situation as it really was. And what I want to impress upon you, is
the suffering unwittingly imposed on both these children. If they
had been punished they would not have felt this paralysing sense of
wrong doing—a suffering of the soul, fitting perhaps for the adult,
but not for the child. With punishment or even with scolding, the
penalty would have been paid, and the relief would have been gained of
self-forgiveness—a relief so much more necessary to happiness than the
forgiveness of others.
Of course, it may be argued that morally such self-accusation which
does follow from this method of adult forgiveness, with its sentimental
treatment of wrong doing, is good for children. I do not think so.
Certainly it makes them suffer—suffer intolerably and to an extent
that few adults are sufficiently discerning to realise. But the burden
placed on the untried, unhardened and sensitive child-soul is, I am
certain, too heavy for them to bear safely at this stage of their
psychic growth. Punishment would, in almost all cases, be far easier
and more acceptable. It would also be far healthier. There is always
the gravest danger in placing the immature child in any position that
forces an emotional response in advance of the stage of development
which has been reached. We have to see these problems as the child
feels them, not as we think about them with our grown-up experience and
adult deadness.
DIFFICULTIES AND MISTAKES IN SEX EDUCATION
To the theoretical teacher or parent eager to reform the world on
paper, it may seem easy to introduce sex education into the nursery
training of the home, and into the curriculum of our schools. It
appears a comparatively easy matter to tell the little child the truth
about its own body, and as it grows older, to give carefully prepared
lessons about plants and animals, which shall lead it slowly and
beautifully into the way of knowledge.
Text books have been written, pamphlets officially issued, schemes
drawn up for home and school instruction, and rules laid down—new
finger-posts to right conduct, whereby the younger generation may
be enlightened and (as we hope) by this means saved from making the
mistakes that we ourselves have made.
I wish it were as simple as this. That sex instruction could be taken
from books.
Of late various attempts have been made to focus attention on this
aspect of the question or on that; we have been told how this teaching
should be given, and with still greater assurance how it should not
be given; this must be done and that must not be done; this said and
that left unsaid. And groups of earnest-minded parents and teachers, in
almost every town, have met together to discuss and decide debatable
points; lecturers have been applied for, and their utterances have
been listened to as a new gospel; yet I venture to think that, as in
all other experimental and debatable questions, the very multitude of
counsel and the earnestness that is expended, indicates the uncertainty
of our knowledge and the doubtful value of many of our affirmations.
I find a tendency amongst most grown-ups, and especially teachers
and advanced parents who ought to know better, to place too firm a
reliance on their own power to educate the young in sex. I myself
have done this. Like those drowning in deep water where they cannot
swim, we have clutched at any plank of hope. You see so many of the
old planks—religion, social barriers, chaperones, home restrictions,
and so many more, on which our parents used to rely, have failed us;
been broken in our hands by the vigorous destroying grasp of the young
generation; and, therefore, we have clutched with frantic fingers at
this new fair-looking life-raft, in pursuit of the one aim, to protect
our children.
But will it save them? I doubt if it will except in a limited and very
different way from what is usually accepted. We cannot help the young
very far or deeply by any of our teaching. Not only do they want their
own experience, not ours, but it is right for them to have it. The urge
of adolescence carries them away out of our detaining hands. And I
think it may be well that at once we realize and acknowledge the very
narrow limits of our power.
Thus I have nothing new or very striking to bring to the solution
of this difficult problem. I shall endeavour, however, to look at
the matter broadly and practically, and attempt to indicate in what
direction, as it seems to me, further progress may be made at the
present stage of our very faulty knowledge.
One of the most disturbing features that we have to recognise in
relation to the child is the very early age at which sex manifests
itself. It was formerly supposed that the sex-life began at the age of
puberty. Nothing is more untrue. Every child is born with instincts
and desires—feelings of love, of hate, of jealousy, which furnish the
motives of conduct, and are accompanied by physical manifestations of
pleasure or discomfort which express themselves, often in a veiled way,
as wishes and cravings, that find relief in action, and must therefore
be yoked either to some burden of utility or to some car of vanity.
It should be noted, however, that the word sexual is somewhat
ambiguous, because I want to stretch it to include the very germs that
afterwards blossom into the adult sex-life. The little girl with her
doll is maternal, and the boy with a tin sword is showing the crudest
manifestation of the male protective instinct.
The baby whenever it enjoys the satisfaction of realising its infantile
wants gurgles with delight. “Every nurse, and every mother who tends
her child herself knows this, and recognises as a necessary task in the
training of the child, almost from the day of its birth, the winning of
it away from this egocentric concentration on its own body.”[2]
We are always trying not to admit that we have to recognise in relation
to sex the very early age at which it manifests itself. We do not
believe this, because we dislike to believe it. Our fear causes us to
neglect in a quite wrong way the deeply affective results of the early
childish emotions.
To the uninstructed eye, early desires and feelings connected with sex
are often so unlike their final form that they pass unrecognised. But
the mother who has eyes to see and knowledge to understand knows that
the child can hide no secret. When the lips speak not, the faces in
twitching mouth and blinking eyes; the hands, in telling gestures; the
biting nails; the sucking thumb; the shuffling feet; the toes that are
played with and sucked—all these utter the truth; and betrayal escapes
out of every nervous movement of hands, and feet, and face.
We will not see and acknowledge the presence of these early emotions
because we want to see the child an angel. We cannot surrender the
picture of childhood as a period of delightful ignorance and innocence.
The very reverse is the truth. The child has brought with it much from
more primitive times; just in the same way as its body still shows
traces of earlier developments in life, so its emotions, its instincts,
its wishes and desires, revert back, in many particulars, to lower
stages of growth. Always the child has to fight its way upwards, and
indeed, it has no easy task to find and keep the right path, in its
short journey of discovery to reach from the savagery of the babe to
the level of a civilised social man or woman. If we do not help it, the
way becomes doubly hard and often the path is lost or, in other words,
the savage triumphs.
We are now in a better position to answer the question, so much
debated, as to the age at which the sex education of the child should
begin. Instead of this being a matter that can be put off until the
child is older, and the angel innocence has been sullied by contact
with an evil and ugly world, it becomes overwhelmingly important that
_no time whatever should be lost_. Every effort must be made to educate
from the very hour of birth these primitive instincts, which, though
permissible in the savage and the little child, are wholly wrong if
allowed to remain active in the later adult years. Delay is fatal. Time
lost now never can be regained: mistakes made cannot be put right. A
wrong direction may most easily be given by a careless act. I cannot
emphasise this too strongly, or too often. _The character, the life
history and the entire fate of every child is fixed in the nursery._
The mistake we have been making for so long is in regarding this
instruction in sex as something we can impart to children or with-hold
from them; a subject we may teach or not teach; enlightenment we may
give to them or conceal from them. This view is entirely erroneous.
In one sense, the whole matter really lies outside of our wills. Sex
education cannot be omitted by any parent or any teacher from the
training of any child, for it is given _by not being given_, just as
surely as the other way about. There is no escape for anyone who has to
do with a child.
You will see what I mean. It is not the good and wise lessons you may
give, of nicely arranged explanations, with flower illustrations or
stories of the mating of birds and animals; still less is it warnings
or goody-goody talks about purity; nor is it any kind of formal or even
conscious instruction that will have the true moulding influence on the
character and emotional state of the child; but what most influences
him, or in other words, teaches him, and helps or hinders him, is
the peculiarly affective state—I mean, the emotional attitude—which
usually is totally unknown to the parents and educators, and is also
quite incomprehensible to the child himself. It is all the things
that the grown-ups are trying hardest to hide from the children and
perhaps also covering away from themselves that are the real directing
forces in their character. The concealed enmity, or even small
disharmonies between the parents, the repressed tempers, the strangled
temptations, the secret longing of one or other parent, the miseries
that are hidden—all these inevitably arouse a response in the children,
which acting continuously and unconsciously bring them to a state
corresponding with that of the parents. Their shame and want of joy in
sex will become the children’s shame and want of joy; their unhappiness
in love will be the children’s unhappiness; their most hidden wishes
will escape to create disharmonies in these young and tender souls.
The parents, and especially the mother, impress deeply into the
child’s being the seal of their characters, and the more sensitive and
mouldable the child the deeper is the impression. Take, for instance,
the only or favourite child, who suffers under an anxious excess of
tenderness, so that his love is so fixed on the mother, that not only
does he become restless with too heavy a burden of emotional stress,
and often really ill, but in later life he has the greatest difficulty
in establishing his own character, freeing himself from the mother’s
influence, or finding his own love-mate. Again, in the exact opposite
position, there is the neglected and unwanted child, who, missing his
rightful possession of love, suffers from a sense of inferiority, which
dark and hindering shadow dogs his footsteps through life, finding a
positive expression in shyness and incapacity for action, or a negative
expression in bombastic and disagreeable self-assertion. So I might
continue with countless examples. Adult traits can, in almost all
cases, be traced back to the child’s early experiences in connection
with its parents and in its home.
The child is like a flower, and the banks where it grows are its
world—its home and the friends with whom it comes in contact; the sky
above is the surrounding love on which it is dependent, and to which
it looks up as the flower to the sun for gladness and for life. What
I mean is this: the child has desires and impulses of its own, but
it reflects the changing needs and atmosphere of the small world in
which it lives, and is terribly dependent on that world. It is forming
and selecting a character. It very largely tries what the effect is
of different kinds of conduct—different characters. The child does
not itself know what it is or would wish to be. Whenever there is, as
often there must be, a mistake made, a wrong step taken—a conflict
inevitably occurs, and must find some quick response in childish
naughtiness; otherwise dullness and unhappiness will arise; and this,
if continued, will tend to bring the dangerous condition of the
repressed and introverted child.
We have established now that the love-life of the child starts at
a very early age; it begins in the home, and I want to investigate
this love-life. To do this we must examine with some care the child’s
emotional relationships to the members of his family.
These relationships are not as amicable or peaceful as at first sight
would appear. At a very early age jealousy as well as love stirs in
the baby’s soul. This may surprise you. But I would ask you for a
moment to consider the baby’s position. The child is in a small shut-up
world with its mother. At first she occupies all its life. She is
the earliest love object and of supreme importance in the infantile
constellation. Everything starts from her. She is the source of
nutrition and as such the first object towards which the hunger-wish is
directed. She is also the supplier of warmth, of comfort, of rest—the
personification of shelter and happiness—the starting point of all
those interests of the child which lie outside its own body. Who can
wonder at the child’s possessive feelings in relation to its mother.
But we have seen already, in an earlier essay, how the superfluous
father comes as an intruder into this mother-child circle. And it
is in this way jealousy begins to awaken, at a very early age, and
sometimes is almost unbelievably active in the baby soul. For these
feelings will increase if the baby is a boy, and the love of the mother
may grow to great intensity, which coupled with the jealousy of the
father may work great evil, especially if the mother is unwise, too
tenderly solicitous, too possessive in her love, herself neurotic.
In the case of the girl the position is different. The baby fixation
upon the mother is, as a rule, relieved with growth, as a part of the
love-fund is transferred to the father. Sometimes this does not happen,
especially when the jealousy of the little girl is roused, usually by a
brother or sister more loved by the mother than herself. Then, indeed,
a fixation happens, either in a too passionate tenderness for the
mother, which, persisting acts as an insurmountable hindrance in the
later life in preventing the normal out-going of love to a member of
the opposite sex. I know of one such case and it may make my meaning
plainer if I tell it to you. A little girl was born in a home where
there was already a brother, passionately loved by a too good mother.
The little girl soon felt, for no one feels so quickly as a little
child, that the brother had a place of greater importance than herself.
She did not hate outwardly this brother, had she done this all might
have been well, as she would have gained relief in expression. She
developed the usual device of the unhappily jealous child and took to
phantasy making—pretending that she had another mother, or, at other
times, that she was doing some wonderful deed, being very clever, very
good, very beautiful, so as to gain the love and admiration of her
mother. This was the inner life of make-believe. The outer life was one
of continuous nervous trouble, which culminated in St. Vitus’s Dance.
What is, however most interesting, is the later love-life and the
startling way it reflects this early emotional conflict. This child is
now a woman nearing thirty, very charming, very nice-looking; but she
is utterly unable to settle on her love-mate. Engagement has followed
engagement, in each case the lover has been discarded for no adequate
reason. In all other connections of life capable and good, she behaves
in her love affairs with a capricious unkindness, very difficult to
pardon if one did not understand.
It may be worth while to refer to another case known to me. Two
daughters, with a mother and father between whom there was trouble,
the father having an affection for another woman. Though the trouble
was most carefully hidden from the little girls it formed the decisive
factor in their lives. It is not clear to me whether the love-object
was the father, though I think that this was so. It was, however,
the mother who was, as, indeed, usually she is, the central figure
in this nursery drama. Both children suffered jealousy, probably of
the lady loved by the father, transferred to the mother. The effect
was directly opposite on each daughter. The elder, stronger and more
forceful charactered girl developed a passionate rebellion against the
mother, a specially sweet and long-suffering woman, of so violent and
unreasonable character that she could not live at home; while the other
child was the absolute type of the perfect daughter, self-sacrificing
and passionately loving. But why this case is interesting is that it
was the good child who suffered while the bad child triumphed. The
rebellious daughter was able to establish her own adult life, to work
successfully and to marry happily; the dutiful daughter lost her own
power to live and to love, and was not liberated even by the death
of the mother. I would ask you to note this very specially as it is
exceedingly important. A too great devotion and anxious excess of
tenderness on the part of any one, but especially on the part of a
child to a parent, covers always, and even under the most improbable
circumstances, as when it appears that there is the closest sympathy
and harmony of will, an intense hostile tendency. And because vice
will not be choked by virtue, this over submissive state is much more
dangerous and likely to destroy the springs of life than open hostility.
We have much less need to be afraid of the future for the rebellious,
even the unkind and ungrateful child, than for the good and devoted
child who apparently knows no will but ours, and lives in outward
perfect submission. Every parent who is wise will recognise such a
state as one of the greatest danger, and at any cost to herself will
separate herself from the child. Mind, I do not mean send the child
away. That plan may, indeed, be tried, but often, especially with
sensitive children, the absence will but forge the fetters firmer.
Something like this happens whenever a child who goes to school, is
continuously homesick and becomes ill, not necessarily with a specified
illness, but grows nervous, fails in work and in play. Such a mother
has before her, perhaps the hardest task in parenthood. She has to take
the child home and dissipate and send from herself the over-tender
love, accepting in its place the rebellious hatred that it covers. Does
she fail in this task of sacrifice, made necessary, remember, by some
early mistake in the management of the child, she is simply using up
for herself the energy of love, which her child ought to have to use
for its own life.
I trust these two cases will have made plainer to you the kind of
difficult problems that have to be met by parents. I do not think there
is any family where they are not present. There are many variations,
and the strength of the difficulty as well as the permanent nature of
the harm suffered by the child, depends almost wholly on the wisdom
and the knowledge of the mother, and, even more, on the extent to
which she has been able to understand her concealed wishes and her
own love-history from her childhood’s days and free herself from its
heritage. You will see, I think, without my waiting to point out how
complex the position is, and how hard is the task of the mother to
guide the early emotional life of her children. It is obvious how
easily mistakes may be made.
Hardly less difficult is the position of the father, who is at once
the intruder in the family and the supporter of it. To the child, in
the ordinary home, he is the final authority. He occupies the position
of a god or a ruler. He is feared and rebelled against, also he is
reverenced. Any omission of these qualities, and especially the last,
is fatal to the child. Without this father reverence, and in absence
of his needed authority, there arises an arrogant disposition that
controls all the later character. As has been recognised by all modern
psychologists, there is much of the childish attitude of the boy to
his father in the later relations of the follower to his ruler, of the
worshipper to his god, of the schoolboy to his school-master.
Every boy looks forward to the day when he can escape the rule of the
father and himself usurp his power. I think you will find here the
secret spring of all later rebellion against authority, either in the
boy or in the man. I must give another warning. Again, it is when these
childish feelings of rebellion, jealousy and hate are hidden, and work
in the child’s soul without his knowledge, that the greatest harm is
done.
In this connection, I may recount the case of a boy who grew out of
babyhood shewing unusual affection for his step-father. He was also too
much attached to his mother—being in that most unfortunate position
of an only and too-much-considered child—and in consequence suffered
from strongly jealous feelings towards the step-father. In this way
a conflict was aroused between love and hate, and serious nervous
symptoms arose. The origin of the trouble was first discovered at about
ten years, when the boy developed a very passionate hatred against God.
He was overheard one day swearing on his toy sword to devote his life
to killing God. As he had not been brought up in an over-religious
home, and had hardly ever been taken to Church, this vehement hatred,
which continued for some time, was noticed as unusual. Now the
specialist consulted about the nervous symptoms at once found in this
God-hatred a projection of the very common boyish hatred to the father.
The parents learnt that this was a sign of health, an effort the boy
was making to rid himself of an unbearable inward trouble.
I would emphasise the necessity of parents having the right knowledge
and the love that will enable them to recognise what is important in
the development of character. Too little attention is given by parents
to the spontaneous utterances of children: it is these that will give
the clue to what is troubling the child. Questions never get direct
and real answers. It is what the child brings out unconsciously that
should be noted; his wishes hidden, as a rule, under some symbol,
that the parent unaided, may find very difficult to interpret. We are
too apt—and in this mothers are the worst sinners—to consider their
children as unthinking beings. Always, I believe, children know more
than we credit to them. This is true, in particular, of all emotional
states. As I have tried to make plain, it is these emotions acting
and interacting in connection with the home relations which are of
lasting importance. Mothers who even in the nursery overforce the
emotional growth of their little ones, with the unceasing demands of an
over-demonstrative and unhealthy tenderness; fathers, who, themselves
too arrogant for power, allow their boys and girls no independent
possession of their own lives—such parents are the destroyers of their
children. Their thoughtlessness and ignorance create problems that are
tragedies of pain to children, and leave them marred, and often maimed,
for their conflict with life.
I am prepared for an objection. You may some of you be thinking that
this picture I have drawn for you of nursery tragedies is coloured
from my imagination and without sufficient relation to truth. “Little
children,” you may be saying, “cannot feel these devastating adult
passions. You are projecting on to them evils created by your own
diseased mind.” And you turn back to your “angel innocence” belief,
which must be true, at any rate, you are convinced in the case of your
own child.
But may I tell you this: you must not come to these problems of the
child with an already fixed conviction that they do not exist; because
this may well be, not because they are not there—active even in your
own nursery—but because you shut your eyes determined not to see them.
You think this about their not being present, because you want to think
it, not because it is true. Also it is very easy even for the wisest
parent to be led astray; for the child is the most accomplished actor,
and is always hiding its real self from you.
You see the child has truly a very hard part to play, a part it can lay
down only when no grown-ups are by. In surroundings very opposed to its
own desires or its primitive needs, while still a savage in emotions,
it has to pretend to be what you think it is, to do what you think it
ought to do, and like what you think it ought to like. It has filled
me often with wonder and admiration to see the really brilliant way
in which even the youngest children play up to the angel-role forced
upon them by grown-ups. Much naughtiness and many violent unexplained
tempers are really a breakdown in this part. The right cue is forgotten
at the right moment, or the correct entrance is missed. And I feel it
very necessary to emphasise to you that the naughty child is not so
much being naughty as being himself. He rushes at you with a knife, not
because he is in a temper, but rather the temper is the liberating key
which allows his real desire to kill you to break through the barricade
of civilised desires that you are building around him. And it is very
necessary for the grown-up to understand the intense satisfaction of
creative strength which the child gains by this breaking out of his
real self—a satisfaction that is greatly marred, it is true, and even
turned to pain, by the consciousness of knowing he has broken adult
rules of behaviour, been a naughty boy and grieved you. Always there
is this conflict going on between his primitive egocentric desires and
the demands of the adult world in which he has to learn to live. It is
this conflict, and his success and failure in it, which determines his
growth. More and more he has to learn to give up his own desires and
subordinate his own will. Yet, I am not sure if his repentence, when he
fails, is altogether good for him. Certainly, if it is excessive, and
if it occurs too frequently, it weakens the force of life. And it is
most urgent of all to remember that the parent, or nurse, or teacher,
by constantly requiring from the uncivilised child the standard of
conduct right for the civilised adult may, and most frequently does,
produce a strain which turns the creative force of life back upon
itself. It is ever thus in life when we draw back too hastily or too
much coerced, from any spontaneous expression of emotion; the energy
gathered for the direct expression flows back impotent. I believe that
many a creative artist is destroyed in the civilising process of the
child being turned into the good boy or girl.
And this brings me to a question of the most urgent importance to all
parents and teachers who attempt to guide the emotional development
of a child; to go slowly, and never to force an outward practice of
virtue from the child, if that particular stage of virtue has not been
reached. We do not expect the child to read until it has learnt to
read, nor to calculate and work sums before it understands the use of
figures; we do not expect it to walk until it has stumbled and fallen
many times, nor to use its tiny hands with precision until it has
broken many objects. Why then should we expect it to be good without
learning to be good? And especially, I ask, why should we demand a
standard of emotional behaviour much in advance of anything to which we
ourselves have attained?
For in truth every child has a twisted and most difficult path to
travel in order to reach the standard of conduct expected by the adult
world. Few parents realise at all the harm that so readily may be done,
from any over-hastening on the road to virtue, to the child, sensitive,
responsive to every suggestion, most liable to injury; who is always
balanced between the desire to be a dirty, little savage, like himself,
or a clean well-behaved person, like a grown-up. For what gives every
adult so tremendous a hold over the child is his never ceasing desire
to push forward to a stage above what he is at. Always he is pulled in
two directions, forward to effort and good conduct and the real world
of action and of grown-ups, and backward towards ease and self-pleasing
and the dream-world of the child, in which he thinks only of what he
wants himself. If we hurry him too much there will be a regression:
the uncivilised trait that has not been got rid of by experience of
its uselessness and voluntarily been cast aside, will be thrust down
deep into the psyche, where its unrealised power sends up primitive and
uncivilised wishes, which will certainly mar the adult life, even if
they do not wreck it.
It is not from sheer “contrariness” or “nastiness” that children
develop “bad habits,” that they pick noses, bite nails, stammer, and
other much worse things, or later are too shy or too boisterously
self-assertive, or develop illness and morbid fears.[3] Such symptoms
may be replacements of infantile curiosities and interests which were
denied their satisfaction by the mother’s warning, often harmful,
however gently given, “that is not nice, darling.” In particular harm
is caused by a too early checking of the child’s delight in messy
things, making mud pies, playing with water, using hands instead of
knife and fork, and other nasty messy habits. The particular habit may,
and usually does, disappear, but the checked and thwarted energy is
still potent and at any time in after life may re-appear clothed in a
fresh dress of concealment.
All that can be done with the bad habit is to turn it into new
directions of rightful energy. As, for instance, the messy child should
be given heaps of plasticine or wax, and sand to play with. Similarly
with the desire to play with water: this is a symbolic action by which
the young child frees itself from some inner hidden trouble. I know
of one case where a child until quite an advanced age, always after a
relapse into bad and primitive behaviour, had a curious way of blowing
water through long tubes. The result was highly satisfactory and never
failed to bring the child back to good and social behaviour. As an
example of the terrible harm that may be done by an over fastidious
niceness of behaviour, I may cite a rather curious case I happen to
know, where a mother, was so afraid of nakedness, and disliking the
sight of her own body, that she actually put on a bathing dress when
she had a bath even in the privacy of her own bath room. This mother
had a son whose adult life was rendered miserable and his happiness to
a great extent injured, by horrible and haunting obscene visions. Here,
in very truth, the cleanness of the mother became the uncleanness of
the son.
I must hasten on. I am bound to leave out much that might well be
noticed, for the subject is very difficult and very wide. I hope,
however, I have made clear to you the following truths:—
(1) That any education of children in sex that is to result in success
in the after life cannot be fulfilled by the imparting of set and
fixed lessons on sex-enlightenment, given either in the home or in the
school. (2) That this education is concerned with the entire emotional
life of the child. (3) That it is continuous and unceasing. (4) And
that it is a work of such complexity that for even the wisest mistakes
are certain and success uncertain.
Above all else, I am sure we have to avoid an easy and lazy optimism.
And with such perils awaiting the incautious, is it any wonder that the
chief element of safety often is a negative one—non-interference? By
non-interference the two chief factors leading to emotional disturbance
and ill-health may almost certainly be avoided; thwarted wishes are not
thrust back, and repressed to work harm in the psyche, causing mental
and bodily ill-health which often does not manifest itself for many
years; development is not hurried on too rapidly, so that necessary
primitive stages of growth are omitted or hastened over too quickly,
causing, not infrequently, in the later years of life, a regression
backwards to primitive and uncivilised conduct.
When interference becomes necessary it must be given wisely and with
due understanding of the child’s position. I mean it must be the right
instruction for the special child at that stage of its growth—not at
all what the adult thinks it ought to be taught or would like to teach
it. There can be no fixed rules as to sex teaching; no maxims laid down
that can safely be always followed.
Take, for instance, the one apparently simple matter of satisfying
the child’s certain and right curiosity at the different stages of
its growth, by telling it the facts of birth, and, as it grows older,
explaining the difficulties that most certainly will arise in the mind
of every boy and girl in regard to these questions. So far I have said
little about this matter because most people say much; holding it as
the one thing implied by sex education, whereas I regard it, as I have
tried to make plain, as a limited, though certainly important duty in
connection with that education, which should be fulfilled by parents,
and within certain limitations, by teachers in the schools.
But here, again, I am bound to utter warnings. There must be no
over-forcing of knowledge not sought for by the child, this is at
least as injurious to the emotional growth as over-forcing is to
the intellectual growth. Any one who has read Jung’s account of his
analysis of little Anna, will know what I mean. Little Anna became
troubled and nervous, worried about the birth of a little brother or
sister (I forget which). Telling her the truth did not help her, and it
took Professor Jung many months of patient work with the child to get
to the bottom of exactly what was troubling her. The most urgent rule
for the mother in this matter is this: never to arouse sexual curiosity
but to watch for its spontaneous expression and always satisfy it when
it is present. This of course is the same as saying, always tell the
child all the truth it wants to know. The difficulty here, of course,
is that so rarely is the child able to ask for the knowledge he (or
she) wants.
What above all else it is necessary is for the mother to watch for the
child’s unconscious betrayal of its own curiosity. I mean by this, that
some unconsidered remark or act is the surest hope of finding just what
part of the problem is troubling him (or her) at that time; in almost
all cases there is a personal element of jealousy, unknown to the child
or carefully hidden, which is directed against one or other parent,
usually the father, or against some brother or sister. This is why the
intellectual teaching of the facts of birth, though necessary, does not
help very much and often disastrously fails.
As I am trying all the time to force upon you, the real sex education
is an emotional education, that is why it is so difficult. I may make
this plainer by means of an illustration which I give in my book
on “Sex Education and National Health.” It was told me by a very
wise mother of her way of dealing with her son, who was, I think,
about fourteen years old. This son showed he was thinking, and was
evidently worried, about the very small families of one or at the most
two children, or the childless marriages, common among his mother’s
friends. He did not, however, speak of his trouble directly; instead
he beat round the question, somewhat in the manner of a shying horse.
After this had gone on for some time, he one day asked his mother if
her friends were more delicate (meaning, of course, more refined) than
other people. His mother was aware of what was troubling him; she
knew what he really wanted to know was whether married people lived
in celibacy when they had not children. She wisely told him the plain
facts and for him at that time curiosity was quieted.
A boy of nine had a dream which he told his parents. His mother was
in a shop, and a man on a bicycle, dressed as an officer came along
the road; he, the little boy, rushed to the bicycle, stopped it,
flung the man off, and killed him. In telling the dream the boy said,
“I prevented him getting to mother.” This dream is so clear that I
need not wait to interpret it beyond saying that the father of the
boy was an officer. It will cause no surprise to anyone, with even a
rudimentary knowledge of the emotional troubles of children, to know
that this boy developed serious nervous symptoms.
It has seemed worth while to record these two instructive little
stories, as a means of illustrating the kind of incident which
furnishes the guide with regard to the nature of the trouble to be
looked for, and shows in the first case as well the kind of help
a watchful and instructed parent can give to relieve the trouble
prevailing in the minds of the young. Dreams should always be noted,
they throw the sharpest light on the child’s emotional conflicts.
I must again urge the necessity of the parent paying the closest
attention to the child’s prattle, to watching carefully his games and
his behaviour, for in this way only can the clue be found to make it
possible to give the kind of instruction or treatment that is wanted. I
may give a few instances. Such things as the frequent childish desire
to sit up with father and mother, the calling for the mother at night
under the plea of fear are very certain signs of active jealousy.
Again the very usual unwillingness of the child to grow up arises out
of the inability to meet the necessity of separating the self from
the protective tenderness of the mother. The child is always tending
to turn back to safety, and, if this is encouraged by the mother, the
child in after life will be unable to meet the necessities of adult
action. The too fond mother perpetuates the childhood of her son or her
daughter.
What the parents can do is to watch the child, and to learn themselves,
in order to have the knowledge to clear up difficulties as these
appear, and then it may be possible to remove obstructions to growth.
Further, they can place within the child’s reach the materials—the sand
and clean messy things to play with—machines to pull to pieces, swords
to fight with, dolls to play with—every child will need different
materials, by which, to a certain extent, liberation can be found
from their primitive instincts, by giving them a free and harmless
expression. In fact the real work of the parent may be likened to that
of the stage scene-shifter and property manager.
Parental power guides the early years of the child like a higher
controlling fate. But when the boy or girl begins to grow up there
begins also the conflict between the home attachments and the need to
break away in order to free the growing soul from the spell of the
family. It is the war between the generations. The frequent and often
very deep depression of puberty arises from this struggle. And there
are the many other, and often very disturbing, symptoms, which are
rooted in the difficulty of the new adjustments. The boy or girl tries
often to separate himself (or herself) as much as possible from his
family; he (or she) may even estrange themselves from their parents
but inwardly this only binds them more firmly to the family ties.
The outward break must be regarded as a dangerous sign of the inner
conflict which the unselfish wisdom of the parents ought to be able to
aid.
I cannot follow this important matter further. But I would wish to
say that this is the time for the teacher to step forward and take up
the work begun by the parent. The parents at this period are often
hindrances to the child, they must push their children away from them
in order to help the growing souls to gain their liberation.
The uncertain and, as I fear they may seem, unsatisfactory conclusions
that must result from any honest inquiry into this difficult question
of helping the young at the start of their life’s journey, is due in
part to the fact that, even yet, and in spite of all the new knowledge
that has been gained in the last few years, we know very little about
the child’s emotional processes. Unfortunately our knowledge is not
sufficient to make it possible for any dogmatic statements to be
placed even tentatively before parents. There can be no ready-made
prescriptions, no certain cures. We do not even know where the greatest
trouble lies, whether it is in the parents and the teachers—the adults
who fail to understand the child; or in the child, who fights away from
the understanding that those who love and train him are able to offer.
We do know, however, that the difficulties on the part of the child
are very great—much greater than most of us (whether we are parents
or teachers)—satisfied in an easy grown-up optimism, have cared to
realise. In many ways we—the adults—the parents and the teachers, we
who are a generation behind the children and already have been through
the long, struggling, upward journey, by which they are now travelling,
ought to manage our love and our training for them more carefully, more
sympathetically, and more intelligently. I say intelligently, because
the sins committed in love against children are more lastingly harmful
than many of the sins committed under neglect or even under unkindness.
Thus, the final word I have to say to parents in regard to their
children is this:
_Do not love your children too possessively._
Try to understand and respect them—realise their existence as
individuals with interests and needs apart from yourself. If
necessary send them from you. Do not love your children for your own
satisfaction, but for their good, and to help them to establish, with
as little disaster as possible, their own lives.
SEX INSTRUCTION
THE AGE AT WHICH KNOWLEDGE SHOULD BE GIVEN
A story is recorded of a father and mother in ancient Greece, who,
being concerned for the welfare of their only son, went to a renowned
teacher and asked him to educate and take full charge of their child.
“How old is your son?” questioned the teacher.
“Just three!”
The sage shook his head. “I am sorry but you have come to me too late:
the boy’s character is decided already.”
I was reminded of this most instructive story as I read the account of
the evidence given by the Rev. the Hon. Ed. Lyttelton, before the Birth
Rate Commission of the National Council of Public Morals. For while I
agree wholeheartedly with the late headmaster of Eton College as to the
necessity of instructing the young in the facts of sex, I disagree,
with his view as to the method of the teaching and, even more I
disagree emphatically, as to the age at which instruction should begin.
Dr. Lyttelton holds that the first lessons should be given at the age
of nine years, when the boy ought to be taught the facts of maternity,
this knowledge to be supplemented by further teaching at the age of
twelve or thirteen explaining the even more important (for the boy)
facts of paternity.
Now it is here that I venture to disagree, and think that Dr. Lyttelton
has fallen into the very common error of underestimating the child’s
intelligence and boundless curiosity. It is in the very early nursery
days that sex education is most urgently needed. To wait until the age
of nine years has been reached is often to wait too late. In a vast
number of cases, it is locking the stable door after the horse has been
stolen.
In all children the activity of the intelligence begins to work at a
very early age, and parents, who are not willfully blind, must know
that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive desire to
know many elementary facts of life, which are dependent upon sex. The
primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know where
“the new baby comes from.” A child of four or even younger, may begin
to ask questions on this matter quite simply and spontaneously. The
degree of curiosity, as also the frankness with which it is expressed,
will differ, of course, in different children, but I am certain this
curiosity is present and at times active in all children. If they do
not question their elders, they will certainly puzzle over the matter
themselves; often they will talk with older companions, and gain the
information they are seeking in the worst possible way.
Thus the first teacher of the child must be the mother, the one who is
most constantly with the child, tending him in washing, undressing, and
in all the daily needs of his little body. It is the mother who ought
to be the child’s supreme trainer.
Few of us understand the confusion and hurt that may be caused by a
mother’s stupid silence and even more stupid hints and evasions and
made-up fables. The false stories of babies brought by the doctor or
the stork, or a little sister or brother found under the gooseberry
bush are never believed. While the fantastic ideas of birth, that the
child makes up for himself, fix their untruth into the immature minds.
And afterwards they cannot be checked, owing to childish concealments,
which always spring up so rapidly to meet any expression of adult
reticence. These birth-fantasies, though the child seems to out-grow
them, are not really forgotten but remain active in the unconscious
mind. In this way, trouble is often started that will be determinative
of the gravest evils in the later adult life.
Parents are greatly to blame for not answering the questions of their
children, and being blind to their natural curiosity. And I would
emphasise again that this curiosity is present even when no questions
are asked. There need be no spoken words to make the child feel that
its questions are discouraged. All adults are surprisingly ignorant
of the affectability of children—their quick response to every kind of
influence.
In the case of the birth of another child—an usurper who takes the
older child’s place—this affectability is exceedingly acute on account
of the emotional disturbance, in excitement and possible jealousy.
And by means of the adult attitude, the very certain interest and
investigation of the child into what is happening may so easily become
confused and connected with what is shameful and wrong; and the trouble
is aided, and usually in the worst possible manner, by the sharpest
observations and deductions made by the child _from unconsidered
actions and overheard remarks_ of parents, and of servants and other
adults—none of whom have any idea of the child’s watchfulness or his
curiosity in this matter.
_We think little children are not interested in birth because we do not
want them to be interested._ And they, with the almost uncanny sagacity
which children show, understand this desire only too well and too
quickly.
I had a striking illustration of this curious adult blindness quite
recently. Two mothers, who were sisters, were pregnant at the same
time. Each mother told me privately that _her children_ were not
interested in the event or in any way curious, but that _her sister’s
children_ were curious and wanting to find out what was happening. It
would have been useless to tell these mothers the truth. Yet both of
them were intelligent. They believed that their own children had no
curiosity because _they wished to believe this, not because it was
true_.
Thwarted curiosity is one of the most frequent causes of emotional
disturbance in the first years of life. Do we not all know children who
as they get older exhibit an unreasoning curiosity about everything,
opening drawers, looking into the envelopes of other people’s letters,
searching excitedly for what they do not want. We want to ask the
question: Why does the child do this? What is it that urges him to act
like a “Peeping Tom?” For he is urged. You will find this habit of
needless prying almost impossible to check. It may persist into adult
life. Do not we all know grown-ups who cannot refrain from prying,
always curious, they are, on all occasions, seeking for knowledge they
do not want.
This seeking action is symbolic. It implies that the search for the
thing that is not wanted, the curiosity over something of no interest
at all, is a substitute action for something that at one time was
wanted—something about which knowledge _was desired_, and desired so
much that it _would not be denied_. It was a curiosity so real that the
thwarting of it has started emotional trouble of which these searching
acts and persisting curiosity are the symbol or sign.
This substitute formation is one of the commonest emotional processes
in children. The child pries, open drawers and letters, collects
useless objects, aimlessly searches for knowledge he does not want
_because there is some knowledge he wants tremendously badly, but
cannot speak about_. That is why he persists in his habits of peeping
and prying in spite of your scoldings and punishments. He must persist,
unless you deaden his character so terribly by your ill-judged
repression that even this substitute relief is closed. Your child
will then, probably, find some other make-believe comfort; he will
bite his nails, pick his nose, or other much worse habits may begin,
or again the emotional disturbance may be so acute that it becomes
impossible for the child to face, so that he fails in achieving any
kind of symbolic replacement. The thwarted and emotionally over-charged
curiosity is thrust back into the psyche where it remains a cause of
ill-health of body and uncleanness of mind, until that time in the
adult years, when the harvest of tares is reaped from the bad seed that
has been sown.
The parents have the greatest responsibility, as I have said already. A
child of four or even younger may begin to ask questions of its mother,
simply and spontaneously. _It is the child who must guide the parent._
But again I would give warning. The mother must not be over-eager, or
she will fall easily into the error of stimulating instead of quieting
the child’s restless inquiring mind. The child at the age when such
questions will first be asked and should be answered, will very quickly
tire of any information that may be given to it. It will break off to
run away and play and will interrupt the most beautiful and carefully
prepared lessons. And if the mother is wise she will never go beyond
the interest of the child, or the satisfying _and nothing further_,
of the special curiosity which at that special time is occupying the
child. If this course is pursued the child will probably continue
to ask for information—though there can be no certainty that this
desirable result will follow. But where such opportunities arise the
right kind of sex instruction can be attempted. For the mother will
be able to give answers in natural conversation, which will not force
information not sought for by the child. When so treated, it will be
found that children are not over-burdened by the subject, they will
interrupt and break away from the answer to the question they have
asked to speak about toy soldiers or dolls. This, to me, is the immense
value of this form of teaching: the child has the information, and yet
does not trouble about it when it is not to the point. Such a result
can never be gained by means of set talks or fixed lessons, especially
if these are mixed up with warnings, and much vague talk of things that
the child neither cares for or understands.
I should, however, be giving a wrong impression if I left the matter
here, so that this answering of children’s questions seemed to be a
simple matter. It is not simple. For each child, as for each adult the
problems of sex are personal problems. And the child whose problem
is the hardest—who most urgently needs help, will hardly ever ask
questions. Instruction in sex is not _and never can be_ like teaching
the child about other things. That is what so many of the modern
advocates of sex education so entirely forget.
In every child, as I have tried to show you there are hidden conflicts
of jealousy, of love, of hate, which determine beforehand its response
to the teaching that is given by the parents.
I cannot here treat at all adequately this difficult question; it is
one on which I have written elsewhere (_Mother and Son_, _Sex Education
and National Health_, _The Mind of the Naughty Child_) I can say
only what I have emphasised already that from the start to the end,
_sex education is an emotional education_. That, of course, is why it
is so difficult.
There is, in my opinion, too firm a belief in the efficacy of formal
instruction. The way is not so easy as this to discharge our debt to
the young. And sometimes I fear that parental talks about sex, in
particular when such talks are delayed until the boy or the girl is
reaching puberty, or until the time when the dangers of school life
have to be met, involving, as it must, a sudden breaking through of the
silence of years, may work for harm instead of for good. That this is
so in the case of some boys and girls I know to be true. You see you
cannot grow flowers in a soil choked already with weeds.
THE MYTH OF THE VIRTUOUS SEX
A day or two ago I was passing one of the great London schools at the
afternoon hour when the boys were released. I write “boys,” but among
them were many of sixteen, seventeen, or even eighteen years who looked
almost men.
On the street side, two flappers, quite young—not more, I should judge,
than fifteen, stood with their faces pressed between the iron rails and
watched the exit of the boys. Certainly they were not nice girls; they
invited with smiles, they giggled, they ogled, they gestured. There
could, I think, be no mistake as to the purpose of the girls.
I am glad to record that no single boy took the slightest notice of
them.
Now this very unpleasant incident has set me thinking. I am oppressed
with feelings of responsibility; yes—and also of shame. If I am to be
honest I must accept here, as in all relations between the two sexes,
the validity of the mans’ plea that rings—yes, and will continue to
ring—through the centuries: “The woman tempted me!”
Now, though we may accept this responsibility in theory, most often
we repudiate it in practice. From time to time—and the intervals are
not long apart—efforts are made to pass new laws which are supported
by many virtuous people—laws, whose one purpose is to increase the
punishments of men for offences against young girls.
I am in whole-hearted sympathy with any changes in our law that will
afford greater protection to young girls. I cannot, however, refuse to
see the reverse side of the question. It is proposed to raise the age
of consent for girls, while at the same time a woman is not to be held
responsible for seducing a boy who is much younger than herself. This
is unjust.
Why should we afford a period of protection longer for the girl than
for the boy?
It may, of course, be argued that the boy is better able to look after
himself. This is not true.
The girl grows up more quickly always than the boy; emotionally she
is far more developed, and, therefore, should be more, and not less,
responsible than he is. I have no doubt about this at all.
No boy knows very much about love until some girl or woman has taught
him.
Of course, the view of the evil nature of men, and of women as always
the victim, is one that can hardly fail to be pleasing to women,
depending, as it does, on their moral superiority, which stamps them
as Amazons of Purity, on the glorious mountain heights of virtue, from
where they must send down climbing ropes and ladders, in the form of
prohibitions and regulations and new laws, to pull men up out of the
deep valleys of vice.
But if we inquire more honestly into this question of men’s sins, we
shall find that it is not they who are wholly responsible. There is
little difference between men’s virtue and women’s virtue.
Almost unceasingly in our streets women are tempting men.
Always there is the invitation near: “Come and make love to me.” To
be provocative is the one simple rule of many women’s lives. Men’s
admiration is a necessity to their very existence.
True, in the after results, the woman may be, and, indeed, often is,
the victim—has to pay the heavier price; but at the start she is the
leader of the assault.
The essential fact in every relationship of the sexes is the woman’s
power over the man, and it is the misuse of this power that is the
beginning of sin.
Do not think I am unfair. Most men, I know, are not only tolerant of
women’s wiles; they like them. But most men succumb, I believe, against
their will, and often against their inclination, to the tyranny of
their own aroused passions.
Men’s chivalry, as well as their pride, has woven a cloak of silence on
this question of the temptation they are so frequently called upon to
resist and this silence has protected women—even the worst.
Let us alter our laws to help girls by all means. Yet, let us be just.
There is such a thing as too much temptation for a boy—temptation that
a woman has no right to give.
SENTIMENTAL TAMPERING WITH DIFFICULT PROBLEMS: WITH SOME REMARKS ON
SEX FAVOURITISM
It is sometimes difficult to have patience with the proposals that
are brought forward, so frequently and with such persistent zeal,
to amend our Criminal Law. One cannot doubt the sincerity of these
efforts to improve our disordered moral conditions. But something more
than good-will is required. There is such a thing as over-haste in
righteousness.
Besides, the attitude taken by these scavengers of conduct is almost
always sentimental and one-sided. It is also dishonest. I say so,
because almost without exception, they fail entirely to meet the true
facts of the evils they attempt to cure. As reformers they seem to
have but one idea; if they have more, they keep them secret, for they
agitate but for one object.
Morality is a word that has been wrested from its true meaning of the
whole duty of man in his social character and limited to the one narrow
application of sexual conduct. It is curious and significant. It is
as if we transferred to others some judgment which unconsciously was
imposed from within.
Yet obviously the strongest impediment against effective reform lies
just here—in this blindness to reality; this separation from the truth.
I need not wait to enlarge upon this further, it is impossible to
contradict. To judge blindly is to judge upon a lie.
Would you ask me to give you examples?
There is, to take one illuminative instance, the long continued and
still unsettled agitation for raising the age of consent for girls.
Those who are chiefly eager for this reform invariably evince frenzied
zeal, combined with the most curious and deplorable ignorance of the
real facts. I cannot for a moment believe that they are in the least
degree, consciously blind. But that does not alter the fact that they
are blind. Instead of facing the situation squarely with knowledge and
due consideration of all the complicated conditions, they ignore every
thing they do not want to see. They wallow in sex-righteousness.
Consider again the controversy that raged now sometime back, with
regard to the White Slave Traffic. The sudden frenzy. The unproved
stories of the trapping of girls! The clamour for legislative measures!
Every moral reformer became obsessed.
The instinctive attitude of the one-ideaed reformer had a unique
chance of displaying itself, and one marvelled at the almost
curious enthusiasm, mated to inexperience, with which the subject
was approached. While the most offensive feature of the agitation
was the sex-obsession, which gave rise to the silly notion of the
helpless perfection of women and the dangerous opposite view of the
indescribable imperfections of men. It is no exaggeration to say that
every sense of reality was lost in white clouds of virtue.
I would wish to make it plain that I am not judging these questions
either on one side or the other. What I desire to show is the danger of
a prejudiced view. And the danger is particularly active in connection
with all these attempts at changing the law, in order to give greater
protection to women and girls, while, at the same time, boys are left
unprotected.
This unpopular view of the need to protect the boy from the girl—the
man from woman—the temptress of man—is not usually brought forward.
Yet, it is a view of the situation, seen from a different side, that
cannot be neglected. The evidence is overwhelming of girls of sixteen
years and even younger tempting boys of the same age as well as those
older than themselves. If in such cases the boy is to be punished and
the girl treated as a wronged and helpless victim, not only will a
great unjustice be done, but there will be a very certain danger of
graver demoralisations.
This truth of the woman’s power, which depends upon Nature and not
upon law, the supporters of a one-sided alteration of our criminal law
too often fail to face.
I am reminded here of a little incident that happened many years ago.
I had quarrelled seriously with a man, who before I had always liked
and respected, for what I then considered was his light treatment of a
certain girl who was my friend. She had written and told me her side of
this occurrence.
Very well I recall what he said: “You don’t understand. She asked for
it.” Then, when I pressed him further, he went on. “A man always treats
a girl in the way she wants him to do.”
Now, one of the greatest troubles in connection with all
sex-legislation to-day arises from this fact that _women do not
understand_. They are inexperienced and in too great a hurry. They
think they can cure old evils with quick penny-in-the slot reforms.
There is still a chivalry that protects women and shields their
ignorance. These illusions are maintained, even by men of the world,
who are acquainted with all the complex difficulties. It is the
romantic view, a kind of male blindness that nothing seems to cure.
Women must be protected from men, who are the great offenders in all
sexual sins. Often I have marvelled at the acceptance by men of a view
of the sex-conflict so highly untrue, though flattering to women,
depending as it does on their entirely unproved moral superiority.
And here I wish to ask your attention to a consideration of the
question that is very rarely appreciated. I regard it as exceedingly
important. Those who are possessed with a frenzy for protecting girls
ought to remember that there is still greater necessity to protect
boys. It is forgotten that the young girl is not usually in constant
close relations with other men than her father and brothers. She has to
be guarded only from the _outside lover_, whom _in the first beginning
of intimacy she could, if she wished, easily repel_.
The reverse is the case with boys. In a sense, they cannot escape from
situations of danger. At school, in lodgings, even at home, in sickness
and also in health; on every occasion opportunities are provided that
make abuse exceedingly easy. The part played in the sexual initiation
of boys by servants, by lodging and boarding-house keepers, and by
other women who have to tend, and feed and mend for them is much larger
than is credited. It is folly to close our eyes to the evils that so
often arise. _Probably every man who is a seducer of women was himself
first seduced by a woman._
In spite of the emancipation upon which women pride themselves, in
spite of much theoretical knowledge, yes, in spite of social and rescue
work—where, it should be noted, they hear the woman’s story but only
in the rarest cases the man’s story—almost all women lead a shielded
life. Much that happens is outside their experience—as long as they are
virtuous. This sets definite limits to their knowledge and their power
of comprehension. And this again explains the continued belief in the
woman’s notion that, _in all cases_, the girl is the victim of the man.
It would be nearer the truth to reverse the position. Girls need to
be taught their great and unavoidable responsibility. They should be
trained to be protectors rather than to seek protection. _Men will
treat them as they want to be treated._
Let us now, for a moment, be practical and consider if there is any
reason we can discover, which will explain why we hear so much more
about the seduction of girls and the sins of men than we ever do about
the other side—the tempting by women and girls, and the seduction of
boys. The answer is simple. The boy will not talk about what happens to
him if he is led into a sexual offence at an early age. This is true
also to a large extent of the man. But the boy especially considers
he ought to have known: also he is much more self-conscious. Then he
expects to be blamed for not resisting, whatever the circumstances. He
will probably not tell anyone, unless the girl does so, until years
afterwards.
I know a schoolboy who was seduced by a woman relation years older than
himself, in a very shameful way. This boy was of high character and
very sensitive; he suffered in ways impossible to relate here, but he
never told anyone until about ten years afterwards, when he told the
woman he was to marry.
Now, if this case had been reversed and a young schoolgirl had been the
victim of a male relative, I am fairly confident the fact would not
have been concealed. Girls, even if not wholly innocent, almost always
will tell, because it has at all times been allowed to them to blame
the man. They thus can count on sympathy. This means much more than
usually is reckoned with.
Let me give a less tragic instance of a different and humourous
character. A schoolboy, about seventeen years old, was waiting for a
motor-bus in which he was going home. He was a dreamy boy and a bus
came up and, lost in his thoughts, he did not take it. He was brought
back to reality by a girl accosting him. “I waited, too,” she said.
“You, are glad arn’t you? You would like me to go in the bus with you.”
She smiled up at him: but he was not to be caught.
“I don’t care, the hell, what you do as long as you don’t expect me to
pay your fare!”
That silenced her and sent her away. But how easily, had the boy been a
less confident type, the incident might have taken a different course.
And then, if disaster had followed, the boy would be blamed, the girl
would be pitied. There is an enormous amount of sex unfairness.
I could recount many further cases in proof of how almost always it
is the girl (or the woman) who takes the first steps in forming these
friendships. Men, at least, will know that I speak the truth. And
yet this fiction of the greater virtue of the woman is persistently
maintained: while the man is condemned as being nearer the devil and
the beast.
I know that the many horrible cases of criminal assault upon children
will be quoted against me, in proof of the justice of this heavy
condemnation of men. Please do not think that I am in any way unaware
of the awfulness of these crimes. The protection of little children
is the one matter on which I feel most deeply. But there can be no
fair comparison between this class of crime and the ordinary cases of
seduction, whether we believe it is the man who seduces the woman,
or the other way round, the woman who tempts and excites the boy
or the man. In the one case an unhappy and terrible degenerate is
passion-driven into the commission of an atrocity, in the other there
is, and, indeed, must be to some extent, a mutual purpose, usually with
some calculation and a certain deliberate choice.
That is why it is so false to reality to regard the one partner as
a helpless victim. It is really a position that is impossible and
ridiculous. Are we to believe that all women are impotent and imbecile
weaklings incapable of resisting men? The truth is that in slandering
men we only slander women with the backward swing of the same blow.
THE SEDUCTION OF MEN
Quite recently an action has been brought in the High Courts by a wife
against a woman for the seduction of her husband. It is the first
time a charge of this kind has been heard in an English court of law,
though, I believe, such actions are not unknown in the newer lands of
America and Canada.
The case is one of very special interest, and opens up many questions
that go right down to the deepest problems of the relationships of men
and women.
As we should expect, the action failed. It was held that the man had
not been seduced. He was not enticed away from his wife by “the other
woman,” rather, it was the other way round. The man, not the woman,
must be held responsible; she had yielded to him only at his desire,
after persuasion and against her will.
But is this true?
As already in the two previous essays I have emphasised, perhaps
over-emphasised, the accepted, very sentimental and peculiar judgment
in all these cases. The woman the victim: the man the seducer. He the
active sinner: she the passive sufferer. All the blame to be heaped on
to him: all the pity to be given to her.
Really it is difficult, as so frequently I have stated, to have
patience at this shelving of the real facts. It seems to be forgotten
entirely how tremendous is the power of the woman in all love
relationships. Why a man under the influence of a woman he loves is as
easily led and as devoid of all will-power as a young child. Indeed,
he becomes the child of the woman, as soon as, and for as long as,
he loves her. He is her’s to make or to destroy. She strengthens him
enormously or irreparably injures and weakens his resistance. She can
hold him to the hardest duty and keep him in the fine path of right
doing. It is she leads him, not he who leads her, into the easier ways
of love.
Yes, it is women who shape the souls of men as it is women who gave
them birth.
That is why this view of the man’s responsibility in love being
greater than the woman’s is so singularly untrue. If we inquire at all
truthfully into this question of seduction, it is obvious that not the
man but the woman is the more responsible. For one thing, she knows so
much more about love, from the beginning, and _without being taught_,
than a man ever knows. Most often it is the woman who takes the first
step, breaks down the first barrier. Always there is the invitation
which unceasingly she gives, whether consciously or unconsciously
expressed—“Come and love me.”
Her dress, her movements—all invite love. To be provocative is however,
little she knows it, the one fixed simple rule of her life. In the end,
and indeed, sometimes very soon the position may be reversed, but at
the start assuredly the woman holds the cards and can make the first
move in the love-game. She is the pursuer, far more often and far more
truly, than the pursued. Too often she directs a continuous attack.
Her relation to the man is comparable to that of a magnet to a heap of
iron filings.
Love to a woman so often, when she is young, is less an affair of
passion than of excitement. It gratifies her insatiable desire for
power. The boy or the man more certainly is driven by love. This is
his principal motive. While the girl often starts on the adventure for
the sake of experiment and because she wants amusement. She pursues
love almost as a game. Passion plays a part only in the second degree.
Not infrequently, in the midst of love, the coldness of her heart is
plainly apparent.
This may seem a hard saying. I believe it is true.
Seduction as the crime of the man alone cannot, I am convinced, be
accepted, in any case without great caution. It is, as I have said
several times already, so comfortable to place the sins of sex on men.
But I doubt very much if any woman _can be seduced against her will_.
I must insist again that excitement and escape from dullness, as
also the joy in receiving presents and having “a good time,” are the
principal motives that first lead girls into illegal relations.
Sometimes it is worse than this.
Many women, seducers of men—women who draw men from their wives and
their homes, and their duty, are nothing but cold experimentors. They
are speculators in love. They do this for delight of power, in the same
way as men are speculators in business.
Perhaps the position is unavoidable.
The subjection of man is a necessity to some women’s existence. Love
is to them a similar feeling to love of the chase. They cannot keep
from pursuing men. It is, as I have said, an expression of the ever
increasing demand for excitement. Conquest in love gives to women the
opportunities for the fulfilment of themselves, which men gain in many
different departments of life.
But no man, I think, could satisfy completely the craving for
dominion, which the delusive humility of his desire awakens in this
type of woman. Then when she commits the error, from a womanly point
of view, of hunting down her man; leading him on by helping him too
much—seducing him, instead of waiting for him and drawing him slowly
and unconsciously by her love, she awakens the same instinct for
dominion and thirst for excitement in the man. It is then that the man
becomes a seducer of other women. It is the lust to devour, to crush,
quickened into being by suggestion. It explains, I believe, the cruelty
of all wild love.
PLAYING WITH LOVE
Many girls to-day try deliberately to keep love light. Shrewd enough
to understand the heavy claims of serious love affairs that lead to
marriage, they prefer flirtations of weeks only—episodes that are a
secret and, as it were, detachable part of their lives.
It is a dangerous state.
Emotional power and the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life are
dried up by such constant stimulation. A new diet of excitement must
always be provided. The object of life is to cheat time and to crowd
out boredom. Whatever is going on they must be in it from a jazz dance
or river picnic to a church bazaar.
In the old days it used to be only duties for girls—now it is rights
and pleasure with the demand to be left to make their own lives. There
is a turning away from duty; a hatred of anything dull.
Girls as I have just shown you want love as an experience and to
provide the always desired excitement. They do not want to marry and to
settle down.
Thus while condescending to fascinate men, while deliberately seeking
attention these young women still hold themselves in hand. Intending to
exploit life to the uttermost they find love amusing, but they fight
always against its being a vocation.
There is calculation and dangerous hardiness in their attitude to their
lovers.
Their transitory love affairs are, indeed, regarded in very much the
same way as formerly they were regarded by the average young men—as
enjoyable and thrilling incidents of which they are ashamed only when
they are talked about and blamed.
With no sex conscience, these wantons of excitement have no
consciousness of womanly responsibility. Each new affair affords an
eagerly snatched tribute to a colossal and restless vanity.
This is one type of woman who to-day plays with love.
There are as well other girls of a different character, less concerned
with pleasure, less consciously vain, more emotional, and to men more
interesting. They are incessantly thinking of their own personalities;
and, for this reason, they are equally, even if not more, harmfully
destructive in the utter misery they often create.
These are the girls who are always emotion hunting.
Impossible to tell what are their pseudo-feelings. A sort of sterile
passion, which expends itself in their failure to know, and find, what
they want.
They do not wish consciously to escape the responsibilities of
marriage; indeed they seek unceasingly the perfect man to whom they may
surrender their freedom. But they suffer from a formless discontent
that rots into every love and prevents them finding satisfaction.
Consumed with haggard restlessness, such girls pass their days in a
dangerous state of expectancy and nervous tiredness. Eternally they are
unsatisfied without knowing why.
Born spiritual adventurers, these worshippers of emotionalism,
attitudinising and thinking perpetually of themselves, desire at all
cost a position in the limelight. They love romantically, but rarely
are they strong enough to obey their inclinations. Such girls are out
on an eternal quest; and, every now and again, they believe they have
found the ideal man they are seeking. Then they discover they have
not found him, so their search is taken up anew. While often their
insistent egoism, which causes them to ignore the rights of others and
all social obligations, drives them into dangerous corners; does not
give them a chance; turns them to use mean weapons of deceit; forces
them into false situations that too often close around them like a trap.
Many other nobler types, besides these two, have been playing with love.
Girls of profound and steadfast emotional nature are rare. The great
majority of girls certainly are not entirely light-minded, but they
are less serious, more noisily determined to do what they want, to
get what they can both out of men and out of life. They are very like
children, playing at desperate rebels, who take up weapons to use far
more deadly than they know.
All this playing with love is detestable—all of it. It bears witness to
a poverty of emotion and a shameful shirking of responsibility.
Women are the custodians of manners in love. The future rests
with them. And this responsibility cannot safely be set aside,
dependent as it is on forces active long before human relations were
established—forces which press on women back and back through the ages.
Yes, woman has laid upon her the sacred necessity of seriousness in all
that is connected with Love. It is a duty imposed upon her by Nature,
and one that she cannot escape. That is why there is so much danger
in these restless neurotic years, when girls are too excited to be
serious.