together with
painful memories of a violent first coitus, are the
most frequent
cause of vaginismus.
The occasional cases, however, of physical injury or
of
pathological condition produced by violent coitus at
the
beginning of marriage constitute but a very small
portion of the
evidence which witnesses to the evil results of the
prevalent
ignorance regarding the art of love. As regards
Germany,
Fürbringer writes (Senator and Kaminer, _Health and
Disease in
Relation to Marriage_, vol. i, p. 215): "I am
perfectly satisfied
that the number of young married women who have a
lasting painful
recollection of their first sexual intercourse
exceeds by far the
number of those who venture to consult a doctor." As regards
England, the following experience is instructive: A
lady asked
six married women in succession, privately, on the
same day
concerning their bridal experiences. To all, sexual
intercourse
had come as a shock; two had been absolutely
ignorant about
sexual matters; the others had thought they knew
what coitus was,
but were none the less shocked. These women were of
the middle
class, perhaps above the average in intelligence;
one was a
doctor.
Breuer and Freud, in their _Studien über Hysterie_
(p. 216),
pointed out that the bridal night is practically
often a rape,
and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is
not cured until
satisfying sexual relationships are established.
Even when there
is no violence, Kisch (_Sexual Life of Woman_, Part
II) regards
awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to
incomplete
excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of
dyspareunia, or
absence of sexual gratification, although gross
disproportion in
the size of the male and female organs, or disease
in either
party, may lead to the same result. Dyspareunia,
Kisch adds, is
astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women
complain of it
without justification in order to arouse sympathy
for themselves
as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant
sign is
absence of ejaculation on the woman's part. Kisch
also observes
that wedding night deflorations are often really
rapes. One young
bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical
side of
love, and so overwhelmed by her husband's first
attempt at
intercourse, that she fled from the house in the
night, and
nothing would ever persuade her to return to her
husband. (It is
worth noting that by Canon law, under such
circumstances, the
Church might hold the marriage invalid. See Thomas
Slater's
_Moral Theology_, vol. ii, p. 318, and a case in
point, both
quoted by Rev. C.J. Shebbeare, "Marriage Law in the Church of
England," _Nineteenth Century_, Aug., 1909, p. 263.) Kisch
considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake;
since the
fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-
seeing, false
modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to
affect the
bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious
illness. This
is undoubtedly the case.
The extreme psychic importance of the manner in
which the act of
defloration is accomplished is strongly emphasized
by Adler. He
regards it as a frequent cause of permanent sexual
anæsthesia.
"This first moment in which the man's individuality attains its
full rights often decides the whole of life. The
unskilled,
over-excited husband can then implant the seed of
feminine
insensibility, and by continued awkwardness and
coarseness
develop it into permanent anæsthesia. The man who
takes
possession of his rights with reckless brutal
masculine force
merely causes his wife anxiety and pain, and with
every
repetition of the act increases her repulsion.... A
large
proportion of cold-natured women represent a
sacrifice by men,
due either to unconscious awkwardness, or,
occasionally, to
conscious brutality towards the tender plant which
should have
been cherished with peculiar art and love, but has
been robbed of
the splendor of its development. All her life long,
a wistful and
trembling woman will preserve the recollection of a
brutal
wedding night, and, often enough, it remains a
perpetual source
of inhibition every time that the husband seeks anew
to gratify
his desires without adapting himself to his wife's
desires for
love" (O. Adler, _Die Mangelhafte
Geschlechtsempfindung des
Weibes_, pp. 159 et seq., 181 et seq.). "I have seen an honest
woman shudder with horror at her husband's
approach," wrote
Diderot long ago in his essay "Sur les Femmes"; "I have seen her
plunge in the bath and feel herself never
sufficiently washed
from the stain of duty." The same may still be said of a vast
army of women, victims of a pernicious system of
morality which
has taught them false ideas of "conjugal duty" and has failed to
teach their husbands the art of love.
Women, when their fine natural instincts have not been hopelessly
perverted by the pruderies and prejudices which are so diligently
instilled into them, understand the art of love more
readily than men.
Even when little more than children they can often
completely take the cue
that is given to them. Much more than is the case with men, at all events
under civilized conditions, the art of love is with them an art that
Nature makes. They always know more of love, as
Montaigne long since said,
than men can teach them, for it is a discipline that is born in their
blood.[386]
The extensive inquiries of Sanford Bell (loc. cit.)
show that the
emotions of sex-love may appear as early as the
third year. It
must also be remembered that, both physically and
psychically,
girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys
(see, e.g.,
Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp.
34 _et
seq._, 200, etc.). Thus, by the time she has reached
the age of
puberty a girl has had time to become an
accomplished mistress of
the minor arts of love. That the age of puberty is
for girls the
age of love seems to be widely recognized by the
popular mind.
Thus in a popular song of Bresse a girl sings:--
"J'ai calculé mon âge,
J'ai quatorze à quinze ans.
Ne suis-je pas dans l'âge
D'y avoir un amant?"
This matter of the sexual precocity of girls has an
important
bearing on the question of the "age of consent," or the age at
which it should be legal for a girl to consent to
sexual
intercourse. Until within the last twenty-five years
there has
been a tendency to set a very low age (even as low
as ten) as the
age above which a man commits no offence in having
sexual
intercourse with a girl. In recent years there has
been a
tendency to run to the opposite and equally
unfortunate extreme
of raising it to a very late age. In England, by the
Criminal Law
Amendment Act of 1885, the age of consent was raised
to sixteen
(this clause of the bill being carried in the House
of Commons by
a majority of 108). This seems to be the reasonable
age at which
the limit should be set and its extreme high limit
in temperate
climates. It is the age recognized by the Italian
Criminal Code,
and in many other parts of the civilized world.
Gladstone,
however, was in favor of raising it to eighteen, and
Howard, in
discussing this question as regards the United
States
(_Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. iii, pp. 195-203),
thinks it
ought everywhere to be raised to twenty-one, so
coinciding with
the age of legal majority at which a woman can enter
into
business or political relations. There has been,
during recent
years, a wide limit of variation in the legislation
of the
different American States on this point, the
differences of the
two limits being as much as eight years, and in some
important
States the act of intercourse with a girl under
eighteen is
declared to be "rape," and punishable with
imprisonment for life.
Such enactments as these, however, it must be
recognized, are
arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. They do not
rest on a sound
biological basis, and cannot be enforced by the
common sense of
the community. There is no proper analogy between
the age of
legal majority which is fixed, approximately, with
reference to
the ability to comprehend abstract matters of
intelligence, and
the age of sexual maturity which occurs much
earlier, both
physically and psychically, and is determined in
women by a very
precise biological event: the completion of puberty
in the onset
of menstruation. Among peoples living under natural
conditions in
all parts of the world it is recognized that a girl
becomes
sexually a woman at puberty; at that epoch she
receives her
initiation into adult life and becomes a wife and a
mother. To
declare that the act of intercourse with a woman
who, by the
natural instinct of mankind generally, is regarded
as old enough
for all the duties of womanhood, is a criminal act
of rape,
punishable by imprisonment for life, can only be
considered an
abuse of language, and, what is worse, an abuse of
law, even if
we leave all psychological and moral considerations
out of the
question, for it deprives the conception of rape of
all that
renders it naturally and properly revolting.
The sound view in this question is clearly the view
that it is
the girl's puberty which constitutes the criterion
of the man's
criminality in sexually approaching her. In the
temperate regions
of Europe and North America the average age of the
appearance of
menstruation, the critical moment in the
establishment of
complete puberty, is fifteen (see, e.g., Havelock
Ellis, _Man and
Woman_, Ch. XI; the facts are set forth at length in
Kisch's
_Sexual Life of Woman_, 1909). Therefore it is
reasonable that
the act of an adult man in having sexual connection
with a girl
under sixteen, with or without her consent, should
properly be a
criminal act, severely punishable. In those lands
where the
average age of puberty is higher or lower, the age
of consent
should be raised or lowered accordingly. (Bruno
Meyer, arguing
against any attempt to raise the age of consent
above sixteen,
considers that the proper age of consent is
generally fourteen,
for, as he rightly insists, the line of division is
between the
ripe and the unripe personality, and while the
latter should be
strictly preserved from the sphere of sexuality,
only voluntary,
not compulsory, influence should be brought to bear
on the
former. _Sexual-Probleme_, Ap., 1909.)
If we take into our view the wider considerations of
psychology,
morality, and law, we shall find ample justification
for this
point of view. We have to remember that a girl,
during all the
years of ordinary school life, is always more
advanced, both
physically and psychically, than a boy of the same
age, and we
have to recognize that this precocity covers her
sexual
development; for even though it is true, on the
average, that
active sexual desire is not usually aroused in women
until a
somewhat later age, there is also truth in the
observation of Mr.
Thomas Hardy (_New Review_, June, 1894): "It has
never struck me
that the spider is invariably male and the fly
invariably
female." Even, therefore, when sexual intercourse takes place
between a girl and a youth somewhat older than
herself, she is
likely to be the more mature, the more self-
possessed, and the
more responsible of the two, and often the one who
has taken the
more active part in initiating the act. (This point
has been
discussed in "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol.
iii of these
_Studies_.) It must also be remembered that when a
girl has once
reached the age of puberty, and put on all the
manner and habits
as well as the physical development of a woman, it
is no longer
possible for a man always to estimate her age. It is
easy to see
that a girl has not yet reached the age of puberty;
it is
impossible to tell whether a mature woman is under
or over
eighteen; it is therefore, to say the least, unjust
to make her
male partner's fate for life depend on the
recognition of a
distinction which has no basis in nature. Such
considerations
are, indeed, so obvious that there is no chance of
carrying out
thoroughly in practice the doctrine that a man
should be
imprisoned for life for having intercourse with a
girl who is
over the age of sixteen. It is better, from the
legal point of
view, to cast the net less widely and to be quite
sure that it is
adapted to catch the real and conscious offender,
who may be
punished without offending the common sense of the
community.
(Cf. Bloch, _The Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. XXIV;
he considers
that the "age of consent" should begin with the completion of the
sixteenth year.)
It may be necessary to add that the establishment of
the "age of
consent" on this basis by no means implies that
intercourse with
girls but little over sixteen should be encouraged,
or even
socially and morally tolerated. Here, however, we
are not in the
sphere of law. It is the natural tendency of the
well-born and
well-nurtured girl under civilized conditions to
hold herself in
reserve, and the pressure whereby that tendency is
maintained and
furthered must be supplied by the whole of her
environment,
primarily by the intelligent reflection of the girl
herself when
she has reached the age of adolescence. To foster in
a young
woman who has long passed the epoch of puberty the
notion that
she has no responsibility in the guardianship of her
own body and
soul is out of harmony with modern feeling, as well
as
unfavorable to the training of women for the world.
The States
which have been induced to adopt the high limit of
the age of
consent have, indeed, thereby made an abject
confession of their
inability to maintain a decent moral level by more
legitimate
means; they may profitably serve as a warning rather
than as an
example.
The knowledge of women cannot, however, replace, the
ignorance of men,
but, on the contrary, merely serves to reveal it. For in the art of love
the man must necessarily take the initiative. It is he who must first
unseal the mystery of the intimacies and audacities
which the woman's
heart may hold. The risk of meeting with even the shadow of contempt or
disgust is too serious to allow a woman, even a wife, to reveal the
secrets of love to a man who has not shown himself to be an
initiate.[387] Numberless are the jovial and contented husbands who have
never suspected, and will never know, that their wives carry about with
them, sometimes with silent resentment, the ache of
mysterious _tabus_.
The feeling that there are delicious privacies and
privileges which she
has never been asked to take, or forced to accept, often erotically
divorces a wife from a husband who never realizes what he has missed.[388]
The case of such husbands is all the harder because, for the most part,
all that they have done is the result of the morality
that has been
preached to them. They have been taught from boyhood to be strenuous and
manly and clean-minded, to seek by all means to put out of their minds the
thought of women or the longing for sensuous indulgence.
They have been
told on all sides that only in marriage is it right or even safe to
approach women. They have acquired the notion that
sexual indulgence and
all that appertains to it is something low and
degrading, at the worst a
mere natural necessity, at the best a duty to be
accomplished in a direct,
honorable and straight-forward manner. No one seems to have told them that
love is an art, and that to gain real possession of a
woman's soul and
body is a task that requires the whole of a man's best skill and insight.
It may well be that when a man learns his lesson too
late he is inclined
to turn ferociously on the society that by its
conspiracy of
pseudo-morality has done its best to ruin his life, and that of his wife.
In some of these cases husband or wife or both are
finally attracted to a
third person, and a divorce enables them to start afresh with better
experience under happier auspices. But as things are at present that is a
sad and serious process, for many impossible. They are happier, as Milton
pointed out, whose trials of love before marriage "have been so many
divorces to teach them experience."
The general ignorance concerning the art of love may be gauged by the fact
that perhaps the question in this matter most frequently asked is the
crude question how often sexual intercourse should take place. That is a
question, indeed, which has occupied the founders of
religion, the
law-givers, and the philosophers of mankind, from the
earliest times.[389]
Zoroaster said it should be once in every nine days. The laws of Manes
allowed intercourse during fourteen days of the month, but a famous
ancient Hindu physician, Susruta, prescribed it six
times a month, except
during the heat of summer when it should be once a
month, while other
Hindu authorities say three or four times a month.
Solon's requirement of
the citizen that intercourse should take place three
times a month fairly
agrees with Zoroaster's. Mohammed, in the Koran, decrees intercourse once
a week. The Jewish Talmud is more discriminating, and
distinguishes
between different classes of people; on the vigorous and healthy young
man, not compelled to work hard, once a day is imposed, on the ordinary
working man twice a week, on learned men once a week.
Luther considered
twice a week the proper frequency of intercourse.
It will be observed that, as we might expect, these
estimates tend to
allow a greater interval in the earlier ages when erotic stimulation was
probably less and erotic erethism probably rare, and to involve an
increased frequency as we approach modern civilization.
It will also be
observed that variation occurs within fairly narrow
limits. This is
probably due to the fact that these law-givers were in all cases men.
Women law-givers would certainly have shown a much
greater tendency to
variation, since the variations of the sexual impulse
are greater in
women.[390] Thus Zenobia required the approach of her
husband once a
month, provided that impregnation had not taken place
the previous month,
while another queen went very far to the other extreme, for we are told
that the Queen of Aragon, after mature deliberation,
ordained six times a
day as the proper rule in a legitimate marriage.[391]
It may be remarked, in passing, that the estimates
of the proper
frequency of sexual intercourse may always be taken
to assume
that there is a cessation during the menstrual
period. This is
especially the case as regards early periods of
culture when
intercourse at this time is usually regarded as
either dangerous
or sinful, or both. (This point has been discussed
in the
"Phenomena of Periodicity" in volume i of these _Studies_.) Under
civilized conditions the inhibition is due to
æsthetic reasons,
the wife, even if she desires intercourse, feeling a
repugnance
to be approached at a time when she regards herself
as
"disgusting," and the husband easily sharing this attitude. It
may, however, be pointed out that the æsthetic
objection is very
largely the result of the superstitious horror of
water which is
still widely felt at this time, and would, to some
extent,
disappear if a more scrupulous cleanliness were
observed. It