The Fundamental Pulse
The judgments of men concerning women are very rarely matters
of cold scientific observation, but are coloured both by their
own sexual emotions and by their own moral attitude toward the
sexual impulse.... [Men's] Statements about the sexual impulses
of women often tell us less about women than about the persons
who make them.--H. ELLIS.
By the majority of "nice" people woman is supposed to have no
spontaneous sex impulses. By this I do not mean a sentimental
"falling in love," but a physical, a physiological state of
stimulation which arises spontaneously and quite apart from any
particular man. It is in truth the _creative_ impulse, and is an
expression of a high power of vitality. So widespread in our country
is the view that it is only depraved women who have such feelings
(especially before marriage) that most women would rather die than
own that they _do_ at times feel a physical yearning indescribable,
but as profound as hunger for food. Yet many, many women have shown
me the truth of their natures when I have simply and naturally
assumed that of course they feel it--being normal women--and have
asked them only: _When?_ From their replies I have collected facts
which are sufficient to overturn many ready-made theories about
women.
Some of the ridiculous absurdities which go by the name of science
may be illustrated by the statement made by Windscheid in the
Centralblatt für Gynäkologie: "In the normal woman, especially
of the higher social classes, the sexual instinct is acquired,
not inborn; when it is inborn, or awakens by itself, there is
_abnormality_. Since women do not know this instinct before
marriage, they do not miss it when they have no occasion in life to
learn it." (Ellis transl.)
The negation of this view is expressed in the fable of Hera quoted
by Ellen Key. Hera sent Iris to earth to seek out three virtuous and
perfectly chaste maidens who were unsoiled by any dreams of love.
Iris found them, but could not take them back to Olympus, for they
had already been sent for to replace the superannuated Furies in the
infernal regions.
Nevertheless it is true that the whole education of girls, which so
largely consists in the concealment of the essential facts of life
from them; and the positive teaching so prevalent that the racial
instincts are low and shameful; and also the social condition which
places so many women in the position of depending on their husband's
will not only for the luxuries but for the necessaries of life, have
all tended to inhibit natural sex-impulses in women, and to conceal
and distort what remains.
It is also true that in our northern climate women are on the
whole naturally less persistently stirred than southerners; and
it is further true that with the delaying of maturity, due to our
ever-lengthening youth, it often happens that a woman is approaching
or even past thirty years before she is awake to the existence of
the profoundest calls of her nature. For many years before that,
however, the unrealised influence, diffused throughout her very
system, has profoundly affected her. It is also true that (partly
due to the inhibiting influences of our customs, traditions and
social code) women may marry before it wakes, and may remain long
after marriage entirely unconscious that it surges subdued within
them. For innumerable women, too, the husband's regular habits of
intercourse, claiming her both when she would naturally enjoy union
and when it is to some degree repugnant to her, have tended to
flatten out the billowing curves of the line of her natural desire.
One result, apparently little suspected, of using the woman as a
passive instrument for man's need has been, in effect, to make her
that and nothing more. Those men--and there are many--who complain
of the lack of ardour in good wives, are often themselves entirely
the cause of it. When a woman is claimed at times when she takes no
_natural_ pleasure in union, it reduces her vitality, and tends to
kill her power of enjoying it when the love season returns.
It is certainly true of women as they have been made by the
inhibitions of modern conditions, that most of them are only fully
awake to the existence of sex after marriage. As we are human
beings, the social, intellectual, spiritual side of the love-choice
have tended to mask the basic physiological aspect of women's
sex-life. To find a woman in whom the currents are not all so
entangled that the whole is inseparable into factors, is not easy,
but I have found that wives (particularly happy wives whose feelings
are not complicated by the stimulus of another love) who have been
separated from their husbands for some months through professional
or business duties--whose husbands, for instance, are abroad--are
the women from whom the best and most definitive evidence of a
fundamental rhythm of feeling can be obtained. Such women, yearning
daily for the tender comradeship and nearness of their husbands,
find, in addition, at particular times, an accession of longing for
the close physical union of the final sex-act. Many such separated
wives feel this; and those I have asked to keep notes of the
dates, have, with remarkable unanimity, told me that these times
came specially just before and some week or so after the close of
menstruation, coming, that is, about every fortnight. It is from
such women that I got the first clue to the knowledge of what I call
the Law of Periodicity of Recurrence of desire in women.
This law it is possible to represent graphically as a curved line; a
succession of crests and hollows as in all wave-lines. Its simplest
and most fundamental expression, however, is generally immensely
complicated by other stimulations which may bring into it diverse
series of waves, or irregular wave-crests. We have all, at some
time, watched the regular ripples of the sea breaking against a
sand-bank, and noticed that the influx of another current of water
may send a second system of waves at right angles to the first,
cutting athwart them, so that the two series of waves pass through
each other.
Woman is so sensitive and responsive an instrument, and so liable
in our modern civilised world to be influenced by innumerable sets
of stimuli, that it is perhaps scarcely surprising that the deep,
underlying waves of her primitive sex-tides have been obscured, and
entangled so that their regular sequence has been masked in the
choppy turmoil of her sea, and their existence has been largely
unsuspected, and apparently quite unstudied.
For some years I have been making as scientific and detailed a study
as possible of this extremely complex problem. Owing to the frank
and scientific attitude of a number of women, and the ready and
intimate confidence of many more, I have obtained a number of most
interesting facts from which I think it is already possible to
deduce a generalisation which is illuminating, and may be of great
medical and sociological value. A detailed statement of this will be
given in a scientific publication, but as it bears very intimately
on the subject of the present chapter, a short and simple account of
my conclusions must be given here.
It is first necessary to consider several other features of woman's
life, however.
The obvious moon-month rhythm in woman, so obvious that it _cannot_
be overlooked, has been partially studied in its relation to some of
the ordinary functions of her life. Experiments have been made to
show its influence on the rate of breathing, the muscular strength,
the temperature, the keenness of sight, etc., and these results have
even been brought together and pictured in a single curved diagram
supposed to show the variability in woman's capacities at the
different times in her twenty-eight-day cycle.
But it brings home to one how little original work even in this
field has yet been done, that the same identical diagram is repeated
from book to book, and in Marshall's Physiology it is "taken from
Sellheim," in Havelock Ellis "from Von Ott," and in other books is
re-copied and attributed to still other sources, but it is always
the same old diagram.
This diagram is reproduced by one learned authority after another,
yet nearly every point on which this curve is based appears to have
been disputed.
According to this curve, woman's vitality rises during the few days
before menstruation, sinks to its lowest ebb during menstruation and
rises shortly after, and then runs nearly level till it begins to
rise again before the next menstrual period. This simple curve may
or may not be true for woman's temperature, muscular strength, and
the other relatively simple things which have been investigated. My
work and observations on a large number of women all go to show that
this curve does _not_ represent the waves of woman's sex-vitality.
The whole subject is so complex and so little studied that it is
difficult to enter upon it at all without going into many details
which may seem remote or dull to the general reader. Even a question
which we must all have asked, and over which we have probably
pondered in vain--namely, what is menstruation?--cannot yet be
answered. To the lay mind it would seem that this question should be
answerable at once by any doctor; but many medical men are still far
from being able to reply to it even approximately correctly. (See
also Appendix, note 2.)
There are a good many slight variations among us, ranging from a
three to a five weeks "month," but the majority of the women of our
race have a moon-month of twenty-eight days, once during which comes
the flow of menstruation. If we draw out a chart with succeeding
periods of twenty-eight days each, looking on each period as a unit:
When in this period is it that a normal healthy woman feels desire
or any up-welling of her sex-tides?
The few statements which are made in general medical and
physiological literature on the subject of sex feeling in women
are generally very guarded and vague. Marshall ("Physiology of
Reproduction," p. 138), for instance, says: "The period of most
acute sexual feeling is generally just after the close of the
menstrual period." Ellis speaks of desire being stronger before and
sometimes also after menstruation, and appears to lean to the view
that it is natural for desire to coincide with the menstrual flow.
After the most careful inquiries I have come to the conclusion
that the general confusion regarding this subject is due partly
to the great amount of variation which exists between different
individuals, and partly to the fact that very few women have any
idea of taking any scientific interest in life, and partly to the
fact that the more profound, fundamental rhythm of sex desire which
I have come to the conclusion exists or is potential in every
normal woman, is covered over or masked by the more superficial
and temporary influences due to a great variety of stimuli or
inhibitions in modern life. For the present consideration I have
tried to disentangle the profound and natural rhythm from the more
irregular surface waves.
The chart given opposite may assist in making graphically clear
what has been said in these last few pages. It is compounded
from a number of individual records, and shows a fair average
chart of the rhythmic sequence of superabundance and flagging
in woman's sex-vitality. The tops of the wave-crests come with
remarkable regularity, so that there are two wave-crests in each
twenty-eight-day month. The one comes on the two or three days just
_before_ menstruation, the other after; but after menstruation
has ceased there is a nearly level interval, bringing the next
wave-crest to the two or three days which come about eight or nine
days after the close of menstruation--that is, just round the
fourteen days, or half the moon month, since the last wave-crest.
If this is put in its simplest way, one may say that there are
fortnightly periods of desire, arranged so that one period comes
always just _before_ each menstrual flow. According to her
vitality at the time, and the general health of the woman, the
length of each desire-period, or, as we might say, the size and
complexity of each wave-crest, depends. Sometimes for the whole of
as much as, or even more than three days, she may be ardently and
quite naturally stimulated, while at another time the same woman, if
she is tired and over-worked, may be conscious of desire for only a
few hours, or even less.
[Illustration: CHART I. Curve showing the Periodicity of
Recurrence of natural desire in healthy women. Various causes make
slight irregularities in the position, size and duration of the
"wave crests," but the general rhythmic sequence is apparent.
(_to face page 32_)]
[Illustration: CHART II.
Curve showing the depressing effects on the "wave-crests" of
fatigue and over-work. Crest _a_ represented only by a feeble
and transient up-welling. Shortly before and during the time of
the crest _d_ Alpine air restored the vitality of the subject.
The increased vitality is shown by the height and number of the
apices of this wave-crest.
(_to face page 33_)]
The effects of fatigue, city life, bad feeding, and, indeed, of
most outward circumstances may be very marked, and may for years,
or all her life, so reduce her vitality that a woman may never have
experienced any spontaneous sex-impulse at all.
The effects of fatigue, which reduces the vital energy, even in
a normal, strongly sexed woman, can be seen in the second curve
opposite, where at _a_ the intermediate wave-crest is very much
reduced. This is not a generalised chart, but a detailed record of
an actual individual case.
Curves similar to those shown facing page 32 represent
in general terms a simplified view of what my research leads me to
believe to be the normal, spontaneous sex tide in women of our race.
As one young married woman confided to me, her longing for bodily
union with her husband, as distinct from her longing for his daily
companionship, seemed to well up naturally like "clockwork," and
this during his long absence. But human beings vary remarkably in
every particular, and just as no two people have the same features,
so no two people would have _absolutely_ identical curves were
they recorded in sufficient detail. Many a woman is particularly
conscious of only one sex-impulse in each moon-month. Of such
women, some feel the period which comes before menstruation, and
some feel the one which follows it. In those who generally feel only
one, the second period is sometimes felt when they are particularly
well, or only when they read exciting novels, or meet the man
they love at a time coinciding with the natural, but suppressed,
time of desire. There are a few women, who seem to be really a
little abnormal, who feel the strongest desire actually during the
menstrual flow.
If anyone who reads this thinks to test my view by questioning a
number of women, the result will probably appear very conflicting,
partly because it is not often that women will tell the truth about
such a thing, and partly because in the larger number of women
either one or the other period is the more acute and is the one
they observe in themselves--if they have observed anything. But a
delicate and more accurate investigation of such cases will often
bring to light the existence of the second crest of vitality. Once
the fundamental idea is grasped, much that appeared obscure or of
no significance becomes plain and full of meaning. One lady doctor
with whom I discussed my view at once said that it illuminated many
observations she had made on her patients, but had not brought
together or explained.
There is but little evidence to be found in scientific works on
sex, but an interesting instance is mentioned by Forel ("The Sexual
Question," Engl. Transl. page 92) in another connection. He says:
"A married woman confessed to me, when I reproached her for being
unfaithful to her husband, that she desired coitus at least once
a fortnight, and that when her husband was not there she took the
first comer." Forel did not see any law in this. We may perhaps all
see in her want of self-control a grievous _moral_ abnormality, but
in her fortnightly periods of desire she fits perfectly into the
physiological law which, it appears to me, governs the normal sex
tides of our race.
In this connection it is of interest to note the decrees of the
Mosaic Law regarding marriage intercourse. Not only was all
intercourse with a woman during her menstruation period very
heavily punished (see Leviticus xx. 18: "If a man lie with a woman
having her sickness ... both of them shall be cut off from among
their people"), but the Mosaic Law provided that women should be
protected from intercourse for some days _after_ each such period.
The results obtained by my independent investigation thus find some
support in this ancient wisdom of the East. Modern writers are
inclined to deride the Mosaic Law on the ground that it prohibits
intercourse just at the time when _they think_ sex feeling should
be strongest. But it does not appear on what grounds they make the
latter statement, nor do they give any scientific data in support
of it. Thus Galabin in his Manual of Midwifery says: "In the Jewish
law women are directed to abstain[4] from coitus during menstruation
and for seven days after its cessation. Strict observers of the
law are said to go beyond what is commanded in Leviticus, and even
if discharge lasts only for an hour or two, to observe five days
during which the discharge might last, for the period itself, and
add to these seven clear days, making twelve in all. It is much
to be doubted whether a whole nation was ever induced to practise
abstinence at the period of most acute sexual feeling." But, as will
readily be recognised, the old Jewish plan of having twelve clear
days after the beginning of menstruation before the next union is in
almost exact harmony with the Law of Periodicity of Recurrence of
women's desire shown in my charts, pp. 32, 33.
[4] NOTE.--In Leviticus xv. it is the _man_ who is directed to
abstain from touching the woman at this period, and who is rendered
unclean if he does.--M. C. S.
These comparatively simple curves represent what I would postulate
as the normal spontaneous up-welling of natural desire in woman.
These are the foundations on which the edifice of the physical
expression of love may be built. It must not be forgotten, however,
that, particularly in modern luxurious life, there are innumerable
excitements which may _stimulate_ sexual feeling, just as there are
many factors in our life which tend to inhibit or retard it. A woman
may be, like a man, so swayed by a great love that there is not a
day in the whole month when her lover's touch, his voice, the memory
of his smile, does not stir her into the thrilling longing for the
uttermost union. Hence it is often difficult, particularly for a
woman dwelling with the man she loves, to recognise this rhythm in
herself, for she may be perpetually stimulated by her love and by
his being.
I am convinced, however, that ordinarily, whether she recognises it
by outward signs or not, a fortnightly rhythm profoundly influences
the average woman, and hence that it fundamentally affects the
marriage relation in every way. The burning magnificence of an
overpowering life-long love is not given to many, and a husband who
desires lasting and mutual happiness in his marriage will carefully
study his wife, observe how far she has a normal rhythm, and in what
she has little personal traits. He will then endeavour to adapt his
demands on her so that they are in harmony with her nature.
This mutual adaptation is not an entirely simple matter, and will be
considered in the next chapter.