delayed but now spreading all along the line—are evident enough. When,
however, we come to the second type of woman mentioned in the preceding
pages, the working wife, we—naturally enough—do not find much conscious
movement. The life of the household drudge is too like that of a slave,
too much consumed in mere toil, too little illuminated by any knowledge,
for her to rise of herself to any other conception of existence.
Nevertheless it is not difficult to see that general and social changes
are working to bring about her liberation also. Improved
house-construction, public bakeries and laundries, and so forth, and,
what is much more important, a more rational and simple and healthful
notion of food and furniture, are tending very largely to reduce the
labors of Housework and Cookery; and conservative though women are in
their habits, when these changes are brought to their doors they cannot
but see the advantage of them. Public institutions too are more and more
taking over the responsibilities and the cost of educating and rearing
children; and even here and there we may discern a drift towards the
amalgamation of households, which by introducing a common life and
division of labor among the women-folk will probably do much to cheer
and lighten their lot. None of these changes, however, will be of great
use unless or until they wake the overworked woman herself to see and
insist on her rights to a better life, and until they force from the man
a frank acknowledgment of her claim. And surely here and there the man
himself will do something to educate his mate to this point. We see no
reason indeed why he should not assist in some part of the domestic
work, and thus contribute his share of labor and intelligence to the
conduct of the house; nor why the woman—being thus relieved—should not
occasionally, and when desirable, find salaried work outside, and so
contribute to the maintenance of the family, and to her own security and
sense of independence. The over-differentiation of the labors of the
sexes to-day is at once a perpetuation of the servitude of women and a
cause of misunderstanding between her and man, and of lack of interest
in each other’s doings.
The third type of woman, the prostitute, provides us with that question
which—according to Bebel—is the sphinx-riddle that modern society cannot
solve, and yet which unsolved threatens society’s destruction. The
commercial prostitution of love is the last outcome of our whole social
system, and its most clear condemnation. It flaunts in our streets, it
hides itself in the garment of respectability under the name of
matrimony, it eats in actual physical disease and death right through
our midst; it is fed by the oppression and the ignorance of women, by
their poverty and denied means of livelihood, and by the hypocritical
puritanism which forbids them by millions not only to gratify but even
to speak of their natural desires; and it is encouraged by the
callousness of an age which has accustomed men to buy and sell for money
every most precious thing—even the life-long labor of their brothers,
therefore why not also the very bodies of their sisters?
Here there is no solution except the freedom of woman—which means of
course also the freedom of the masses of the people, men and women, and
the ceasing altogether of economic slavery. There is no solution which
will not include the redemption of the terms “free woman” and “free
love” to their true and rightful significance. Let every woman whose
heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself
and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman. Let
her accept the term with all the odium that belongs to it; let her
insist on her right to speak, dress, think, act, and above all to use
her sex, as she deems best; let her face the scorn and the ridicule; let
her “lose her own life” if she likes; assured that only so can come
deliverance, and that only when the free woman is honored will the
prostitute cease to exist. And let every man who really would respect
his counterpart, entreat her also to act so; let him never by word or
deed tempt her to grant as a bargain what can only be precious as a
gift; let him see her with pleasure stand a little aloof; let him help
her to gain her feet; so at last, by what slight sacrifices on his part
such a course may involve, will it dawn upon him that he has gained a
real companion and helpmate on life’s journey.
The whole evil of commercial prostitution arises out of the domination
of Man in matters of sex. Better indeed were a Saturnalia of free men
and women than the spectacle which as it is our great cities present at
night. Here in Sex, the women’s instincts are, as a rule, so clean, so
direct, so well-rooted in the needs of the race, that except for man’s
domination they would scarcely have suffered this perversion. Sex in man
is an unorganized passion, an individual need or impetus; but in woman
it may more properly be termed a constructive instinct, with the larger
signification that that involves. Even more than man should woman be
“free” to work out the problem of her sex-relations as may commend
itself best to her—hampered as little as possible by legal,
conventional, or economic considerations, and relying chiefly on her own
native sense and tact in the matter. Once thus free—free from the mere
cash-nexus to a husband, from the money-slavery of the streets, from the
nameless terrors of social opinion, and from the threats of the choice
of perpetual virginity or perpetual bondage—would she not indeed choose
her career (whether that of wife and mother, or that of free companion,
or one of single blessedness) far better for herself than it is chosen
for her to-day—regarding really in some degree the needs of society, and
the welfare of children, and the sincerity and durability of her
relations to her lovers, and less the petty motives of profit and fear?
The point is that the whole conception of a nobler Womanhood for the
future has to proceed candidly from this basis of her complete freedom
as to the disposal of her sex, and from the healthy conviction that,
with whatever individual aberrations, she will on the whole use that
freedom rationally and well. And surely this—in view too of some decent
education of the young on sexual matters—is not too great a demand to
make on our faith in women. If it is, then indeed we are undone—for
short of this we can only retain them in servitude, and society in its
form of the hell on earth which it largely is to-day.
Refreshing therefore in its way is the spirit of revolt which is
spreading on all sides. Let us hope such revolt will continue. If it
lead here and there to strained or false situations, or to temporary
misunderstandings—still, declared enmity is better than unreal
acquiescence. Too long have women acted the part of mere appendages to
the male, suppressing their own individuality and fostering his
self-conceit. In order to have souls of their own they must free
themselves, and greatly by their own efforts. They must learn to fight.
Whitman in his poem “A Woman Waits for Me,” draws a picture of a woman
who stands in the sharpest possible contrast with the feeble bourgeois
ideal—a woman who can “swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
retreat, defend herself,” etc.; and Bebel, in his book on Woman, while
pointing out that in Sparta, “where the greatest attention was paid to
the physical development of both sexes, boys and girls went about naked
till they had reached the age of puberty, and were trained together in
bodily exercises, games and wrestling,” complains that now-a-days “the
notion that women require strength, courage and resolution is regarded
as very heterodox.” But the truth is that qualities of courage and
independence are not agreeable in a slave, and that is why man during
all these centuries has consistently discountenanced them—till at last
the female herself has come to consider them “unwomanly.” Yet this last
epithet is absurd; for if tenderness is the crown and glory of woman,
nothing can be more certain than that true tenderness is only found in
strong and courageous natures; the tenderness of a servile person is no
tenderness at all.
It has not escaped the attention of thinkers on these subjects that the
rise of Women into freedom and larger social life here alluded to—and
already indeed indicated by the march of events—is likely to have a
profound influence on the future of our race, It is pointed out that
among most of the higher animals, and indeed among many of the early
races of mankind, the males have been selected by the females on account
of their prowess or superior strength or beauty, and this has led to the
evolution in the males and in the race at large of a type which (in a
dim and unconscious manner) was the ideal of the female.[11] But as soon
as in the history of mankind the property-love set in, and woman became
the chattel of man, this action ceased. She, being no longer free, could
not possibly choose man, but rather the opposite took place, and man
began to select woman for the characteristics pleasing to him. The
latter now adorned herself to gratify his taste, and the female type and
consequently the type of the whole race have been correspondingly
affected. With the return of woman to freedom the ideal of the female
may again resume its sway. It is possible indeed that the more dignified
and serious attitude of women towards sex may give to sexual selection
when exercised by them a nobler influence than when exercised by the
males. Anyhow it is not difficult to see that women really free would
never countenance for their mates the many mean and unclean types of men
who to-day seem to have things all their own way, nor consent to have
children by such men; nor is it difficult to imagine that the feminine
influence might thus sway to the evolution of a more manly and dignified
race than has been disclosed in these last days of commercial
civilization!
The Modern Woman with her clubs, her debates, her politics, her freedom
of action and costume, is forming a public opinion of her own at an
amazing rate; and seems to be preparing to “spank” and even thump the
Middle-class Man in real earnest! What exactly evolution may be
preparing for us, we do not know, but apparently some lively sparring
matches between the sexes. Of course all will not be smooth sailing. The
women of the new movement are naturally largely drawn from those in whom
the maternal instinct is not especially strong; also from those in whom
the sexual instinct is not preponderant. Such women do not altogether
represent their sex; some are rather mannish in temperament; some are
“homogenic,” that is, inclined to attachments to their own, rather than
to the opposite, sex; some are ultra-rationalizing and brain-cultured;
to many, children are more or less a bore; to others, man’s sex-passion
is a mere impertinence, which they do not understand, and whose place
they consequently misjudge. It would not do to say that the majority of
the new movement are thus out of line, but there is no doubt that a
large number are; and the course of their progress will be
correspondingly curvilinear.
Perhaps the deficiency in maternal instinct would seem the most serious
imputation. But then, who knows (as we have said) what evolution is
preparing? Sometimes it seems possible that a new sex is on the
make—like the feminine neuters of Ants and Bees—not adapted for
child-bearing, but with a marvelous and perfect instinct of social
service, indispensable for the maintenance of the common life. Certainly
most of those who are freeing themselves—often with serious
struggles—from the “lady” chrysalis are fired with an ardent social
enthusiasm; and if they may personally differ in some respects from the
average of their sex, it is certain that their efforts will result in a
tremendous improvement in the general position of their more commonplace
sisters.
If it should turn out that a certain fraction of the feminine sex should
for one reason or another not devote itself to the work of maternity,
still the influence of this section would react on the others to render
their notion of motherhood far more dignified than before. There is not
much doubt that in the future this most important of human labors will
be carried on with a degree of conscious intelligence hitherto unknown,
and which will raise it from the fulfilment of a mere instinct to the
completion of a splendid social purpose. To save the souls of children
as well as their bodies, to raise heroic as well as prosperous citizens,
will surely be the desire and the work of the mothers of our race.[12]
It will perhaps be said that after going about to show (as in the
previous chapter) the deficiency of women hitherto in the matter of the
generalizing faculty, it is somewhat inconsistent to express any great
hope that they will ever take much active interest in the general social
life to which they belong; but indeed the answer to this is that they
are already beginning to do so. The social enthusiasm and activity shown
by women in Britain, Russia, and the United States is so great and
well-rooted that it is impossible to believe it a mere ephemeral event;
and though in the older of these countries it is at present confined to
the more wealthy classes, we can augur from that—according to a
well-known principle—that it will in time spread downwards to the women
of the nation.
Important as is the tendency of women in the countries mentioned to
higher education and brain development, I think it is evident that the
widening and socialization of their interests is not taking place so
much through mere study of books and the passing of examinations in
political economy and other sciences, as through the extended actual
experience which the life of the day is bringing to them. Certainly the
book-studies are important and must not be neglected; but above all is
it imperative (and men, if they are to have any direct sway in the
future destinies of the other sex, must look to it) that women, so long
confined to the narrowest mere routine and limited circle of domestic
life, should see and get experience, all they can, of the actual world.
The theory, happily now exploding, of keeping them “innocent” through
sheer ignorance partakes too much of the “angel and idiot” view. To see
the life of slum and palace and workshop, to enter into the trades and
professions, to become doctors, nurses, and so forth, to have to look
after themselves and to hold their own as against men, to travel, to
meet with sexual experience, to work together in trade-unions, to join
in social and political uprisings and rebellions, etc., is what women
want just now. And it is evident enough that at any rate among the more
prosperous sections in this country such a movement is going on apace.
If the existence of the enormous hordes of unattached females that we
find living on interest and dividends to-day is a blemish from a
Socialistic point of view; if we find them on the prowl all over the
country, filling the theaters and concert-rooms and public
entertainments in the proportion of three to one male, besetting the
trains, swarming onto the tops of the ’buses, dodging on bicycles under
the horses’ heads, making speeches at street corners, blocking the very
pavements in the front of fashionable shops, we must not forget that for
the objects we have just sketched, even this class is going the most
direct way to work, and laying in stores of experience, which will make
it impossible for it ever to return to the petty life of times gone by.
At the last, and after centuries of misunderstanding and association of
triviality and superficiality with the female sex, it will perhaps dawn
upon the world that the truth really lies in an opposite direction—that,
in a sense, there is something more deep-lying fundamental and primitive
in the woman nature than in that of the man; that instead of being the
over-sensitive hysterical creature that civilization has too often made
her, she is essentially of calm large and acceptive even though
emotional temperament. “Her shape arises,” says Walt Whitman,
“She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever,
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d,
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing is concealed from her,
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor,
She is the best belov’d, it is without exception; she has no reason to
fear, and she does not fear.”
The Greek goddesses look down and across the ages to the very outposts
beyond civilization; and already from far America, Australasia, Africa,
Norway, Russia, as even in our midst from those who have crossed the
border-line of all class and caste, glance forth the features of a
grander type—fearless and untamed—the primal merging into the future
Woman; who, combining broad sense with sensibility, the passion for
Nature with the love of Man, and commanding indeed the details of life,
yet risen out of localism and convention, will help us to undo the bands
of death which encircle the present society, and open the doors to a new
and a wider life.
MARRIAGE
A RETROSPECT
Of the great mystery of human Love, and that most intimate personal
relation of two souls to each other—perhaps the firmest, most basic and
indissoluble fact (after our own existence) that we know; of that
strange sense—often, perhaps generally, instantaneous—of long precedent
familiarity and kinship, that deep reliance on and acceptation of
another in his or her entirety; of the tremendous strength of the chain
which thus at times will bind two hearts in life-long dedication and
devotion, persuading and indeed not seldom compelling the persons
concerned to the sacrifice of some of the other elements of their lives
and characters; and, withal, of a certain inscrutable veiledness from
each other which so frequently accompanies the relation of the opposite
sexes, and which forms at once the abiding charm, and the pain,
sometimes the tragedy, of their union; of this palpitating winged living
thing, which one may perhaps call the real Marriage—I would say but
little; for indeed it is only fitting or possible to speak of it by
indirect language and suggestion, nor may one venture to rudely drag it
from its sanctuary into the light of the common gaze.
Compared with this, the actual marriage, in its squalid perversity as we
too often have occasion of knowing it, is as the wretched idol of the
savage to the reality which it is supposed to represent; and one seems
to hear the Aristophanic laughter of the gods as they contemplate man’s
little clay image of the Heavenly Love—which, cracked in the fire of
daily life, he is fain to bind together with rusty hoops of law, and
parchment bonds, lest it should crumble and fall to pieces altogether.
The whole subject, wide as life itself—as Heaven and Hell—eludes
anything like adequate treatment, and we need make no apology for
narrowing down our considerations here to just a few practical points;
and if we cannot navigate upward into the very heart of the
matter—namely, into the causes which make some people love each other
with a true and perfect love, and others unite in obedience to but a
counterfeit passion—yet we may fairly, I imagine, study some of the
conditions which give to actual marriage its present form, or which in
the future are likely to provide real affection with a more satisfactory
expression than it has as a rule to-day.
As long as man is only half-grown, and woman is a serf or a parasite, it
can hardly be expected that Marriage should be particularly successful.
Two people come together, who know but little of each other, who have
been brought up along different lines, who certainly do not understand
each other’s nature; whose mental interests and occupations are
different, whose worldly interests and advantage are also different; to
one of whom the subject of sex is probably a sealed book, to the other
perhaps a book whose most dismal page has been opened first. The man
needs an outlet for his passion; the girl is looking for a “home” and a
proprietor. A glamor of illusion descends upon the two, and drives them
into each other’s arms. It envelopes in a gracious and misty halo all
their differences and misapprehensions. They marry without misgiving;
and their hearts overflow with gratitude to the white-surpliced old
gentleman who reads the service over them.
But at a later hour, and with calmer thought, they begin to realize that
it is a life-sentence which he has so suavely passed upon them—not
reducible (as in the case of ordinary convicts) even to a term of 20
years. The brief burst of their first satisfaction has been followed by
satiety on the physical plane, then by mere vacuity of affection, then
by boredom, and even nausea. The girl, full perhaps of a tender emotion,
and missing the sympathy and consolation she expected in the man’s love,
only to find its more materialistic side—“This, this then is what I am
wanted for;” the man, who looked for a companion, finding he can rouse
no mortal interest in his wife’s mind save in the most exasperating
trivialities;—whatever the cause may be, a veil has fallen from before
their faces, and there they sit, held together now by the least
honorable interests, the interests which they themselves can least
respect, but to which Law and Religion lend all their weight. The
monetary dependence of the woman, the mere sex-needs of the man, the
fear of public opinion, all form motives, and motives of the meanest
kind, for maintaining the seeming tie; and the relation of the two
hardens down into a dull neutrality, in which lives and characters are
narrowed and blunted, and deceit becomes the common weapon which guards
divided interests.
A sad picture! and of course in this case a portrayal deliberately of
the seamy side of the matter. But who shall say what agonies are often
gone through in those first few years of married life? Anyhow, this is
the sort of problem which we have to face to-day, and which shows its
actuality by the amazing rate at which it is breaking out in literature
on all sides.
It may be said—and often of course is said—that such cases as these only
prove that marriage was entered into under the influence of a passing
glamor and delusion, and that there was not much real devotion to begin
with. And no doubt there is truth enough in such remarks. But—we may say
in reply—because two people make a mistake in youth, to condemn them,
for that reason, to life-long suffering and mutual degradation, or to
see them so condemned, without proposing any hope or way of deliverance,
but with the one word “serves you right” on the lips, is a course which
can commend itself only to the grimmest and dullest Calvinist. Whatever
safeguards against a too frivolous view of the relationship may be
proposed by the good sense of society in the future, it is certain that
the time has gone past when Marriage can continue to be regarded as a
supernatural institution to whose maintenance human bodies and souls
must be indiscriminately sacrificed; a humaner, wiser, and less
panic-stricken treatment of the subject must set in; and if there are
difficulties in the way they must be met by patient and calm
consideration of human welfare—superior to any law, however ancient and
respectable.
I take it then that, without disguising the fact that the question is a
complex one, and that our conclusions may be only very tentative, we
have to consider as rationally as we conveniently can, first, some of
the drawbacks or defects of the present marriage customs, and secondly
such improvements in these as may seem feasible.
And with regard to the former, one of the most important points—which we
have already touched on—is the extraordinary absence of any allusion to
these subjects in the teaching of young folk. In a day when every
possible study seems to be crammed into the school curriculum, it is
curious that the one matter which is of supreme importance to the
individual and the community is most carefully ignored. That one ought
to be able to distinguish a passing sex-spell from a true comradeship
and devotion is no doubt a very sapient remark; but since it is a thing
which mature folk often fail to do, how young things with no experience
of their own or hint from others should be expected to do it is not easy
to understand. The search for a fitting mate, especially among the more
sensitive and highly-organized types of mankind, is a very complex
affair; and it is really monstrous that the girl or youth should have to
set out—as they mostly have to do to-day—on this difficult quest without
a word of help as to the choice of the way or the very real doubts and
perplexities that beset it.