monogamous marriage and woman: a continuation of the previous chapter, with some remarks on the character of woman

“that the first decade of the child life of all mankind age after age passes continuously through the hands of woman seemed to him one of the most significant facts in the whole range of human affairs.”—life and letters of edward thring.

i trust from what i have said already on marriage in the previous chapter that two things have been made plain: on the one side, my own strong faith in monogamous marriage as the most practical and happiest form of association for the great majority of women and men; and my further opinion that sexual relationships must be regulated by law. i am, however, deeply conscious of the ignominious conditions of many marriages, and thus, on the other side, i am forced to the opinion that for the whole of sexual conduct there cannot safely be one only rule. i know well there will always be exceptions: men and also women who are unfitted for faithful mating. it is this fact we do not face that makes the problem so difficult to solve at all and to solve completely impossible.

regarding companionship as essential in any true union, the reform most likely to produce a balance of good in marriage is such an alteration in the basis of marriage and increased spirituality in the way of conceiving it as will make incompatibility of temperament, resulting in inability[210] to maintain companionship, justify honourable divorce. to consider sexual infidelity as the only valid ground for divorce is to take a limited and wrong view of marriage. spiritual unfaithfulness may be a far greater sin, and one bringing much deeper unhappiness in marriage, than sexual unfaithfulness.

it may seem that this view is a contradiction of what i have said of the enduring character of marriage. i do not think so. no marriage that should be maintained will ever be broken by making divorce easy. it will add nothing to the sanctity of marriage to force those who are really unmated to remain mated by law. one marvels at the folly of such a view. i want people to enter into marriage and to remain in it, because they want to be there, not because they are forced.[79]

for i do believe that the great majority of women and men do really desire to live faithfully with one mate. divided allegiance is possible only where love is of a slight character. if it is absorbing it cannot be diffuse, and the more diffuse it is the less the partners in such a union will be able to give or take from one another. it is impossible to be lovers and partners in the fullest and most human sense in several unions.

the real controlling power in marriage is our desire, though our acts may be, and usually are, directed as well by habit and tradition—a sort of conscience and feeling for the judgment of others. and divorce can never be easy while it at all hurts us to hurt one another.

[211]

i must, however, reaffirm my opinion that sexual relationships, whether within marriage or outside of it, whether legal or free, can never safely be unregulated, and will always be a difficult experiment. and experience has forced on me the knowledge that the most passionate union is often the one most likely to end in disaster. for buckle is not far from right when he says we accumulate knowledge, but do not progress in morals, which depend on the unaltered heart of man.

some characters are manifestly and essentially unfaithful, self-seeking, and regardless of the happiness of others in love and in all the affairs of life. others again act unfaithfully through weakness or haste, or through the misfortune of circumstances. the mistake with many of these people is that they ever bind themselves in permanent unions. we should not condemn or deal harshly with them, for by so doing we drive them to undertake obligations which they do not, because they cannot, fulfil. in my opinion, it is foolishness to pretend that for the whole of sexual conduct there can ever be one fixed rule. we shall have more morality, not less, if we accept this.

it is for this reason that i am altogether persuaded of the need of much greater facilities of divorce than exist at present: divorce on the ground of mutual consent, and based on inability through any cause to maintain true partnership in marriage.

there are some men and also women unsuited for marriage and quite undesirable as life-partners; they are not, however, undesirable because of the legal bond, but because of certain qualities which as individuals they possess. and this wider facility of divorce would do very much to lessen individual hardships, and moreover it would cleanse, in a[212] way not sufficiently recognised, the immorality which is present in many unions. marriage, with its fixed duties and the restrictions it does impose, in particular, upon the woman, will always appear to some a bondage from which they will seek the quickest way of escape. if no honourable way is allowed to them, they will take a dishonourable course. this may be deplored, it cannot (at any rate under existing conditions of character and public opinion) be helped, and nothing but evil can follow by pretending it is not so.

thus we find that the difficulty of divorce is the strongest factor that brings disgrace and immorality into marriage.

this matter of honourable divorce is, however, one only of the almost countless questions in the tangle of considerations involved in the difficult matter of any attempt to change sexual conduct. more important, perhaps, is the great disproportion between the two sexes in a country that calls itself and tries to be monogamous. in our society, where so many conditions and causes have corresponded to make marriage more and more difficult, there are a very large number of women and also some men, and will be for a long time, who, from necessity rather than from choice, have to seek to satisfy their sex needs and to find love in the best way that they can. i do not see that we can or ought to condemn without fuller knowledge than as a rule we can have, these breaches of the prohibitions and laws of marriage: i am very certain that no good can be gained by branding those who commit them as sinners. rather the conditions that give rise to such conduct must be openly faced and wherever possible dealt with. war, acting as it must inevitably do in increasing these evils and making marriage more difficult for many women, perhaps will bring[213] us to do this. changes in our laws may be forced upon our acceptance. we shall have to be more careful to protect life and to prevent waste of the powers of life. we cannot, therefore, i think, go on, in this question of the sex needs that are not satisfied in marriage, with the old game of pretence, that no irregular conduct need be considered as long as it can be hidden, or at least not publicly acknowledged.

but of sexual relationships outside of marriage i shall speak in a separate chapter.[80] the question is too urgent to be dealt with hastily. i shall state what seems to me can be done to regulate these unlegalised unions so as to free them, as far as this is possible, from the secrecy and shamefulness which acts, i am certain, as the strongest factor in the distress and evil which they do almost inevitably bring, both to the individuals who enter into them and to the society which tolerates, but does nothing to protect, them.

in the past, we have failed sufficiently to recognise the immorality which is present in many marriages. monogamy has in reality never been attained either by ancient civilisations or in the modern world. thus, while accepting monogamy, we tolerate extra conjugal relationships, which can be regarded only as a hidden polygamy, and, indeed, from one practical point of view, it is even worse in its results than a well-understood and regulated polygamy, as these fugitive unions, being unrecognised, carry with them no obligations. and the action of this double standard of sexual morality, with its concealed element of lying hypocrisy, has brought, and rightly brought, into discredit legal monogamous marriage; it has led on the one side to the[214] setting up of an ideal of marriage conduct which, as many in fact actually do not follow it, tends to become an outward form, and this on the other side leads to a concealed laxity in practice, which results only too frequently in irresponsible unions, hidden diseases and blasted motherhood, the most terrible of the evils in our disordered sexual life of to-day. facts of daily observation may not be shuffled out of observation by any hypocrisy. they must be faced and dealt with.

the question becomes clearer, if we consider that some people, men as well as women, have a great desire for children; or possibly as the desire is not always consciously recognised, it would be truer to say that with them the sexual impulse is more deeply rooted. i mean, though it is very difficult in words to express this, that erotic desire is less personally overmastering, that they are in truer relation with the race—one link in the long chain of the generations. this being so, the getting of a child is the ultimate, though rarely, i think, the conscious, satisfaction of sex; while for others—and this is true of some women quite as much as it is true of many men—sexual relations are in themselves the final gratification of love. children may come, but they are born because of the operation of this strictly personal impulse or need of the parents.

it is, i think, very necessary to distinguish between sex-passion and the desire for a child; they are not the same, though, of course, the one impulse may be, and is as a rule, involved in the other. we need more clear thinking and frank speaking on the two elements in the reproductive act. this is a human problem, one that belongs to mankind alone; moreover, it has greatly increased among civilised races, and is likely to become more, and not less,[215] difficult with the advance of time. animals have sex-passion, which is neither love as we feel it nor lust; with them, as also in some degree with most primitive peoples, this passion is seasonal, not always active, and is more or less closely connected with the obtaining of offspring. far different and much more complicated are the conditions of love among us to-day. men and women have a continuous desire for love, with sex-passion as its outward expression and children for its efflorescence. they also have lust, which is a comparatively new expression,[81] at least, that is my opinion as to what is true of the majority among us. i do not use the word “lust” here in any sense of contempt, but to express strong and conscious sex-passion, seeking its own satisfaction without connection with any possible result in a child. then at a much lower level there is lust-desire without love, or clothed merely in a rootless ephemeral mimicry of passion—a libertinage having no law but curiosity in self-indulgence. and all passion is a very different thing from the serene considerations which, according to the prayer book, cause men and women to marry.

now, it is because of what sex-passion has come to be among us—its variety in desire and in result—that we are far more remote than pre-human and primitive parents from having marriage and parenthood settled so as to meet the desires and sex-needs of every one, as would be easily possible if the reproductive act could be regarded as being solely, or even chiefly, connected with the birth of children.

i do not know if i have made my meaning perfectly clear, but what i wish to insist upon is this: it is necessary[216] in all questions and judgments connected with marriage to consider the presence or absence in the partners of the wish to produce and possess a child. i propose to deal briefly with this question in relation to the character of women.

it is commonly asserted that the normal woman desires to be a mother. now, this may be true, but what is forgotten is that all women are not normal, and thus there are many who not only have no desire to become mothers, but exceedingly dislike the idea of bearing children. you may say this is an unnatural condition; but such a use of the word “unnatural” is surely wrong; nothing is “natural” to the man or woman save what they have evolved, and by that i mean what they have come to desire to be; and my contention is that we have evolved a type of woman unsuited for motherhood because she does not desire it, and for such a woman it is “unnatural” to be a mother. of course this turning away from motherhood is in numerous cases the result of wrong education, and is dependent on the weakened constitutions and shaken nerves of women, which forces them to fear the pains of child-birth, as well as inducing an increasing dislike to the restrictions and duties that the care of children will entail. these causes are strong to-day; doubtless they hold back many women from becoming mothers, but i do not think that they take us very far to the deeper hidden causes which are also present among us, nor can they be regarded as essential factors in deciding the question as to which women should be mothers. there is something acting much more strongly, a cause which must be sought in the character of woman herself, and one which, unlike those dependent on outside conditions, cannot, i think, be altered. you see, i regard the true instinct for motherhood as a quality directing all[217] expression, something deep-seated in the nature, and therefore a quality that cannot be added to a character if the woman does not possess it.

and because i believe this, i regard any effort to force maternity, even as an ideal, upon all women as a great wrong. we do not expect all men to desire to be fathers, we must cease to expect all women to desire to become mothers. for by so doing we cause more evil than we know. and the hurt is not borne by the mother alone. the child born against the will of its mother must tend also to be without will; too weak to bear well the stress and struggle of life. this is no fanciful statement. i believe it can be proved by any one, with sufficient knowledge, who takes the trouble to investigate the facts. the child who is born through the physical mastery of the father and the physical subserviency of its mother, and against her desire, does pay the penalty in a heritage which lacks stability and harmony in character.

one of the many hypocrisies of our society to-day is the condemnation, still maintained by many who do not understand, of the use of the many safe artificial preventatives to conception. the mother must be given more control over the birth of her children. personally i have not a strong feeling against the procuring of abortion, but perhaps the forbidding of it is necessary as a fence around the reverence for human life; but the prevention of birth is a different matter. and certainly each woman must be free to make her own choice as to whether she bears children or does not bear them; no man, and still more no social or moral compulsion, may safely decide this matter for her; she must give life gladly to be able to give it well.

nor must we look with disfavour on those women who[218] desire to avoid motherhood and its duties, or regard them as “unnatural”—this word, as i have just said, is used far too carelessly. it were well to remember that the parental instinct is not fixed and is dependent on causes that very few of us understand, that it is not present in all women any more than the fighting instinct is present in all men.

a vast amount of stupid confusion arises from our failing to accept the wide diversity in women’s temperaments and characters in relation to this question of motherhood. between the more usual type of woman, whose deepest desire and strongest instincts are fixed in motherhood, and the woman at the other extreme to whom even the thought of maternity is a terror, there are a wide range of intermediate types—women able to love and even in some respects markedly feminine, but with weak maternal feeling. such diversity in the family qualities has always existed. we have seen in our past study of the family that the maternal instincts may be overlaid and even destroyed, being replaced by others more clearly masculine. examples of this are found in the insect world, and striking examples among fishes and reptiles, where the father is the true parent and undertakes all duties connected with the young. the case of the phalaropes furnished us with a further remarkable instance of this reversal in the characters of the two sexes. things are not quite as dramatic, perhaps, in the human world, but they are more fateful, more significant. and such changes in the expression of the emotions, dependent as they would seem to be on changes in the sexual character, can be effected, for every individual of one sex has in him or her the qualities of the other sex in a less degree; and any special circumstance or alteration in the conditions of life which acts on an individual or[219] group of individuals in an opposite direction from the ordinary, may succeed in modifying and, in some cases, transforming the deep impulses of sex.[82]

i do not wish to follow this question here. it is, however, widely evident that in the society we have evolved to-day there are many women in whom, what i may perhaps call, an atrophy of the maternal instincts has taken place. this may be regretted, it cannot wisely be blamed, for it forms no solution of the problem thus to mark down for blame. there is one way, and one way only, as far as i can see, whereby this great evil that has happened and still is taking place might be stayed. the maternal women, the mother type, should be the only women to be mothers; which is, of course, the same thing as saying that every child should be born of passionate desire.

but this is not so simple in practice as at first sight it seems; it carries with it first the demand that women must be given the knowledge and means to prevent the conception of every undesired child; and second, and even more important, that all girls should be educated to understand something at least of their sexual nature so that they may know their own need and strongest instincts; then, does their desire turn towards motherhood, they will be better able to choose as the father of their children men who desire to be fathers as they desire to be mothers, so that together they may decide the number of children they will bring into the world and under what conditions. that is the only kind of motherhood that will endure.

i am prepared for an objection here. i shall be told that a woman, much less a girl, does not know whether she[220] wants a child until she bears one; that it is then her maternal instinct will develop. i do not believe it. i find this is the opinion of men and of women who have failed to think straight; both judge in these matters too arbitrarily and with too little understanding. they forget how difficult it has been, and still is, for any one of my sex to be at all sexually truthful. considering the folly of the education we give to girls, there is little reliance to be placed on what any woman says about sex. what we need most of all is the liberation of women’s instincts through education in consciousness. perhaps, then, we shall cease to expect the impossible, by which i mean we shall not hope to make good mothers of the girls who have no deep instinct to love children. i know, of course, that the girl who before marriage does not love children, may, and as a rule will, love her own child: but i am certain that in nine cases out of every ten she will do so in the wrong way; the child will be cherished only as a possession of herself, an extension of her own egoism, which is very far indeed from what i hold as the self-giving character of the mother-woman. here is one reason why good motherhood is so rare.

one source of great error arises because of the hypocrisy that society still forces upon women in all questions of sex, and in particular on this matter of their wanting, or not wanting, to be mothers. you see, the desire for a child is allowed to them, but it is not yet allowed to them to desire love without the child. we are a strange people. and this belief, instilled into us by puritanism and a religion which denies simple human needs, that sex enjoyment is immoral without the purpose of procreation, has been a most degrading influence. it has done great harm. it has poisoned the lives of thousands of women and men; but the[221] greatest of the evils it has wrought is that, under its influence, countless children have been born, both in marriage and outside of it, against the will of their mothers. until it is openly recognised that women are not alike in their sexual natures any more than they are alike in their outward appearance, that they cannot all be classed together as the mother-sex, this evil cannot be changed; the old hypocrisy will continue and children will verily be born in sin, for they will be born without the mother’s desire, and for this the race must pay the penalty.

we have, i am sure, to face the fact of the general occurrence among us of women of the siren type; they are the exact opposite to the mother type. with them the “pleasure factor”[83] in the sexual act is the aim and end of love: this results, as it seems to me, in an intensified egoism, which has far-reaching effects first in the woman’s attitude to the man, as later in her attitude to her children. the siren woman is the property of all men, or rather it would be much nearer to the truth to say that all men are her property. i do not think such a woman can ever remain satisfied with one mate, though circumstances may hold her apparently faithful to her marriage vows. she is quite unsuited for monogamous marriage, unless, indeed, she finds a man of a similar type whom she has perpetually to reconquer. even then there must be variety in each conquest to provide the excitement necessary with both to stimulate love. such a woman, as, of course, also the man, is always unsuited for the selfless sacrifices of parenthood. she is the natural prostitute, who absorbs everything in sex for her own desire.

the case is quite different with the mother type, and[222] her relation to the man is not the same; true, she also seeks and uses the man, the difference is not here. woman is better equipped for the sex-battle than is man. there is nothing wrong in this. i hold that a woman should be able to take the man she loves as her right; she does take him now, but in ways that too often should make both herself and him ashamed. the mother-woman exercises her right of choice as the representative of nature. she is the fount of the race, she seeks the man as her helper and because he will give life to the child she desires. such a woman is not always faithful in marriage, but she wishes to be so, and she will be faithful in actual fact, if she is fortunate and finds in her lover the fitting father she seeks unconsciously for her children.

of course, this is a purely arbitrary classification; the two types of character mingle in most women. there are traces of the siren in every woman, and no woman—though i am less certain here—is entirely devoid of the maternal instinct.

it is very difficult to know the truth. but it seems to me that, when from any cause the pleasure factor in sex becomes secretly over-accentuated, as it may so easily do under conditions where full sex expression is denied to many women, the normal sexual impulses are in some cases weakened or even atrophied through disuse, while in others satisfaction is gained in secret erotic practice, and by so doing the character and these deep impulses receive a twist in an unhealthy direction, leading or at least tending to an inflaming of the egoistical desires, which, if long continued, will increase to crowd out, like an overgrowth of some poisonous weed, the more tender plant of the parental instinct. while certainly not presuming to speak with authority[223] on so difficult a subject, i think that the suggestion i have made may possibly afford an explanation of the poverty of the mother instinct in some women compared with its richness in other women. i plead for a patient recognition of the fact that in all these deep matters relating to sex we are still very ignorant.

let me now give an example that quite recently came under my notice, of a woman who, though a mother, was without any glimmering flicker of maternal feeling. it seems to me to be worth recording as being the most striking case i have met of the siren type of woman, who, if i am right, is occupying a wrong place in any monogamous marriage. facts speak more forcibly than any mere statements.

in a boarding-house at which i was staying there was a young and beautiful mother. she had borne seven children, of whom the two youngest were with her, a boy of about five and a baby a year old. she had with her also a young niece of about seven years of age. they were healthy and, i should judge, charming children. the mother apparently had no love for them whatever. it was a most extraordinary case. physically this woman was fitted to bear children, but she was clearly without any capacity for caring for them. she reminded me of the phalarope mothers, who seek love adventures and leave the charge of their children to the fathers. in this case the father was not present: the guardian of the baby was the niece. i never saw a more patient worker than this tiny child. i do not know whether it was fear held her to her task. she did not play: all day she tended, and worked, and watched. sometimes she was assisted by the tiny boy, her cousin.

[224]

here is one out of many conversations that i chanced to overhear.

harry, the boy, called to his cousin—

“susie, i have washed baby’s napkins, what shall i do now?”

she answered, “begin to get the food ready; i will come in a minute to boil the milk.”

this is no exaggeration, i state exactly what i heard.

now, it is no use shrieking out that this woman’s conduct is unnatural and a libel on motherhood. if the maternal instinct was a fixed instinct and bore good fruit only, this might be done. the objection to the wrong kind of women being mothers is precisely that it inevitably produces some such results. this woman simply followed the promptings of her own desires: the difference was that she did it much more frankly than is usual. she employed the days in playing croquet and tennis and in flirting with any available male. i do not think she knew she was not a good mother. at intervals, when she remembered, she scolded the children; but when she forgot them, which was frequently, she left them alone.

often i talked with her, as she interested me very strongly. i wished that i could have known her early history, and especially some details of her sexual life. i could but guess, still i do not think i was mistaken. she told me quite frankly that she did not like children, though she added (clearly, though quite unconsciously, speaking conventionally), “of course, i love my own children.” then (lapsing again into truth) she went on bewailing the length of the school holidays (the little boy and the girl were both at boarding-school) and her present position of being without a nurse to look after the baby. on the occasion[225] of another conversation she told me that she did not care for men. i answered, “probably not, but you like them to care for you.” she laughed and seemed pleased, and asked me how i knew this.

now, this woman was to me a most interesting study. a friend who was staying with me at the time blamed her very severely. i think this was unfair. what was clear to me was that life was demanding from this woman what she could not give. she was strongly sensual without being passionate; she was probably philoprogenitive or she would not have had so many children; but she was not at all maternal, and was quite unfitted to be entrusted with any child. she was not immoral—at least, i think not; probably she was faithful in the usual meaning to her husband. in her world the price was too high to make unfaithfulness worth while; but she was wholly non-moral. such a woman should not marry; she should never be a mother. i would go even further and say her place was the place of the prostitute. this judgment may seem hard. yet i know of no other remedy. you cannot alter these things by pretending they are not there. and the expression of sex is always a question of refinement and of character.