THE NEW LIBERTY OF ACTION
Important forces are, however, at work in the contrary direction.
If the growing prevalence of herd morality will tend to place a new
emphasis on the importance of uniformity, uniformity in the moral
sphere is likely to prove more difficult of attainment.
Two factors in particular will militate against it. These are the
growth of economic independence among women, and the practice of birth
control. Let us consider these factors separately.
I. The basis of the institution of marriage is economic. Theological
factors have of course played their part. The early Christian fathers,
expecting the immediate end of the world, saw no reason to take steps
to ensure the continuance of the race. The Christian hostility to the
pleasures of the senses was, therefore, allowed to rage unchecked, and
sexual intercourse was denounced as both wicked and unnecessary. As
time passed, however, it was found that the world showed no signs of
coming to an end, an inconsiderateness which led to the necessity for
a change of attitude. The Church met the situation with a complete
_volte face_. It had previously stigmatized the sexual passions as so
wicked that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them: it now
pronounced them to be so sacred that no Christian should be permitted
to indulge them without the sanction of the Church. The sanction of
the Church was given in marriage, a device whereby the Fathers sought
to control and to regulate the workings of a passion they were unable
to ignore. Since then the Church has claimed both the ability and the
right to sanctify sex, and has looked with disfavour upon marriages
consummated by the State as an infringement of her monopoly.
But the fact that marriage has been instituted by God and cornered by
the Church is not sufficient to account for its existence before the
Christian epoch or its stability since. These rest upon an economic
foundation.
Throughout the recorded history of civilization the only recognized
way for a woman to make her living has been through her body. Her
body being her one saleable asset, she could employ it in either of
two ways. She could sell the use of it to one man for an indefinite
period, or she could lease it to a number of men for short and strictly
regulated periods. The first method is known as marriage; the second
as prostitution. The existence of these two, and of only these two,
ways of gaining an economic livelihood has led to the formation of
two unofficial women’s Trade Unions, the Trade Union of wives and the
Trade Union of prostitutes. The strength of these unions is directly
proportional to their monopoly of the economic field, and far exceeds
that of any recognized Union in the more strictly industrial sphere.
It is immediately obvious that any woman who was prepared to give for
love or for nothing what other women were only prepared to give for
maintenance was a blackleg of the most subversive type, and the whole
force of organized female opinion has, therefore, been devoted to
making her position impossible. The force of female opinion so directed
is known as morality, and the bitterness with which the free lover,
that is to say, the woman who loves outside the marriage tie or the
prostitute’s preserves, is denounced as immoral, is due to woman’s
unconscious recognition of the fact that she is cutting at the basis of
the economic livelihood of her sex.
It is of course true that the two women’s Unions are to some extent
competitive, and that the existence of the prostitute threatens the
security of the wife while it guarantees the chastity of the young
girl. For this reason there is and always will be hostility between
the Unions. The wife’s first commandment is the Deity’s “Thou shalt
have none other woman but me”, and she is accordingly accustomed to
regard the prostitute with horror, whereas she does not object to the
existence of other wives, since this does not, at least in theory,
threaten her own. For this reason, too, the method of earning a living
adopted by the wife is generally preferred to that adopted by the
prostitute, and is esteemed the more honourable by public opinion.
So true is this that in most women the belief in the honourableness
of wifehood has become second nature, the really nice woman feeling
instinctively that the only decent way for her to live is on the
earnings of some man. But while this feeling provokes hostility to
members of the other Union, it is a hostility which cannot compare
in bitterness with the scorn and hatred felt for the free lover. The
reason for this is obvious. The number of women a man can have for
money is limited by the extent of his income; the number of women he
can have for nothing is limited only by the extent of his ability to
find them. For this reason it is felt instinctively that the free lover
is a greater menace to society than the prostitute. The prostitute,
indeed, is and always has been recognized as a social necessity. She
guarantees the chastity of nice women by providing a necessary solace
for men up to the comparatively late age at which modern economic
conditions allow them to marry. Thus in Tsarist Russia the brothel was
a State-recognized institution. The new brothel was formally opened
by the police officer, and was hallowed by a religious ceremony in
the course of which the premises were blessed by a Russian Orthodox
priest.[5]
[5] _Report of Labour Delegation_, 1925.
Sexual morality in men springs from the same economic source, but is
more limited in scope and less fiercely embraced. This is a natural
deduction from what has just been said. If the livelihood of women
is bound up with the strict observance of the marriage tie, the
maintenance of the moral restrictions upon which marriage as an
institution depends is their special concern. In a purely promiscuous
community the livelihood of women would be intolerably insecure. Hence
women are the natural guardians of morality, knowing that it guarantees
their bread and butter. It is not too much to say that morality as a
going concern is kept up by women. Men on the whole, despite their
strong property sense, are not interested in moral questions. They
have not the woman’s delight in nosing out scandals, and, except when
they are whipped up into a state of moral horror by their women folk,
are much too prone to live and let live. The attitude of deliberate
uncharitableness towards erring sisters which the sex affects does
not come naturally to men, and left to themselves, they would condone
offences which their outraged spouses insist on punishing with social
ostracism.
It is on the whole true to say that the moral sense, so far as sex is
concerned, only begins to function in men after marriage and, except
in the case of one’s own daughter whose saleable value in the marriage
market is thought to be diminished by inchastity, it centres upon the
wife. Since the wife is in origin a piece of property purchased by the
husband for his own enjoyment, to her must be extended the jealous
guardianship which presides over property in general. The wife is the
most valuable of a man’s indoor possessions; in return for the use of
her body he has agreed to maintain her in such dignity and leisure as
he can afford. This obligation to maintain the wife is a permanent one
persisting even after the enjoyment of her person has ceased. Thus
when a wife divorces or lives apart from her husband, he is usually
required to maintain her, so long as she remains chaste. So soon,
however, as she bestows the enjoyment of her person upon another, the
obligation to maintenance ceases, presumably on the ground that the
new consumer should be saddled with the obligation of keeping up what
he enjoys. In nothing is the property basis of marriage more clearly
discernible than in the ‘dum casta’ clause of the English divorce law.
It is upon the same economic basis that the husband’s objection to
infidelity chiefly rests. If another man is permitted to enjoy for
nothing what he himself has purchased at a heavy outlay, the husband
naturally feels aggrieved. He is also rendered ridiculous. It is for
this reason that the cuckold is always presented in literature as a
comic figure; he is in the position of a man who is unconsciously
having his pocket picked. The husband’s predilection for fidelity
in the wife is thus as strong as the wife’s demand for fidelity in
the husband――at times it is even stronger――and springs from the same
economic source. So long as the wife is in essence a piece of property,
it is naturally felt that only the man who has paid for her should
have the use of her; so long as a woman can only obtain her living by
selling herself to a man, she not unnaturally demands that others
should not be allowed to undercut her.
We have spoken of this situation as if it existed in the present; but
it is already in many respects an affair of the past. The history of
the last fifty years has recorded the growing and continuous influx
of women into wage-earning employment which bears no relationship
to sex. Women cure the sick, plead in the law courts, teach in the
schools, do manual labour in garden, field, factory, and workshop, and
serve increasingly as clerks, typists and shop assistants. Three were
recently found among the five hundred applicants for the post of public
executioner in Hungary.
Men have not unnaturally resented this change. The dependence of
women has on the whole suited them, and they do not like to see those
whose economic helplessness has made them a natural prey to male
predatoriness rendered capable of standing on their own feet. Having
deliberately deprived women of the skill, the training, the knowledge,
and the qualifications necessary to make their way in the world, men
have then proceeded to justify themselves by proving the moral and
intellectual inferiority of women from the fact that she is ignorant,
unskilled and uneducated. When it is remembered that the same causes
that have left woman no alternative but concubinage (married or
unmarried) or starvation, have compelled her, as often as not, to
perform the duties of an unpaid housekeeper, it is not difficult to
see how much man was the gainer by the transaction. But, unfortunately
for him, he has been unable to stem the rising tide of feminism. It
has long ceased to be true that a woman’s only means of earning her
living is by exploiting her sex-attraction, and all the evidence
points to the fact that the number of women in wage-earning employment
will be augmented in the future. This estimate leaves out of account
the probability of the endowment of motherhood, which will place all
mothers, whether married or unmarried, in the category of independent
wage-earners.
The effect of this economic change upon the situation I have briefly
sketched, and upon the moral sentiments to which it gives rise is
likely to be twofold.
In the first place the unmarried woman will tend increasingly to form
temporary, irregular unions. This result will follow:
(1) Because her knowledge that she can earn her living in other ways
will not force her to demand from the man a pledge of life-long
maintenance as the price of her love.
(2) Because knowing that she is not dependent upon a man for her
livelihood, she will no longer have the incentive to pander to the
man’s demand for virginity in his prospective wife by remaining chaste
until marriage.
(3) Because a man’s abandonment of the connection which she has formed
with him, a process commonly known as desertion, will not as heretofore
leave her stranded without means of support.
(4) Because men will be less chary of forming temporary, sexual
relationships with women, when they know that they are not expected to
keep them.
In the second place the married woman will tend to mitigate her
hostility to irregular unions formed by unmarried women when she
realizes:
(1) That her husband’s mistress, not being dependent upon him for
support, will constitute a less formidable threat to her livelihood.
(2) That the possible transference of her husband’s affections
and consequent withdrawal of financial support will not leave her
necessarily incapable of finding other employment.
(3) That, as the clear-cut line of demarcation between married and
unmarried unions becomes obscured by the increase in the number of the
latter, it will no longer be either possible or necessary to put the
unmarried mistress as completely beyond the pale of decent society as
has been customary in the past.
From the above considerations it will be seen that the growing
economic independence of women is likely, unless counteracted by other
forces, to lead to a relaxation of the marriage tie, to an increase in
irregular unions, and to a growing tendency to dispense with marriage
altogether.
But, some critics will object, what about the children? Hitherto,
I have left the children outside the scope of the argument, and it
is high time to bring them in. This leads me to a consideration of
the second of the two factors which I cited at the beginning of the
chapter, the practice of birth-control.
II. That the practice of birth-control is likely to increase there can,
I think, be no reasonable doubt. I am aware that there is considerable
opposition to birth-control at the moment, and the various arguments
are brought forward to discourage people from employing its methods.
These arguments are not held on rational grounds, but are dictated
by prejudices based on certain religious or political opinions which
those who put them forward profess. It is said, for example, that
birth-control is displeasing to the Almighty, who invented sexual
intercourse for the reproduction not of pleasure but of children; and
it is thought, though not said, that it is injurious to the State
because it will diminish the supply of cannon-fodder and cheap labour.
As regards the Almighty, whether he would agree with the views put
forward by those who speak in his name is not known. Until, therefore,
we can obtain a direct expression of his opinion on the matter, it
is more prudent to assume that his attitude is non-committal, than
to supply the place of knowledge by converting our conjectures into
dogmas. As regards the supply of cannon-fodder, this is supposed to be
important for consumption in future wars. Since, however, those who
oppose birth-control on the ground that it will diminish the number of
recruits, also hold that wars are inevitable owing to the pressure of
expanding populations, it would seem that populations which cease to
expand have no need to maintain large armies to protect them from the
results of expansion.
The position of those who oppose birth-control being based on political
and religious feelings of an emotional character is not, however,
refutable by argument, or assailable by reason. Our business is not to
reply to arguments which have no rational basis, but to estimate what
influence they are likely to have in the future.
There is, I think, little doubt that this influence will be a
diminishing one. Much of the opposition to birth-control is little
more than an expression of the generalized feeling of hostility which
people experience in regard to anything that is new. Whether it be
a new morality, a new sonata form, a new way of wearing the hair, a
new kind of corset (or none at all), or a new saviour of mankind with
which he is presented, man’s natural and instinctive reaction is one
of antagonism. The antagonism is provoked not by any intrinsic demerit
in the thing that arouses it――indeed in fifty or a hundred years time
it is embraced with acclamation as the last word in orthodoxy or good
form――but simply by its newness. The suggestion that any way of life,
of thought or of conduct can be better than that which they have
hitherto followed wounds people’s self-respect, and some time must
elapse before they can overlook the offence.
This kind of objection applies in a marked degree to birth-control
which challenges people’s most intimate habits, and seems likely to
effect a revolution in their conduct. It will, however, diminish as
the idea of birth-control becomes familiar. The reaction of the normal
Englishman to that which is new usually passes through three phases.
He says first “It is absurd”, second “It is contrary to Scripture”, and
third “Of course! I knew it all the time”. It will be seen that the
opposition to birth-control has already passed into the second phase.
There is a further reason for the probable weakening of the
anti-birth-control movement. The organized opposition to birth-control
comes very largely from members of the upper and middle classes. These
on an average have very much smaller families than the lower classes in
whose interests they profess to oppose birth-control, and to whom they
denounce it. The inevitable inference from this fact cannot continue
indefinitely to remain undrawn, and, as soon as it is drawn, the
lower classes will be able to gauge the sincerity of those who exhort
them to choose between continence or children, while being themselves
remarkable for neither.
Finally the knowledge of the use of contraceptives is bound in course
of time to percolate through every social stratum. The advantages of
birth-control to the individual are so obvious that few will refuse to
avail themselves of the knowledge which the State, in the persons of
the medical officers in charge of infant welfare centres, at present
withholds; while the disadvantages to the community of a system under
which the lower strata proliferate unchecked, while the upper and
middle classes barely keep up their numbers, and the exceptional man
who has the talent and energy to climb from one stratum into another
finds it necessary to sterilize himself in the process, will, in the
shape of a rapidly deteriorating population, force themselves upon the
notice of even the most pious.
Birth-control has come to stay; it has also knocked the bottom out of
what is called sexual morality.
If the views put forward in the previous chapters be correct, if
morality is the interest of the stronger, and if, where the stronger
is the herd of average individuals, it expresses itself in disapproval
of conduct from which the average, for whatever reason, shrink,
then the driving force of morality is to be looked for not in any
innate sanction but in the power which the herd possess of rendering
intolerable the lives of those who flout its prejudices. But in order
that the herd may be able to exercise this power, it must be in a
position to detect the objects of its censure. This has been possible
in the past owing to the unfortunate propensity of sexual irregularity
to result in offspring. It is not easy to disguise the existence of a
child, and, even if the desperate course of overlaying or otherwise
extinguishing it be adopted, the disposal of the corpse presents grave
difficulties. Such a course is also open to the objection of doing
grave violence to the humaner parental instincts. But birth-control
precludes the necessity for children, and by so doing makes it possible
to “sin” without being found out.
It is not to be expected that people will refuse to avail themselves
of the liberty thereby conferred. Whether we are to infer that people
are by nature sinful, or simply that a sin which has been manufactured
by herd morality is not really a sin, is a question that does not
immediately concern us. What does concern us is the impetus which this
ability to avoid detection is likely to give to irregular intercourse.
Birth-control combined with economic independence has brought a new
freedom to women. Economic independence enables them to have children
without going either to the altar or into the workhouse. The practice
of birth-control makes it unnecessary even to have the children.
One further result of birth-control may be noticed before we pass on.
This is the probable abolition of the double standard of morality for
men and women after marriage. That adultery in a wife has always been
considered to be more serious than adultery in the husband the state
of the law bears witness. Adultery in a wife is a sufficient cause for
divorce, in a husband it[6] must be coupled with cruelty or desertion.
This disparity of treatment has always caused grave offence to feminist
organizations. Yet the reason for the difference is not far to seek. It
arises from the economic dependence of the wife upon the husband. As
the result of this dependence any children which the wife may acquire
in the course of her adventures become a charge upon the husband, who
is thus required to pay for the fruits of his own shame and another’s
enjoyment. It is true that he is, or ought to be, similarly responsible
for the upkeep of the offspring which may result from his own adultery,
but in this case he has at least had his pleasure and sinned his sin,
and cannot in justice complain if his substance is consumed by its
fruits. Where, however, adultery on the part of the wife does not carry
with it a risk of children to be maintained by the husband, it becomes
an offence neither more nor less serious than adultery on the part of
the husband, and the double standard ceases accordingly to operate.
[6] In July, 1923, the law was amended and adultery in the husband
became a sufficient ground of divorce.
As a result of the above-mentioned considerations we may expect that
the practice of birth-control will profoundly modify our sexual habits.
It will enable the pleasures of sex to be tasted without its penalties,
and it will remove the most formidable deterrent to irregular
intercourse.
It is this consideration which lies at the root of the opposition to
birth-control. Deep down in most of us there lurks something of the old
Puritanical attitude, which insists that pleasure cannot or should not
be had without paying for it. This at least is true of pleasures we do
not share. And it is this sentiment which is outraged by the immunity
from the consequences of sexual pleasure which birth-control confers.
The Puritans objected to bear baiting not so much because of the pain
which it gave to the bear, as because of the pleasure which it gave
to the spectators. In the same way the great mass of decent middle
class citizens object to birth-control not because of the evil which
it does to the race, but because of the pleasure which it gives to
those who practice it. The Puritans are up in arms; the dowagers, the
aunts, the old maids, the parsons, the town councillors, the clerks,
the members of Vigilance Committees and Purity Leagues, all those who
are themselves too old to enjoy sex, too unattractive to obtain what
they would wish to enjoy, or too respectable to prefer enjoyment to
respectability――in a word, the makers of public opinion――are outraged
in their deepest feelings by the prospect of shameless, harmless and
unlimited pleasure which birth-control offers to the young. And if they
can stop it it will be stopped.
Hence concurrently with the increased freedom which economic
independence and birth-control will give to young people, and to young
women in particular, there is likely to be a growth in restrictive and
purely inhibitory morality on the part of the middle-aged.
We are in, then, for a wave of Puritanism on the one hand combined with
the possibility of a new liberty of action on the other. What will be
the outcome?