A question which is as frequent as it is idle, concerns the degree of
sexual impulse in woman. It is important for the lawyer to know
something about this, of course, for many a sexual crime may be more
properly judged if it is known how far the woman encouraged the man, and
in similar cases the knowledge might help us to presume what attitude
feminine witnesses might take toward the matter. First of all, the needs
of individual women are as different as those of individual men, and as
varied as the need for food, drink, warmth, rest, and a hundred other
animal requirements. We shall be unable to find any standard by
determining even an average. It is useless to say that sexual
sensibility is less in woman than in man; because specialists contradict
each other on this matter. We are not aided either by Sergi’s[264]
assertion, that the sensibility is less than the irritability in woman,
or by Mantegazza’s statement, that women rarely have such powerful
sexual desire that it causes them pain. We can learn here, also, only by
means of the interpretation of good particular observations. When, for
example, the Italian positivists repeatedly assert that woman is less
erotic and more sexual, they mean that man cares more about the
satisfaction of the sexual impulse, woman about the maternal instinct.
This piece of information may help us to explain some cases; at least we
shall understand many a girl’s mistake without needing immediately to
presuppose rape, seduction by means of promises of marriage, etc. Once
we have in mind soberly what fruits dishonor brings to a girl,--scorn
and shame, the difficulties of pregnancy, alienation from relatives,
perhaps even banishment from the paternal home, perhaps the loss of a
good position, then the pains and sorrows of child-birth, care of the
child, reduction of earnings, difficulties and troubles with the child,
difficulties in going about, less prospect of care through
wedlock,--these are of such extraordinary weight, that it is impossible
to adduce so elementary a force to the sexual impulse as to enable it to
veil the outlook upon this outcome of its satisfaction.
The well-known Viennese gynaecologist, Braun, said, “If it were
naturally so arranged that in every wedlock man must bear the second
child, there would be no more than three children in any family.” His
intention is, that even if the woman agrees to have the third child, the
man would be so frightened at the pains of the first child-birth that he
never again would permit himself to bear another. As we can hardly say
that we have any reason for asserting that the sexual needs of woman are
essentially greater, or that woman is better able to bear more pain than
man, we are compelled to believe that there must be in woman an impulse
lacking in man. This impulse must be supposed to be so powerful that it
subdues, let us say briefly, all the fear of an illegitimate or
otherwise undesirable child-birth, and this is the impulse we mean by
sexuality, by the maternal instinct.
It would seem as if nature, at least in isolated cases, desires to
confirm this view. According to Icard there are women who have children
simply for the pleasure of suckling them, the suckling being a pleasant
sensation. If, now, nature has produced a sexual impulse purely for the
sake of preserving the species, she has given fuller expression to
sexuality and the maternal instinct when she has endowed it with an
especial impulse in at least a few definite cases. This impulse will
explain to the criminalist a large number of phenomena, especially the
accommodation of woman to man’s desires; and from this alone he may
deduce a number of otherwise difficultly explainable psychical
phenomena.
There is, of course, a series of facts which deny the existence of this
impulse--but they only seem to. Child-murder, the very frequent cruelty
of mothers to their children, the opposition of very young women to
bearing and bringing up children (cf. the educated among French and
American women), and similar phenomena seem to speak against the
maternal instinct. We must not forget, however, that all impulses come
to an end where the opposed impulse becomes stronger, and that under
given circumstances even the most powerful impulse, that of
self-preservation, may be opposed. All actions of despair, tearing the
beard, beating hands and feet together, rage at one’s own health, and
finally suicide may ensue. If the mother kills her own child, this
action belongs to the same series as self-damage through despair. The
more orderly and numerous actions and feelings in this direction, e.g.,
the disinclination of women toward bearing children, may be explained
also by the fact that it is the consequence of definite conditions of
civilization. If we recall what unnatural, senseless, and half crazy
habits with regard to nutrition, dressing, social adjustments, etc.,
civilization and fashion have forced upon us, we do not need to adduce
real perversity in order to understand how desire for comfort, how
laziness and the scramble for wealth lead to suppression of the maternal
instinct. This may also be called degeneration. There are still other
less important circumstances that seem to speak against the maternal
instinct. These consist primarily in the fact that the sexual impulse
endures to a time when the mother is no longer young enough to bear a
child. We know that the first gray hair in no sense indicates the last
lover, and according to Tait, a period of powerful sex-impulsion ensues
directly after the climacterium. Now of what use, so far as child-birth
is concerned, can such an impulse be?
But because natural instincts endure beyond their period of purposive
efficiency, it does not follow that they are unconnected with that
efficiency; we eat and drink also when the food is superfluous as
nourishment. Wonderfully as nature has adjusted the instincts and
functions to definite purposes, she still has at no point drawn fixed
boundaries and actually destroyed her instrument where the need for it
ceased. Just because nature is elsewhere parsimonious, she seems
frequently extravagant; yet that extravagance is the cheapest means of
attaining the necessary end. Thus, when woman’s passion is no longer
required for the function of motherhood, its impulsion may yet be
counted on for the psychological explanation of more than one criminal
event.
What is important, is to count the maternal instinct as a factor in
criminal situations. If we have done so, we find explanations not only
of sexual impropriety, but of the more subtle questions of the more or
less pure relation between husband and wife. What attitude the woman
takes toward her husband and children, what she demands of them, what
she sacrifices for them, what makes it possible for her to endure an
apparently unendurable situation; what, again, undermines directly and
suddenly, in spite of seemingly small value, her courage in life;--these
are all conditions which appear in countless processes as the
distinguishing and explaining elements, and they are to be understood in
the single term, “maternal instinct.” For a long time the
inexplicability of love and sexual impulse were offered as excuses, but
these otherwise mighty factors had to be assigned such remarkable and
self-contradictory aspects that only one confusion was added to another
and called explanation. Now suppose we try to explain them by means of
the maternal instinct.