England, 161, 162;
school of initiation into sex for, 172;
effect of childlessness upon the positive, 205, 206;
games, hobbies, and religion the substitutes for sexual variety for
the positive, 207;
the negative, guided by vanity, 222;
the proud, disliked to-day, 224 _n._, 225;
the modern, very much below even a modest idea of what man should
be, 230;
ruined and devitalized by commercialism, 265 (_see also_
Introduction);
the creative intelligence even in woman’s sphere, 299;
the Promethean type of, and the misery he creates, 333, 334;
geniuses and unmitigated fools produced by the extreme variability
of, 350, 351;
his psychic powers, 360;
his great variability, 367;
most in need of transformation, 368
MANLINESS, absurd modern conception of, 82
MANU, Laws of, _see_ HINDUS
MARITAL fidelity, due to ill-health, 151
MARK ANTHONY, ruled by reproductive instinct, 45, 55
MARRIAGE, erroneous to regard it is a sacrifice for women, 79;
often a disappointment to the positive girl, 90;
a social contrivance, 125;
not a natural state, 126;
hedonistic view of, reprehensible, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137;
its utility, 133;
in a chaotic condition in Europe owing to Christianity, 139;
unhappy in most cases of men of genius, 143;
modern, now on the rocks, 168;
should be utilitarian, 169;
points to be considered in, 169;
right teaching regarding, 170;
reform of, essential, 176;
the fifth to the tenth the most critical years for, 210, 211;
entered upon from vanity, 218;
in England often peaceful owing to negativism, 227;
should be the only calling for women, 276
MATERNITY, the pains of, exaggerated by modern women to give man a
guilty conscience, 77;
only intolerably painful in disease, 78;
only “unselfish” in the case of a sick or badly formed woman, 78;
increasing number of women suffering from, to-day, 79;
only self-sacrifice in the case of sick females, 148 _n._
MEMORY, ancestral, in women, 234
MEREDITH, George, on wealthy spinsters, 270
MILL, John Stuart, a henpecked philosopher, 282;
inspired by his wife, 282;
his foolish remarks on the nature of woman, 283-7;
his false assumptions regarding woman, 289;
a sentimental liar concerning women, 296;
a pernicious liar, 345
MODESTY defined, 224
MONOGAMY, natural to some animals but unnatural for man, 126;
advantages of, chiefly social, 134-7;
regulates the procreation of children, 138;
disadvantages of, 139-67;
precludes all change and respite, 140, 141;
more satisfactory to the female than to the male, 148, 149, 150;
may inflict sexual abstinence on the male during pregnancy of the
wife, 165;
productive of ill-health and degeneracy, 165
MORTAL Life, desirable together with sex and other means
thereto, 6-8, 12, 13;
includes pain, 10;
intellectual justification required for constant attacks upon, 12;
to be called Life, as being the only kind of Life we know, 13
MOTHER, the, loved by the true artist, 71;
the positive, consciously desires her full sexual cycle, 77;
importance of the early training of the child by the, 314, 315
MOTHER’S milk, abominable substitutes for, 164
NAPOLEON, ruled by social instinct, 45;
his dictum that women have no rank, 331, 332;
and Madame de Staël, 337
NEGATIVENESS, defined, 13;
noisy laughter a sign of, 17;
the attitude of, towards childhood, 22;
in woman, the outcome of sickness or degeneracy, 35
NEGATIVISM, responsible for chastity in England, 96;
excellent from the Puritan point of view, 96;
causes of deterioration to, 108-11;
physical disorders due to, 112;
positive girl converted to, by her husband, 118;
in women through lack of mastery in men, 121, 122;
incapable of lasting emotion, 130;
impossible to calculate the vagaries of, 213;
due to an atonic condition of the body, 215;
confounds motherhood with martyrdom, 215;
never guided by passion, 227
NIETZSCHE, ruled by social instinct, 45
OLD MAID, the, less enthusiastic about “Woman’s Cause” than the
negative wife, 218 (_see also_ SPINSTER)
OLD TESTAMENT, honest in its attitude to disease, 101
ORDER, means greater happiness and security, 60
ORGASM, the, alone unsatisfying for the woman, 195
PAIN, to be accepted because necessary to Mortal Life, 13;
the depth and distinction gained by, 107
PARENTS, should destine their daughters for marriage only, 276
PASSION, does not grin and grimace, 221;
never directs negative people, 227;
euphemisms for lack of, 228
PAUL, ST., hostile to Life, 9, 11;
altogether negative, 13;
immoral because hostile to Life, 62
PENELOPE, her undesirability probably the cause of her
fidelity, 190 _n._;
admiration of, 192 _n._
PESSIMISM, the, of the positive English girl, 105
PHILOSOPHER, the positive, deeply interested in the child, 14, 15
POSITIVENESS, defined, 13;
the seriousness of, 16, 17;
forgets all that mars interest in life, 17;
rarely has a guilty conscience, 18;
has no fear of pain, 18
PRAYER BOOK, its wisdom in the Marriage Service, 107;
its teaching regarding marriage, 138
PREHENSION, a male quality, 120;
modern Englishman lacking in, 121
PRIG, woman’s epithet for the man of insight, 217
PROCREATION, improper and impious for cold-blooded Puritans, 34
PROFESSIONAL classes, reasons for high percentage of divorce in
the, 212
PROSTITUTE, the, loved by degenerates and anarchists, 71;
the only kind of woman to whom man is everything, 73;
driven by unfortunate circumstances to misunderstand her true
needs, 76;
the sadness of her lot not due to its moral turpitude, 254;
her childless fate her severest penalty, 255 _n._;
not so by nature but made so by circumstances, 255
PROSTITUTION, an evil in Western civilization because it is made
so, 249;
sexual, not necessarily the worst, 250;
most degraded in England, 251;
hypocritical attitude towards, in England, 252;
Lecky on, 252 _n._;
as a school of initiation into sex, 253;
necessity of placing, on a sound and more humane basis, 254
PURITAN, the, his implacable loathing of sex, 5;
and of all bodily matters, 8;
immoral because hostile to Life, 62;
by associating sexual pleasure with marriage only, responsible for
_mésalliances_, 134;
his outcry against wise marital infidelity, 166
PURITANISM, has reduced men to nincompoops, 33;
claims of, now heard because of increase in repulsive and botched
people, 35;
vitality impaired by depressing foods and drinks introduced by, 53;
affected men more deeply than women in England, 94, 95;
ruins the sexual life of the positive couple, 153;
has destroyed the male man in England, 161
PURITY, true and false, 100;
the only true, is the outcome of fire, 100
RELIGION, as a compensation for sex, 245
REPRESSION, De Quincey and Aristotle on bad effects of, 246, 247
REYNOLDS, JOSHUA, his bodiless child angels the ideal of the negative
mind, 22
SADISM, in little girls, spinsters, and old women, 156;
unconscious, in women, 157;
humanitarianism an inverted form of, 243
SAVOURINESS, a pre-requisite in marriage, 87
SCANDAL, loved by all decent, humane people, 311
SCHOPENHAUER, hostile to Life, 11;
the masculinity of his mother, 158;
on woman as the voice of the species, 178;
his conclusions vitiated by his failure to distinguish between
healthy and unhealthy, 213 _n._;
on woman’s cunning, 304 _n._;
his unfortunate relationship to his mother, 316;
on harm done to modern society by woman’s influence, 330 _n._
SEDUCER, the, who gives a girl a child more merciful than he who does
not, 254 _n._
SELF-CONTROL, that, which arises from strength, 70;
the so-called, of the negative young man, 91;
not responsible for the chastity of English courting couples, 95;
a euphemistic name for lack of virility, 167;
in sex a counsel for wax figures, 175;
the vain boast of negative spinster, 257
SELFISH, a meaningless term, 197
SENSUALITY, necessary in woman, 340-4;
but should be controlled, 343
SEX, the necessary counterpart of death, 3;
incompatible with Eternal Life, 4, 5;
necessary for Mortal Life, 6, 8
SEXUAL ACT, man’s attitude towards the, 70, 71;
alone insufficient for woman, 76
SOCIAL instinct, creates society, 62;
positiveness towards, in woman denotes decline of woman, 66;
leads man to support woman and children, 68;
keeps sexual instinct in control, 70
SOCRATES, unhappy married life of, 143
SOUL, the pernicious doctrine of the pure, 101, 102 _n._
SPENCER, HERBERT, right regarding children of large families, 21;
ruled by social instinct, 45
SPINSTER, the hateful, only made by the snubbed positive girl, 111;
the cheerful, made by the negative girl, 112;
her advice about girls to be suspected, 114 _n._;
her outcry against wise marital infidelity, 166;
the, always abnormal, 229-31;
exercises an abnormal influence on society, 231-3;
her “useful work” should be suspected, 232, 233;
the positive and negative defined, 234, 235;
the positive, a great conscious sufferer, 235-7;
profound physiological disappointment of the Positive, 238;
tendency to suicide in the very positive, 238, 239;
neuropathic symptoms in the, 239, 240;
affectation a sign of misery in the, 240;
the various ways in which she seeks compensation, 240, 246;
reason of her frequent choice of the teaching profession, 241;
her jealousy of young girls, 246;
the embittered, more common on the Continent than in England, 247;
the negative, not a great conscious sufferer, 255;
misinterpretations of the lack of sexual vigour in the
negative, 256, 257;
the danger of these misinterpretations, 257;
will gravitate almost automatically to Christianity, 258;
her love of the weak and the poor, 260;
her hatred of men, 261;
the negative becoming more prevalent in England, 262;
increases economic difficulties, 263;
the wealthy, inevitably a burden on society, 268-71;
her good works a means of making herself important, 270;
George Meredith on, 270;
contaminates English opinion, 272;
largely responsible for Feminism, 273;
an abnormal influence, 273, 274;
wisely provided for by the Catholic Church, 274, 275;
the “annuitant” always a bane, 278;
benevolent sequestration of the, desirable, 278
SPIRIT, the things of the, pall quickly, 86
STEPMOTHER, the bad, a good mother, 312, 313 _n._
STRAFFORD, ruled by social instinct, 45
SUBLIMATION of sex possible but undesirable outside a Church, 174;
of sex may be accomplished through Christianity or alcohol, 248
SUICIDE, through disappointed love more common among women than
men, 42 _n._;
tendency to, in the positive spinster, 238, 239
TACITUS, emphasizes the important rôle of women among the Teutons, 290
TEACHER, pernicious influence of the unmarried, 241
TEUTONS, importance of women among the, 290
UNCONSCIOUS motives, actuating action, 40, 41;
misunderstood by women, 43, 47-9
UNHEALTHINESS, defined, 50;
the unhealthy woman approaches maleness, 51;
makes woman an infidel towards Life, 52
UNSELFISH, a meaningless term, 197
UNSELFISHNESS, the, of motherhood one of the greatest lies produced
by Western civilization, 79
VALUES, guide a man in his choice of a mate, 98, 99
VANITY, helps to save the young girl’s body, 106;
makes the sick girl desire marriage, 111;
as cause of adultery, 189 _n._;
of the old man, 193 _n._;
mistaken for passion, 214;
leading to imitation of passion, 218;
leading to marriage, 218;
leading to adultery, 219;
courtship the time of the strongest appeal to, 220;
guiding the negative woman, 218-22;
guiding the negative man, 222, 223;
always found in conjunction with modesty, 223-5;
the tragedy of mortified, 226;
of criminals, 226 _n._;
judgments based on, unreliable, 226 _n._
VIRGIN, the, does not sincerely crave for children, 75;
the “pure” defined, 258;
as the voice of oracles, 357
VIRGINITY, idiotic demand for, in men before marriage, 155
VULGARITY, vital, of women, 326-30
WAR, the Great, supported by negative spinsters and old men from
secret sex motives, 261 (_see also_ Introduction)
WARTS, children positive even to, 19
WEALTH, desired by positive woman, 84
WEININGER, his logical hostility to Sex and Mortal Life, 8, 9, 11;
his misunderstanding of the unconscious in woman, 47;
makes no classification into healthy and unhealthy, 50;
admired sterility, 52;
admired homosexuality, 52 _n._;
his contradictory statements about the prostitute, 71 _n._;
his view of “maleness” in women, 155;
this view proved false, 161 _n._;
his conclusions vitiated by his failing to distinguish between
healthy and unhealthy, 213 _n._;
agrees that there has been no subjection of women, 297;
on woman’s natural lawlessness, 301 _n._;
his pessimism, 302 _n._;
on great men preferring the prostitute, 327
WILL defined, 44
WOMAN, more positive than modern man, 23;
wretched and desperate to-day, 25;
an unchanging individuality not fashioned by man, 25, 27;
her primary adaptation to man and the child, 28;
is Life’s uninterrupted stream, 29;
to-day deprived of her primary adaptations, 30;
rightly dissatisfied with modern man, 30;
modern attitude towards superfluous women insulting and
dishonest, 31, 32;
the Catholic Church more honest towards them, 32;
as Life’s custodian inevitably miserable and in pain to-day, 35;
not equipped for ordering Life, 35;
her cry of warning must be respected but her remedies rejected, 36;
her action guided by her bodily structure, 41;
is above all wedded to Life and sins in its service, 42;
unconsciously exploits man, 42;
does not know her unconscious motives, 43;
ruled by reproductive instinct, 46;
misinterprets promptings of reproductive instinct, 47;
unconscious of her motives, 49, 50;
approaches maleness when unhealthy, 51;
an infidel towards Life when unhealthy, 52;
for woman positiveness to sex and Life is the same thing, 55;
the asexual, hostile to Life, 56;
will follow man if he understands her, 56;
positive to order, 61;
feels no confidence in men lacking in social instinct, 62;
the positive, all sex, 63;
the positive, timid in the presence of men, 64;
the positive, does not continue to practise the arts when once they
have helped her to secure a man, 65;
modern, losing faith in man because of the decline of his social
instinct, 67;
attitude of the positive, to sexual act, 72;
sexual union alone insufficient for, 72, 76;
her love for man a romantic ideal, 73;
the positive, unconscious of what is necessary for full sexual
experience, 73, 74;
positive in the first place to man, 74;
the positive, unconsciously desires full sexual cycle, 75, 76;
the modern European, exaggerates pains of maternity in order to
give man a guilty conscience, 77;
increasing number of women suffering from maternity to-day, 79;
the positive, desires wealth for the protection of her offspring,
84;
the positive, not impressed by spiritual gifts alone, 88;
guided by Life in choice of a mate, 98, 99;
the negative, content without children, 149 _n._;
sadism in, 156, 157;
the “male” desirable, 157-9 (_see also_ Introduction);
cases in which the “male” is undesirable, 159;
maleness in, only made recessive by superior maleness in the
man, 160, 161, 174, 175;
misery of the “male” woman in England, 162;
her demand for the sexual cycle the voice of the Will of the
Species, 178;
rarely tempted to leave her husband if regularly bearing
children, 179;
the positive, grows more indifferent to her husband as the family
grows, 181, 182;
the positive, unconsciously desires to employ her reproductive
machinery, 188;
the positive, commits adultery owing to long absence of husband,
189;
the best, faithful to Life before all else, 192;
her adultery owing to husband’s impotence, 194;
the childless, often takes up a Cause, 196 _n._;
tries to rule man by giving him a guilty conscience, 197 _n._;
more likely to go wrong in marriage through childlessness than the
man, 205;
the negative, endures childlessness much longer than the
positive, 215;
the negative, cultivates a taste for soulful literature and
Christianity, 216;
calls man who sees through her “prig,” 217;
difference between positive and negative, in an illicit love
affair, 220, 221;
the negative, notoriously _grimacière_, 221;
the surplus, and work outside the home, 267;
being besotted by entering the work market, 267, 268;
the number of surplus women in England, 274;
should be destined for marriage alone by her parents, 276;
suggested ways of dealing with the problem of the surplus, 276, 277;
connected with evil from time immemorial, 280;
lying “physiological” in, 281;
her bondage an illusion, 289, 290, 296;
her importance among the Teutons, Celts, and Early English, 290-2;
in the Middle Ages, 293, 294;
in the 16th and 17th centuries, 294-6;
has consistently shown crass stupidity in her own peculiar
domain, 298, 299;
Life’s custodian, 300;
her _primum mobile_ completely a-moral, 301;
her lies vital, 302, 305;
her lying necessarily extended to non-vital matters, 302-4;
her five cardinal virtues, 307;
modern Englishman’s erroneous view of her virtues, 308;
her derivative virtues, 309-19;
her laudable love of scandal, 311;
her six cardinal vices, 318-43;
her tact, 320;
her lack of taste of vital necessity, 326-32;
her incapacity to appreciate great men, 327-9;
cannot forgive material failure in her men, 331;
has no rank, 331, 332;
her love of petty power, 332-6;
must be controlled, 335, 336;
her vanity, 336-40;
danger of her vanity, 338;
her vanity vital, 339, 340;
vanity overcome by passion in the positive, 340;
her sensuality, 340-4;
her sensuality vital, 341, 342;
the custodian of Life, 346;
negligible in Art, Philosophy and Science, 346, 347;
reasons for her turning to Science or Art, 349;
cannot be changed without danger to the species, 350, 351;
her thinking largely feeling, 351, 352;
incompetent to act in any judicial capacity, 353, 355;
her intuition, 355, 356;
her psychic powers, 358, 359
WOMANHOOD, ideal of “true womanhood” cruel nonsense, 26, 27
WOMEN workers, their number, 263 _n._
WORKING-MAN, the, more gifted at love-making than his social
superior, 154 _n._
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_.
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 8 Changed: and, finally—this gem of negativness:
to: and, finally—this gem of negativeness:
pg 102 Changed: The danger at persent
to: The danger at present
pg 137 Changed: that pictire of it that dwells
to: that picture of it that dwells
pg 145 Changed: and that B has delieved him
to: and that B has believed him
pg 186 Changed: passion qiu soit bon
to: passion qui soit bon
pg 207 Changed: practise in their lesiure hours
to: practise in their leisure hours
pg 217 Added footnote marker after: analysing the true nature
of woman.
pg 223 Changed: grotesquely lenient to corespondents
to: grotesquely lenient to correspondents
pg 226 Changed: perspicacious, knowledgable, etc., etc.
to: perspicacious, knowledgeable, etc., etc.
pg 237 Changed: the passion, the disapppointment, the hardships
to: the passion, the disappointment, the hardships
pg 266 Changed: and perfer to pay even the price
to: and prefer to pay even the price
pg 302 Changed: immorality, preforce condemned it.
to: immorality, perforce condemned it.
pg 303 (footnote) Changed: or of a dovoted husband
to: or of a devoted husband
pg 319 Changed: unreasonng fury he provokes
to: unreasoning fury he provokes
pg 335 Changed: we read in the old cannon
to: we read in the old canon
pg 347 Changed: devised the Copernician system
to: devised the Copernican system
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