Part 11

In short, as we found in the previous essay on unfaithful husbands, woman gains her fulfilment from the man when he gives her his child. But when she turns from him, she leaves him unsatisfied. The drama and the novel are burdened with this problem, which, indeed, intrudes itself on every hand.

We have, by our wrong ideals, for long been inducing an entirely perverted view, which regards physical desire as something of which women should be ashamed, and the sex act as a thing in itself degrading and even disgusting—the nasty side of love and of marriage, something to be submitted to, indeed, in order to bear children or for the sake of the loved man whose passions must be allowed, but not a thing for health and desire—for the delight and perfection of the woman herself.

This false view, I affirm again, is the blight that has been, and still is, the destroyer of sexual happiness and health. And this fear and denial of love; this separation between the passion allowed to the man and not allowed to the woman, is the serious side of this problem of marriage. For the hideous disguises and constant lying, too often made necessary to both the partners, owing to the wife’s entire failure to realise the physical necessities of love, makes domestic life an organised hypocrisy.

We fight and fight to be free. Yet ever the concealed antagonism lays fresh hold, upon both the husband and the wife. It crops up in many and curious ways, imposing its poison and destroying life—the deep, deep-hidden rage of unsatisfied love.

The need for love will not often allow itself to be inhibited without claiming payment. And if desire so frequently manifests itself in abnormal forms of the coarsest and commonest dissipation, this is almost always to be explained by some hindrance opposed to its normal expression. When women face facts and realise this truth, many things in the conduct of husbands will be clear that hitherto have been hidden from them.

There is, however, another aspect of this question which now must be considered. For to leave the matter here would be the greatest injustice. A further question must first be asked. Why is this coldness in women so prevalent? Why does the desire of even the loving wife so often cease towards her husband? It is a difficult question to answer. One reason has been given already. We have noted women’s false attitude to love; an attitude which, in so many cases, makes her ashamed of expressing openly the passions she feels. Yet there is, I think another and much deeper part of the truth that is fairly clear. Love is a more difficult thing for women than it is for men. Each man is able to enforce his sexual desire upon his wife _at a time when she feels no desire, whereas she cannot gain her desire unless he gain his_. We may, perhaps, trace back to this cause, many of the feelings of disharmony and waning of desire which injures the woman’s power to love.

I must follow this a little further. In marriage the husband, usually exercises his marital privileges _when he wishes_. He does not think sufficiently of, or understand sufficiently as he should, the wishes of his wife. For what _she says_ must never be accepted as representing really what she wishes. It is very hard for any man to understand how almost impossible it is for a woman, if she is good, to be frank about sexual desire. Both our laws, and opinion and custom have strengthened the view—not usually openly acknowledged but usually felt—that the husband has the right to approach his wife when he desires. Her right is not equally considered, too often it is taken for granted that she has no desires or real sex-needs to be considered. The result is inescapable. The man’s passion finds relief while she remains unsatisfied. She is in just the same position as someone who is forced to eat a meal without appetite.

And inevitably this leaves her unresponsive, makes her irritable, capricious, and quite incomprehensible to her husband.

Of course, this disharmony, is not always conscious even to the woman herself, who usually fails quite to understand what is the matter or to connect her restless unhappiness with the stirrings of her unsatisfied love. The dyspeptic does not know that he wants food: he turns away from it. In the same way the woman turns away from love. She gives in to the inhibiting influences and accepts the abysmal misconception into which one sex has fallen in regard to the other.

This difference in the power for sexual sacrifice between the two sexes is, I have frequently thought, one of the gravest causes of misery in marriage. It will take very long to over come it. Only as we advance in refinement and knowledge of love can this antagonism in the sex act lessen, as the woman gains in frankness and the man comes to know how to arouse and keep aflame her desire.

For woman is passionate. There is no greater lie than the so often reiterated assumption that she “_is naturally and organically frigid._”[4] We must remember that this view of woman’s coldness in love is of comparatively modern growth. Yet it is a lie that will take a real revolution in our moral ideas to uproot. It is, in large measure, at least, the result of our pretences—the horrible, grasping, destroying, back-wash of shams. It is the result of the way in which women have lived, with blinds drawn down on most of the unruly disturbance and elemental forces in love.

The wife whose love is turned away from her husband finds substitute satisfaction in her home and her children, if she has them, or, failing these, in dress and amusement and other outside interests; or in a lover, who gives her new hope of finding satisfaction in love. And the poor bewildered husband is quite unaware of the cause of this coldness. He cannot understand his wife’s unfaithfulness. He does not know that his unthinking acceptance of her subordination to his desire, however gladly given, is what has, and indeed must, exhaust the passion in her.

For I do not deny, as already I have stated, that sexual coldness is exceedingly common on the part of the wife to-day. What I do deny is that this is a natural condition; rather is it a symptom of the mistakes of our civilisation that have cheated women and men alike of health and happiness in love.

I affirm again, that this idea of coldness in love being natural to women is entirely false. Complete absence of satisfaction in love cannot be borne, especially when living in the close intimacy of married life, by any woman, through a period of years, without producing serious results on the body and the mind. It is in the blighting effects of this pseudo-celibacy that we must seek the cause of the sterility of so many married women’s lives.

Do I put this other side of the problem of marital-celibacy—the woman’s side—in a strong light. Yes I do, but I put it faithfully as I have come to know it from the facts I see daily around me.

It is hard to say how often, and how many wives have put from them the temptation to seek happiness in love _at any price_; no less hard is it to compute to what extent the transformation of this suppressed sexual passion is expended in passion in other channels. We see it in a hundred cases to-day. In every instance where passion is called for woman tends by her nature to be carried further than man.

There is, of course, no exact measuring in these matters, but who among us can dare to say that the harm done by the deprivation of love is greater in the lives of men than of women? I doubt not it is the other way. We hear so much of the sex-needs of husbands that we have become a little wearied. We accept so much for them as being right and natural, but who shall calculate the number of equally right and natural impulses that women have resisted?—resisted until the very instinct to love tends in time to become dulled and blighted.

I am willing to grant, indeed, that few women experience that obsessing longing of the man to grasp the woman of his desire, nor do they, as a rule, I think suffer the same terrible physical depression that causes incapacity for control. I am not certain here: women are less open about these matters than men are, and one hesitates to judge other women by oneself. We are dealing with a question very difficult to solve. We may find some explanation in the fact that many passionate women have had to learn how the energy of the sexual impulse may be diverted into other activities. It is a lesson that possibly men will have to learn. Yet I do not know, the price women have had to pay has been heavy and the results gained very poor. And does not this denial of love entail a waste of life?—that is what really matters. It is very hard to know the truth.

Here, then, is the question I would put to men who are suffering to-day from the unfaithfulness of women. I would ask them. Have they taken sufficient trouble to understand, both on the physical and psychical side, the sexual nature of woman, which is much more complex than their own? The art of love is not understood by men. If they paid more attention to this subject marriage would be freed from the strongest and most frequently operating cause that brings it to disaster. But this will never be done until we have ruled out from our moral conscience the idea of “the body as the prison of the soul.”

I have often asked myself if this misconception is not the real cause of all sex trouble?

SHOULD DOCTORS TELL?

Of the many differing opinions concerning the question whether doctors should reveal medical secrets, none that I know have been more interesting, in particular to women, than that of a local practitioner (whose name I have forgotten) who spoke at a Conference of doctors met to consider this question. In opposing with admirable frankness a resolution for the continuance of the practice of professional secrecy, he asked the straight question, whether “a bounder” should be allowed to live and his wife and child to die?

For here we touch at once the grave difficulty of the position. The discussion, as is evident, was concerned more particularly with the position in regard to venereal diseases.

The whole question has, indeed, been brought before public attention in connection with the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases that a communication made by a medical practitioner with regard to these diseases and to guard the innocent from infection should be regarded as a privileged communication, and the law of libel be so modified as to give this safeguard.

Now, on the face of it, this would seem a simple matter. And the question I want to ask is, why the professional medical voice of this country has pronounced so emphatically against it? I know, of course, the reason that is given, that the divulging of a patient’s secret, without his or her consent, and even if for a good reason, must weaken confidence—not only the patient’s confidence in the particular doctor who “told,” but the confidence of the public in the whole medical profession.

I do not think this reason bears any close investigation. Confidence is destroyed quite as surely, though probably not so quickly, by suppression of truth as by revealing it.

No, I believe we have to look deeper for the reason to explain this attitude of medical hiding.

These diseases are set apart from all other sicknesses of our bodies. For this reason, in considering them, moral considerations become confused with practical values. And I do not see quite how this is to be avoided. There is however, the gravest danger from such an attitude which rests upon hidden personal prejudices, and is not dependent on the facts of the case. Such an attitude leads inevitably to concealment of truth, which is specially disastrous here, because it is absolutely essential that these diseases, if they are to be cured, should be met in the open and grappled with methodically and thoroughly.

For greater clearness, I may state the matter thus: There are three attitudes that may be adopted towards sexual disease. First, that of the pure moralist, who says only “This is a sin to be punished.” On the opposite side is the purely utilitarian, who says, “This is only a disease to be cured.” But both attitudes may be alike wrong or, more correctly, the truth lies midway between the two. The disease, as a disease, needs to be cured. This is the first step with which nothing should interfere. But far different and much more complex is the treatment required to alter the actions that lead to the disease.

As a first step, public opinion ought to condemn too late marriage, instead of recommending it on economic grounds. The mania for making economics the deciding factor in conduct should surely cease: the falsity of this view has been exposed by many great writers, but much stronger is the condemnation that must be given here by all who can understand the evils that it has wrought in our sexual lives. Late marriages must be one of the causes contributing to men’s use of prostitutes before marriage.

We have to find a way out, to silence our shrieks of blame, and to give up many of our old pretences. You can never get things right until you honestly face them.

Women are the worst sinners. And I say, without hesitation, that it is men’s fear of women, especially the husband’s fear of his wife, that is the greatest hindrance to openness in this connection. It is women’s attitude which holds us back in progress towards health.

Let me give an illustration. I attended recently a meeting where a paper was read on the morals of men, in connection with the alarming increase of venereal diseases since the war. The reader of the paper, being a woman doctor as well as a feminist, took the wise view that the most urgent question was not the reform of the men, but staying the spread of the diseases. In the discussion that followed it was plainly evident that few of the audience—all women—agreed with her. These were women workers, who had read about, and to some limited extent, at any rate, thought and studied, these questions. Yet the general view was that men ought to be punished. One speaker, who stated that she was married, said that no true woman could or ought to forgive a husband who had become infected with a contagious disease.

Now, it is this view, here so crudely expressed, that has done so much harm in the past. It explains also the continuance of the medical secrecy that has acted so strongly against the stamping out of this scourge of civilisation. Such an attitude of blame and unforgiveness on the part of women has to be changed before the truth can be told safely.

Women are mainly responsible for the secrecy of these diseases. And what is the result? Because these infectious diseases are secret they are largely uncured.

It is, of course, easy to understand the attitude taken up by women. Blame of men is not easily avoided; yet is there not confusion in women’s minds?

The sin that a husband commits against his wife, a man against the girl he is to marry—yes, and a son against the trust of his mother—is in being unfaithful. Having caught the disease is a misfortune. The effect must not be blamed by itself.

Let me illustrate this point of view by considering a different case. Your child gets scarlet fever by an act of direct disobedience—the sin of his age. He stays from school, without leave of absence, and goes to play at a house he has been forbidden to enter. Would you, because of his disobedience, refuse to pity and nurse him? Rather, would you not forget his sin and desire only to help and heal him?

Do you see what I mean now? It is not that I would condone immoral conduct in the husband or the lover that I plead for pity and understanding on the part of women who love them.

Few men are intentionally evil. They do not even always act foolishly in this question of infectious diseases because they are wantonly careless. Often they are fully alive to the danger that may result to their wives, or the girl they wish to make their wife, from their own infection.

I repeat, they are not necessarily bad men, and they love their wives and children; but they are cowards. All men are cowards when it comes to facing the blame and misunderstanding of the woman they love.

If they cannot rely on the woman’s pity and help, few men will dare to tell the truth; nor will they be willing to let the doctor tell the facts for them. And if the truth cannot be told, it is very unlikely that the infection will not be spread to others. This may lead to the birth of diseased children, and who may say that in this case the crime is the man’s alone?

Why can’t we face the situation now, when we are trying to tidy up our social life? Concealments that may have been necessary in the old time of ignorance are surely impossible now.

Is the evil to remain hidden, uncorrected, from one generation to another? Hidden evil multiplies itself, and the sum is national deterioration.

The mistake has been the muddleheaded thinking that has obscured the plain and comparatively simple question of cure with the entirely opposed problem of moral appraisement and punishment: a confusion and losing of the way that has led us all inevitably into a forest-tangle of difficulty, of lies and silences, and unanswerable questions.

And this heritage of wrong thinking is still compassing our feet, binding them and throwing us down, as soon as we try to move a step onwards: and until that entanglement is broken through, by bringing the whole complicated position into the light of understanding and honest thinking, the evil will go on, unchecked by our futile tearings here and there at withered branches. The supporting stem of concealments and dishonesty will flourish, and the devastating evil will continue to spread.

THE MODERN WIFE AND THE OLD-FASHIONED HUSBAND

The old-fashioned husband is always older than his wife. If he is not old in years, he is old in character. His desires and instincts are aged. She is young because she is alive.

He wants to give her advice, but she will not listen. He desires to guide her, or he must think that he does so. He protects her. Thinks of her as young and precious and tender. He does not speak of certain things before her. He caresses her, he pays her bills, gives her presents, and treats her in the way, in which she has learnt not to treat her children.

For the old-fashioned husband is conservative and hopelessly romantic.

The fact is he ever seeks in his wife the image of his mother, the first woman whom he worshipped, and whose virtues remain as an unforgettable pattern, ever to be repeated. He sees her darning socks (horrible and useful occupation), making beds, dusting the china, arranging flowers, brushing her husband’s overcoat and smoothing his hat, fussing needlessly over everything. These pictures are always interfering with the image of his wife—the new woman of to-day, with her restless and noisy movements, her slang and violence, her knowledge, capable management and clearness of vision-that-look-you-straight-in-the-eyes air that belongs now to wives.

Why have women altered so greatly? Why have women gone on and left their husbands behind?

It is common to refer everything back to the war. Certainly the war did this—it sent both women and men into difficult schools but the men’s school was harder and quite different from that of the women.

If the war had a devastating effect, the peace has likewise had for women its revolutionary consequences. We all know what the war did. It took women out of their homes. The feminists rejoiced to see women in munition factories, on the platforms of trams, squeezed into government offices, hoeing and driving the plough. Then the peace threw them back; closed the open doors, cut off the day of financial prosperity, re-introduced them to their children, if they had any, and to their husbands.

And now what happened? What effect had this on the desires of women and men?

Why, the husbands yearned for the old order of home and wife and children. For the men had fought, they had experienced the uttermost bitterness of life. Their petrified imagination had had no new ideals. They wanted nothing changed. For them a terrible interlude was over, a nightmare passed, that must be forgotten. But the non-combatant women had not experienced war; they had only looked on. For many of them a glamour of patriotic achievement in various kinds of work, which they much preferred to the old domestic duties, added to the lure of high wages, had thrown a cloak of romance over the war-period. They had nothing to forget. The last thing they wanted was to go back, all their desire was set on going forward.

Here then, is the reason why to-day there are so many modern wives with old-fashioned husbands.

These war-trained women are very efficient; they impose their will on everyone; they are attractive and very honest, but sometimes rather aggressive with their assurance and massed information. They go to and fro from their homes, when they like and how they like. The husband knows almost nothing of his wife’s friends. He supposes it is all right. But he understands that he cannot stop her, cannot control her interests. She makes his house her home, is his friend and dear companion, but she does not stay in his charge. Often he feels like a stranger, helpless, not knowing what to do.

Wives are now almost more independent than husbands used to be. “I want to do it, therefore, I must do it,” is their acknowledged cry. They are on such good terms with life and with themselves that they cannot imagine another view—the old view of the woman sacrificing herself. There are quite a lot of things they won’t do; they are very simple and straightforward about them.

Nowadays it is not fashionable for even young unmarried girls to remain in the guarded shelter of the home. Old-fashioned fathers and brothers, are sometimes alarmed at the freedom of friendship allowed—the light-hearted pairing off. Life is a game, a dance, like the figure in the lancers where you “visit” and waltz away, but then come back to do the same thing with another partner. Yet these girls are not without hearts; but they realise that they must know men before they can choose the one man to whom they may give themselves. They have almost nothing in common with the boneless emotional heroines of the past. They are very practical and know that love will not pay the baker’s bills, and after realising all this, they have schooled themselves not to fall in love carelessly.

They look all life squarely in the face, understand their duties, what they will do and will not do, in a way that may be hard, but is admirably sane and admirably honest.

Here is an incident. An exceedingly modern girl was engaged by some ill-chance to an old-fashioned man. She came once to talk with him of her future and his. She was not fond of children and therefore, thought she ought not to have any. Gently he placed his hand over hers, “That will be as God wills, my darling.” She sprang from him, “It won’t, Ronald, that’s not true, it will be as I arrange.”

It used to be so different. The old-fashioned girl could never have spoken with such frankness. Wife or maid she was always younger than the man she loved. She studied him, listened to him, quoted him. She lived only in and through him. _At least that is what he thought._ He did not know that she did not really listen, was tired of his stories, not interested in his business or his friends. All her seeming submission and acceptance were used to hold him.

The opinions of the old-fashioned woman were quotations from authority; her motto was obedience, but her practice was sweet rebellion. Very rarely was she honest. Her eyes were so blinkered that she saw nothing that she did not wish to see.