SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE
“All love must have its responsibilities, or it will degrade
and dissipate itself in mere sentiment or sensuality.”
I find this sentence written in an old notebook, one that for a long time
I have not been using. I took the book up by chance, when my eyes lighted
on this saying; at once I decided to place it at the beginning of this
chapter on sexual relationships outside of marriage. I want to make it
clear at the very start that it is far indeed from my purpose to make
easy the way of irregular unions or at all to loosen the responsibilities
that ought to bind men and women.
The difficulties of writing upon all questions of sexual conduct are
very real. Almost always one is suspected of advocating license and of
disbelief in marriage, so commonplace is it to misunderstand, so easy to
misrepresent. For not only is there prejudice to encounter, which on no
question is so obstinate as it is on this one that we are now considering
of unregulated love, but we have to deal with so many different problems,
taking account of many opposed facts, where threads are crossed and
entangled and at best can be patched only roughly together. I plead for a
patient recognition of the real seriousness of this problem, which, I am
certain, will have to be faced in the near future if our sexual life and
marriage are to be freed from secret disgrace that is unbearable.
We have found in the two previous chapters what all of us must know
from our own experience of life, that some women and men are by
their temperament unsuited for monogamous marriage and the duties of
parenthood. Often, I would even say as a rule, these individuals are
strongly sexual. They will not, because with the character they have,
they cannot, live for any long period celibate. They will marry to
gain permanent sexual relief or they will buy temporary relief from
prostitutes, unless they are able to seek satisfaction in an irregular
union.
Now I affirm it as my conviction that the first and second of these
courses are likely to lead to greater misery and sin than the third
course; and of the three, the first, in my opinion, is the worst. I have
no doubt at all on this matter. No one, who is not blind to the facts
of life, can close their eyes to the evil and suffering that a coercive
monogamy forces upon those people who are unfitted and do not desire to
fulfil the obligations and duties of living faithfully with one partner.
And I would ask all those who stand in fear of any change or reform in
our marriage laws or of any open toleration of wider opportunities for
sexual friendships to consider this fact: the discredit which has fallen
upon monogamous marriage arises largely from the demoralising lives lived
under its cover by those unsuited for enduring mating.
Our moral code is, however, much less ruled by law than by custom and
the united will of the community. It is for this reason that I want to
force men, and even more women, to think practically on these matters. My
own opinion is firm. Apart from the fact that the disproportion in the
number of the sexes in this country makes marriage impossible for all
and condemns great numbers of women to sterile celibacy (a question I
have dealt with elsewhere[84]), I am persuaded of the need for much wider
facilities for honourable partnerships outside of permanent marriage;
such unions are, I am sure, necessary in order to harmonise our sexual
life and meet the desires of a large, and I believe increasing, number
of women and men, whose exceptional needs our existing institutions and
customs ignore or crush.
Let us view these questions in the light of their results. Most of us
fail to meet the facts. We never realise the evil of this hypocrisy—love
everywhere carried on secretly, that is acting always as a disturbing
force in our sexual life—it is a worm that gnaws unceasingly at the roots
of marriage and destroys too often the most beautiful blossoms of love.
One great source of difficulty arises from the want of frankness in our
thoughts. Especially is this the case with women, who throughout their
lives have had the great fundamental facts of life clothed in euphemisms,
until it seems as if they have succeeded, by the help of many fictitious
aids, in concealing the natural outward signs of the existence of sex.
And largely from these concealments our every idea of sex has become
tainted with sentiment and vulgarity. We can hardly speak of the subject
even to our children without an apology.
The actions and emotions of life undraped with lies seem to most of us
anathema; we, who have so veneered our lives that we know no longer of
what wood they are made; we, who for generations have been so covered
with shameful concealments, deceiving even ourselves, and are impervious
to the claims of that ill-bred creature—Life.
And how deep we have wandered into sin in seeking to escape from it!
Need we put up with this? Must we turn our eyes away for ever from things
as they are—stifle our desires in fear of what we shall do?
The sex-needs almost always are dealt with as though they stood apart and
lay out of line with any other need or faculty of our bodies. This is,
in part, due to the secrecy which has kept sex as something mysterious.
We have most of us been trained from our childhood into indecent
secretiveness. But there is as well a deeper reason, and it will be a
long time before we can change it. Sex is so powerful in most of us,
and, when from any cause awakened into consciousness, occupies really so
large a part of our attention, that we are afraid of ourselves, and this
reacts in fear of any open acknowledgment even in our thoughts of our
own sex-needs. Still less can we grant the sex-needs of others, perhaps
stronger and different from our own need.
It is necessary to face very frankly this tremendous force of the
sex-passion, for the most part veiled in discussion. Many women and some
men do not realise at all the immense complications of sex, or understand
the claims that passion makes on many natures. Almost necessarily in
any inquiry into these questions of sexual conduct one’s opinions are
biased by temperament and personal experience. We are dealing with forces
in which the individual element cannot be set aside. It is foolishness
always to preach continence. Sexual abstinence is possible without great
effort for some people, it is not possible for all. I am certain we have
to recognize this fact, and to allow for its action. It is not what we
want people to do, but what they will do, that we are considering.
If we look at the matter practically, it is of course necessary to
remember that this question of the possibility of, as well as the
advantage to be derived from, sexual abstinence is an entirely different
one, as it relates to the time before, or after, the first experience of
love. The sex desires are strong when roused, but when not definitely
aroused, the ideal of chastity asserts itself, and for long periods these
desires may not greatly occupy the conscious imagination. It is clear
that the physical problem cannot be, and ought not to be, considered
apart from the will. Great good in some cases may be done by establishing
control over thought.
It is, however, idle to count on a course of thought and action being
taken by the rough majority among us which so much of our civilisation
and daily environment makes difficult and indeed impossible. A race of
young men and women surrounded with shameful concealments and bred to a
blind acceptance of wrong sexual conditions, accustomed to an atmosphere
of sniggering and suggestiveness in connection with the central facts of
love and life—such a race cannot have, much less practise, an ideal of
true chastity.
These wrong and vulgar conditions without doubt have acted more strongly
against men than against women. And I would note in passing, that here,
as I believe, we find one explanation of the greater continence among
unmarried women than among unmarried men. It is not because satisfaction
for the sex-needs is more necessary for the health and well-being of men
than it is for the health and well-being of women—a statement I do not
believe; nor is it proved that this absence of conscious sex-desires
necessarily implies the absence of unconscious sex-action; all that can
be claimed is that the sexual impulses have been diverted into different
expressions, and the explanation of such diversion is to be sought in the
boy’s and young man’s education and life, which forces sex so much more
strongly into the conscious thought and attention.
We are dealing with a question very difficult to solve. On this
assumption that the sex-needs of the man are more imperative than the
sex-needs of the woman, much that is false has been accepted as true;
there are many who have advocated a “duplex sexual morality,” and while
demanding from the woman complete sexual abstinence until she marries,
regard this as impossible in the case of men. Such a separation as
this between the sex-needs of man and the sex-needs of woman is, in my
opinion, a very grave error. Celibacy is unnatural and harmful in man, it
is at least equally unnatural and harmful in woman.
Now, it is on this question of the sex-needs of women that I find
myself, as I have suggested already, in such direct opposition to the
great majority of women, numbers of whom do not, will not, admit to
a consciousness of any kind of sexual need. I believe they are quite
honest, but I know they are mistaken.
The doctrine of chastity being the natural and special virtue of women is
entirely false. Complete abstinence from love cannot be borne by women
through a long period of years without producing serious results on the
body and the mind. And these results are by no means clearly dependent
on a conscious knowledge of unsatisfied sex. The evil may be pronounced
even when the woman herself has not the slightest knowledge of her real
needs. In many women the penalty is paid in an unceasing and wearying
restlessness of mind and body. We have also to face the fact that
prolonged and enforced abstinence may act to cultivate a morbid obsession
with sexual things. I believe that the celibate often is less chaste than
the normally sexual individual. This may seem to be a wanton charge to
some, but I am not speaking without due consideration.
I know well that some among my readers, and in particular women, will
say that I am wrong, many will accuse me of exaggerating and complain
that I see sex in everything; the few only will know that I am right.
I would, however, refer all those who doubt to the researches of Freud
and his followers, which have proved in the most conclusive way that the
manifestations of sex may be concealed in numberless guises. Without some
understanding of the “Unconscious” it is useless to attempt to deal with
these questions. We need to realise that the fact of an individual, or
group of individuals, being unconscious of the presence of sex does not
prove that sex is not acting strongly and often harmfully within them.
Nay, we may go further and say that could it be proved that desire was
absent and no sex difficulties of any kind be discovered, this is no
reason why we should necessarily be too satisfied. If no kind of action
is apparent, it is very probable that some deep evil is at work, which
hinders sex from a more healthy and open expression.
I am haunted by the fear that the careless reader will think I am
writing against chastity. This is not so. I would affirm again, with
all the power that I have, that compulsory sexual abstinence may not be
confused with voluntary chastity. We must be very clear in our thought
about this. We can never establish an ideal of true chastity until we
have rooted out from our social life all the unnatural and empty forms
of chastity. The long waiting for marriage which economic and other
causes have forced upon us, more and more increases the difficulties of
maintaining any true chastity. It is a great evil which almost always
wastes the energies of life.
There are very many women (as also these are men) who are moral, because
they are too great cowards to be immoral. The reasons for chastity must
in many cases be sought in the poverty of experience and the difficulty
of obtaining love, in the hard binding of circumstances, and, even more
often, in the terror of being found out. Respectability is the strong
moral safeguard of woman. The conception of faithfulness to one mate (the
true chastity) is as strong in many men as it is in any woman, a fact to
which I gladly bear witness, from my knowledge of the men I have known.
It is too commonly taken for granted that sex-passion is less refined in
men and different from sex-passion in women. I am sure in many cases it
is not true. I am not going to discuss the question further, as it is one
that cannot easily be proved.
It is, however, very necessary to break down the idea that for the
impulses of sex, with their immense complications and differences,
there is one general rule either for men or for women. In every case
the element of personal idiosyncrasy must be taken into account, and,
for this reason, the difficulties of these questions are enormously
complex. Nor is it possible, I am sure, to make any arbitrary judgments.
To me the man or woman who is able to live a celibate life is not
necessarily better than the man or woman who is not. I may prefer one
type, I may dislike the other, but this also is a matter of my personal
idiosyncrasy. We cannot safely class those who differ from ourselves as
wrong, and set them down as fit only for suppression and restraint. We
have to put aside those shrieks of blame that are possible only to the
ignorant.
It is all very well to preach the ideal of complete sexual abstinence
until marriage, but there are the clear, hard conditions of contemporary
circumstances for all but the really rich, who can marry when they
want to do so without other consideration, and the very poor who marry
young because they have nothing at all to consider. We have to face the
presence amongst us to-day of an amount of suffering through enforced
celibacy which is acting in many directions in degrading our sexual
lives. Any number of these sufferers, both the unmarried and the married
who are ill-mated, are everywhere amongst us. I need not say more to
prove this: the facts face us all, unless, indeed, we are too ignorant
and too prejudiced to know what is happening.
Many new lessons will have to be learnt. I would suggest as a first step
towards honesty and health, that we ought to claim an open declaration of
the existence of any form of sexual relationship between a woman and a
man. We shall, I believe, do this, if not now, then later, because we are
finding out the evils that must ensue, both to the individuals concerned
and to the society of which they are members, by forcing men and women
into the dark, immoral way of concealments.
It is ridiculous to say, as many do, that sexual relationships between
two people affect no one but themselves, unless a child is born. The
partners in even the strongest and purest mutual passion have no right
to say to society, “This is our business and none of yours.” The
consequences may be so grave and wide for society that the deed can
never be confined to the interests of the pair concerned. And the sexual
partnership that is kept secret will work anti-socially just in the same
way as any other secret partnership. Opportunity will be given to those
who desire to sin and escape the responsibilities of the partnership,
while other men and women, who wish to and would act honourably, find
the way so difficult that in nine cases out of ten they fail in their
endeavors. Many unions that now are shameful would not be shameful if the
parties had not been driven into concealments, which cannot fail to act
in a way that is immoral.
We must see things a little more as they are. We must accept ourselves
as we are. We must do more than this, we must accept others as they are,
and cease from blaming them when we find them different from ourselves.
We must give up being hypocrites. To force every one to accept the one
form of union is not the wisest way to deal with the matter. We must
understand what is the result of our doing this. It does not prevent
people from acting wrongly. Anything may be done, any sexual partnership
be undertaken, however shameful, as long as it is hidden. We shall have
more morality, not less, by an open recognition of honourable sexual
friendships entered into outside the permanent binding of monogamous
marriage.
I do not think we need fear to do this. My own faith in monogamous
marriage, as the most practical, the best, and the happiest form of union
for the great majority of people, is so strongly rooted that I do not
wish, because I hold it as unnecessary, to force any one either to enter
into or to stay within its bonds. I want them to do this because they
themselves want to be bound. We get further and further away from real
monogamy by allowing no other form of honourable partnerships.
Under present economic conditions and the pressure of social opinion,
the penalties that the woman has had to pay for any sexual relationship
outside of marriage are very heavy. This is manifest. Indeed, when we see
the difficulties faced in these unions, that so many women do take the
risks is another proof, if one were needed, of the elemental strength
of the sex-passion in women. But mark this: it is only the woman whose
social conscience is unawakened, or the few women strong enough and
able to ignore the censure of their friends, who can enter into these
irregular relationships—except in a hateful secrecy. And this has acted,
as I believe, harmfully in a way not usually recognised, in so far as it
has driven into marriage many who would have been better not to marry.
At present our monogamous marriage is buttressed with prostitution
and maintained with the help of countless secret extra conjugal
relationships, which thus makes our moral attitude one of intolerable
deception. To this question I shall presently return.
Under existing social conditions the opportunities for sexual
relationships to meet the needs of those women and men unable, or not
desiring, to marry must, in almost all cases, entail the sacrifice of
the woman. It is an unsocial, because an ostracised union. Our efforts
at reform have so far been not only ineffective, but absurd. It is no
use shirking it, if some change cannot be made, then we must accept
prostitution and wild-love as well as the degradation of all the more
honourable partnerships entered into outside of marriage.
I believe that many of these problems of our sexual life must remain
unsolved; some of them, perhaps, are unsolvable, but certain of the evils
are preventable. And first note this: there is one rule that is able and
ought to guide us. I have asserted elsewhere,[85] what again I would
affirm here: it is an essential fact of sexual morality, as I conceive
it, that in any relation between the two sexes—I care not whether the
association be legal or illegal—the position of the woman as the mother
must be made secure. The immoral union is the union which results in bad
and irresponsible parenthood.
It is because I believe this, that I wish to see saner, more practical,
and more moral relations made possible between those women and men who
live together but do not marry.
But before I attempt the difficult task of suggesting what seems to me
the way in which better conditions could be established, it will be
necessary to note briefly a few facts concerning changes actually taking
place in the position of women, which it seems to me must be certain
to affect profoundly the conditions of marriage and the problem we are
considering.
The quite new importance as workers which women have now obtained will
react inevitably on the relations between the sexes. In every sort of
occupation, in clerking, shop-assisting, railway work, motor driving and
conducting, police work, in labour on the land and in many more unusual
capacities, they are being found efficient beyond precedent. And in the
munition factories, in the handling of heavy and intricate machinery,
their adaptability and inventiveness, as well as their steadfastness and
enthusiasm, have surprised all those who are without knowledge of the
bewildering resourcefulness of the feminine character. All the disengaged
energy of women has been employed. They have gained a strong position in
the economic world. This is evident, but what is not realised are the
forces working beneath.
What is going to be the permanent result? Will all this energy evaporate
after the war, will it be reabsorbed in the home and work directly
connected therewith, or will this great force of women’s work be still
used in industrial and other employments? It is not easy to give a
certain answer.
Leaving aside the question whether such work if permanently continued
will be good or bad for women, a matter on which already I have
expressed my opinion strongly,[86] I want to consider how these fresh
and advantageous labour conditions have affected, and will, I think, go
on affecting, women’s own desires. The question is whether this change
that war conditions have brought is one which the desires of women cause
them to welcome, or whether it is an arrangement that has arisen out of
necessity to which they are essentially antagonistic.
What, in my opinion, makes the present situation dangerous is, that long
before the war women were forcing an entrance into the world of labour,
and struggling in competition with men to gain the positions which now
are being thrust upon them. And I do not believe that in the mass to-day
they are doing their work temporarily and to replace men for the period
of the war, but rather they are aiming to establish their own economic
emancipation. Probably of the million women[87] who have plunged into
new work in connection with the war, the great majority are much better
off economically than ever they were in times of peace. War has brought
more of gain than of sacrifice. The new thing is the opportunity that has
come. Individually women were adventurous before the war; they have now
become adventurous as a class. War has but accentuated and made obvious
the change that for long had been taking place in the desires of women.
This turning away from themselves, from their own lives and duties, to
the world and employments and duties of men, is a thing that was going on
before the war, slowly and against much prejudice, but what matters is
that it was going on.
I shall make no attempt to deal with the serious economic results that
are likely to occur should women, when the war is ended, struggle to
compete with men in the labour market. The disasters that would follow
such action are sufficiently plain. One result would certainly be a
clash of sex, unavoidable in a work-struggle for the upper hand between
women and men. The great temptation to women then will be to keep their
positions by accepting lower wages than the men can take. No one can know
whether they will do this.
There can be no question that the situation will be difficult. For
the return of women to the home and what hitherto has been considered
exclusively feminine work is going to mean much more than a change of
occupation; it will be going back to the insistent duties of the narrowed
woman’s sphere with new ideas and a fresh command of life. It is useless
pretending that this can be easy. For one thing, the great uplift in
women’s wages has given girls as well as women an independence, with a
quite strange joy as spenders which they have not known before.
And this new power in industry has been associated also with many women
with a new power in the home. The withdrawal to the war of the men of
the family has left women with an opportunity to spend incomes over
which hitherto they had no direct control. So that sometimes one wonders
whether men will be allowed to re-enter their homes, if they come back,
on the same terms as before they held. Will women again accept with
contentment a position of economic dependence? This cannot fail, I think,
to act directly on the conditions of marriage. The question would seem to
be this: Will women come back to the home believing the home to be the
central interest of their lives? Will they feel that motherhood, with
the care of the little child and all the duties it should entail, is the
ultimate joy, for the denial of which no personal freedom or success in
work can compensate?
It is one of the unhappy features of our present condition of necessity
for women to carry on the work of this country that the most deep and
far-reaching issues are being decided in haste, and in many cases by
young girls who have never been taught by any wise training to realise
their own nature as women, or to understand their sexual needs with their
immense restricting power. And my fear is that the things which matter
most to life will be lost. I feel that almost everything in the future
depends on the inner attitude of the thousands and thousands of girls and
young women who to-day have gone out of the home. I wish I had the gift
to make them feel the far-acting importance of their personal attitude.
The root of all action is the will or desire. Yes, that is the danger.
Our desires are the greatest realities that we have, and we should look
closely to the direction towards which they are turned. Nothing but the
strongest desire on the part of women will save the home. Many forces
will be acting to make permanent conditions that cannot fail to act
adversely to any right ideal of home life. My hope is that women in the
mass will understand in time and resist these forces. Yet, I do not know,
and sometimes my fear is more active than my hope.
At least, it is evident that in the immediate future the home is not
going to be re-established without effort. Women will have to make great
sacrifice to surrender in every direction the new power of controlling
and spending money which now they are enjoying. And for this reason, even
if for no other, many women almost certainly will seek to hold their
places in the labour world and keep on working for themselves. Therefore,
it is, I think, safe to expect that to some limited extent the present
extension of women’s employment outside the home will be permanent when
peace is established.
Certainly it is unnecessary for me to say, after what I have written in
the earlier chapters of my book, how exceedingly I regret the permanence
of conditions that can seem good only in an industrial society. In my
opinion the working of women will be the greatest of the many disasters
that are likely to follow and remain from the war. I wish I had the power
to prevent it. I do not, however, see any way in which this can be done.
For one thing, if the desires of women are being set in a direction away
from the home, this, as I have just said, must count as the strongest
factor of all. What women want to do is what they are likely in the end
to do.
So many women have been for long, and still are, suffering from the
delusion that conditions which industrialism, with all its failures in
the art of life, first established, and which war now has made necessary,
are an advantage to be maintained after the need of war has made them
unnecessary. This is the great mistake. I would emphasise again what I
have shown in an earlier chapter,[88] that conditions which act against
the home and marriage (always dependent on the individual home) are sure
proof of social instability. Such conditions are centuries old; all
this flood of change is bringing nothing that is new. In all periods of
unsettled life the individual home and the family have been threatened.
The primitive form of marriage, the maternal form, where the husband
visited the wife in her own home, is very near to the most modern
suggestions for the readjustment of marriage. And the heavy working of
women is a further sign of disturbance and of primitive conditions of
life. It is a step backward, not a step forward. Few women, however,
realise that this is so. Perhaps this explains why so many among them are
talking and behaving to-day as if no more babies were desired to be born.
How far this will be carried I do not profess to say. Women will have
a fresh power to refuse the position of wife and mother; thus it seems
likely that there may be an increased option against marriage in its true
and binding form. And closely connected with the independent position of
women will be the great shortage, for the next decade, of marriageable
men, due to the killing and disablements of war. It will be a world in
which the proportion of women will be very high. And although it would
be folly to estimate precisely how this great numerical strength of
one sex will act, whether it will strengthen women’s position, or, as
it equally well may, will lessen their importance in a society crowded
with unwanted women, it is plain that it must directly affect the sexual
relationships. Women, accustomed when young to control their own lives
and able to be self-supporting, will not only find it much more difficult
to marry, but they will be in a position to get along economically
without marriage. To every married woman there are likely to be three or
four unmarried ones.[89] It will also probably be a period of poverty.
The economic stress which war causes will almost necessarily continue
in the years when we shall all be compelled to meet the huge task of
national recovery that peace must bring. It is possible that for some
years it will be more difficult to maintain a family than it has ever
been before. This will be a third factor acting against marriage, and
tending to maintain as permanent the class of energetic, not strongly
maternal and undomesticated women workers.[90]
In different directions also causes very much the same may possibly be
acting to the same end. The desires of men as well as the desires of
women may be affected, and be turned from marriage and the duties of the
family and the home. Many men will not come back out of the hell of war
the same men that entered it. It may not be easy to plan life on the old
rules, the safe customs of civilisation may well count for less. Some
men will not want to return to the posts kept open for them by women; to
sell tablecloths to fussy women, or to spend dull days in offices adding
columns of figures and addressing envelopes, may not appear “a man’s job”
to men who have met the stark facts of death and life. I doubt the zeal
of the response of all these men to the binding ties of family life. And
in this way, it may be, that many fathers will be cut off from the family
and turned away from desiring the sacrifice and duties that children
entail, which cannot fail to act as a further force in modifying marriage.
If we try to take an entirely practical view of the position, certain
grave facts must, I think, become evident. For side by side with these
forces acting against marriage, and the parental sacrifice necessary to
maintain the ideal of the family, must be placed the nation’s increased
need for children—in particular for male children. The repair of the war
drain on the world’s manhood must fall heaviest on women. It is woman who
has borne and bred and loved each life that has been lost by war. It is
she who will have to make good the waste. This is her bill of compulsory
service.
Never will child life have been so precious as it will be after this
World War. Already in this country we are beginning to recognise this
need. Excellent work for the restriction of infant mortality and the
protection of child life is beginning to be undertaken, and these
questions are receiving a practical recognition which they never gained
in the days of peace. But much more drastic action than has as yet been
considered will be needed. It is certainly not inconceivable that this
need for children may lead to changes both in our public and private
attitudes to many sexual questions. I am hopeful that it may force us to
face squarely many problems that hitherto we have turned from in fear.
Speculations on all matters connected with marriage and the relations
between the sexes are so hazardous that they are likely to be wrong. I
do, however, think that, having regard to the direction in which so many
forces are acting, the position in regard to the special problem we are
considering has become clearer. Monogamous marriage and the home based
upon maternity and offspring has got to be saved. And in my opinion this
will be done most surely by a frank acceptance, under the almost certain
conditions of the future, of more than one form of sexual association.
This proposal is not made lightly. I am not advocating such a course
as being in itself desirable or undesirable. I am attempting merely to
estimate the drift and tendency of the times, considering those forces
that were beginning to act before the war and, as I think, must continue,
even with greater power, after the war. I suggest, therefore, the one
course that seems to me can in any practical way help us to be more
moral. All the facts that we have found work out to force us to the
realisation that an increasing number of women will not be able, and
probably will not desire, even if they marry, to bear children. Now, I
do not believe in changing the ideal of marriage so that its duties no
longer bind women to their children and to the home. I think it better to
make provision for other partnerships, to meet the sex-needs (for we can
cause nothing but evil by failing to meet them) of the women and men who
are not able or do not desire to enter the holy bonds of marriage and
undertake together the duties and sacrifice inevitable to the founding
and maintenance of a family.
I know the whole question is a very difficult one. Let me try to make my
position somewhat clearer.
I am in one way in agreement with Roman Catholic Christianity (I use the
phrase to make my meaning plain, and ask indulgence if to any one it
seems in itself indefensible). The Roman Catholic Church admits the need
of two standards of sexual conduct—some women and men are fitted for a
religious life and should bind themselves to celibacy; others need to
marry, and to them marriage is permitted. The difference between my view
and the one just expressed is that, whereas it is usual to suppose the
morals of the celibate monk or nun superior to those of the married man
or woman, I should hold the opposite opinion; it is the highest types of
men and women who would seek to marry and be best and happiest if living
together as faithful man and wife, as devoted father and mother. I do,
however, hold that there are others—women as well as men—without the
gifts that make for successful parenthood or happy permanent marriage.
I would recognise the divergence of these two roughly defined classes
and let those who cannot marry be openly permitted to live together in
temporary childless unions, destined, I hope, to show to the world the
inferiority of every type of ideal of the sex relationships other than
the monogamous union, which fulfils the completion of the woman and the
man in the child created by their love. And further, these sterile unions
would, by their childlessness, act to remove for ever from the world
those unsuited to be parents. It is this last result that matters most.
As long as we force those unsuited for faithful mating into marriage and
hold them bound against their desire, children will be born who must pay
the penalty in weakness of character of their parents’ sins against love.
I believe if there were some open recognition of honourable partnerships
outside of marriage, not necessarily permanent, with proper provision
for the future, guarding the woman, who, in my opinion, should be in
all cases protected, a provision not dependent on the generosity of the
man and made after the love which sanctioned the union has waned, but
decided upon by the man and the woman in the form of a contract before
the relationship was entered upon, then there would be many women ready
to undertake such unions gladly; there would be women as well as men
who, I believe, would prefer them to monogamous marriage that binds them
permanently to one partner for life. In this way many marriages would be
prevented that inevitably come to disaster. And this would leave greater
chances of marriage and child-bearing for other and more suitable types.
It is also possible that such friendship-contracts might, under present
disastrous conditions, be made by those who are unsuitably mated and yet
are unable, or do not wish, to sever the bond between them, with some
other partner they could love. Such contracts would open up possibilities
of honourable partnerships to many who must otherwise suffer from
enforced sexual abstinence or be driven into shameful and secret unions.
By this means a solution might be found for conditions of dishonour in
our midst that we all know to be there—dishonour that, as far as I am
able to see, is likely to be increased, and not lessened, in the near
future by the conditions left by war. Moreover, prostitution, and also
the diseases so closely connected with prostitution, would be greatly
lessened, though I do not think that sexual sins would cease. There will
always be for a very long time men and women who will be attracted to
wild-love. This we have to recognise. Men would not, however, be driven
to buy sexual relief.[91]
We have got, I am certain, to recognise that our form of permanent
marriage—the monogamous union—cannot meet the sex-needs of all people. To
assert that it can do this is to close our eyes to the facts we all know
to exist. The extending of the opportunities of honourable love must be
faced before we can hope for more moral conditions in marriage. I must
affirm again how necessary, in my opinion, is some kind of fixed public
recognition for every form of sexual relationship between a man and a
woman, so that there may be some accepted standard of conduct for the
partners entering into them.
May not something be done now, when we are being forced to consider these
questions, to make some such recognition possible? Partnerships other
than marriage have had a place as a recognised and guarded institution in
many older and more primitive societies, and it may be, as I have tried
to show, that the conditions brought upon us after the World War may act
in forcing upon us a similar acceptance.
I believe that, in face of the many past disorders in our sexual
conduct, such a change would work for good and not for evil; that it
would not destroy marriage, but might re-establish its sanctity.
The whole question of any sexual relationships outside of marriage
in the past has been left in the gutter, so to speak, in darkness
and concealment. This would be changed. It is the results that have
almost always followed these irregular unions that have branded them
as anti-social acts. But the desertion of women, which has arisen from
the conditions of secrecy under which they now exist, would be put to
an end. One reason why extra conjugal relationships are discredited is
because the difficulties placed around them are so numerous that, as a
rule, only the weak, the foolish, and the irresponsible undertake these
partnerships. Make these partnerships honourable and honourable men and
women will enter into them. I do not see how we can forbid or treat with
bitterness any union that is openly entered into and in which the duties
undertaken are faithfully fulfilled. It is our attitude of blame that has
made this impossible.
I can anticipate an objection that will probably be raised. Why, I
shall be asked, if sexual relationships are to be acknowledged outside
of marriage, preserve marriage at all? I have answered this question
sufficiently. Monogamous marriage will be maintained because the great
majority of women and men want it to be maintained. I have affirmed
before my own belief in the monogamic union: the ideal marriage is that
of the man and woman who have dedicated themselves to each other for
the life of both, faithfully together to fulfil the duties of family
life. This is the true monogamy; this is the marriage which I regard as
sanctified. But I, regarding it as a holy state, would preserve it for
those suited for the binding duties of the individual home so intimately
connected with it.
And I do disavow the sanctity of many professedly monogamous marriages
that are maintained only with the support of prostitution and clandestine
loves. Squalid intrigues have been the shadow of the old, narrow moral
code. The contract-partnerships I have suggested will do nothing to
change the sanctity of any true marriages. And the answer I would give
to those who fear an increase of immorality from any openly recognised
provision for sexual partnerships outside of permanent marriage is,
that no deliberate change made in the future in our sexual conduct can
conceivably make moral conditions worse than they have been in the recent
past. As a matter of fact, every form of irregular union has existed and
does exist to-day, but shamefully and hidden. It is certain that they
will continue, and that their number will be increased.
I have sought to put these matters as plainly as may be in the conviction
that nothing can be gained by concealment. Any one who writes on the
subject of marriage reform is very open to misconception. It is not
realised that the effort of the reformer is not to diminish at all the
bonds in any sexual partnerships, rather the desire is to strengthen
them, but the forms of the partnership will have to be more varied,
unless, indeed, we prefer to accept unregulated and secret vice. Matters
are likely to get worse and not better. We shall, I do most sincerely
believe, gain more morality by doing what I am pleading for than will be
gained in any other way.
The only logical objection that I can think of being advanced against an
honourable recognition of these partnerships is that, by doing away with
all necessity for concealments, their number is likely to be larger than
if the old penalties were maintained. This is undoubtedly true; it is
also true that recognition is the only possible way by which such unions
can cease to be shameful. Prohibition and laws, however stringent, can do
nothing. The past has proved their failure; they will fail still worse in
the future.
Nor is the change really so great or so startling as at first it
may appear to be. Our marriage in its present form is primarily an
arrangement for the protection of the woman and the family. What I want
is that some measure, at least, of the protection now given to the legal
wife, should also be afforded to all women who in an open and honourable
way fulfil any of the same duties. I am not seeking to make immorality
easier, that is very far indeed from my purpose. These changes for which
I am pleading will make immorality much harder, for it will not be so
easy as now it is to escape from the responsibilities of love.
No one can suppose, of course, that these changes can be other than
gradual. There will be no stage at which a large section of society
will give up the accepted convention of concealments with regard to
unregulated unions, and will stand perplexed as to how they may readjust
their opinion and moral judgments on this question. What will happen is
this. The slow abandonment by society of the old attitude of blame and
fear, as experiments in sexual partnership are made, at first by the few,
to be followed by an ever increasing number. When the need for change
arises, then does a change come.
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XII
THE UNMARRIED MOTHER
The law should help unmarried parents to give adequate
protection to their child—Repressive terrors drive men to
desert girls made pregnant through their lust—The penalty for
illegitimate parentage should not be paid by the child—At
present the child does pay—Figures to show this—Illegitimate
infant death-rate—Unmarried mother not able to give
proper care to her child—Some mothers unfit to care for
their children—Different types of unmarried mothers—Four
cases—Where both parents working-class least harm usually
results from birth of a love-child—Enlightened legislation in
Scandinavia—The law in England and in France—Good legislation
in Australia and New Zealand—Other countries—Five proposals for
reforming our law.