THE PRESENT POSITION OF WOMEN
(II) THE MARRIED
WE shall now examine a little more closely the lot of the 9,000,000 odd
women in England and Wales who are or who have been married, and
endeavour to find out whether similar tendencies to those already
discovered in the previous chapter are making their influence felt in
the matrimonial life of the country.
Attention has already been called to the fact that, almost as fast as
bodily parts or functions are lost, science comes forward with aids that
enable us to carry on notwithstanding; and also that these substitutes,
combined with the third-rate bodily experiences secured by our impaired
physique, make us question the value of both life and love.
Nowhere, however, are the effects of imperfect functioning or incomplete
bodies more acutely felt than in the married state; and that is why, if
science had recognized the importance of securing happiness for this
state, it would have left no stone unturned in order to restore to us
the natural conditions on which happiness depends, instead of giving us
ever more and more efficient substitutes.
In our present world the effect of the body-despising values enters as a
disturber of our bliss into almost every aspect of matrimony.
It enters first in the form of our impaired physiques, and affects the
female partner in two ways: it depreciates the quality of her most
important _natural_ extra-corporeal equipment, _man_, and therefore the
quality of her joy; and it further depreciates that joy through her own
indifferent bodily condition.
It enters next in the form of Puritanism, which, thanks to its
associated fear of, and incompetence in, sexual matters, arrests the
male partner’s impulses, causing him to hesitate, flounder, and
frequently to fail, whereby the ideal relationship of two ardent lovers
is marred, if not destroyed; and it usually succeeds in preventing them
from attaining the top wave of ecstasy by imposing inhibitions against
perfectly instinctive desires.
Finally, it enters by rendering ever more and more harassing for the
woman the natural consequences of conjugal intimacy—gestation,
parturition, and lactation; and by converting these once beautiful and
enthralling functions into things of ugliness and pain.
We cannot here discuss the many ways in which our bodily disorders and
defects interfere with the happy congress of man and wife. Suffice it to
say, however, that science already gives a good deal of assistance even
here, and is likely to perform a good deal more.
At all events, this much we may say without impropriety—that, as fast as
Puritanism and bodily imperfections together have conspired to cast a
slur on sex by converting the congress of the human couple from an
experience of magic beauty into an ordeal of both painful embarrassment
and actual pain, not only have a certain number of women begun to think
that conception without congress would be a god-send, but a scientific
technique, which realizes this desideratum, has also been brought to
ever greater efficiency. Artificial impregnation—the scientific aid
again!—is now a thoroughly familiar operation, frequently performed;
and, if the present tendencies continue, and the body-despising values
culminate in their extreme logical consequence—the elimination of the
body—there can be no doubt that it will become ever more and more
customary.
In the limited space at our disposal, however, we must concentrate upon
gestation, parturition, and lactation in this chapter, more particularly
as they form so important a part of woman’s share in married life.
Now it may be stated straight away that there are no human functions
that have got into a more alarming state of abnormality and muddle than
gestation, parturition, and lactation. Indeed, so great are the
divergences from Nature in the two latter functions, that it is no
exaggeration to say that, all hope of ever recovering normal conditions
having long since been abandoned, all persons have now resigned
themselves to an almost complete reliance on artificial aids. In the
middle and so-called “upper” classes instruments and anæsthetics are now
very nearly the rule in helping the function of parturition, while among
the poorer classes they are very common. And in regard to lactation, all
kinds of unnatural food, including, of course, cow’s milk, take the
place of breast-feeding.
The doctors, the nurses, the mothers, and the whole population have, we
declare, resigned themselves to the modern conditions of difficult and
scientifically aided childbirth; but it would be more strictly accurate
to say that they have meekly prostrated themselves before a _fait
accompli_; for, as far as we have been able to judge, no attempt on a
grand scale has ever yet been made to ascertain whether the present
difficulties are as hopelessly inevitable as they seem, or whether a
more normal method of functioning might not be recovered.
The ugly circumstances of modern childbirth, mitigated to some extent
only by a liberal use of anæsthetics, are now sufficient to intimidate
any young woman who happens to reflect, before marriage, on her future
prospects; while to those already married they constitute a heavy
lowering cloud, which hardly ever disperses until the climacteric at
last puts an end to all anxiety. Stated in the most moderate terms,
these ugly circumstances at least add to the arguments which, in our
Puritanical and Feminist atmosphere, accumulate year by year against
both the body and the sexual life; and for this reason alone, if for no
other, it is important for us to examine them and to see how, or
whether, they can be mitigated.
The curious part of it is that, here, we are not confronted by
degeneration or malformation nearly to the extent that some people
suppose; but by ignorance, lack of initiative in the medical profession,
and the foolish superstitions of all the chief actors in the muddle—the
expectant mothers, the doctors, and the nurses.
A certain percentage of births still takes place each year under normal
conditions—that is to say, without anæsthetics or instruments; but even
of these it is safe to say that they are accompanied by much more pain
than can possibly be natural; while, owing to circumstances quite
independent of the mother’s bodily condition, even these cases often
receive quite unnecessary scientific aid.
The circumstances that cause doctors to interfere more and more
frequently with confinements that promise to be normal are the
following: In the well-to-do classes, _the extreme busyness of the
doctor_, on the one hand, _which makes him disinclined to wait for
Nature to do her work_; and, on the other, his interested relationship
to his patient, which makes it almost necessary for him to appear as her
champion. By encouraging the patient to be put to sleep and to allow the
process to be hurried, the doctor thus kills two birds with one stone.
After only a few hours’ labour, therefore, he will employ anæsthetics,
and the result is that what might have been a fairly normal confinement,
free from anæsthesia and instruments, becomes a serious operation, in
which damage is frequently inflicted on the young mother.
In the poorer classes the same thing happens, except that poor women
often go to some public institution to be confined. It should not be
forgotten, however, that young and aspiring doctors have to acquire some
practice with the obstetric forceps, and that it is precisely in homes
and hospitals that this practice can be obtained. Instead of its being
the excessive busyness of the doctor that leads to the hasty and
unnecessary use of instruments, therefore, it is now the circumstance
that the woman may find herself in a maternity-home or hospital. And the
tragic part of it is that the demonstrating surgeon in such cases, far
from electing an abnormal pregnancy for his exhibition, deliberately
chooses the most normal of his patients, because of the greater ease
with which the demonstration can then be made. Thus, even when Nature is
most willing and modern women are most normal, natural functioning is
spurned and rebuffed. Such cases, however, are possible only in an
atmosphere that has long been infected with body-despising prejudices.
In no other atmosphere would the doctors dare to behave in this way.
At all events, among both the rich and the poor, normal confinements are
becoming increasingly rare, and we shall now try to discover why, except
in case of obvious abnormality, this is so; and why, moreover, even in
normal confinements there is always, or almost always, the alleged
“sorrow” or excessive pain of biblical tradition.
Provisionally we suggest the following reasons for the difficulties of
parturition among modern women, and for the fact that nothing is done to
restore more normal functioning:
(=a=) _The absurd superstition that our heads are getting larger and
that the pelves of women are getting smaller._ Doctors are persuaded
that the difficulty of modern childbirth must be due to “Progress.” And,
since “Progress” is erroneously connected in their own and most people’s
minds with the belief that men are growing more intelligent (which quite
obviously they are not), the facile conclusion is reached that, as our
brains must be growing larger, our heads must follow suit. It is hardly
necessary to say that this is sheer nonsense, and no more than an
indolent excuse for the Conservative stagnation of the medical
brotherhood. The heads of modern people are certainly not larger than
the heads of their ancestors ten thousand years ago (_vide_ Keith’s
_Antiquity of_ _Man_); and as to the shrinking of women’s hips, this
also is an invention. It is certainly found, but only where the pelvis
is rachitic, or where undue strains on the thighs in early childhood (in
violent games, etc.) have led to a premature stiffening of the fleshy,
and a premature ossification of the bony, parts. At all events, it is
much less common than is usually supposed; and, in any case, it is very
seldom that there is any disproportion between the sizes of the foetus
and the pelvis. See, however, how convenient the explanation
is—Increasing brains, larger heads, and shrinking pelves!—The doctors,
shrugging their shoulders before this apparently vicious circle, can
quietly resign themselves, _à la_ Walrus and Carpenter, to a permanent
engagement as artificial functionaries to supersede a perfectly natural
human function; and, what is more, they need feel no dread about growing
thinner or poorer themselves as time goes on, nor trouble to discover
how normal functioning can be recovered.
(=b=) _The still more absurd superstition that a baby should be 8 or 9
lbs at birth._ This is universal in England, and whether it is the daily
newspapers over the birth of a prince, or a poor woman’s neighbours over
the birth of a new pauper, everybody is jubilant if an 8-lb baby is
born. It may have required a team from Harley Street to deliver it, and
it may, and usually does, lose weight after birth; but all this does not
matter: nobody cares, nobody troubles to think, provided that it has
registered the full 8 lbs in the first hour of its existence.
Unfortunate women, permanently injured by instruments, smile
triumphantly over the thought that they have had a baby-boy weighing 9
lbs. But what can we expect when their doctors encourage them in these
lunatic transports?
(=c=) _The belief, deeply rooted in the modern and lay minds, that it is
God’s decree that children should be brought forth in sorrow._ Having
rejected the _Genesis_ version of the origin of man and all living
creatures, it is remarkable that the modern world, led by its men of
science, should take so seriously a curse mentioned in the first book of
Moses, which, even if its effect be admitted as possible, had probably
only a tribal or national application when it was uttered. And it is
still more odd that they should regard us and our womenfolk as still
lying under its spell. For, apart from the fact that there are savage
and semi-civilized tribes still in existence with whom childbirth is not
nearly such a sorrowful event as some might suppose, but a simple and
easy function (_teste_ almost every ethnological work), why should we
assume that the Jewish women, to whom the curse originally applied, were
normal or lived normally? From our knowledge of the Syrian Jewess, it
seems highly probable that, if her remote ancestors resembled her, their
confinements must have been extremely sorrowful. But what has that to do
with us? This never seems to have occurred to the modern medical man;
and, taking the _Genesis_ curse as his motto, he has now solemnly
allowed the agony to be piled up, till it is no longer merely in sorrow,
but almost in tragedy, that children are brought forth—not to mention
the extra-corporeal equipment of instruments, etc. And, why should there
be any limit? When once the principle is admitted, where is the line to
be drawn, particularly if it pays not to draw it? We protest, however,
that even if we admit—which we do not—that there must be “sorrow,” this
can hardly have meant the miserable failure and elaborate scientific
technique which modern medicine has made of parturition in general.
Now, in view of these three articles of faith, not only are the doctors
and the public in an attitude that paralyses all endeavour to effect a
change for the better, but both the doctors and the public have ceased
to ask whether any such change is possible. Having ceased to ask the
question, no effort is made to inquire into the means of achieving the
end it suggests; and, as usual, everything is staked on artificial aids.
Anyone who, like ourselves, asks whether there are not other ways of
overcoming the enormous difficulties of parturition among modern women,
in order to remove this cloud from life and love and restore pleasure to
a natural function, is laughed at.
Nevertheless the present writer continues to ask the question, and for
the following reasons:
For a long time it has seemed to him suspicious that Nature, who is so
uniform in her methods and who with such unfailing consistency has made
all vital functions pleasant, should have made this one conspicuous
exception, particularly in regard to a function linked to the most vital
moment in our lives. Being unsatisfied with the verdict of science on
the subject, therefore, he made inquiries on his own account, and was
not at all surprised to find, not only that a number of existing races
still enjoy infinitely greater ease in parturition than most European
women, but also that, as he expected, there are still to be found among
mankind faint vestiges of that ecstasy which he believes must once have
attended the function in normal circumstances. Even the dreams of some
European women lead the inquirer to suspect the existence of this
ecstasy not so very far back along the racial line. When, however, the
present writer expressed this view in a recent work dealing with the
subject,[8] he provoked the most violent indignation, particularly among
women themselves.
Footnote 8:
See _Woman: A Vindication_ (Constable and Co.: 1923).
After having made a number of observations and experiments on the higher
animals, he discovered not only that parturition is in fact ecstatic
among these animals when in their natural condition, but also that their
ecstasy can quickly be altered to anguish by only the smallest
divergence from the normal in their food during gestation.
Observing animals in a state of nature, moreover, he arrived at this
interesting conclusion, _that their young_, even when the mothers are in
splendid fettle, _are only skin and bone at birth_, that their birth is
an ecstatic function to the mother only when they are in this state, and
that young born in this way not only never lose weight, but grow as
plump and vigorous as could be wished in the first twenty-four hours.
If, however, the gestating mother’s food be so modified _as to make it
unlike the natural food of the species_—for instance, if large
quantities of potatoes, bread, cabbage, and rice-pudding be given to a
female cat, with rations of cooked instead of raw meat—the birth of the
kittens, which are grossly fat, is immensely difficult, and some of them
may be still-born or appear only after long delay in mutilated
fragments.
The present writer has confirmed these facts repeatedly, and they led
him to ask this question: _whether civilized women, even in antiquity,
have not habitually taken the wrong food during gestation, with the
result that their babies have been too fat or too hard in the bone at
birth_?
It is notorious that a small, healthy 6-lb baby frequently flourishes
better than the heavier infant of 8 or 9 lbs; also that, since the
larger baby usually loses weight after birth, its bulk is demonstrably
unnecessary at that stage. What then prevents us from adopting what is
obviously Nature’s plan—the birth of relatively thin and small babies,
through care of the gestating mother’s food?
It is obviously only a question of feeding and hygiene, and of ridding
the public and the medical profession of a number of absurd prejudices:
the rest will necessarily follow if only it be earnestly desired.[9]
Footnote 9:
As the present chapter is being written, we notice with pleasure that
at a conclave of doctors held recently at Bradford, Dr Μ. E.
Mackenzie, of Leeds, put a question to the meeting which showed that
she is evidently on the track of the reforms we recommend; but we were
not surprised to find that the President, Dr J. S. Fairbairn, declared
that he did not take her remarks seriously. (See _British Medical
Journal_, Aug. 16th, 1924).
We feel convinced, from our study of animals, that this is the direction
in which inquiry should be directed, for at least it offers some hope of
an improvement, whereas the elaboration and more persistent use of
artificial aids offers none. Doctors should exert themselves to discover
that ideal gestatory diet which will lead to an infant’s being born
whose weight is from 6 to 6½ lbs, whose body is lean, whose head is
small and not too hard, and who will gain and not lose weight after
birth. But we can hardly refrain from adding that, when once these
food-conditions are found, medical men are likely to discover that they
have much less to do than at present by the bedside of the expectant
mother, and that they will then be invited to delegate their duties to
someone less learned, less expensive, less pressed for time, and
therefore less interested in achieving the result by scientific aids.
Dr Eichholz of Kreuznach, writing in the _Frauenarzt_ as early as 1895,
outlined a system of dieting which he declared produced the results
described above; while Dr Lahmann, who was the first to point out that
our aim should be to obtain smaller and thinner babies, with heads less
hard at birth, experimented with a diet poor in nitrogen, which he
declared was completely successful.
According to Lahmann, it is not only excessive feeding and drinking
during pregnancy which, owing to the natural greed of women and the
sycophantic encouragement of that greed by ignorant doctors, is the
universal error, but the excessive eating of foods rich in protein; and
he recommends a diet rich in food-salts and poor in meat and cereals,
which seems to approximate very well to what one may imagine the food of
primitive mankind to have been.
The compass of this work, however, does not allow us to enter into the
minutiæ of the Lahmann diet. All we wish to emphasize here is that, if
only we can rid our minds of a few ridiculous superstitions and aim at a
natural ideal, the attainment of which cannot be beyond the wit of man,
the probability is that the “sorrow” in which children are brought forth
will be greatly mitigated, if not wholly removed, and much of its
pristine bliss restored to the life of woman and to motherhood.
Since our aim should be the recovery of our belief in the value of life
and love, by improving our bodily functions, we cannot halt at any
difficulty in the way of our success. But success means not only
contesting the sway of the body-despising values, but also fighting the
Conservatism and prejudices of a great profession, which, while it has
great power to-day, can hardly fail to identify its best interests with
a perpetuation and aggravation of our present physical disabilities.
Passing now to lactation, which constitutes one of the chief joys of
motherhood, and which, in its serenity and bliss has in all ages
symbolized the beauty of the feminine virtues, the home, and the family,
it will perhaps not astonish the reader to hear that there is at present
no human function, except parturition, which is more often replaced by
artificial means than this one.
The vast multiplication in recent years of patent infant-foods and
preparations of cow’s milk sufficiently demonstrates the extent to which
modern women are failing in this respect; and, when it is remembered
that this failure is to be observed in all classes, even among those who
cannot plead society obligations as an excuse, the situation appears to
be deplorable enough.
No doubt a certain percentage of this increase in artificial feeding is
due to actual physiological defects; but we must not make too much of
that. Truth to tell, degeneration and defective functioning account for
but a trifling number of those who, every year, have recourse to the
bottle instead of the breast in the feeding of their infants. For, with
few exceptions, lactation can be established in every woman.
The general authoritative opinion seems to be that “when care is
exercised and adequate attention paid to the necessary details, the
glands can in nearly all cases be brought into the required degree of
activity,” and that “if the value of natural feeding were realized, it
can hardly be doubted that the capacity for breast-feeding would be
found to be practically universal among the women of England.” (Dr Janet
E. Lane Claypon).
The enormous popularity of artificial feeding, therefore, must be due to
the increased activities of women of all classes outside the home, which
is one of the most noticeable features of the Women’s Movement, and the
consequent disinclination on their part to undertake the rearing of
their children in the natural manner. Together with the decline in the
function on the one hand, and women’s refusal to suckle on the other,
there has, as usual, arisen both a scientific technique and a host of
substitutes which take the place of mother’s milk; and, in accordance
with our traditional tendencies, we have once more neglected the effort
to restore natural conditions, in order to apply all our ingenuity to
the task of bringing artificial aids to perfection.
Now this would be all very well, and no one could rightly complain, if
the substitutes in this case were more akin to natural conditions than
are most artificial aids. If this were so we might regret, from the
sentimental and the æsthetic standpoints, the evanescence of
breast-feeding, and sympathize _en passant_ with the mothers who were
deprived of it as an experience; but we should be able to advance no
practical reasons why it was to be deplored from the standpoint of human
desirability.
And, indeed, for many years this has been the position. Although doctors
and commercial corporations repeatedly protest that breast-feeding is
best, they are quite ready in the same breath to admit that artificial
feeding can be made “as good as mother’s milk”; and no one is in the
least perturbed when he hears that his own child or that millions of
other babies are being hand-fed. We have even read the work of one
English doctor who smugly proclaims that we shall improve on Nature in
this matter!
Thus, once again, while flagrant abnormalities are becoming the rule
amongst us, science hastens to set our minds at rest by a shower of
artificial aids; and, since we can “carry on,” nothing more is said.
The problem appears to be a simple one, and, to give scientists their
due, they have done little to complicate it. Mother’s milk contains so
much water, so much protein, carbo-hydrates, fat, and mineral salts,
and, when once you have these ingredients in the proper proportions, you
have a synthetic product “as good as mother’s milk.” Indeed, so long
have these ingredients and their quantitative values held the field, to
the exclusion of everything else, that we have come to believe that
cow’s milk or even Allenbury’s is as normal as breast-feeding.
And yet, if we were to undergo a strange and uncommon test hardly ever
applied in highly civilized countries, how quickly would our blind faith
in even the best artificial methods receive a shock! True, sentiment
alone would be responsible for the commotion; but in this case sentiment
would be strangely akin to true knowledge.
Place a human baby at the dug of a cow, a goat, or an ass, as you
sometimes see them placed in semi-civilized countries, and what is it
that you immediately feel? The sight is an offence to the eyes, a
humiliation of our racial pride.—Why?
Instinctively we feel and intellectually we know that Nature makes the
wisest provision for her needs. When, therefore, we see one of our
babies at the dugs of a goat, our sense of fitness is shocked: even our
practical utilitarian prejudices receive a blow. We know instantly that
the baby cannot have been meant to take that milk, because it is a
nobler creature than the goat and its body has tasks and feats to
perform with its food which the kid has not. Above all, it has that huge
brain to develop, which the kid has not. Can it be possible that Nature
could have overlooked that? The human brain is not only larger at birth
than that of any other animal, but its rate of growth is also greater.
Is it conceivable that Nature could have made no special provision for
that?
Hence our sense of degradation and revolt—feelings which somehow are not
provoked when the milk reaches us in a bright glass-bottle, or in a nice
clean tin covered with printed matter—because all the degrading side of
it is then hidden from our view.
The strange part of it, however, is that this sense of degradation and
revolt is based upon fact; for not only on _a priori_ grounds may we
deny that goat’s milk or any other substitute can adequately replace
breast-feeding, but we may also deny it from positive knowledge.
Years ago Dr Biedert showed that the most important differences between
human and cow’s milk were qualitative rather than quantitative. A little
later Dr G. von Bunge confirmed this view; and Dr Halliburton, the great
physiologist, has recently repeated and emphasized it. It is impossible
to enter here into the qualitative differences to which these
authorities refer: suffice it to say that the gravity of the whole
question from our standpoint lies not merely in the greater
digestibility of human milk, but in the conspicuous difference between
human milk and all other substitutes as a brain-developing food. Dr von
Bunge, who calls attention to this point, claims not only that human
milk is more complex than its substitutes, but that in it we find
lecithin bodies in peculiar proportions, which serve for the
construction of the inordinately large human brain.
It is not surprising that this important point should have been
overlooked all this time. As we have already said, materialism is
necessarily the creed of body-despisers. But, if Dr von Bunge’s view is
correct, how severe must have been our loss in intelligence and genius,
precisely owing to the decline in breast-feeding! Certainly the
uncontrollable and increasing stupidity of our governing classes for
over a hundred years, seems to point to the truth of von Bunge’s views;
for it is among them that, for social reasons, artificial feeding has
been, and still is, most common. Dean Inge comments somewhere on the
increasing besottedness of modern people, and we entirely agree with his
view; but we wonder whether it has ever struck him that the decline in
breast-feeding, which is the outcome of his body-despising values, may
be one of the most powerful contributory causes of it.
For we should always bear in mind, in comparing our poor spiritual
achievements with the genial performances of antiquity, the Middle Ages,
the Renaissance, and the pre-Victorian era, that the artificial feeding
of infants is essentially a modern invention, and that it was unknown to
antiquity.
From Plato down to Pope Alexander VI no one had ever heard of a baby’s
bottle. The alleged ancient artificial feeder discovered in Cyprus by
Franz von Löher was probably no more than an old traveller’s gourd or
wine-bottle. As late as the fifteenth century the only kind of
infant-feeding, other than breast-feeding by the mother, that was known,
was that which a foster-mother, or so-called wet-nurse, could provide.
Metlinger in 1473 appears to be the first to mention cow’s milk as a
substitute, and Rosslin comes next, in 1522, with a theory about
egg-yolk and bread-mash. But these men speak of these substitutes as
applicable only in case of extreme need, and there is nothing to suggest
that the practice of artificial feeding was common.
At all events, it is safe to say that the vast expansion of artificial
feeding, as we know it to-day, is something quite recent and new; and,
since there appears to be no doubt that, qualitatively, human milk is
quite inimitable, it is impossible to calculate the damage which the
latest development of “Progress” may ultimately do to the spirits and
bodies of civilized men.
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