Part 10

Optimists are heralding a changed state in the relationship of men and women. They point to modern activities and interests as evidence of a different position in the world. They say that customs and traditions of past days are yielding to something freer and finer. The old order, as far as home life is concerned, has been turned topsy-turvy. Out of this chaos, interpreters of the coming morality declare that already better and happier ways have been established between man and maid.

It sounds plausible enough, but the trouble remains, that, so far, it isn’t true. The intimate relationship of men and women is about as it was in the days of Cleopatra or Xanthippe. The most brawny stevedorette leaves her freight in the air when the whistle blows and rushes home to husband as if she were his most sheltered possession. Following the tradition of the centuries, the business woman, whose salary may double that of her mate, hands him her pay envelope and asks permission to buy a new hat. Busts and bustles are out, flat chests and orthopedic shoes are in, while the waist line moves steadily toward the thigh--but what of it? Actualities of present days leave the ancient phantasies unchanged.

Current patterns for women, as formulated by the man in the street, by the movies, in the women’s clubs and lecture halls can be boiled down to one general cut. Whatever she actually is or does, in the stereotype she is a creature specialized to function. The girl on the magazine cover is her symbol. She holds a mirror, a fan, a flower and--at Christmas--a baby. Without variety, activity, or individuality her sugary smile pictures satisfying femininity. Men are allowed diversity. Some are libertines, others are husbands; a few are lawyers, many are clerks. They wear no insignia of masculinity or badge of paternity and they are never expected to live up to being Man or Mankind. But every woman has the whole weight of formulated Womanhood upon her shoulders. Even in new times, she must carry forward the design of the ages.

One of the quaint hang-overs of the past is that men are the chief interpreters of even the modern woman. It may be that the conquest of varied fields and the strain of establishing the right to individuality has taken all her time and energy. Or it may be that the habit of vicarious expression has left her inarticulate. Whatever it is, in the voluminous literature of the changing order, from the earnest tracts on “How It Feels to Be a Woman,” by a leading male educator to the tawdry and flippant syndicated views of W. L. George, masculine understanders take the lead. And the strange part of their interpretations is that they run true to ancient form. Old adages are put in a more racy vernacular, the X-ray is turned on with less delicacy, but when the froth of their engaging frankness disappears, hoary old ideas remain thickly in the tumbler.

Take the intimate life story of a girl of the younger generation--Janet March--written by that good friend of women, Floyd Dell. The blurb on the jacket of the book announces that she moves toward “not a happy ending but an intelligent one.” And the end? Janet finds her mate and the curtain falls to the soft music of maternity. “One has to risk something,” Janet cries. “All my life I’ve wanted to _do_ something with myself. Something exciting. And this is the one thing I can do. I can”--she hesitated. “I can create a breed of fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers.”

As a conclusion this is acceptable to any one with a heart, but wherein is it intellectual and not happy? Queen Victoria, the Honorable Herbert Asquith, or the Reverend Lyman Abbott would be equally pleased by its one hundred per cent womanliness. And how does it differ from our cherished slogan, “Woman’s place is in the home”? Only because Floyd Dell cuts Janet in a large, free-hand design. The advance pattern calls for a wealth of biological and gynecological explanation, pictures the girl as a healthy young animal who “smoked but drew the line on grounds of health at inhaling,” and, following the fashion of peasants in foreign countries, consummated the marriage before it was celebrated. Yet Janet, who claimed her right to all experience and experiment, finally raises her banner on the platform of fireside and nursery.

Despite its unquestionable orthodoxy, Janet March was retired from circulation. But no one has successfully dammed the flowing tide of W. L. George. He draws with somewhat futuristic effect, at times, but his conclusions are those of the old masters. “No woman,” he enunciates authoritatively, “values her freedom until she is married and then she is proud to surrender it to the man she has won.” Or take this: “All women are courtesans at heart, living only to please the other sex.” Wherein does this differ from the sentiment of Alexander Pope who, one hundred and fifty or more years before the birth of W. L. George, declared:

Men, some to business, some to pleasures take, But every woman is at heart a rake.

H. L. Mencken, stirred by debates about the intelligence of woman and her newer activities, essayed “In Defense of Women,” to put his old wine in a fancy bottle, but it was the same home brew. Generously conceding brains to women, he proves his point on the evidence that they are used to ensnare men, who weak-minded and feeble in flight are usually bowled over in the battle of wits. “Marriage,” he says, “is the best career a woman can reasonably aspire to--and in the case of very many women, the only one that actually offers a livelihood.”... “A childless woman remains more than a little ridiculous and ill at ease.”... “No sane woman has ever actually muffed a chance.”... “The majority of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex hygiene and birth control species are simply those who have done their best to snare a man and failed.”

In H. L. Mencken’s favor is his absence of the usual gush about feminine beauty. He declares with refreshing honesty that in contrast to the female body a milk jug or even a cuspidor is a thing of intelligent and gratifying design. Of woman’s superior mental ability he says, “A cave man is all muscle and mush. Without a woman to think for him, he is truly a lamentable spectacle, a baby with whiskers, a rabbit with the frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous caricature of God.” What a pity that women use all these advantages of superior mentality and ability only in the age-old game of man-hunting. But do they?

D. H. Lawrence shares this philosophy of the chief business of women, and he is much more gloomy about it. In fact, he is decidedly neurotic in his fear of the ultimate absorption of man. Woman he describes perpetually as a great, magnetic womb, fecund, powerful, drawing, engulfing. Man he sees as a pitiful, struggling creature, ultimately devoured by fierce maternal force. “You absorb, absorb,” cries Paul to Miriam in “Sons and Lovers,” “as if you must fill yourself up with love because you’ve got a shortage somewhere.” The Lawrence model, madly, fiercely possessive, differs from older forms in the abundance of physiological and pathological trimming. His conclusion, as voiced again by Paul to Miriam is, “A woman only works with part of herself; the real and vital part is covered up.” And this hidden reality is her terrific, destructive, fervid determination to drown man in her embrace.

So it goes. To Floyd Dell woman is a Mother, to H. L. Mencken a Wife, to W. L. George a Courtesan, and to D. H. Lawrence a Matrix--always specialized to sex. There may be men who are able to think of woman apart from the pattern of function, but they are inarticulate. Most of them spend their lives associating with a symbol. The set pieces they call Mary, Martha, Elaine, or Marguerite may follow the standardized design of grandmother, mother, or aunt. Or in more advanced circles, the pattern may call for bobbed hair, knickers, and cigarette case. Under any form of radicalism or conservatism the stereotype remains.

The old morality was built upon this body of folk-lore about women. Whether pictured as a chaste and beautiful angel, remote and untainted by life’s realities, or more cynically regarded as a devil and the source of sin, the notion was always according to pattern. Naturally, the relationship of men and women has been built upon the design, and a great many of our social ideals and customs follow it. The angel concept led, of course, to the so-called double standard which provides for a class of Victorian dolls who personify goodness, while their sisters, the prostitutes, serve as sacrificial offerings to the wicked ways of men. The new morality, as yet rather nebulous and somewhat mythical, has fewer class distinctions. The angel picture, for instance, has had some rude blows. As portrayed by the vanguard of radicals and interpreters, however, the changing conventions have their roots in the old generalizations and phantasies.

Perhaps this is only to be expected, for the man or woman does not exist whose mind has not become so filled with accepted ideas of human beings and relationships before maturity, or even adolescence, that what is seen thereafter is chiefly a fog of creeds and patterns. If several hundred babies, children of good inherited backgrounds, could be brought up on an isolated island, without a taint of superimposed custom and never hearing generalizations about themselves--never having standardized characteristics laid heavily upon their shoulders, perhaps a different type of relationship founded upon actualities, would be evolved. Without a mythology of attributes, based chiefly upon biological functions, real human beings might discover each other and create new and honest ways of comradeship and association. As it is to-day, we do not know what the pristine reactions of individuals, free from the modifications of stereotype, would be like.

It was the development of means by which beliefs could be separated from actual facts which brought modern science into being and freed the world from the quaint superstitions of the ages. Not until the nature of substance could be proved and classified in contrast with the mass of ignorant notions which clogged ancient thought was the amazing mechanical, economic, and scientific advance of the last century possible. The world of antiquity had standardized life and tied thought down to speculative creeds. Empirical science discarded all supposition and centered itself upon building up another picture--life as an examination of its actual nature proved it to be.

In the creating of a new order which will bring with it a different type of social and personal contact, something similar must take place. For most of our ideas, even those classified as liberal and advanced, are built upon the reactions of an alleged, not an actual human being. Men have suffered from pattern-making, but never have they been burdened with the mass of generalizations that are heaped upon women from birth. Nobody knows what women are really like because our minds are so filled with the stereotype of Woman. And this picture, even in the interpretations of those who claim to understand the modern woman, is chiefly of function, not character. It is impossible to create a satisfying relationship between a red-blooded individual and a symbol. A changed morality cannot successfully emerge when half of those who participate are regarded not as people but functions. As long as women are pictured chiefly as wife, mother, courtesan--or what not--defining merely a relationship to men--nothing new or strange or interesting is likely to happen. The old order is safe.

Women and the New Morality

By Beatrice M. Hinkle

Beatrice M. Hinkle

_is a physician and psycho-analyst who follows in general the beliefs of Jung. She is the author of “Recreating the Individual.”_

WOMEN AND THE NEW MORALITY

BY BEATRICE M. HINKLE, M.D.

In the general discussions of morality which are the fashion just now, sex morality seems to occupy the chief place. Indeed, judging from the amount of talk on this subject one would be inclined to think it the outstanding problem of our time. Certainly the whole of humanity is concerned in and vitally affected by the sexual aspect of life. Sexuality in its capacity as an agent of transformation is the source of power underlying the creativeness of man. In its direct expression, including its influence upon human relationships in general, it is woman’s particular concern. The position of importance it is assuming seems, therefore, to be justified, regardless of the protests of the intellect and the wish of the ego to minimize its significance.

A general weakening of traditional standards of ethics and morals and their gradual loss of control over the conduct of individuals have long been observed in other activities--in business affairs and in the world of men’s relations with each other. This has taken place so quietly and with so much specious rationalizing that sharp practices and shady conduct which formerly would have produced scandals, shame, and social taboos now scarcely cause a protest from society. These aspects of morality belong to the masculine world in particular and produce little agitation, while the upheaval in sex morals particularly affects the feminine world and by many people can scarcely be considered calmly enough for an examination. The changes in this field are the most recent and are being produced by women; they are taking place in full view of all with no apologies and with little hesitation. They appear, therefore, most striking and disturbing. It can be said that in the general disintegration of old standards, women are the active agents in the field of sexual morality and men the passive, almost bewildered accessories to the overthrow of their long and firmly organized control of women’s sexual conduct.

The old sex morality, with its double standard, has for years been criticized and attacked by fair-minded persons of both sexes. It has been recognized that this unequal condition produced effects as unfortunate for the favored sex as for the restricted one, and that because of this it could not be maintained indefinitely by a psychologically developing people. As a matter of course, whenever the single standard was mentioned, the standard governing women was invariably meant, and the fact was ignored that it is easier to break down restrictions than to force them upon those who have hitherto enjoyed comparative freedom. Furthermore, it was not realized that a sex morality imposed by repression and the power of custom creates artificial conceptions and will eventually break down.

This forced morality is in fact at the present time quite obviously disintegrating. We see women assuming the right to act as their impulses dictate with much the same freedom that men have enjoyed for so long. The single standard is rapidly becoming a _fait accompli_, but instead of the standard identified with women it is nearer the standard associated with men. According to a universal psychological law, actual reality eventually overtakes and replaces the cultural ideal.

Although this overthrow of old customs and sex ideals must be chiefly attributed to the economic independence of women brought about through the industrialism of our age, it is safe to say that no man thought ahead far enough or understood the psychology of women sufficiently to anticipate the fruit of this economic emancipation. As long as women were dependent upon men for the support of themselves and their children there could be no development of a real morality, for the love and feelings of the woman were so intermingled with her economic necessities that the higher love impulse was largely undifferentiated from the impulse of self-preservation. True morality can only develop when the object or situation is considered for itself, not when it is bound up with ulterior and extraneous elements which vitiate the whole. The old morality has failed and is disintegrating fast, because it was imposed from without instead of evolving from within.

A morality which has value for all time and is not dependent upon custom or external cultural fashions can arise only from a high development of the psychological functions of thinking and feeling, with the developed individual as the determiner of values instead of general custom or some one else’s opinion. The function of feeling and the realm of the emotions have been universally regarded as woman’s special province; therefore it is women who are specially concerned with testing out moral values involving sexual behavior. Women have been reproached by men again and again as being only sexual creatures, and they have meekly accepted the reproach. Now, instead of examining the statement, they have accepted the sexual problem of men as though it were their own, and with it the weight of man’s conflict and his articulateness. For sexuality as a problem and a conflict definitely belongs to man’s psychology; it is he primarily who has been ashamed of his domination by this power and has struggled valiantly to free himself; his egotistic and sexual impulses have always been at war with each other. But whoever heard of women being ashamed of yielding to the power of love? Instead they gloried in the surrender of themselves and counted themselves blessed when love ruled. It is this need of man to escape from the power of the sensual appeal that has made him scorn sex and look upon the great creative power of life as something shameful and inferior, and in modern days treat it as a joke or with the indifferent superficiality which betrays emasculation and inadequacy.

One has only to “listen in” where any large group of men, young or old, are gathered together in easy familiarity (the army camps were recent examples on a large scale) to discover the degree to which sexuality still dominates the minds of men, even though its expression is confined so largely to the jocose and the obscene. Many men can corroborate this report from a military camp--“we have sexuality in all its dirty and infantile forms served daily for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” It is the inferior and inadequate aspect of masculine sexuality that has made it necessary for man to conceive it as something shameful and unclean, and to insist that woman must carry his purity for him and live the restrictions and suppression that rightly belonged to him. Woman on her part became an easy victim of his ideas and convictions, because of the very fact that the function of feeling and the emotions so largely dominate her psychology. The translation of feeling into thought-forms has been slow and difficult. About herself woman has been quite inarticulate and largely unconscious. This inarticulateness inevitably made her accept man’s standards and values for her, for little directed thinking is achieved without form and words. Because of her sexual fertility and fruitfulness woman had no sexual conflict; therefore, man easily unloaded his psychological burden upon her, and claimed freedom for the satisfaction of his own desires.

Thus, woman was made a symbol or personification of man’s morality. She had to live for him that which he was unable to live for himself. This was the reason for his indignation at moral transgressions on her part. She had injured the symbol and revealed his weakness to him. However, with the discovery by women that they could be economically independent of men, they commenced to find themselves interesting. As they have gradually come to think for themselves about fundamental questions, there has begun a tremendous activity and busyness in regard to the very subject which was previously taboo.

A recent writer boasts that men have changed their attitude regarding sexual problems very little and are not much concerned in the new interest of women. This is probably true, for man has contributed all he has to give to the subject. He has laid down his taboos and externalized his restrictions, chiefly applicable to the other sex, and he is finished with the subject--bored by having it thrust forward as an unfinished problem needing reconsideration. All of his knowledge or understanding of the sexual aspect of life--the aspect underlying human creativeness, the faulty development of which is responsible for a large part of his woes, “can be told in two hours to any intelligent sixteen year old boy,” another writer recently stated. It is this youthful ignorance and assurance that the last word has been spoken on this subject that has awakened women, no longer dependent economically, to the fact that they must also become independent of men intellectually if they wish to gain expression for their knowledge or to form their own rules of conduct based on their psychology. In the true scientific spirit of the age they are now experimenting and using nature’s method of trial and error to find out for themselves by conscious living experience what feeling has vaguely told them. This is the first step towards objectifying and clarifying woman’s intuitive knowledge.

With the revolt of women against the old restrictions and the demand for freedom to experience for themselves, there has appeared a most significant phase of the changed morality--the new relation of women toward each other. The significance of this enormous change which has been taking place very quietly and yet very rapidly is scarcely appreciated. However, when one realizes that only a generation ago the newspapers were still publishing their funny paragraphs at the expense of women (“The dear creatures; how they love one another”), the great difference in their relations today becomes evident. The generally accepted distinction between the personal loyalties of the sexes can be summed up in the statement that women are loyal in love and disloyal in friendship, while men are loyal in friendship and disloyal in love. It is this attitude of women that is gradually disappearing with the awakening of a new sense of themselves as individuals. Their changed attitude towards each other--the recognition of their own values, and the growing realization that only in solidarity can any permanent impression be made on the old conception of woman as an inferior, dependent creature, useful for one purpose only--constitutes the most marked difference between their present social condition and that of the past.

As long as women remained psychologically unawakened, their individual values were swallowed up in their biological value for the race. They were under the unconscious domination of their sexual fruitfulness and an enemy of themselves as individuals. Weininger gives as the chief difference between the masculine and feminine creeds that “Man’s religion consists in a supreme belief in himself--woman’s in a supreme belief in other people.” These other people being men, the sex rivalry among women that has so long stood in the way of their further development is easily understood. It has been a vicious circle which could only be broken by women’s gaining another significance in the eyes of the world and in their own eyes. This other significance is the economic importance which they have acquired in the world of men.

It makes little difference within the social structure how many individual women exist who have forged a position for themselves and have won a freedom and independence equal to that possessed by the ordinary man, so long as they are isolated phenomena having little understanding of the peculiar difficulties and problems of women as a whole, and no relation with each other. These women have always existed in all culture periods, but they have produced little effect upon the social condition or psychology of women in general. There was no group action because the majority of women were inarticulate. The woman who was different became abnormal in the eyes of the world.