THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP
I.-Marriage
“The race flows through us, the
race is the drama and we are the incidents.
This is not any sort of poetical statement; it is a
statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals,
in so far as we seek to follow merely individual
ends, we are accidental, disconnected, without
significance, the sport of chance. In so far
as we realise ourselves as experiments of the species
for the species, just in so far do we escape from
the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes
in an experience greater than ourselves.”-H.G.
WELLS.
“There is no subject,”
says Bernard Shaw in his delightful preface to Getting
Married, “on which more dangerous nonsense
is talked and thought than marriage.” And,
in truth, it is not easy to avoid such foolishness
if we understand at all the complexity of the relationship
of the sexes. Sentiment rules our actions in this
connection, whereas our talk on the subject is directed
by intellect. And the demands of the emotions
are at once more imperious and tyrannical, and more
fastidious and more critical, than are the demands
of the mind. Thus the more firmly reason checks
the riot of imagination the greater the danger of
error. Of all of which what is the moral?
This: It is useless to talk or to think unless
it is also possible and expedient to act.
Be it noted, then, first that our
marriage customs and laws are founded and have been
framed not for, or by, the personal needs-that
is, the likes and dislikes of men and women, but by
the exigencies of social and economic necessities.
Now, from this it will be readily seen that individual
inclinations are very likely, even if not bound, to
clash with, as they seek to conform to, the usages
of society. Always there will tend to be prevalent
everywhere a hostility-at times latent,
at others active-between these two forces;
against the special desires of women and men on the
one hand, and the laws enforced by a social and economic
community on the other. Always there will tend
to arise some who will desire to change the accepted
marriage form, those who, considering first the personal
needs, will advocate the loosening or the breaking
of the marriage-bond; while others, looking only to
the stability which they believe to be founded in
law and custom, will seek to keep and to make the tie
indissoluble.
This perpetual conflict is, it seems
to me, the greatest difficulty that has to be faced
in any effort to readjust the conditions of marriage.
In our contemporary society there is a deep-lying
dissatisfaction with the existing relations of the
sexes, a yearning and restless need for change.
In no other direction are the confusions and uncertainty
of the contemporary mind more manifest. The change
that has taken place so rapidly in the attitudes of
women and men has brought with it a very strong and,
what seems to be a new, revolt against the ignominious
conditions of our amatory life as bound by coercive
monogamy. We are questioning where before we have
accepted, and are seeking out new ways in which mankind
will go-will go because it must.
Yet just because of this imperative
urging the greater caution is called for in introducing
any changes in the laws or customs affecting marriage.
Present social and economic conditions are to a great
extent chaotic. It would be a sorry thing if
in haste we were to establish practices that must
come to an end, when we have freed ourselves from
the present transition; changes that would not be for
the welfare of generations still unborn. It will,
however, hardly be denied by any one that reform is
needed. All will admit that a change must be made
in some direction, and an attempt to say where it should
be tried must therefore be faced.
Does Nature give us any help in solving
the problem? None whatever. It would seem,
indeed, that Nature has in some ways arranged the love
relation in regard to the needs of the two sexes very
badly. But putting this aside for the present,
it is clear that in regard to the form of marriage
Nature has no preference; all ways are equal to her,
provided that the race profits by them, or at least
does not suffer too much from them. We found
abundant proof of this in our examination of marriage
and the family as established already in the animal
kingdom; the modes of sexual association offer great
variety, no species being of necessity restricted
to any one form of union. Polygamy, polyandry,
and monogamy all are practised. The family is
sometimes patriarchal, though more often it is matriarchal,
with the female the centre of it, and her love for
the young infinitely stronger and more devoted than
the male, though even in this direction there are
many and notable exceptions. When we came to study
the history of mankind we found similar conditions
persisting. Separate groups living as they best
could without caring about theories; their sexual
conduct ordered by a compromise between the procreative
needs on the one hand, and the necessities of the
social conditions on the other. Marriage forms,
as we understand them, were for long unknown, the
relations of the sexes slowly evolving from a more
or less restricted promiscuity to a family union at
first merely temporary, and only later becoming fixed
and permanent. Thus very gradually the primitive
instinctive sex impulses underwent expansion, and always
in the direction of the control of the individual
desires in the interest of the family.
The unit of the group or state is
the family, therefore sex-customs arise and laws are
made not to suit the convenience of the woman or the
man, but for the preservation and good of the family.
In a word, the children-they are the pivot
about which all regulations of marriage should turn.
It is certain, however, that such
control and such laws have never in the past, and
never in the future can be fixed to one unchanging
form. In proof of this I must refer the reader
back to the historical section of this book, where
nothing stands out clearer than that the most diverse
morality and customs prevail in matters of sex.
Wherever for any reason there arises a tendency towards
any form of sexual association, such form is likely
to be established as a habit, and, persisting, it
comes to be regarded as right, and is enforced by
custom and later by law, and also sometimes sanctified
by religion. It comes to be regarded as moral,
and other forms become immoral.
Now, all this may seem to be rather
far away from the matter we are discussing-the
present dissatisfaction with our marriage system.
But the point I want to make clear is this: there
is no rigid and unchangeable code of right or wrong
in the sexual relationship. Our opinions here
are based for the most part on traditional morality,
which accepts what is as right because it is established.
A small but growing minority, looking in an exact
opposite direction, turn to an ideal morality, considering
the facts of sex not as they are, but as they think
they ought to be. Both these attitudes are alike
harmful. The one refuses to go forward, the other
rushes on blindly, goaded by sentiment or by personal
desires. And to-day the greater danger seems
to me to rest with the hasty reformers. It is
an essentially feminine crusade. By this I do
not mean that it is advocated alone by women, but
that in itself it must be regarded as feminine;
a view which elevates a subjective ideal relationship
of sex above all objective facts. The desires
and feelings and sentiments are set up in opposition
to historical experience and communal tradition.
We hear much, and especially in the writings and talk
of women, of such vapid phrases as “Self-realisation
in love,” “The enhancement of the individual
life,” and “The spiritualising of sex.”
Such personal views, which exalt the passing needs
of the individual above the enduring interests of
the race, are in direct opposition to progress.
What is rather needed is an examination of marriage
and other forms of our sexual relationships by practical
morality, by which I mean the estimating of their
merits and defects in relation to the vital needs
of the community under the circumstances of the present.
To do this we must first clear our
minds from the belief that regards our present form
of monogamic marriage as ordained by Nature and sanctified
by God. He who accepts the development of the
love of one man for one woman from other and earlier
forms of association may well look forward in faith
to a future progress from our existing marriage:
yet, though eager for reform, he will, remembering
the slowness of this steady upward progress in love’s
refinement in the past, refrain from acting in haste,
understanding the impossibility of forcing any Utopia
of the sexes. No change can be made in a matter
so intimate as marriage by a mere altering of the
law. Only such reforms as are the natural outgrowth
of an enlightened public feeling can be of benefit,
and thus permanent in their result. I must go
further than this and say that what may very possibly
be right for the few cannot be regarded as practically
moral and good until it can be accepted and acted
upon by the people at large. In sex more than
in any other department of life we are all linked
together; we are our brother’s keeper, and the
blood of the race will be required at our hands.
Many women, and some men, do not realise at all the
immense complications of sex and the claims passion
makes on many natures. I am sure that this is
the explanation of much of the foolish talk that one
hears. I tried to make clear in the first chapters
of this book the irresistible elemental power of the
uncurbed sexual instincts. And this force is
at least as strong now as it was in the beginning of
life. For in sex we have, as yet, learnt very
little. We who are living among the sophistication
of aeroplanes, the inheritors of the knowledge of
all the ages, have still to pass in wonder along the
paths of love, entering into it blindly and making
all the old mistakes.
Am I, then, afraid that I plead thus
for caution? No, I am not. I rest my faith
in the development of the racial element in love side
by side with its personal ends of physical and spiritual
joy. For the sex impulses, which have ruled women
and men, will assuredly come to be ruled by them.
Just as in the past life has been moulded and carried
on by love’s selection, acting unconsciously
and ignorant of the ends it followed, so in the future
the race will be developed and carried onwards by
deliberate selection, and the creative energy of love
will become the servant of women and men. The
mighty dynamic force will then be capable of further
and, as yet, unrealised development. This is
no vain hope. It has its proof in the past history
of the selective power of love. The problems
of our individual loves are linked on to the racial
life. The hope for improvement rests thus in a
growing understanding of the individual’s relation
to the race, and in an expansion of our knowledge
and practice of the high duties love enforces.
Let us look now at the practical direction
of the present. We have reached these conclusions
as a starting-point-
(1) We have inherited marriage as
a social, nay more, a racial institution.
(2) The practical moral end of marriage,
whether we regard it from the wider biological standpoint
or from the narrower standpoint of society, is a selection
of the sexes by means of love, having as its social
object the carrying on of the race, and as its personal
object a mutual life of complete physical, mental,
and psychical union.
(3) The first of these, the racial
object, is the concern of the State; the second, the
personal need of love, is the concern of the individual
woman and man.
(4) It is the business of the State
to make such laws that the interests of the race,
i.e. the children, are protected.
From this it would seem to follow
that beyond such care the State has nothing to do
with the sexual relationship. Here I am placed
in a difficulty. I cannot accept this view.
I do not believe that the loves of women and men,
even apart from children being born from such union,
can ever be merely a personal matter between the two
individuals concerned. For this reason any woman
and man is a potential mother or father, and may become
so in a later union. We cannot break the links
which bind the individual to the race. I am very
clear in my mind, however, of the need of recognising
this perpetual duality in the objects of love.
It is not necessary to bring forward any proof of the
profound significance of the individual side of the
sexual passion in the progress of civilisation.
We may accept what is really proved by all of us in
our acts, that love and love’s embrace are not
exercised only, or indeed chiefly, for the purpose
of procreation, but are of quite equal importance
to the parents, necessary for the complete life-the
physical and mental development and the joy of the
woman and the man.
It may seem, then, that we are thus
faced by two opposing forces. That is not the
case. There is real harmony underlying the apparent
opposition of these two interests, and each is, indeed,
the indispensable complement of the other. Both
the personal and the further-reaching racial objects
of love alike belong to the great synthesis of life.
I do not, of course, deny, what every one knows, that
there is at present an opposition and even conflict
in certain individual cases. This is but one
sign of chaos and the wastage of love. But this
does not change the truth; there can be no gain for
the individual in the personal ends of love unless
there is also a corresponding gain to the wider racial
end. The element of self-assertion in our loves
must be brought into correlation with the universal
and immortal development of life. This is so evident
that I will not wait to elaborate it further.
I will only point out that all the good, as also all
the evil, that the individual is able to gain from
love must ultimately react also for the benefit, or
the wastage, of the race. Thus we have to get
every good that we can out of our sexual experiences
for ourselves for this very reason that we do not
stand alone. It is because the race flows through
us that we have to make the utmost of our individual
opportunities and powers, so that, understanding our
position as guardians to the generations yet unborn,
we may use to the very full, but refrain from any misuse
of love’s possibilities of joy. We know
that all we gain for ourselves we gain in trust for
the race, and what we lose for ourselves we waste for
the life to come. This has, of course, been said
before by numberless people, but it seems to me it
has been realised by very few, and until it is realised
to the fullest extent it will never begin to be practised.
We shall continue at a crossed purpose between our
own interests and desires and the interests of the
race, and shall go on wasting the forces of love needlessly
and riotously.
Armed with these conclusions I shall
now attempt to examine our existing marriage in its
relation (1) to the needs of the children, (2) to
the individual needs apart from parentage. The
extent of the problems involved is almost illimitable,
thus all that I can do is to touch very briefly and
insufficiently on a few facts.
As we question in turn the various
systems of marriage it becomes clear that monogamy
is the form which has most widely prevailed, and will
be likely to be maintained, because of its superior
survival value. In other words, because it best
serves the interests of the race by assuring to the
woman and her children the individual interest and
providence of the father. I believe further that
monogamy of all the sexual associations serves best
the personal needs of the parents; and, moreover,
that it represents the form of union which is in harmony
with the instincts and desires of the majority of people.
The ideal of permanent marriage between one woman
and one man to last for the life of both must persist
as an ideal never to be lost. I wish to state
this as my belief quite clearly. The higher love
in true marriage is the veritable law of the life
to be; and beside it all experiments in sensation
will rot in their emptiness and their self-love.
But this faith of mine in an ideal
and lasting union does not lessen at all my scepticism
in the moral inefficacy of our present marriage system.
It is not the particular form of marriage practised
that, after all, is the main thing, but the kind of
lives people live under that form. The mere acceptance
of a legally enforced monogamy does not carry us very
far in practical morality; we must claim something
much deeper than this.
And this brings us to the base counterfeit
of monogamy that is accepted and practised by many
among us to-day; base because it is a monogamy largely
mitigated by clandestine transitory loves-tipplings
with sensation and snackings at lust which betray passion.
Facts of daily observation may not be shuffled out
of consideration by any hypocrisy. They must
be faced and dealt with. Our marriage system is
buttressed with prostitution, which thus makes our
moral attitude one of intolerable deception, and our
efforts at reform not only ineffective, but absurd.
Without the assistance of the prostitution of one
class of women and the enforced celibacy of another
class our marriage in its present form could not stand.
It is no use shirking it; if marriage cannot be made
more moral-and by this I mean more able
to meet the sex needs of all men and all women-then
we must accept prostitution. No sentimentalism
can save us; we must give our consent to this sacrifice
of women as necessary to the welfare and stability
of society. But with this question I shall deal
in a later section of this chapter. There is,
however, more than this to be said. Marriage
is itself in many cases a legalised form of prostitution.
From the standpoint of morals, the woman who sells
herself in marriage is on the same level as the one
who sells herself for a night, the only difference
is in the price paid and the duration of the contract.
Nay, it is probably fair to say that at the lowest
such sale-marriage results in the greater evil, for
the prostitute does not bear children. If she
has a child it has, as a rule, been born first; such
is our morality that motherhood often drives her on
to the streets!
Any woman who marries for money or
position is departing from the biological and moral
ends of marriage. A child can be born gladly only
as the fruit of love. It is in this direction,
rather than in maintaining a barren virginity, that
woman’s chastity should be guarded. We
may excuse women on the grounds of possible ignorance,
but, none the less, have the conditions of marriage
been unfavourable to the development of a fine moral
feeling in women or in men. No one can have failed
to feel surprised at the men many girls are content
to marry; it is one thing that must be set against
the claim women make as the morally superior sex.
Mr. Wells, whom I have already quoted in this matter,
places in the mouth of one of his characters, in his
recent book, Marriage, a true and terrible indictment
of women.
“If there was one thing in which
you might think woman would show a sense of some
divine purpose in life it is in the matter of
children, and they show about as much care in the matter-oh,
as rabbits! Yes, rabbits. I stick to
it. Look at the things a nice girl will marry;
look at the men’s children she’ll submit
to bring into the world. Cheerfully!
Proudly! For the sake of the home and the
clothes!”
The fact is our marriage in its present
legal form is primarily an arrangement for securing
the rights of property. This in itself is not
necessarily evil. Economic necessities cannot
be ignored in any form of the sexual relationship;
it is rather a readjustment that is called for here.
We have seen how admirably a marriage system based
upon property in the form of free contracts worked
in Egypt, and how happy were the family relationships
under this system of equal partnership between the
wife and husband. I would again recommend the
careful study of these marriage contracts to all those
interested in marriage reform. The contracts
were never fixed in one form; all that was required
being that the interests of the woman and the children
were in all cases protected. Take again the Roman
marriage which, in its latest fine developments, has
special interest, as the history of modern marriage
systems may be traced back to it. The Romans came,
like the Egyptians, to regard marriage as a contract
rather than a legal form. In the custom of usus,
which supplanted the earlier and sacred confarreatio,
there was no ceremony at all. I would recall to
the memory of my readers the significant fact that
in both these great countries this freedom in marriage
was associated with the freedom of woman. It
must be recognised that these two forces act together.
Traditional customs in marriage, as
in all other departments of life, tend to become worn
out, and whenever any form presses too heavily on
a sufficient number of individuals acting against,
instead of for, the interests of those concerned,
there arises a movement towards reform. This
happened in Rome, and led to the establishment of marriage
by usus, which was further modified by the
practice known as conventio in manus, whereby
the wife by passing three nights in the year from
her husband was able to break through the terrible
right of the husband’s manus. It
is possible that by some such simple way of escape
we may come to change the pressure of our coercive
marriage.
The briefest glance at our marriage
system proves it to be founded on the patriarchal
idea of woman as the property of man, which is sufficiently
illustrated by the fact that a husband can claim sums
of money as compensation from any man who sexually
approaches his wife, while a woman, on her side, is
granted compensation in the case of a breach of promise
of marriage. If we seek to find how this condition
has arisen we must look backwards into the past.
To the fine legacy left by the Roman law (which, regarding
marriage as a contract, placed the two sexes in a
position of equal freedom) was added the customs of
the barbarians and the base Jewish system, giving to
the husband rights in marriage and divorce denied
to the wife. Later, in the twelfth century, came
the capture of marriage by the Church and the establishment
of Canon law, whereby the property-value of marriage
became inextricably mingled with the sanctification
of marriage as a sacrament, which, strengthened by
Christian asceticism and the glorification of virginity,
involved a corresponding contempt cast on all love
outside of legal marriage. The action of this
double standard of sexual morality has led on the
one side to the setting-up of a theoretical ideal,
which, as few are able to follow it, tends to become
an empty form, and this, on the other side, leads to
a hidden laxity that rushes to waste love out to a
swift finish. The puritan view has left us an
inheritance of denials. It is small wonder, under
such circumstances, that marriage is often immoral,
so often ending in repulsion and weariness. “Our
sexual morality,” it has been said with fine
truth by Havelock Ellis, “is in reality a bastard
born of the union of property-morality with primitive
ascetic morality, neither in true relationship to
the vital facts of life.”
It may, indeed, be doubted if apart
from property considerations we have left any sexual
morality at all. How else were it possible for
marriage (which, if it is to fulfil its moral biological
ends, must be based on physical and mental affinity
and fitness) to be contracted, as it often is, without
knowledge or any true care of these essential factors,
and, moreover, to guarantee a permanence of a relationship
thus entered into blindly. At least it should
be considered necessary that a certificate of the
health of the partners be obtained before marriage.
What is required to ensure our individual life ought
to be demanded before we create new life. Here,
as I believe, is one direction in which the State
should take action. Parentage on the part of
degenerate human beings is a crime, and as such it
ought to be prevented. It may be, and is, argued
that any action of the State in this direction entails
an interference with the rights of the individual.
Just the same may be said of all laws. The man
who wishes to steal or to kill either another or himself
may, with equal reason, hold that it is an interference
of the law that he is not permitted to follow his
inclinations in these matters. The sins that he
may wish to commit are assuredly less evil in their
results than the sin of irresponsible parentage.
You see what I mean. For if this unceasing crime
against the unborn could somehow be stopped there would
be so great a reduction of all other sins that we
might well be freed from many laws. As an example
I would refer the reader back to the wise Spartans,
to consider how great was the gain to them as individuals
by their strict and unceasing care for the welfare
of the race.
There are many who attribute to mammon-marriages
all the terrible evils of our disordered love-life
of to-day. It is, therefore, well to remember
that such conditions are not really a new thing, and
cannot be regarded as the result of our commercialised
civilisation. The intrusion of economics into
marriage is of very ancient origin, and may be found
among peoples who are almost primitive. But there
is this important difference. In earlier and
more vigorous societies such property-based marriages
occur side by side with other forms of sexual associations,
on a more natural basis, which are openly accepted
and honoured. Our marriage system by its rigorous
exclusions closes this way of escape. Morality
may be outraged to any extent provided that law and
religion have been invoked in legal marriage.
Let me give my readers two cases from
my own experience; facts speak more forcibly than
any mere statements of opinion. In a village that
I know well a woman, legally married, bore five idiot
children one after the other; her husband was a confirmed
drinker and a mental degenerate. One of the children
fortunately died. The text that was chosen as
fitting for his funeral card was, “Of such is
the kingdom of heaven.” About the same
time in the same village a girl gave birth to an illegitimate
child. She was a beautiful girl; the father, who
did not live in the village, was strong and young;
probably the child would have been healthy. But
the girl was sent from her situation and, later, was
driven from her home by her father. At the last
she sought refuge in a disused quarry, and she was
there for two days without food. When we found
her her child had been born and was dead. Afterwards
the girl went mad. I will add no comment, except
to record my belief that under a saner social organisation
such crimes against love would be impossible.
As was said years ago by the wise
Senancour, “The human race would gain much if
virtue were made less laborious.” Let us
view these large questions in the light of their results
to the individual and the race. This practical
morality will serve us better than any traditional
code. So only shall we learn to see if we cannot
rid love of stress and pain that is unendurable.
We force women and men into rebellion, into fearing
concealments, and the dark and furtive ways of vice.
For this reason we must, I believe, make the regulations
of law as wide as possible, taking care only that
mothers and all children must be safeguarded, whether
in legal marriage or outside. All of which forces
the conclusion: the same act of love cannot be
good or bad just because it is performed in or out
of marriage. To hold such an opinion is really
as absurd as saying that food is more or less digestible
according to whether grace is, or is not, said before
the meal. All marriage forms are only matters
of custom and expediency.
In face of the iniquity of our bastardy
laws we may well pause to doubt the traditional ideas
of our sexual code and conventional morality.
It seems to me that in these questions of sex we have
receded further and further from the reality of things,
and become blinded and baffled by the very idols to
love that men have set up. One thing renders
love altogether and incurably wrong, and that is waste.
The terribly high death-rate among illegitimate children
alone suffices to illustrate the actual conditions,
to say nothing of the greater waste often carried
on in those children who live. The question of
the maintenance of such unfathered children is a scandal
of our time. We may surely claim that the birth
of any child, without exception, must be preceded
by some form of contract which, though not necessarily
binding the mother and the father to each other, will
place on both alike the obligation of adequate fulfilment
of the duties to their child. This, I believe,
the State must enforce. If inability on the part
of the parents to make such provision is proved, the
State must step in with some wide and fitting scheme
of insurance of childhood. The carrying out of
even these simple demands will lead us a great step
forward in practical morality. It will open up
the way to a saner and more beautiful future.
But here, in case I am mistaken and
thought to be desiring the loosening of the bonds
between the sexes, I must repeat again how firmly
I accept marriage as the best, the happiest, and the
most practical form of the sexual association.
The ideal union is, I am certain, an indestructible
bond, trebly woven of inclination, duty, and convenience.
Marriage is an institution older than any existing
society, older than mankind, and reaches back, as Fabre’s
study of insects has so beautifully shown us, to an
infinitely remote past. Its forms are, therefore,
too fundamentally blended with human and, further
back, with animal society for them to be shaken with
theories, or even the practices of individuals or
groups of individuals. Thus I accept marriage:
I believe that its form must be regulated and cannot
be left to the development of individual desires against
the needs of the race.
There are some who, in seeking liberation
from the ignominious conditions of our present amatory
life, are wishing to rid marriage from all legal bonds,
and are pointing to Free-love as the way of escape.
To me this seems a very great mistake. I admit
the splendid imaginative appeal in the idea of Love’s
freedom as it is put forward, for instance, by the
great Swedish feminist, Ellen Key; I am unable to
accept it as practical morality. This, I believe,
should be the only sound basis for reform. The
real question is not what people ought to do,
but what they actually do and are likely to
go on doing. It is these facts that the idealist
fails to face. Love is a very mixed game indeed.
And all that the wisest reformer has ever been able
to do is to make bad guesses at the solution of its
problems.
The fundamental principle of the new
ideal morality is that love and marriage must always
coincide, and, therefore, when love ceases the bond
should be broken. This in theory is, of course,
right. I doubt if it is, or ever will be, possible
in practice. Experience has forced the knowledge
that the most passionate love is often the most likely
to end in disaster. Nor do I think that the evil
is much lessened when no legal bond is entered into.
Those few people who have made a success of Free-love
would probably have made an equal success of marriage.
I know personally several cases in which the same woman,
and many in which the same man, has tried in succession
legal marriage and free unions and has been equally
unhappy in both.
All the facts seem to me to point
in another direction for reform. I do not think
that life’s great central purpose of carrying
on the race (not alone giving birth to fit children,
but the equally necessary work of both parents uniting
in caring for and bringing them up) can be left safely
to be confused and wasted by its dependence on the
gratification of personal desires. I wish that
I thought otherwise. It would make it all so
much easier. It is useless to point back here
to the action of love’s selection in the past
history of life. As civilisation progresses,
and as individual needs become elaborated and wealth
increases, we tend to get further and further away
from the realities of love. We choose our partners
without understanding, and think very little of the
needs of the future. What I want is to free marriage
from those bonds that can be proved to act against
practical morality. I do not wish at all to lessen
its binding, only to defend it against the conventions
of a false and narrow traditional morality. In
love, as in every human relationship, it is character
that avails and prevails-nothing else.
Marriage is, or ought to be, the most practically
moral institution that any civilisation is able to
produce. Women and men are likely to get out of
any form of the sexual association results in proportion
to that which they put into it. A great many
people put nothing into marriage, and they are disappointed
when they get out of it-nothing. We
shall put more into marriage, and not less, in proportion
as we come to understand it and to value its enduring
importance.
After all it is the people of any
race who make marriage, not marriage the people.
The form of union is but a symbol of the people’s
character, their desires, and capacities. If we
have evolved the wrong women and men, then any reform
of marriage is vain. Have we in our weakened
civilisation drifted so far from life that the inherent
attributes of loyalty and discipline to the future
are no longer with us in sufficient measure adequately
to respond to the enduring realities of love?
The answer is with women. We must demand from
the fathers of our children, as we demand from ourselves,
loyalty to the well-being of the race; the discipline
of our personal desires and loves that we may maintain
ourselves fit as the bearers and protectors of those
wider interests, which belong not to ourselves, not
to this generation alone, but to the life and the
future history of our race. Woman must again
assert, as she did in the past, that she is the maker
of men. She must reclaim her right, held by the
female from the beginning of life, as the director
of love’s selective power. And more even
than this. Woman with man must be the framer of
the law, and the guide and director of all the relations
of the sexes. But it is not sufficient to do
this by mere proclamation. Virile nations are
not made by theories or by the blast of the trumpet.
They are reared in the bonds of marriage, and what
we incorporate in that bond will be manifest in our
children.
II.-Divorce
“The result of dissolving the
formal stringency of the marriage relationship,
it is sometimes said, would be a tendency to an immoral
laxity. Those who make this statement overlook
the fact that laxity tends to reach a maximum
as the result of stringency, and that where the
merely external authority of a rigid marriage
law prevails then the extreme excesses of licence
must flourish. It is also undoubtedly true,
and for the same reason, that any sudden removal
of restraints necessarily involves a reaction
to the opposite extreme of licence. A slave is
not changed in a stroke into an autonomous free man.”-HAVELOCK
ELLIS.
In putting forward a practical morality
for marriage we have to remember that we are not really
uprooting traditional morality. There is no necessity.
Of its own decay the old morality has fallen in a
confusion of ruin. The ideal marriage is the union
of one woman with one man for life. This we have
established. We have now to look at the question
from another side and ask, How far is this ideal monogamy
possible in practice? I think the answer must
be that, as we stand at present, it is possible to
very few. For marriage is essentially a state
of bondage-there is no getting away from
this-a state which calls upon the individual
to surrender his personal freedom in the interests
of the race and the stability of social structure.
I have proved that this bondage acts really for the
benefit and happiness of the individual, but this
deep truth I must now leave. Marriage is, thus,
a concession of the individual to the general welfare
of the future and of the State. Now, with human
nature as it is in its present development, it is
clearly claiming the impossible to demand indissoluble
marriage. Divorce is really implicit in the conditions
of marriage itself, and the firmest believers in monogamy
must be the supporters of practical and moral conditions
of divorce.
The moral code of any society represents
the experience of its members. But experience
is continually changing and enlarging, and moral codes
must also change and enlarge, or they become worn-out
and useless. Those people who are unable to modify
their moral code to fit new conditions and growth
are doomed to extinction, while the people who adjust
their customs and laws to meet new requirements open
up the way to move on, and still onwards, in continual
progress.
It were well to remember this as we
come to question the conditions of our law of divorce.
There can be no possible doubt that if marriage is
to remain and become moral there must be an easier
dissolution of its bonds. The enforced continuance
of an unreal marriage is really the grossest form
of immorality, harmful not only to the individuals
concerned, but to the children. The prejudices
handed down to us by past tradition have twisted morals
into an assertion that a husband or wife who have
ceased to love must continue to share the rites of
marriage in mutual repugnance, or live in an unnatural
celibacy.
The question as to how this condition
arose may be answered very briefly. The Church
ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this
being found impossible to maintain in practice, the
State stepped in with a way of escape-a
kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift
it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent!
Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation
of an unworthy partner another partner must first
be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity.
Adultery is, in fact, a State-endowed offence against
morality, just as the indissolubility of marriage is
a theological perversion of the plainest moral law,
that the true relationship between the sexes is founded
on love. This bastard-born morality of Church
and State is as immoral in theory as it is evil in
practice.
For if we look deeper it becomes clear
that the test to be applied here is the same as in
every relation between the sexes: the conditions
of divorce, like the conditions of marriage, must be
such as best serve the interests of the race.
This means, in the first place, that both partners
in a marriage must have the assurance that when the
moral conditions of the contract are broken, or through
any reason become inefficient, they can be liberated,
without any shame or idea of delinquency being attached
to the dissolution. “Divorce is relief
from misfortune and not a crime,” to quote from
the admirable statute-book of Norway, a saying which
should be one of universal application in divorce.
This must be done not merely as an act of justice
to the individual; it is called for equally in the
interests of the race. The woman or man from
whom a divorce ought to be obtained is in almost all
cases the woman or man who ought not to be a parent.
We may go further than this. Divorce cannot be
considered on the physical side alone, there is a
psychological divorce which is far deeper, and also
far more frequent. The woman or man who for any
reason is unhappy in marriage is unfitted to be a parent
in that marriage, and the way should be opened to
them, if they desire, to have other children born
in love in a new marriage with a more fitting mate.
Our eyes are shut to the damning facts which confront
us on every side. Take, for instance, the case
of the drunkard, the insane, the syphilitic, the consumptive,
parent bound in marriage. On biological and economic
grounds it is folly to leave in such hands the protection
of the race. It is the business of the State,
as I believe, to regulate the law to prevent, as far
as possible, the birth of unfit children; at least
we may demand that Church and State cease to grant
their sanction to this flagrant sin.
It is of the utmost importance to
realise that Divorce Law Reform is needed to bring
our jurisprudence up to the level of the modern civilised
State. Our law in this respect lags far behind
that of other countries, and is only one example out
of many of our hide-bound attachment to ancient abuses.
The opposition shown against the splendid and fearless
recommendations for the extension of the grounds of
divorce, voiced by the Majority Report in the recent
Divorce Law Commission, prove how far we are still
from understanding the higher morality of marriage.
The recent Commission and the strong movement in favour
of reform will, without doubt, lead to a change in
the glaring injustice and inconsistencies of our law.
It is, however, certain that an enlightened divorce
law must go much further than providing ways of escape
from marriage. Such exits tend to destroy the
true sanctity of marriage; also they are unable to
meet the needs of all classes, no matter how wide
and numerous they are. They can never form the
ultimate solution. They tend to make marriage
ridiculous, and there are real grounds in the objections
raised against them. There must be no special
exits; the door of marriage itself must be left open
to go out of as it is open to enter. This will
come. When personal responsibility in marriage
is developed, when all the relationships of sexes
are founded on the recognition of the equality of the
mother with the father-the woman with the
man, then will come divorce by mutual consent.
Whenever divorce is difficult, there
woman’s lot is hard and her position low.
It is a part of the patriarchal custom which regards
women as property. It would be easy to prove this
by the history of marriage in the civilisations of
the past, as also by an examination of the present
divorce laws in civilised countries. I cannot
do this, but I make the assertion without the least
shadow of doubt. I would point back in proof
to the Egyptian and Babylonian divorce law, and to
the splendid development of Roman Law in this direction.
Consent is accepted as necessary to marriage; it should
be the condition of divorce. This, I believe,
is the only solution which women will be content to
accept, when once they are awakened to their responsibilities
in marriage. And here I would quote the wise dictum
of Mr. Cunninghame Graham: “Divorce is the
charter of Woman’s Freedom”.
The condemnation of divorce and the
pillorying of divorced persons are not really the
outcome of any concern for true morality, though most
people deceive themselves that they are. They
are predominantly the outcome of ignorance, of prejudices
and false values, based, on the one hand, on the primitive
patriarchal view of the wife (hence the insistence
on woman’s chastity and the inequality of the
law), and, on the other, on the ecclesiastical doctrine
of the indissolubility of marriage and the sin of
all relationships outside its bonds. It is only
when we realise how deeply and terribly these worn-out
views have saturated and falsified our judgments that
we come to understand the barbarism of our present
laws of divorce.
It is significant that those who talk
most of the sanctity of marriage are the very people
who fear most the extension of divorce, seeming to
believe that any loosening of its chains would lead
to a dissolution of the institution of marriage.
One marvels at the weakness of faith shown in such
a view. It is not possible to hold the argument
both ways. If the partners in marriage are happy,
why lock them in? if not, why pretend that they are?
The best argument I ever heard for divorce was a remark
made to me in a conversation with a working man.
He said, “When two people are fighting it is
not very safe to lock the door”. After
all, what you do is this: you give occasion for
the locks to be broken.
I have already spoken of loyalty and
duty in relation to marriage, and nothing that I say
now must be thought to lessen at all my deep belief
in the personal responsibility of the individual in
every relationship of the sexes. Living together
even after the death of love may, indeed, be right
if this is done in the interests of the children.
But it can never be right to compel such action by
law. For then in ninety-nine cases out of every
hundred what is regarded as duty is really a question
of expediency. It is very easy to deceive ourselves.
And it requires more courage than most people possess
to face the fact that what has perhaps been a happy
and fruitful marriage has died a slow and bitter death.
But the higher morality claims that a child must be
born in love and reared in love, or, at the lowest,
in an atmosphere from which all enmity is absent.
Only the parent who is strong enough to subordinate
the individual right to the rights of the child can
safely remain in a marriage without love.
One great advantage of free divorce
is that the wife and husband would not part, as is
almost inevitable under present conditions, in hatred,
but in friendship. This would enable them to meet
one another from time to time and unite together in
care of any children of the marriage. If such
reasonable conduct was for any reason impossible on
the part of either or both parents, then the State
must appoint a guardian to fill the place of one parent
or both. No child should be brought up without
a mother and a father. The adoption of children
under the State might in this way open up fruitful
opportunities whereby childless women and men might
gain the joys of parenthood.
This condition of safety by free-divorce
once established, would do much to mitigate the hostility
against marriage which is so unfortunately prevalent
among us to-day. Practical morality is teaching
us the immorality of indissoluble marriage. In
Spain, a country that I know well, where marriage
is indissoluble, an increasing number of men-and
these the best and most thoughtful-are
refraining from marriage for this very reason.
It follows, as a result, that in Spain the illegitimate
birth-rate is very high. The difficulty of divorce
is also a strong factor that upholds prostitution.
Many women and men of exceptional
gifts and character, conscious of an increasing intolerance
against the makeshift morality imposed upon our sexual
life, are standing outside of marriage and evading
parentage. For this waste we are responsible
to the future. Thus, finally, we find this truth:
the principle of divorce reform forms the most practical
foundation-and one waiting ready to our
hands-for the reformation of marriage and
the re-establishment of its sanctity. It also
has direct and urgent bearing on many of the problems
of womanhood.
III.-Prostitution
“Nought so vile that
on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special
good doth give;
Nor nought so good but strained
from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling
on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice being
misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action
dignified.”-Romeo and Juliet.
“In nature there’s
no blemish but the mind,
None can be called deformed
but the unkind.”-Twelfth Night.
A brief and final section of this
chapter on the sexual relationships must be devoted
to the question of the conditions of prostitution,
which are really part of the conditions of marriage,
being correlated with that institution in its present
coercive form, in fact, part of it and growing out
of it.
The extent of the problems involved
here are so immense, the difficulties so great and
the issues so involved that I hesitate at making any
attempt to treat so wide a subject briefly and necessarily
inadequately in the short space at my disposal.
Yet it seems to me impossible to take the easy way
and pass it over in silence, and I may be able to
contribute a word or two of worth to this very complex
social phenomenon. I shall limit myself to the
aspects of the question that seem to me important,
choosing in preference the facts about which I have
some little personal knowledge.
Essentially this is a woman’s
question. What do women know about it? Almost
nothing. We are really as ignorant of the character,
moral, mental and physical of “the fallen woman,”
as if she belonged to an extinct species. We
know her only to pity her or to despise her, which
is, in result, to know nothing that is true about her.
To deal with the problem needs women and men of the
finest character and the widest sympathy. There
are some of them at work now, but these, for the most
part, are engaged in the almost impossible task of
rescue work, which does not bring, I think, a real
understanding of the facts in their wider social aspect.
Women are, however, realising that
they cannot continue to shirk this part of their civic
duties. These “painted tragedies”
of our streets have got to be recognised and dealt
with; and this not so much for the sake of the prostitute,
but for all women’s safety and the health of
the race. The time is not far distant when the
mothers of the community, the sheltered wives of respectable
homes, must come to understand that their own position
of moral safety is maintained at the expense of a
traffic whose very name they will not mention.
For the prostitute, though unable to avenge herself,
has had a mighty ally in Nature, who has taken her
case in hand and has avenged it on the women and their
children, who have received the benefits of our legal
marriage system. M. Brieux deals with this question
in Les Avaries: it is a tragedy that should
be read by all women.
For this reason, if for no other,
the existence of prostitution has to be faced by women.
Apathy and ignorance will no longer be accepted as
excuse, in the light of the sins against the race slowly
piled up through the centuries by vice and disease.
But what will be the result of women’s action
in this matter? What will they do? What changes
in the law will they demand? The importance of
these questions forces itself upon all those who realise
at all the difficulties of the problem. What
we see and hear does not, I think, give great hopes.
Every woman who dares to speak on this great burked
subject seems to have “a remedy” ready
to her hand. What one hears most frequently are
unconsidered denunciations of “the men who are
responsible.” For example, I heard one
woman of education state publicly that there was
no problem of prostitution! I mention this because
it seems to me a very grave danger, an instance of
the feminine over-haste in reform, which, while casting
out one devil, but prepares the way for seven other
devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect
to solve problems that have vexed civilisation since
the beginnings of society. This attitude is a
little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to
grapple with prostitution has been a failure.
Women have to remember that it has existed as an institution
in nearly all historic times and among nearly all
races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage,
and maybe the result of that form of the sexual relationship,
and not, as some have held, a survival of primitive
sexual licence. The action of women in this question
must be based on an educated opinion, which is cognisant
with the past history of prostitution, recognises the
facts of its action to-day in all civilised countries,
and understands the complexity of the problem from
the man’s side as well as the woman’s.
Nothing less than this is necessary if any fruitful
change is to be effected, when women shall come to
have a voice to direct the action the State should
assume towards this matter. The one measure which
has recently been brought forward and passed, largely
aided by women, especially the militant Suffragists-I
refer to the White Slave Traffic Bill-is
just the most useless, ill-devised and really preposterous
law with which this tremendous problem could be mocked.
As Bernard Shaw has recently said-
“The act is the final triumph
of the vice it pretends to repress. There
is one remedy and one alone, for the White Slave Traffic.
Make it impossible, by the enactment of a Minimum Wage
law and by the proper provision of the unemployed,
for any woman to be forced to choose between prostitution
and penury, and the White Slaver will have no
more power over the daughters of labourers, artisans
and clerks than he (or under the New Act she)
will have over the wives of Bishops.”
Now all this is true, but is not all
the truth. Remove the economic pressure and no
woman will be driven, or be likely to be trapped, into
entering the oldest profession in the world; but this
does not say that she will not enter it.
The establishment of a minimum wage will assuredly
lighten the evil, but it will not end prostitution.
The economic factor is by no means the only factor.
It is quite true that poverty drives many women into
the profession-that this should be so is
one of the social crimes that must, and will, be remedied.
The real problem lies deeper than
this. Want is not the incentive to the traffic
of sex in the case of the dancer or chorus girl in
regular employment, of the forewoman in a factory
or shop who earns steady wages, or among numerous
women belonging to much higher social positions.
These women choose prostitution, they are not driven
into it. It is necessary to insist upon this.
The belief in the efficacy of economic reform amounts
almost to a disease-a kind of unquestioning
fanatical faith. Again and again I have been met
by the assurance, made by men who should know better,
as well as by women, that no woman would sell herself
if economic causes were removed. Such opinion
proves a very plain ignorance of the history and facts
of prostitution. It is only a little more scientific
than the view of the woman moral crusader, who believes
that the “social evil” can easily be remedied
by self-control on the part of men. One of the
worst vices common to women at present is spiritual
pride. One wonders if these short-cut reformers
have ever been acquainted with a single member of
this class they hope to repress by legal enactments
or other measures, such as early marriage, better
wages for women, moral education, the censorship of
amusements, and so forth. It is not so simple.
You see, what is needed is an understanding of the
conditions, not from the reformer’s standard
of thought, but from that of the prostitute, which
is a very different matter. How can any one hope
to reform a class whose real lives, thoughts, and
desires are unknown to them?
My effort to reach bed-rock facts
had led me to seek first-hand information from these
women, many of whom I have come to know intimately,
and to like. I have learnt a great deal, much
more than from all my close study of the problem as
it is presented in books. Problems are never
so simple in the working out as they appear in theories.
Moral doctrines fall to pieces; even statistics and
the estimates of expert investigators are apt to become
curiously unreal in the light of a very little practical
knowledge. I have learnt that there is no one
type of prostitute, no one cause of the evil, no one
remedy that will cure it.
And here, before I go further, I must
in fairness state that I have been compelled to give
up the view held by me, in common with most women,
that men and their uncontrolled passions are chiefly
responsible for this hideous traffic. It is so
comfortable to place the sins of society on men’s
passions. But as an unbiassed inquirer I have
learnt that seduction as a cause of prostitution requires
very careful examination. We women have got to
remember that if many of our fallen sisters have been
seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have
received their sexual initiation at the hands of our
sex. This seduction of men by women is often
the starting-point of a young man’s association
with courtesans. It is time to assert that, if
women suffer through men’s passion, men suffer
no less from women’s greed. I am inclined
to accept the estimate of Lippert (Prostitution
in Hamburg) that the principal motives to prostitution
are “idleness, frivolity, and, above all, the
love of finery.” This last is, as I believe,
a far more frequent and stronger factor in determining
towards prostitution than actual want, and one, moreover,
that is very deeply rooted in the feminine character.
I do not wish to be cynical, but facts have forced
on me the belief that the majority of prostitutes
are simply doing for money what they originally did
of their own will for excitement and the gain
of some small personal gift.
There are, of course, many types among
these unclassed women, as many as there are in any
other class, probably even more. Yet, in one
respect, I have found them curiously alike. Just
as the members of any other trade have a special attitude
towards their work, so prostitutes have, I think,
a particular way of viewing their trade in sex.
It is a mistake of sentiment to believe they have
any real dislike to this traffic. Such distaste
is felt by the unsuccessful and by others in periods
of unprofitable business, but not, I think, otherwise.
To me it has seemed in talking with them-as
I have done very freely-that they regard
the sexual embraces of their partners exactly in the
light that I regard the process of the actual writing
down of my books-as something, in itself
unimportant and tiresome, but necessary to the end
to be gained. This was first made clear to me
in a conversation with a member of the higher demi-monde,
a woman of education and considerable character.
“After all,” she said, “it is really
a very small thing to do, and gives one very little
trouble, and men are almost always generous.”
This remarkable statement seems to
me representative of the attitude of most prostitutes.
They are much better paid, if at all successful, than
they ever could be as workers. The sale of their
sex opens up to them the same opportunities of gain
that gambling on the stock-exchange or betting on
the racecourse, for instance, opens up to men.
It also offers the same joy of excitement, undoubtedly
a very important factor. There are a considerable
number of women who are drawn to and kept in the profession,
not through necessity, but through neurosis.
There is no doubt that prostitution
is very profitable to the clever trader. I was
informed by one woman, for instance, that a certain
country, whose name I had perhaps better withhold,
“Is a Paradise for women.” Quite
a considerable fortune, either in money or jewels,
may be reaped in a few months and sometimes in a few
weeks. But the woman must keep her head; cleverness
is more important even than beauty. I learnt
that it was considered foolish to remain with the same
partner for more than two nights, the oftener a change
was made the greater the chance of gain. The
richest presents are given as a rule by young boys
or old men: some of these boys are as young as
fifteen years.
Now the really extraordinary thing
to me was that my informant had plainly no idea of
my moral sensibility being shocked at these statements.
Of course, if I had shown the least surprise or condemnation,
she would at once have agreed with me-but
I didn’t. I was trying to see things as
she saw them, and my interest caused her really to
speak to me as she felt. I am certain of this,
as was proved to me in a subsequent conversation,
in which I was told the history of a girl friend,
who had got into difficulties and been helped by my
informant. (These women are almost always kind and
generous to one another. I know of one case in
which a woman who had been trapped into a bogus marriage
and then deserted, afterwards helped with money the
girl and bastard child, also left by the man who had
deceived her.) The story was ended with this extraordinary
remark, “It was all my friend’s own
fault, she was not particular who she went with; she
would go with any man just because she took a fancy
to him. I often told her how foolish she was,
but she always said she could not help it.”
It was then that I realised the immensity
of the gulf which separated my outlook from that of
this successful courtesan. To her to be not
particular was to give oneself without a due return
in money: to me ! Well, I
needed all my control at that moment not to let her
see what I felt. I have never been conscious of
so deep a pity for any woman before, or felt so fierce
an anger against social conditions that made this
degradation of love possible. For, mark you, I
know this woman well, have known her for years, and
I can, and do, testify that in many directions apart
from her trade, her virtue, her refinement and her
character are equal, even if not superior, to my own.
This is the greatest lesson I have learnt. The
degradation of prostitution rests not with these women,
but on us, the sheltered, happy women who have been
content to ignore or despise them. Do you come
to know these women (and this is very difficult) you
are just as able to like them and in many ways to
respect them, as you are to like and to respect any
“straight” woman. You may hate their
trade, you cannot justly hate them.
I would like here to bring forward
as a chief cause of prostitution a factor which, though
mentioned by many investigators, has not, I think,
been sufficiently recognised. To me it has been
brought very forcibly home by my personal investigations.
I mean sexual frigidity. This is surely the clearest
explanation of the moral insensibility of the prostitute.
I have not enough knowledge to say whether this is
a natural condition, or whether it is acquired.
I am certain, however, that it is present in those
courtesans whom I have known. These women have
never experienced passion. I believe that the
traffic of love’s supreme rite means less to
them than it would do to me to shake hands with a
man I disliked.
Now, if I am right, this fact will
explain a great deal. I believe, moreover, that
here a way opens out whereby in the future prostitution
may be remedied. This is no fanciful statement,
but a practical belief in passion as a power containing
all forces. To any one who shares the faith I
have been developing in this book, what I mean will
be evident. If we consider how large a factor
physical sex is in the life of woman, it becomes clear
that any atrophy of these instincts must be in the
highest degree hurtful. Moral insensibility is
almost always combined with economic dependence.
If all mating was founded, as it ought to be, on love,
and all children born from lovers, there would follow
as an inevitable result a truer insistence on reality
in the relationships of the sexes. With a strengthening
of passion in the mothers of the race, sex will return
to its right and powerful purpose; love of all types,
from the merest physical to the highest soul attraction,
will be brought back to its true biological end-the
service of the future.
I know, of course, as I have said
already, that, just as there are many different forms
of prostitution, there are many and varied types of
prostitutes, and that, therefore, it is foolishness
to hold fast in a one-sided manner to a single theory.
There are undoubtedly voluptuous women among prostitutes.
These I have not considered. For one thing I
have not met them. I have preferred to speak of
the women I have known personally. In the light
of what I have learnt from them, I have come to believe
that only in comparatively few cases does sexual desire
lead any woman to adopt a career of prostitution, and
in still fewer cases does passion persist. The
insistence so often made on this factor as a cause
of prostitution is due, in part, to ignorance as to
the real feelings of these women, and also, in part,
to its moral plausibility. We are so afraid of
normal passion that we readily assume abnormal passion
to be the cause of the evil. But far truer causes
on the women’s side are love of luxury and dislike
of work. I think the estimates given by men on
this subject have to be accepted with great caution.
It must be remembered that it is the business of these
women to excite passion, and, to do this, they must
have learnt to simulate passion; and men, as every
woman who is not ignorant or a fool knows, are easy
to deceive. It may also be added that to the
woman of strong sexuality the career of prostitution
is suited. It is possible that in the future
and under wiser conditions such women only will choose
this profession.
For the same reason I have passed
very lightly over the economic factor as a cause of
prostitution. I believe that this will be changed.
I do not under-estimate the undoubted importance of
the driving pressure of want. But, as I have
tried to make clear, it does not take us to the root
of the problem. Poverty can only be regarded
as probably the strongest out of many accessory causes.
The socialists and economic apostles have to face
this: no possible raising of women’s wages
can abolish prostitution.
We must hold firmly to the fact that
characterlessness, which is incapable of overcoming
opposition and takes the path that is easiest, is
the result of the individual’s inherited disposition,
with the addition of his, or her, own experience;
and of these it is the former that, as a rule, determines
to prostitution. Every kind of moral and intellectual
looseness and dullness can, for the most part, be traced
to this cause. At all events it is the strongest
among many. Not alone for the prostitute’s
sake must this subject be seriously approached, but
for society’s sake as well. As things stand
with us at present, moral sensitiveness has a poor
chance of being cultivated, and those who realise
that this is the case are still very few. Women
have yet to learn the responsibilities of love, not
only in regard to their duties of child-bearing and
child-rearing, but in its personal bearing on their
own sexual needs and the needs of men. I believe
that the degradation of our legitimate love-relationships
is the ultimate cause of prostitution, to which all
other causes are subsidiary.
If we look now at the position for
a moment from the other side-the man’s
side-a very difficult question awaits us.
It is a question that women must answer. What
is the real need of the prostitute on the part of
men? This demand is present everywhere under civilisation;
what are its causes? and how far are these likely
to be changed? Now it is easy to bring forward
answers, such as the lateness of marriage, difficulty
of divorce, and all those social and economic causes
which may be grouped together and classed as “lack
of opportunity of legitimate love.” Without
question these causes are important, but, like the
economic factor which drives women into prostitution,
they are not fundamental; they are also remediable.
They do not, however, explain the fact, which all
know, that the prostitute is sought out by numberless
men who have ample opportunity of unpriced love with
other women. Here we have a preference for the
prostitute, not the acceptance of her as a substitute
taken of necessity. It is, of course, easy to
say that such preference is due to the lustful nature
of the male. There was a time when I accepted
this view-it is, without doubt, a pleasant
and a flattering one for women. I have learnt
the folly of such shallow condemnations of needs I
had not troubled to understand. Possibly no woman
can quite get to the truth here; but at least I have
tried to see facts straight and without feminine prejudice.
This is what seems to me to be the explanation.
We have got to recognise that there
are primitive instincts of tremendous power, which,
held in check by our dull and laborious, yet sexually-exciting,
civilisation, break out at times in many individuals
like a veritable monomania. In earlier civilisations
this fact was frankly recognised, and such instincts
were prevented from working mischief by the provision
of means wherein they might expend themselves.
Hence the widespread custom of festivals with the
accompanying orgy; but these channels have been closed
to us with a result that is often disastrous.
No woman can have failed to feel astonishment at the
attractive force the prostitute may, and often does,
exercise on cultured men of really fine character.
There is some deeper cause here than mere sexual necessity.
But if we accept, as we must, the existence of these
imperatively driving, though usually restrained impulses,
it will be readily seen that prostitution provides
a channel in which this surplus of wild energy may
be expended. It lightens the burden of the customary
restraints. There are many men, I believe, who
find it a relief just to talk with a prostitute-a
woman with whom they have no need to be on guard.
The prostitute fulfils that need that may arise in
even the most civilised man for something primitive
and strong: a need, as has been said by a male
writer, better than I can express it, “for woman
in herself, not woman with the thousand and one tricks
and whimsies of wives, mothers and daughters.”
This is a truth that it seems to me
it is very necessary for all women to realise.
It is in our foolishness and want of knowledge that
we cast our contempt upon men. Women flinch from
the facts of life. These women who, regarded
by us as “the supreme types of vice,” are
yet, from this point of view, “the most efficient
guardians of our virtue.” Must we not then
rather see if there is no cause in ourselves for blame?
It has been held for generations that
woman must practise principles of virtue to counteract
man’s example. This has led to an entirely
false standard. A solving compromise has been
found in the ideal of purity in one set of women and
passion in another. And this state of things
has continued indefinitely until it has become to some
extent true. Numberless women have withered in
this unprofitable service to chastity. The sexual
coldness of the modern woman, which sociologists continually
refer to, exists mainly in consequence of this constant
system of repression. Female virtue has been over-cultivated,
the flower has grown to an enormous size, but it has
lost its scent. A hypocritical and a lying system
has been set up professing disbelief in that which
it knows is necessary to the needs of the individual
woman and to the larger needs of the race. Physical
love is only inglorious when it is regarded ingloriously.
Why this horror of passion? The tragedy of woman
it seems is this, that with such power of love as
she has in her there should be so little opportunity
for its use-so much for its waste.
Those of us who believe in passion as the supreme
factor in race-building, must know that this view of
its shamefulness is weakening the race.
I, therefore, hold firmly as my belief
that the hateful traffic in love will flourish just
as long, and in proportion, as we regard passion outside
of prostitution with shame. Each one of us women
is responsible. Do we not know that there is
not this difference between our sexual needs and those
of men? Let us tear down the old pretence.
Do not instincts arise in us, too, that demand expression,
free from all coercion of convention? And if
we stifle them are we really the better-the
more moral sex? I doubt this, as I have come to
doubt so many of the lies that have been accepted
as the truth about women.
The true hope of the future lies in
the undivided recognition of responsibility in love,
which alone can make freedom possible. Freedom
for all women-the women of the home and
the women of the streets. The prostitute woman
must be freed from all oppression. We, her sisters,
can demand no less than this. If we are to remain
sheltered, she must be sheltered too. She must
be freed from the oppression of absurd laws, from
the terrible oppression of the police and from all
economic and social oppression. But to make this
possible, these women, who for centuries have been
blasted for our sins against love, must be re-admitted
by women and men into the social life of our homes
and the State. Then, and then alone, can we have
any hope that the prostitute will cease to be and
the natural woman will take her place.