that if anything went wrong, it was not the fault of the girls. "They are a
rough lot," she wrote, "and, of course, they like to have a soldier to walk
out with. They like to romp with the men, and to kiss them, and perhaps
they do go rather far in letting the men pull them about. But they have no
intention whatever of going any further. If things do go further, it is the
men's fault, not the girls'."
I could hardly have a better instance of the sort of thing I mean. The
girls want to have "fun" up to a certain point, and there stop. It does
not occur to them that there may be a difference in the point at which they
propose--or wish--to stop, and that at which the man can. That there is
any physiological or psychological factor in the case which makes stopping
possible at one moment and next-door to impossible at another, and that
these factors may differ between the sexes, so that one cannot stop just
where the other can, is quite a new idea not only to factory girls but to
women-patrols--at least to some of them. A girl will cheerfully start a
man rushing down an inclined plane and then complain because he continues
rushing till he reaches the bottom. Well, in a sense, we ought not to
complain of either of them: we ought to challenge the senseless way in
which they are kept in the dark about each other.
In these days, when so much greater liberty is accorded to boys and girls
than was given in the past, the friends of liberty should insist with
obstinacy on the need for knowledge. For if liberty is unaccompanied and
unguided by knowledge, its degeneration into licence will be triumphantly
used by the lovers of bondage as an argument against liberty itself. Let me
then say boldly that I am all for liberty. I want boys and girls, men and
women, to see far more of each other and get to know each other much
better than in the past. I believe in co-education, and in _real_
co-education--not the sham that is practised in some of our universities
and colleges. I see the risks and I want to take them. I know there will be
"disasters," and I think them much less disastrous than those attending the
methods of obscurantism and restraint. I think the idea that a boy and girl
may not touch each other introduces a silly atmosphere of unreal "romance"
where commonplace friendship is what is wanted. But with all this, and
_because_ of all this, I want a girl to know that a boy's body and mind
are not _exactly_ like hers; and perhaps a boy to know that a girl's is not
totally _unlike_ his!
In what way do they differ? The male, I think, is more liable to sudden
gusts of passion, of violence so great as to be almost uncontrollable--at
least so nearly so as to make it both cruel and stupid to arouse them. A
woman's nature is not (generally) so quickly stirred. She takes longer to
move (hence the universal fact of courtship). Or rather it might be more
accurate to say that he and she may both start at the same time from the
same point, but she takes longer to reach the end, and because this is so,
is more capable of stopping before the end is reached. This she does not
understand, and expects that if _she_ can pause, so can _he_; while he also
misunderstands, and does not know that there is for her, just as much as
for him, a moment when self-control becomes impossible.
I have said so much about the lack of chivalry shown by women to men that
it is only reasonable to point out that the reverse is true, and that men
are often extraordinarily unchivalrous towards women. The cause is, of
course, the same: they do not realize what a strain they are putting on
them. There is still a very general assumption, even by those who really
know better, that women have no passions and are untempted from within. I
have often been assured by "men of the world" that "a woman can always stop
a man if she wants to." No doubt she can--some men. She can "stop them if
she wants to." The trouble is that a time comes when she cannot want to.
The bland assumption that a man has a perfect right to play on a woman's
sex-instincts till they are beyond control, and then call her the
guilty one because they _are_ beyond control, is based on the age-old
determination not to recognize the full humanity of women. They are
"different" from men. So they are. I have admitted it. But the likeness
is much greater than the difference. And neither the likeness nor the
difference makes self-control an easy thing for her. It is easier up to
a certain point, because she is more slowly moved; it is harder when that
point is reached because her whole nature is involved. She has never
learnt to say that she can give her body to one while remaining spiritually
faithful to another, and perhaps she never will learn. I at least suspect
so. She may be as fickle as a man, but it will be in a different way.
Of course, in all this I generalize very rashly from a very narrow
experience. My excuse is that these things must be discussed if we are ever
to generalize more safely, or to learn that we must not generalize at all.
And I have come to the conclusion that it is perhaps as possible to know
something of what is or is not true when one is unmarried as when one is
married. At least one escapes the snare into which so many married people
surprisingly fall, of generalizing from an experience which is not merely
as narrow as everyone's must be, but actually unique; which enables them to
pronounce with stupefying confidence that all men are as this man is; all
women as his wife; and all marriages as his marriage. When one has had the
honour of receiving the confidence of a succession of such prophets and
heard them pronounce in turn, but in an entirely different sense, upon
the difficulties or easinesses of sex-relationships, always with a full
assurance that they are right, not only in their own case but universally,
one begins to make a few tentative generalizations oneself in the hope that
they will at least provoke discussion and engender light.
X
"THE SIN OF THE BRIDEGROOM"
"A deathless bubble from the fresh lips blown
Of Cherubim at play about God's throne
Seemed her virginity. She dreamed alone
Dreams round and sparkling as some sea-washed stone.
Then an oaf saw and lusted at the sight.
They smashed the thing upon their wedding night."
_Dunch,
Susan Miles._
Something has been said by others of one of the most fruitful sources of
misunderstanding between men and women, where misunderstanding is likely to
have the most disastrous results--what has been called by Rosegger "the sin
of the bridegroom." Perhaps "sin" is a mistaken word. If irreparable harm
is often done on the wedding night, it is quite as much due to ignorance
as to cruelty. Nothing is more astonishing than the widespread ignorance of
men _and women_ of the fact that courtship is not a mere convention, or a
means of flattering the vanity of women, but a physiological necessity
if there is to be any difference at all between the union of lovers and a
rape.
It is all, I suppose, part of the old possessive idea which, making of
a woman something less than a human personality with wishes, desires and
temperament of her own, forbade the man to realize or even to know that
her body has its needs as well as his, and that to regard it merely as an
instrument is to be in danger of real cruelty.
You can bargain for the possession of a violin and the moment it is yours,
may play upon it. It is yours. If you are in the mood to play, it must be
ready for you. If it is not, then tune it, and it will be.[G] But a human
being cannot be treated so in any human relationship. It needs mutual
patience and mutual respect to make a relationship human.
[Footnote G: But even a violin will need to be tuned.]
This simple fact, however, has been so little understood of lovers, that
husbands have, in genuine ignorance of the cruelty they were committing,
raped their wives on their wedding night. Judging by what one knows of
wedding-days, it could hardly be supposed that there could be a more
unpropitious moment for the consummation of marriage. And when to the
fatigue and strain of the day is added--_as is still quite often the
case_--blank though uneasy ignorance as to what marriage involves, or the
thunderbolt of knowledge (_sic_) launched by the bride's mother the night
before, or the morning of the day itself, it would be difficult with the
utmost deliberation and skill better to ensure absolute repulsion and
horror on the part of the bride. I think that any man who would consider
this from the bride's point of view would see that she need not necessarily
be cold or unresponsive because, in such circumstances, she needs rest and
consideration more than passion. But I wish men could know a little more
than this, and understand that to enforce physical union when a woman's
psychical and emotional nature does not desire it, is definitely and
physically cruel. Woman is not a passive instrument, and to treat her as
such is to injure her.
Perhaps I may be forgiven for labouring this point because, in fact,
misunderstanding here is so disastrous. Marriage, after all, is a relation
into which the question of physical union enters, and if there is no
equality of desire, marriage will be much less than it might be. Women
are--idiotically--taught to believe that passion is a characteristic of the
depraved woman and of the normal man, who is shown by this fact to be on a
lower spiritual level than (normal) woman. This senseless pride in what
is merely a defect of temperament where it exists has poisoned the marital
relations of many men and women, and has led women into marrying when they
were temperamentally unfitted for such a relation, and quite unable to make
anyone happy in it. Nor ought they to be too much blamed, since they are
often unaware of what they ought to be prepared to give in marriage and
firmly convinced that their preposterous ignorance is in some inexplicable
way a virtue. Why it should be admirable, or even commonly honest, to
undertake duties of whose nature you are ignorant, neither men nor women
seem ever to have decided, and the illusion is beginning to pass. But it is
still not understood that the woman who is not temperamentally asexual may
easily be made so by being forced when she is not ready, and physically
hurt when a little patience and tenderness would have saved her. Forel,
Havelock, Ellis and others have insisted on this, but their books are
unfortunately not easily accessible to the general public; and something
may be added to the more widely read productions of Dr. Stopes.[H] Not
only the physiological but the psychological side of the problem has to be
considered, and it would be hard to decide which is the more important or
which the _vera causa_ of the other's reaction. Scientists may perhaps tell
us some day: here I want only to point out that there is a spiritual factor
in the case which needs at least to be recognized.
[Footnote H: _Married Love_, _Wise Parenthood_, and _Radiant Motherhood_.
By Marie Carmichael Stopes.]
Is passion a cause or an effect? In other words, should physical union be
the expression of spiritual union? Is it the "outward and visible sign of
an inward and spiritual grace?" Or is it a means by which that grace is
achieved? I think the first instinct of most women would be to say that
spiritual union should be _expressed_ by physical union, and that unless
this spiritual union exists the physical union is "wrong." And yet everyone
who stops to think will admit that the expression of an emotion deepens
it. One can "work oneself up into a rage" by shouting and swearing. One can
deepen love by expressing love. It is noticeable that the whole case for
birth control has repeatedly been argued from the ground that the act of
physical union not only expresses but intensifies and increases love.
Marriage is the most difficult of human relations, because it is the most
intimate and the most permanent. To live so close to another--who, in
spite of all, _remains_ another--to be brought so near, to associate so
intimately with another personality, without jarring or wounding--that
is hard. No wonder it is not invariably a success! But passion makes
it possible to many to whom, without this, it would not be possible.
Ultimately passion should be transcended since in any case it must be left
behind. Yet it has served its end, in deepening and intensifying the love
of two people for one another.
Where then lies the difficulty, since probably men and women alike would
agree that what I have said is true?
The difference of view is perhaps more in practice than in theory; yet it
is all the harder of adjustment for that. In theory, both men and women
would agree that physical union, ideally, should express a spiritual
union; and that in doing so, it deepens and intensifies it. But it is still
possible to disagree as to which of these two aspects of an admitted truth
is the more vital and fundamental.
It may be, as I have already suggested, that the woman's point of view is
due to her physiology; or it may at least be influenced by it. At least,
I am convinced that to the woman the sense that physical union is _only_
justified by already existent spiritual union, is the normal one. I believe
that, however incapable she may be of explaining it, and however her power
of reasoning may be vitiated by wrong ideas about the sexual relation, she
does instinctively recoil from its use when its reason for existence is not
there. She may attribute her reluctance to the fact that she is too womanly
(_sic_), too spiritually minded to have any desire for sexual relations at
all; her husband may attribute it to coldness of temperament or "modesty."
In fact, it is due to the cause I have stated, and if she had never been
called upon to give her body except when her own desire for the "outward
and visible sign" of an "inward and spiritual grace" demanded it, her
husband would have found that she was not temperamentally defective, but as
good a lover as he.
No one who lives in the world at all can fail to understand that in every
human relationship, and supremely in this one, there must be much mutual
accommodation, much give and take, a great gentleness to every claim made
in the name of love. All I am concerned to do here is to help to clear up
misunderstandings. It is no claim that I put forward that the woman's point
of view is superior to the man's: merely that they seem to me a little
different.
A man who is conscious of jarring, who finds himself a little at
cross-purposes with the woman he loves, and yet knows that the jarring is
merely superficial and the love profound, may easily feel that to ask and
offer once more the supreme expression of that love is the best way to
transcend the temporary lack of sympathy and restore love to its right
place and true proportion. Who shall say that he is wrong? Is it not
certain that the expression of love does intensify and deepen love? Is not
a sacrament the means of grace as well as its symbol.
Yet let him be warned. He may easily seem to his wife to be contenting
himself with the symbol without the reality, the body without the soul. If
she understands him, she may go with him. If she does not, no yielding on
her part--no physical passion that he may arouse--will quite stifle the
protest which tells her that she suffers spiritual violation. Do you
remember the cry of Julie in "The Three Daughters of M. Dupont"? "_It is a
nightly warfare in which I am always defeated_." That her physical nature
is suborned to aid in the conquest only increases for her the sense of
degradation.
This difference in point of view affects the relations of men and women
far more widely than is realized, since it is apt to arise wherever the
physical comes in at all--and where does it not? Not a touch only, or a
caress, but all deliberate appeal to sexual feeling becomes more difficult
to women as they grow more civilized. It is perhaps difficult for a man
to realize, in the atmosphere of giggles and whispers with which sex
is surrounded in the theatre, the novel and the press, how revolting it
becomes to modern women to be expected to use such means for "holding" a
lover, or extorting concessions from one who is "held." It was much easier,
I suppose, when women did not understand what they were about. One sees
that to such women it is comparatively easy to-day. And the position
is complicated by inheritance of the age-old conviction that a woman is
supremely woman when she can bend a man by precisely these means. But the
revolt is here. And--for the sake of clearness--what I am concerned to show
is that a woman is not necessarily asexual or cold because she will not use
an appeal to sexuality in order to get what she wants. She may have all the
"temperament" in the world, but she has also self-respect, and she revolts
from the idea of exploiting for advantage what should be sacramental.
I believe that a better understanding on this point would save not only
great disasters but an infinity of small jars and strains, and if I
have put the woman's point of view at some length it is partly because I
understand it better, but chiefly because it is comparatively "modern" to
admit that she has a point of view to put.
Once understood, it becomes easier to understand also the startling
successes and disastrous failures which attend the remarkable practice of
"teaching a woman to love after she is married." The extent to which social
tabus and prudery may actually inhibit a woman's natural sexual development
makes it possible, as we have seen, for her to marry in ignorance of what
marriage implies. When this happens, her love, though it may be noble,
altruistic and spiritual, does not involve her whole nature. Her husband,
if he respects her sufficiently, will be able to awaken that which sleeps,
and in accordance with the undoubted truth that expression intensifies
love, he does "teach her to love" him not only in one sense but in all.
On the other hand, if she does not already love him, he will not succeed
in "teaching" her anything but disgust if he dreams that by compelling
physical union he can create spiritual union.
Evidently it is a singularly dangerous attempt! It is to be hoped that in
future no woman will run such risks out of ignorance, but that lovers will,
before they marry, understand what each expects, what each desires to give,
and at least _start_ fair.
This is no less important with regard to other matters in which marriages
are often wrecked. Surely people who propose to spend their lives together
ought to know (for example) whether children are desired and whether many
or few; and what the attitude of either is on the vexed subject of birth
control. Imagine the case of a husband who thinks the use of contraceptives
right and wishes to use them; and a wife who thinks them absolutely wrong
and, being warned by the doctor that she must not have more children,
cheerfully, and with perfect conviction that she is acting nobly, invites
her husband to run the risk of causing her death! Yet I have known such
cases.
I do not enter into the question of birth control, because it has been and
is being discussed much more freely than in the past, and by married people
who are much better able to estimate the difficulties and advantages on
either side of the question than any unmarried person can possibly be.
Since, however, I am continually asked at least to give my personal
opinion, for what it is worth, and since it is true that I have heard a
good deal (on both sides) from those who _are_ married, I will say briefly
that it seems to me of supreme importance (1) that every child that is born
should be _desired_, and (2) that no mother's time and strength should be
so far overtaxed as to prevent her giving to each child all the love and
individual care that it requires.
This necessitates control of the birth-rate, for a baby every year means
a too-hurried emptying of the mother's arms. But I disagree--very
diffidently--with the majority of my friends and acquaintances who hold
that the right and best method is the use of contraceptives. I do not think
it the best; I do not think it ideal. Unlike some authorities who must be
heard with respect, I can say with confidence that some of the noblest,
happiest and most romantic marriages I know base their control of
conception not on contraceptives but on abstinence. They are not prigs,
they are not asexual, they do not drift apart, and they have no harsh
criticism to make on those who have decided otherwise. These are facts, and
it is useless to ignore them.
On the other hand, it is equally true that sometimes such an attempt at
self-control leads to nervous strain, irritability and alienation. These
also are facts.
Personally, I would submit marital relations to the two tests I have
proposed, and add that we have succeeded in oversexing ourselves to an
extent which cannot be ignored; that we have "repressed" till we are
obsessed; and that, before we right ourselves, we shall have to make many
experiments, try many roads, and suffer many things. It is then above all
necessary that we be very gentle to one another and even a little patient
with ourselves. I conceive it much better to use contraceptives than to
bear unwanted children; I conceive it also better to use them than to be
cruel to others or become neurotic oneself; but that it is the ideal I do
not believe.
XI
COMMON-SENSE AND DIVORCE LAW REFORM
"Those whom _God_ hath joined together let no man put asunder."
In view of what I have said[I] about our marriage and divorce laws, several
people have asked what I should actually propose in the way of reform, and
I am glad to take the opportunity of a new edition briefly to answer this
question.
[Footnote I: See Chapter V.]
I do not wish to see reform take the line of a longer list of "causes"
for divorce, such, for example, as drunkenness, insanity, imprisonment for
life, and so on. I should prefer to abolish these lists altogether, and to
bring all divorce cases under some form of "equitable jurisdiction," each
case being decided on its merits.
It should be the business of the court to decide whether the marriage
desired to be invalidated has _in actual fact_ any validity or reality at
all; and to declare the couple divorced if it has not. In such courts men
and women (or a man and a woman) should act together as judges.
It will be urged that to decide such a question is beyond the power of any
human judgment; but I submit that in fact such decisions are being given
every day. A judge who grants a judicial separation is deciding that _a
marriage has ceased to be real or valid_, and he divorces the couple _a
mensa et thoro_, though leaving them without the power to marry again. He
actually "puts them asunder" more rigidly than a divorced couple. Since
this is possible, it cannot be impossible for him to decide that the
marriage must be wholly dissolved, with freedom of re-marriage to other
partners; though such a decision, being even more grave, should not be
reached without certain safeguards.
These safeguards should include that teaching about marriage on which I
have insisted throughout the whole of this book. Young people should know
what sex is and involves: what marriage is: how necessary to the welfare of
the race, their children and themselves are fidelity and love. They should
know that unless they believe that their love is indeed for life they ought
not to marry. They should understand that to fail here is to fail most
tragically.
If, nevertheless, a man and woman believe that their marriage is a complete
and hopeless failure, their claim to be released from it should not be
granted in haste. A period of years should in any case elapse before
divorce can be obtained, and every effort should be used to reconcile the
two, to remove any removable cause of difficulty, to convince them of the
possibility of making good, by loyalty, unselfishness and a deep sense of
responsibility, even an incomplete and desecrated bond.
If, however, it is clear that for no worthy consideration can they be
induced to take up again the duties and responsibilities of marriage--if
they remain immovably and rationally convinced that their marriage is not
a real marriage--they should be released. And this because it is not moral
but immoral, not Christian, but unChristian, to pretend that a marriage is
real and sacred _when it is not_.