MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER,
WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN
“That the first decade of the child life of all mankind age
after age passes continuously through the hands of woman seemed
to him one of the most significant facts in the whole range of
human affairs.”—_Life and Letters of Edward Thring._
I trust from what I have said already on marriage in the previous
chapter that two things have been made plain: on the one side, my own
strong faith in monogamous marriage as the most practical and happiest
form of association for the great majority of women and men; and my
further opinion that sexual relationships must be regulated by law. I
am, however, deeply conscious of the ignominious conditions of many
marriages, and thus, on the other side, I am forced to the opinion that
for the whole of sexual conduct there cannot safely be one only rule.
I know well there will always be exceptions: men and also women who
are unfitted for faithful mating. It is this fact we do not face that
makes the problem so difficult to solve at all and to solve completely
impossible.
Regarding companionship as essential in any true union, the reform most
likely to produce a balance of good in marriage is such an alteration in
the basis of marriage and increased spirituality in the way of conceiving
it as will make incompatibility of temperament, resulting in inability
to maintain companionship, justify honourable divorce. To consider sexual
infidelity as the only valid ground for divorce is to take a limited and
wrong view of marriage. Spiritual unfaithfulness may be a far greater
sin, and one bringing much deeper unhappiness in marriage, than sexual
unfaithfulness.
It may seem that this view is a contradiction of what I have said of
the enduring character of marriage. I do not think so. No marriage that
should be maintained will ever be broken by making divorce easy. It will
add nothing to the sanctity of marriage to force those who are really
unmated to remain mated by law. One marvels at the folly of such a view.
I want people to enter into marriage and to remain in it, because they
want to be there, not because they are forced.[79]
For I do believe that the great majority of women and men do really
desire to live faithfully with one mate. Divided allegiance is possible
only where love is of a slight character. If it is absorbing it cannot be
diffuse, and the more diffuse it is the less the partners in such a union
will be able to give or take from one another. It is impossible to be
lovers and partners in the fullest and most human sense in several unions.
The real controlling power in marriage is our desire, though our acts may
be, and usually are, directed as well by habit and tradition—a sort of
conscience and feeling for the judgment of others. And divorce can never
be easy while it at all hurts us to hurt one another.
I must, however, reaffirm my opinion that sexual relationships, whether
within marriage or outside of it, whether legal or free, can never safely
be unregulated, and will always be a difficult experiment. And experience
has forced on me the knowledge that the most passionate union is often
the one most likely to end in disaster. For Buckle is not far from right
when he says we accumulate knowledge, but do not progress in morals,
which depend on the unaltered heart of man.
Some characters are manifestly and essentially unfaithful, self-seeking,
and regardless of the happiness of others in love and in all the affairs
of life. Others again act unfaithfully through weakness or haste, or
through the misfortune of circumstances. The mistake with many of these
people is that they ever bind themselves in permanent unions. We should
not condemn or deal harshly with them, for by so doing we drive them to
undertake obligations which they do not, because they cannot, fulfil. In
my opinion, it is foolishness to pretend that for the whole of sexual
conduct there can ever be one fixed rule. We shall have more morality,
not less, if we accept this.
It is for this reason that I am altogether persuaded of the need of much
greater facilities of divorce than exist at present: divorce on the
ground of mutual consent, and based on inability through any cause to
maintain true partnership in marriage.
There are some men and also women unsuited for marriage and quite
undesirable as life-partners; they are not, however, undesirable because
of the legal bond, but because of certain qualities which as individuals
they possess. And this wider facility of divorce would do very much to
lessen individual hardships, and moreover it would cleanse, in a way not
sufficiently recognised, the immorality which is present in many unions.
Marriage, with its fixed duties and the restrictions it does impose, in
particular, upon the woman, will always appear to some a bondage from
which they will seek the quickest way of escape. If no honourable way
is allowed to them, they will take a dishonourable course. This may be
deplored, it cannot (at any rate under existing conditions of character
and public opinion) be helped, and nothing but evil can follow by
pretending it is not so.
Thus we find that the difficulty of divorce is the strongest factor that
brings disgrace and immorality into marriage.
This matter of honourable divorce is, however, one only of the almost
countless questions in the tangle of considerations involved in the
difficult matter of any attempt to change sexual conduct. More important,
perhaps, is the great disproportion between the two sexes in a country
that calls itself and tries to be monogamous. In our society, where so
many conditions and causes have corresponded to make marriage more and
more difficult, there are a very large number of women and also some
men, and will be for a long time, who, from necessity rather than from
choice, have to seek to satisfy their sex needs and to find love in the
best way that they can. I do not see that we can or ought to condemn
without fuller knowledge than as a rule we can have, these breaches of
the prohibitions and laws of marriage: I am very certain that no good
can be gained by branding those who commit them as sinners. Rather the
conditions that give rise to such conduct must be openly faced and
wherever possible dealt with. War, acting as it must inevitably do in
increasing these evils and making marriage more difficult for many women,
perhaps will bring us to do this. Changes in our laws may be forced
upon our acceptance. We shall have to be more careful to protect life
and to prevent waste of the powers of life. We cannot, therefore, I
think, go on, in this question of the sex needs that are not satisfied
in marriage, with the old game of pretence, that no irregular conduct
need be considered as long as it can be hidden, or at least not publicly
acknowledged.
But of sexual relationships outside of marriage I shall speak in a
separate chapter.[80] The question is too urgent to be dealt with
hastily. I shall state what seems to me can be done to regulate these
unlegalised unions so as to free them, as far as this is possible, from
the secrecy and shamefulness which acts, I am certain, as the strongest
factor in the distress and evil which they do almost inevitably bring,
both to the individuals who enter into them and to the society which
tolerates, but does nothing to protect, them.
In the past, we have failed sufficiently to recognise the immorality
which is present in many marriages. Monogamy has in reality never been
attained either by ancient civilisations or in the modern world. Thus,
while accepting monogamy, we tolerate extra conjugal relationships,
which can be regarded only as a hidden polygamy, and, indeed, from
one practical point of view, it is even worse in its results than a
well-understood and regulated polygamy, as these fugitive unions,
being unrecognised, carry with them no obligations. And the action of
this double standard of sexual morality, with its concealed element of
lying hypocrisy, has brought, and rightly brought, into discredit legal
monogamous marriage; it has led on the one side to the setting up of an
ideal of marriage conduct which, as many in fact actually do not follow
it, tends to become an outward form, and this on the other side leads
to a concealed laxity in practice, which results only too frequently in
irresponsible unions, hidden diseases and blasted motherhood, the most
terrible of the evils in our disordered sexual life of to-day. Facts
of daily observation may not be shuffled out of observation by any
hypocrisy. They must be faced and dealt with.
The question becomes clearer, if we consider that some people, men as
well as women, have a great desire for children; or possibly as the
desire is not always consciously recognised, it would be truer to say
that with them the sexual impulse is more deeply rooted. I mean, though
it is very difficult in words to express this, that erotic desire is
less personally overmastering, that they are in truer relation with
the race—one link in the long chain of the generations. This being so,
the getting of a child is the ultimate, though rarely, I think, the
conscious, satisfaction of sex; while for others—and this is true of some
women quite as much as it is true of many men—sexual relations are in
themselves the final gratification of love. Children may come, but they
are born because of the operation of this strictly personal impulse or
need of the parents.
It is, I think, very necessary to distinguish between sex-passion and
the desire for a child; they are not the same, though, of course, the
one impulse may be, and is as a rule, involved in the other. We need
more clear thinking and frank speaking on the two elements in the
reproductive act. This is a human problem, one that belongs to mankind
alone; moreover, it has greatly increased among civilised races, and
is likely to become more, and not less, difficult with the advance
of time. Animals have sex-passion, which is neither love as we feel
it nor lust; with them, as also in some degree with most primitive
peoples, this passion is seasonal, not always active, and is more or
less closely connected with the obtaining of offspring. Far different
and much more complicated are the conditions of love among us to-day.
Men and women have a continuous desire for love, with sex-passion as
its outward expression and children for its efflorescence. They also
have lust, which is a comparatively new expression,[81] at least,
that is my opinion as to what is true of the majority among us. I do
not use the word “lust” here in any sense of contempt, but to express
strong and conscious sex-passion, seeking its own satisfaction without
connection with any possible result in a child. Then at a much lower
level there is lust-desire without love, or clothed merely in a rootless
ephemeral mimicry of passion—a libertinage having no law but curiosity
in self-indulgence. And all passion is a very different thing from the
serene considerations which, according to the Prayer Book, cause men and
women to marry.
Now, it is because of what sex-passion has come to be among us—its
variety in desire and in result—that we are far more remote than
pre-human and primitive parents from having marriage and parenthood
settled so as to meet the desires and sex-needs of every one, as would
be easily possible if the reproductive act could be regarded as being
solely, or even chiefly, connected with the birth of children.
I do not know if I have made my meaning perfectly clear, but what I wish
to insist upon is this: It is necessary in all questions and judgments
connected with marriage to consider the presence or absence in the
partners of the wish to produce and possess a child. I propose to deal
briefly with this question in relation to the character of women.
It is commonly asserted that the normal woman desires to be a mother.
Now, this may be true, but what is forgotten is that all women are not
normal, and thus there are many who not only have no desire to become
mothers, but exceedingly dislike the idea of bearing children. You
may say this is an unnatural condition; but such a use of the word
“unnatural” is surely wrong; nothing is “natural” to the man or woman
save what they have evolved, and by that I mean what they have come to
desire to be; and my contention is that we have evolved a type of woman
unsuited for motherhood because she does not desire it, and for such
a woman it is “unnatural” to be a mother. Of course this turning away
from motherhood is in numerous cases the result of wrong education, and
is dependent on the weakened constitutions and shaken nerves of women,
which forces them to fear the pains of child-birth, as well as inducing
an increasing dislike to the restrictions and duties that the care of
children will entail. These causes are strong to-day; doubtless they hold
back many women from becoming mothers, but I do not think that they take
us very far to the deeper hidden causes which are also present among us,
nor can they be regarded as essential factors in deciding the question
as to which women should be mothers. There is something acting much more
strongly, a cause which must be sought in the character of woman herself,
and one which, unlike those dependent on outside conditions, cannot, I
think, be altered. You see, I regard the true instinct for motherhood as
a quality directing all expression, something deep-seated in the nature,
and therefore a quality that cannot be added to a character if the woman
does not possess it.
And because I believe this, I regard any effort to force maternity, even
as an ideal, upon all women as a great wrong. We do not expect all men
to desire to be fathers, we must cease to expect all women to desire to
become mothers. For by so doing we cause more evil than we know. And
the hurt is not borne by the mother alone. The child born against the
will of its mother must tend also to be without will; too weak to bear
well the stress and struggle of life. This is no fanciful statement.
I believe it can be proved by any one, with sufficient knowledge, who
takes the trouble to investigate the facts. The child who is born through
the physical mastery of the father and the physical subserviency of its
mother, and against her desire, does pay the penalty in a heritage which
lacks stability and harmony in character.
One of the many hypocrisies of our society to-day is the condemnation,
still maintained by many who do not understand, of the use of the many
safe artificial preventatives to conception. The mother must be given
more control over the birth of her children. Personally I have not
a strong feeling against the procuring of abortion, but perhaps the
forbidding of it is necessary as a fence around the reverence for human
life; but the prevention of birth is a different matter. And certainly
each woman must be free to make her own choice as to whether she bears
children or does not bear them; no man, and still more no social or moral
compulsion, may safely decide this matter for her; she must give life
gladly to be able to give it well.
Nor must we look with disfavour on those women who desire to avoid
motherhood and its duties, or regard them as “unnatural”—this word, as I
have just said, is used far too carelessly. It were well to remember that
the parental instinct is not fixed and is dependent on causes that very
few of us understand, that it is not present in all women any more than
the fighting instinct is present in all men.
A vast amount of stupid confusion arises from our failing to accept the
wide diversity in women’s temperaments and characters in relation to
this question of motherhood. Between the more usual type of woman, whose
deepest desire and strongest instincts are fixed in motherhood, and the
woman at the other extreme to whom even the thought of maternity is a
terror, there are a wide range of intermediate types—women able to love
and even in some respects markedly feminine, but with weak maternal
feeling. Such diversity in the family qualities has always existed. We
have seen in our past study of the family that the maternal instincts
may be overlaid and even destroyed, being replaced by others more
clearly masculine. Examples of this are found in the insect world, and
striking examples among fishes and reptiles, where the father is the
true parent and undertakes all duties connected with the young. The case
of the phalaropes furnished us with a further remarkable instance of
this reversal in the characters of the two sexes. Things are not quite
as dramatic, perhaps, in the human world, but they are more fateful,
more significant. And such changes in the expression of the emotions,
dependent as they would seem to be on changes in the sexual character,
can be effected, for every individual of one sex has in him or her the
qualities of the other sex in a less degree; and any special circumstance
or alteration in the conditions of life which acts on an individual or
group of individuals in an opposite direction from the ordinary, may
succeed in modifying and, in some cases, transforming the deep impulses
of sex.[82]
I do not wish to follow this question here. It is, however, widely
evident that in the society we have evolved to-day there are many women
in whom, what I may perhaps call, an atrophy of the maternal instincts
has taken place. This may be regretted, it cannot wisely be blamed, for
it forms no solution of the problem thus to mark down for blame. There is
one way, and one way only, as far as I can see, whereby this great evil
that has happened and still is taking place might be stayed. The maternal
women, the mother type, should be the only women to be mothers; which is,
of course, the same thing as saying that every child should be born of
passionate desire.
But this is not so simple in practice as at first sight it seems; it
carries with it first the demand that women must be given the knowledge
and means to prevent the conception of every undesired child; and second,
and even more important, that all girls should be educated to understand
something at least of their sexual nature so that they may know their
own need and strongest instincts; then, does their desire turn towards
motherhood, they will be better able to choose as the father of their
children men who desire to be fathers as they desire to be mothers, so
that together they may decide the number of children they will bring into
the world and under what conditions. That is the only kind of motherhood
that will endure.
I am prepared for an objection here. I shall be told that a woman, much
less a girl, does not know whether she wants a child until she bears
one; that it is then her maternal instinct will develop. I do not believe
it. I find this is the opinion of men and of women who have failed to
think straight; both judge in these matters too arbitrarily and with too
little understanding. They forget how difficult it has been, and still
is, for any one of my sex to be at all sexually truthful. Considering
the folly of the education we give to girls, there is little reliance to
be placed on what any woman says about sex. What we need most of all is
the liberation of women’s instincts through education in consciousness.
Perhaps, then, we shall cease to expect the impossible, by which I mean
we shall not hope to make good mothers of the girls who have no deep
instinct to love children. I know, of course, that the girl who before
marriage does not love children, may, and as a rule will, love her own
child: but I am certain that in nine cases out of every ten she will do
so in the wrong way; the child will be cherished only as a possession of
herself, an extension of her own egoism, which is very far indeed from
what I hold as the self-giving character of the mother-woman. Here is one
reason why good motherhood is so rare.
One source of great error arises because of the hypocrisy that society
still forces upon women in all questions of sex, and in particular on
this matter of their wanting, or not wanting, to be mothers. You see,
the desire for a child is allowed to them, but it is not yet allowed
to them to desire love without the child. We are a strange people. And
this belief, instilled into us by puritanism and a religion which denies
simple human needs, that sex enjoyment is immoral without the purpose
of procreation, has been a most degrading influence. It has done great
harm. It has poisoned the lives of thousands of women and men; but the
greatest of the evils it has wrought is that, under its influence,
countless children have been born, both in marriage and outside of it,
against the will of their mothers. Until it is openly recognised that
women are not alike in their sexual natures any more than they are alike
in their outward appearance, that they cannot all be classed together
as the mother-sex, this evil cannot be changed; the old hypocrisy will
continue and children will verily be born in sin, for they will be born
without the mother’s desire, and for this the race must pay the penalty.
We have, I am sure, to face the fact of the general occurrence among us
of women of the siren type; they are the exact opposite to the mother
type. With them the “pleasure factor”[83] in the sexual act is the aim
and end of love: this results, as it seems to me, in an intensified
egoism, which has far-reaching effects first in the woman’s attitude
to the man, as later in her attitude to her children. The siren woman
is the property of all men, or rather it would be much nearer to the
truth to say that all men are her property. I do not think such a woman
can ever remain satisfied with one mate, though circumstances may hold
her apparently faithful to her marriage vows. She is quite unsuited for
monogamous marriage, unless, indeed, she finds a man of a similar type
whom she has perpetually to reconquer. Even then there must be variety in
each conquest to provide the excitement necessary with both to stimulate
love. Such a woman, as, of course, also the man, is always unsuited for
the selfless sacrifices of parenthood. She is the natural prostitute, who
absorbs everything in sex for her own desire.
The case is quite different with the mother type, and her relation to
the man is not the same; true, she also seeks and uses the man, the
difference is not here. Woman is better equipped for the sex-battle
than is man. There is nothing wrong in this. I hold that a woman should
be able to take the man she loves as her right; she does take him now,
but in ways that too often should make both herself and him ashamed.
The mother-woman exercises her right of choice as the representative of
Nature. She is the fount of the race, she seeks the man as her helper and
because he will give life to the child she desires. Such a woman is not
always faithful in marriage, but she wishes to be so, and she will be
faithful in actual fact, if she is fortunate and finds in her lover the
fitting father she seeks unconsciously for her children.
Of course, this is a purely arbitrary classification; the two types of
character mingle in most women. There are traces of the siren in every
woman, and no woman—though I am less certain here—is entirely devoid of
the maternal instinct.
It is very difficult to know the truth. But it seems to me that,
when from any cause the pleasure factor in sex becomes secretly
over-accentuated, as it may so easily do under conditions where full
sex expression is denied to many women, the normal sexual impulses
are in some cases weakened or even atrophied through disuse, while in
others satisfaction is gained in secret erotic practice, and by so doing
the character and these deep impulses receive a twist in an unhealthy
direction, leading or at least tending to an inflaming of the egoistical
desires, which, if long continued, will increase to crowd out, like an
overgrowth of some poisonous weed, the more tender plant of the parental
instinct. While certainly not presuming to speak with authority on so
difficult a subject, I think that the suggestion I have made may possibly
afford an explanation of the poverty of the mother instinct in some
women compared with its richness in other women. I plead for a patient
recognition of the fact that in all these deep matters relating to sex we
are still very ignorant.
Let me now give an example that quite recently came under my notice,
of a woman who, though a mother, was without any glimmering flicker of
maternal feeling. It seems to me to be worth recording as being the most
striking case I have met of the siren type of woman, who, if I am right,
is occupying a wrong place in any monogamous marriage. Facts speak more
forcibly than any mere statements.
In a boarding-house at which I was staying there was a young and
beautiful mother. She had borne seven children, of whom the two youngest
were with her, a boy of about five and a baby a year old. She had with
her also a young niece of about seven years of age. They were healthy
and, I should judge, charming children. The mother apparently had no
love for them whatever. It was a most extraordinary case. Physically
this woman was fitted to bear children, but she was clearly without any
capacity for caring for them. She reminded me of the phalarope mothers,
who seek love adventures and leave the charge of their children to the
fathers. In this case the father was not present: the guardian of the
baby was the niece. I never saw a more patient worker than this tiny
child. I do not know whether it was fear held her to her task. She did
not play: all day she tended, and worked, and watched. Sometimes she was
assisted by the tiny boy, her cousin.
Here is one out of many conversations that I chanced to overhear.
Harry, the boy, called to his cousin—
“Susie, I have washed baby’s napkins, what shall I do now?”
She answered, “Begin to get the food ready; I will come in a minute to
boil the milk.”
This is no exaggeration, I state exactly what I heard.
Now, it is no use shrieking out that this woman’s conduct is unnatural
and a libel on motherhood. If the maternal instinct was a fixed instinct
and bore good fruit only, this might be done. The objection to the wrong
kind of women being mothers is precisely that it inevitably produces
some such results. This woman simply followed the promptings of her
own desires: the difference was that she did it much more frankly than
is usual. She employed the days in playing croquet and tennis and in
flirting with any available male. I do not think she knew she was not a
good mother. At intervals, when she remembered, she scolded the children;
but when she forgot them, which was frequently, she left them alone.
Often I talked with her, as she interested me very strongly. I wished
that I could have known her early history, and especially some details of
her sexual life. I could but guess, still I do not think I was mistaken.
She told me quite frankly that she did not like children, though she
added (clearly, though quite unconsciously, speaking conventionally),
“Of course, I love my own children.” Then (lapsing again into truth)
she went on bewailing the length of the school holidays (the little boy
and the girl were both at boarding-school) and her present position of
being without a nurse to look after the baby. On the occasion of another
conversation she told me that she did not care for men. I answered,
“Probably not, but you like them to care for you.” She laughed and seemed
pleased, and asked me how I knew this.
Now, this woman was to me a most interesting study. A friend who was
staying with me at the time blamed her very severely. I think this was
unfair. What was clear to me was that life was demanding from this
woman what she could not give. She was strongly sensual without being
passionate; she was probably philoprogenitive or she would not have had
so many children; but she was not at all maternal, and was quite unfitted
to be entrusted with any child. She was not immoral—at least, I think
not; probably she was faithful in the usual meaning to her husband. In
her world the price was too high to make unfaithfulness worth while; but
she was wholly non-moral. Such a woman should not marry; she should never
be a mother. I would go even further and say her place was the place
of the prostitute. This judgment may seem hard. Yet I know of no other
remedy. You cannot alter these things by pretending they are not there.
And the expression of sex is always a question of refinement and of
character.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE
My purpose in writing on this subject—No desire to lessen
responsibility—The great difficulties of such an inquiry—A
return to the question considered in the previous chapters on
marriage—Some women and men unsuited for monogamous marriage
and the duties of parenthood—The evils that must arise when
those unfitted for true monogamy are forced to live under its
cover—Sex subjects usually viewed either with false sentiment
or with vulgarity—Shameful concealments and sniggering do
not lead to true chastity—These bad conditions exert more
influence on men than on women—Celibacy as unnatural and
harmful in women as in men—One form of union can never be
imposed for every one—Is secrecy advantageous to society—Effect
of economic conditions and pressure of opinion—Without some
change prostitution and the degradation of the more honourable
partnerships outside marriage must be accepted—The position of
the mother must always be secured—The war has caused increased
independence of women—The war as well will cause a shortage
of men and probably a period of poverty—These must act as
further causes of avoidance of marriage—At the same time the
nation will have an increased need for children—More than one
form of sexual association required—The highest types of men
and women should live in monogamous marriage—For others the
sterile temporary union—The law should establish contracts
providing for the woman in such relationships—Advantages of
this procedure—Increase not hinder morality.