this volume, and it will again be necessary in the
last chapter.
The question as to the method by which the economic
independence of women
will be completely insured, and the part which the
community may be
expected to take in insuring it, on the ground of
woman's special
child-bearing functions, is from the present point of
view subsidiary.
There can be no doubt, however, as to the reality of the movement in that
direction, whatever doubt there may be as to the final adjustment of the
details. It is only necessary in this place to touch on some of the
general and more obvious respects in which the growth of woman's
responsibility is affecting sexual morality.
The first and most obvious way in which the sense of
moral responsibility
works is in an insistence on reality in the
relationships of sex. Moral
irresponsibility has too often combined with economic
dependence to induce
a woman to treat the sexual event in her life which is biologically of
most fateful gravity as a merely gay and trivial event, at the most an
event which has given her a triumph over her rivals and over the superior
male, who, on his part, willingly condescends, for the moment, to assume
the part of the vanquished. "Gallantry to the ladies,"
we are told of the
hero of the greatest and most typical of English novels,
"was among his
principles of honor, and he held it as much incumbent on him to accept a
challenge to love as if it had been a challenge to
fight;" he heroically
goes home for the night with a lady of title he meets at a masquerade,
though at the time very much in love with the girl whom he eventually
marries.[303] The woman whose power lies only in her
charms, and who is
free to allow the burden of responsibility to fall on a man's
shoulder,[304] could lightly play the seducing part, and thereby exert
independence and authority in the only shapes open to
her. The man on his
part, introducing the misplaced idea of "honor" into the field from which
the natural idea of responsibility has been banished, is prepared to
descend at the lady's bidding into the arena, according to the old legend,
and rescue the glove, even though he afterwards flings it contemptuously
in her face. The ancient conception of gallantry, which Tom Jones so well
embodies, is the direct outcome of a system involving
the moral
irresponsibility and economic dependence of women, and is as opposed to
the conceptions, prevailing in the earlier and later
civilized stages, of
approximate sexual equality as it is to the biological traditions of
natural courtship in the world generally.
In controlling her own sexual life, and in realizing
that her
responsibility for such control can no longer be shifted on to the
shoulders of the other sex, women will also indirectly affect the sexual
lives of men, much as men already affect the sexual
lives of women. In
what ways that influence will in the main be exerted it is still premature
to say. According to some, just as formerly men bought their wives and
demanded prenuptial virginity in the article thus
purchased, so nowadays,
among the better classes, women are able to buy their
husbands, and in
their turn are disposed to demand continence.[305] That, however, is too
simple-minded a way of viewing the question. It is
enough to refer to the
fact that women are not attracted to virginal innocence in men and that
they frequently have good ground for viewing such
innocence with
suspicion.[306] Yet it may well be believed that women will more and more
prefer to exert a certain discrimination in the approval of their
husbands' past lives. However instinctively a woman may desire that her
husband shall be initiated in the art of making love to her, she may often
well doubt whether the finest initiation is to be
secured from the average
prostitute. Prostitution, as we have seen, is ultimately as incompatible
with complete sexual responsibility as is the
patriarchal marriage system
with which it has been so closely associated. It is an arrangement mainly
determined by the demands of men, to whatever extent it may have
incidentally subserved various needs of women. Men
arranged that one group
of women should be set apart to minister exclusively to their sexual
necessities, while another group should be brought up in asceticism as
candidates for the privilege of ministering to their
household and family
necessities. That this has been in many respects a most excellent
arrangement is sufficiently proved by the fact that it has nourished for
so long a period, notwithstanding the influences that
are antagonistic to
it. But it is obviously only possible during a certain stage of
civilization and in association with a certain social
organization. It is
not completely congruous with a democratic stage of
civilization involving
the economic independence and the sexual responsibility of both sexes
alike in all social classes. It is possible that women may begin to
realize this fact earlier than men.
It is also believed by many that women will realize that a high degree of
moral responsibility is not easily compatible with the practice of
dissimulation and that economic independence will
deprive deceit--which is
always the resort of the weak--of whatever moral
justification it may
possess. Here, however, it is necessary to speak with
caution or we may be
unjust to women. It must be remarked that in the sphere of sex men also
are often the weak, and are therefore apt to resort to the refuge of the
weak. With the recognition of that fact we may also
recognize that
deception in women has been the cause of much of the
age-long blunders of
the masculine mind in the contemplation of feminine
ways. Men have
constantly committed the double error of overlooking the dissimulation of
women and of over-estimating it. This fact has always
served to render
more difficult still the inevitably difficult course of women through the
devious path of sexual behavior. Pepys, who represents so vividly and so
frankly the vices and virtues of the ordinary masculine mind, tells how
one day when he called to see Mrs. Martin her sister
Doll went out for a
bottle of wine and came back indignant because a
Dutchman had pulled her
into a stable and tumbled and tossed her. Pepys having been himself often
permitted to take liberties with her, it seemed to him that her
indignation with the Dutchman was "the best instance of woman's falseness
in the world."[307] He assumes without question that a woman who has
accorded the privilege of familiarity to a man she knows and, one hopes,
respects, would be prepared to accept complacently the brutal attentions
of the first drunken stranger she meets in the street.
It was the assumption of woman's falseness which led the ultra-masculine
Pepys into a sufficiently absurd error. At this point, indeed, we
encounter what has seemed to some a serious obstacle to the full moral
responsibility of women. Dissimulation, Lombroso and
Ferrero argue, is in
woman "almost physiological," and they give various grounds for this
conclusion.[308] The theologians, on their side, have
reached a similar
conclusion. "A confessor must not immediately believe a woman's words,"
says Father Gury, "for women are habitually inclined to lie."[309] This
tendency, which seems to be commonly believed to affect women as a sex,
however free from it a vast number of individual women are, may be said,
and with truth, to be largely the result of the
subjection of women and
therefore likely to disappear as that subjection
disappears. In so far,
however, as it is "almost physiological," and based on radical feminine
characters, such as modesty, affectability, and
sympathy, which have an
organic basis in the feminine constitution and can
therefore never
altogether be changed, feminine dissimulation seems
scarcely likely to
disappear. The utmost that can be expected is that it
should be held in
check by the developed sense of moral responsibility,
and, being reduced
to its simply natural proportions, become recognizably intelligible.
It is unnecessary to remark that there can be no
question here as
to any inherent moral superiority of one sex over
the other. The
answer to that question was well stated many years
ago by one of
the most subtle moralists of love. "Taken
altogether," concluded
Sénancour (_De l'Amour_, vol. ii, p. 85), "we have no reason to
assert the moral superiority of either sex. Both
sexes, with
their errors and their good intentions, very equally
fulfil the
ends of nature. We may well believe that in either
of the two
divisions of the human species the sum of evil and
that of good
are about equal. If, for instance, as regards love,
we oppose the
visibly licentious conduct of men to the apparent
reserve of
women, it would be a vain valuation, for the number
of faults
committed by women with men is necessarily the same
as that of
men with women. There exist among us fewer
scrupulous men than
perfectly honest women, but it is easy to see how
the balance is
restored. If this question of the moral preëminence
of one sex
over the other were not insoluble it would still
remain very
complicated with reference to the whole of the
species, or even
the whole of a nation, and any dispute here seems
idle."
This conclusion is in accordance with the general
compensatory
and complementary relationship of women to men (see,
e.g.,
Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition,
especially pp.
448 et seq.).
In a recent symposium on the question whether women
are morally
inferior to men, with special reference to aptitude
for loyalty
(_La Revue_, Jan. 1, 1909), to which various
distinguished French
men and women contributed their opinions, some
declared that
women are usually superior; others regarded it as a
question of
difference rather than of superiority or
inferiority; all were
agreed that when they enjoy the same independence as
men, women
are quite as loyal as men.
It is undoubtedly true that--partly as a result of
ancient traditions and
education, partly of genuine feminine characteristics--
many women are
diffident as to their right to moral responsibility and unwilling to
assume it. And an attempt is made to justify their
attitude by asserting
that woman's part in life is naturally that of self-
sacrifice, or, to put
the statement in a somewhat more technical form, that
women are naturally
masochistic; and that there is, as Krafft-Ebing argues, a natural "sexual
subjection" of woman. It is by no means clear that this statement is
absolutely true, and if it were true it would not serve to abolish the
moral responsibility of women.
Bloch (_Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia
Sexualis_, Part
II, p. 178), in agreement with Eulenburg,
energetically denies
that there is any such natural "sexual subjection"
of women,
regarding it as artificially produced, the result of
the socially
inferior position of women, and arguing that such
subjection is
in much higher degree a physiological characteristic
of men than
of women. (It has been necessary to discuss this
question in
dealing with "Love and Pain" in the third volume of these
_Studies_.) It seems certainly clear that the notion
that women
are especially prone to self-sacrifice has little
biological
validity. Self-sacrifice by compulsion, whether
physical or moral
compulsion, is not worthy of the name; when it is
deliberate it
is simply the sacrifice of a lesser good for the
sake of a
greater good. Doubtless a man who eats a good dinner
may be said
to "sacrifice" his hunger. Even within the sphere of traditional
morality a woman who sacrifices her "honor" for the sake of her
love to a man has, by her "sacrifice," gained something that she
values more. "What a triumph it is to a woman," a woman has said,
"to give pleasure to a man she loves!" And in a morality on a
sound biological basis no "sacrifice" is here called for. It may
rather be said that the biological laws of courtship
fundamentally demand self-sacrifice of the male
rather than of
the female. Thus the lioness, according to Gérard
the
lion-hunter, gives herself to the most vigorous of
her lion
wooers; she encourages them to fight among
themselves for
superiority, lying on her belly to gaze at the
combat and lashing
her tail with delight. Every female is wooed by many
males, but
she only accepts one; it is not the female who is
called upon for
erotic self-sacrifice, but the male. That is indeed