Part 2

As workers the women are most conscientious and intelligent, apt to learn, and ready to adopt improvements. From my personal observations I can bear witness that their cottages, though very poor, are usually clean, and their children are universally well cared for. Nowhere are children happier or more loved than in Spain. The women are full of energy and vigour even to an advanced age. They are certainly healthy. I once witnessed an interesting episode during a motor-ride in the country districts of the north. A robust and comely Spanish woman was riding _a ancas_ (pillion fashion) with a young _caballero_, probably her son. The passing of our motor frightened the steed, with the result that both riders were unhorsed. Neither was hurt, but it was the woman who pursued the runaway horse; she caught it without assistance and with surpassing skill. What happened to the man I cannot say. When I saw him he was standing in the road brushing the dust from his clothes. I presume the woman returned with the horse to fetch him.

Women were the world’s primitive carriers. In Spain I have seen women bearing immense burdens, unloading boats, acting as porters and as firemen, and removing household furniture. I saw one woman with a chest of drawers easily poised upon her head, another woman bore a coffin, while another, who was old, carried a small bedstead. A beautiful woman porter in one village carried our heavy luggage, running with it on bare feet without sign of effort. She was the mother of four children, and her husband was at the late Cuban war. She was as upright as a young pine, with the shapeliness that comes from perfect bodily equipoise. I do not wish to judge from trivial incidents, but I have found in these Spanish women a strength and beauty that has become rare among women to-day. When a fire breaks out in a small town or village it is the women water-carriers who act as firemen. They fetch the water from fountains and pour it upon the flames. Just recently I have read of three of these women who lost their lives in an attempt to rescue a cripple girl from a burning house.

I was never tired of looking at the Spanish water-carriers; the fountains that are in every town are the most delightful watching-places. The grace with which the women walk on the uneven roads and their perfect skill in balancing their beautiful _jarras_ of stone or copper called forth my unceasing admiration. One result of this universal burden-carrying on the head is the perfect and dignified character of the women’s manner of walking. These women walk like priestesses who are bearing sacred vessels. They move erectly, but without stiffness, with a secure and even stride, planting the foot and heel together, light and firmly. There is something of the grace of an animal in their movements—the alertness, the perfect balance, the suggestion of hidden strength. I recall a conversation I had once with an Englishman, of the not uncommon strongly patriotic and censorious type. We were walking on the quay at La Coruna; he pointed to a group of women-bearers, who were at work unloading a vessel, and said in his indiscriminate British gallantry, “I can’t bear to see women doing work that ought to be done by men.” “Look at the women!” was the answer I made him.

It is interesting to contrast the robust heroines of Spanish writers with the feminine feebleness and inanity which so often are the ideal of English novelists. In Spanish literature vigour and virility, are qualities apart from sex and are bestowed on women equally with men.

Again and again the thoughtful reader will be struck with this in the works of the Spanish writers. It is a point of such interest that one would like to linger upon it. I may mention, as one instance, Cervantes’ heroines: the “illustre Fregona,” “beautiful, with cheeks of rose and jessamine, and as hard as marble,” and Sancho’s daughter, who was “tall as a lance, as fresh as an April morning, and as strong as a porter.” Of Tirso de Molina, the great Spanish dramatist, it has been said that he gives “all vigour to his women and all weakness to his men.” Nor has this robust ideal of womanhood changed. We meet the same qualities among the women depicted by the Spanish writers to-day. Blasco Ibanez, in his “Flor de Mayo,” describes a young woman who could meet “a stolen embrace with a superb kick, which more than once had felled to the ground a big youth as strong and firm as the mast of his boat.” Among the heroines of Juan Valera we find “Juanita” who, “as a girl could throw stones with such precision that she could kill sparrows, and leap on the back of the wildest colt or mule,” while Dona Luz “could dance with a sylph, ride like an Amazon, and in her walk resembled the divine huntress of Delos.”

It may of course be argued that these are chosen types that cannot fairly be said to represent Spanish women. Yet the Spanish writers are realists in a much truer sense than is understood amongst English novelists, and it must be admitted that the persistence of the same qualities in so many heroines proves a fundamental veracity in the type presented; and from my own experience, I can testify that the women I have known, in their vigour and independence, show the qualities of these portrait women.

The fact can scarcely be passed over that these heroines almost all belong to the country districts, sometimes even to the poorest people, and if, as in the case of “Dona Luz,” they spring from a different class, they are, as a rule, illegitimate, combining aristocratic distinction with plebian vigour. This corresponds with my own observations. I have found the women workers more robust and more intelligent than the women of the middle and upper classes.

Nor is the explanation far to seek. The preparation that these women receive for life is far inferior to that of the workers, who co-operate with men, and whose lives are as actively productive, and work as capably performed. The women of the richer classes lead lives of marked inferiority; without opportunity for work, and compelled to an existence of restricted activity, it is impossible to develop their physical and intellectual qualities.

Most of these ladies, except when quite young, are stout, they are less intelligent than the peasants, and few of them have ever appealed to me as being beautiful. I hasten to add, however, that they all have the fascination that belongs to Spanish women; a charm not easy to define. I have spoken of this quality before, let me try to make it clearer now. I believe it is that all these “senoras” and “senoritas” understand that they are women, and instead of this bringing them unhappiness and causing, as it so often does, the indefinite unquietness that characterises so many English and American women, you feel that they are glad that this is so. This is why they are so attractive. Spanish women are in harmony with themselves, which gives them something of that exquisite appeal which belongs to all natural things. This is the reason too, why the older women are so good-humoured, smiling and gay; they have none of them missed their womanhood.

Here is the real reason of the admiration which these women so universally arouse,—as women they are so perfect. This is a question that reaches very deeply; it is a quality so easy to see, so difficult to explain. What I wish to make clear is that the modern English ideal for women leaves a wide margin open to desire; the innermost forces of life too often are left unsatisfied, while the women of Spain, with all their restrictions, know what it is that, after all, really brings happiness for women. Which is the wiser knowledge?

The restrictions for women will pass with the expansion of modern life, and then the strong personality of Spanish women, their energy and good sense, will inevitably find expression when opportunity is given to them. But never can they fall, in pursuit of outside things, into the error of forgetfulness of their womanhood. There does not appear to be any vagueness in the souls of these women: our women have so often too much. In the composed presence of the Spanish ladies I have felt that it is little profit to a woman if, in gaining the world, she should lose herself.

THE DANGEROUS AGE

A TRACT FOR THE TIMES

I

Under this title the Danish writer, known as Karin Michaelis, in the far-back years before the war—a time now marked as the terrible period of the suffrage craze, gave to the world a remarkable and intimate revelation of a woman. It is perhaps the most illuminating work that has been written in recent years about women, from its rare quality of femininity, expressed with an unconscious sincerity and biting truth.

It is very late in the day to describe a book which, though now forgotten, was, at the time of its publication, very widely read and still more widely criticised and discussed in almost all European countries. It appeared at a time of great feminist unrest, which accounts, to some extent, for the reception it gained.

The story matters very little, for it is not as the confession of one woman that “The Dangerous Age” gains its importance, it is because it affords a diagnosis of an old and a very great evil, as well it is an acute observation of a certain type of woman’s soul or character.

It is from this aspect that I wish to approach it, and for this reason I have called it “A Tract for the Times.”

Thus it is of very little importance to my present purpose that the book is not a new one. It does not matter if the story is remembered, or indeed, if the book itself has, or has not, been read. If the reader will recall to his or her mind any one of the restless, unsatisfied women they must know—women, not young but not old, they will have the history (the variety in the details will not matter at all) of Elsie Lindtner, the heroine of this story.

This admirable piece of observation deals with a section of women who have come into being through our industrial civilisation with its wrong ideals and stupid customs. Marcel Prévost[1] in his preface to the book, speaks of Elsie Lindtner’s confession as a revelation of the feminine soul of all time. With the latter part of this opinion I entirely disagree. Rather would I say that it is a revelation of the soul of woman as that soul has been evolved through the repression of natural instincts and the want of satisfying fields for the expression of energy, in an atmosphere which very surely gives birth to the modern demons of confused desires and unconscious unhappiness.

The title of the book is not, I think, well chosen. The Dangerous Age—Elsie Lindtner was forty-two when she wrote her confession—was dangerous because of the life which had preceeded it. There is, without doubt, a cleavage in life, which may be said to be marked by the diminishing of attraction towards the opposite sex. But this is common to men as well as to women. It belongs to no special age, and its proportion of danger to the individual rests, first on the fulness or poverty of experience before this period arrives, and secondly on the power to extract from the past the joyous impulse for continuous living. But to Elsie Lindtner, as to all women of such false and restricted experience, it was far more than a cleavage, and because she had never lived simply and completely, she experienced that emptiness which strikes the soul with death when the consciousness comes that the opportunities of life are passing.

The terror of approaching age robbed her of all her hope of future happiness, just because she had emptiness in her past.

It is easy to condemn her, to speak of her selfishness, her falseness, her colossal egoism—there are few adjectives of condemnation that I have not heard applied to the Elsie Lindtner’s of life. Yet if we look at the matter rightly, rather ought we to admire her for the perfect self-sacrifice with which she pursued the one occupation.

II

The question at its root is one of right functioning. For mark the real point of Elsie Lindtner’s history is this: all her actions were based on search for pleasure. To gain the possessions of this world was the fixed aim for which she bartered her soul. What does she tell us in one of her letters? She is writing of her school-days. A class mate had said to her, “Of course, a prince will marry you, for you are the prettiest girl here.” She carried the words home to a maid who added to the poison:

“That’s true enough,” she said, “a pretty face is worth a pocketful of gold.”

“Can one sell a pretty face, then?” the child asked.

“Yes, to the highest bidder,” was the answer given.

The seed thus sown gave a rich harvest. Sex-trade became the object, which Elsie Lindtner pursued with the same unflinching purpose which directs all those who create for themselves the false gods of possessions. Truly, while we support with our praise the successful financier, we cannot in justice give less esteem to the woman who pursues the same end in the way that is the easiest and surest of success.

It is no part of my purpose to give a resumé of the history of Elsie Lindtner. The details matter little; a structure of life built on a false foundation must of necessity fall to ruin. And there is another point I wish to make clear. The destroying penalty paid by this woman for the gain of wealth and position was a failure of the power to love. The real explanation of her unrest, hysteria, and manifold symptoms of excitement was caused by the unceasing warfare within her of two antagonistic forces—the desire for comfort and ease, partly instinctive, but also fixed by habit, strengthened by a wish to keep the moral dignity imposed upon women by the conditions of the society in which she lived, fighting with the deeply instinctive desire for satisfying sex experience to fulfil the functioning of life.

It is necessary for women to speak plainly. You cannot deny the needs of the body, or prostitute their use, without the soul paying its penalty. That is what women too often forget. A false purity held Elsie Lindtner from giving herself to her lover, Jorgen Mallthe, and kept her faithful in the letter of the law to the husband she had married for his wealth. She had no children. I say without any doubt that she would have been a purer and a better, because a happier and more healthy woman, if she had followed the cry of her heart, at the first, as she was driven in the end to want to do—when it was too late. That she did not do this, but chose to sacrifice her lover in the same way that she had sacrificed her husband must, in my opinion, be counted as sin against her. Only the falseness which had wrapped her own life in a net of pretence could have made her fail to see the truth for herself.

It is a fact of very special importance that Elsie Lindtner and all the women who enter into this book belong to the Scandinavian race, among whom chastity was extolled as the chief virtue of a woman, while any lapse was punished with terrible severity. If the husband of an ancient Dane discovered his wife in adultery he was allowed to kill and castrate her lover. “There is a city,” says the Scandinavian Edda, “remote from the sun, the gates of which face the north, poison rains there through a thousand openings, the place is all composed of the carcasses of serpents. There run certain torrents, in which are plunged the bodies of the perjurers, assassins, and those who seduce married women. A black-winged dragon flies incessantly round and devours the bodies of the wretched who are there imprisoned.” Again, the Icelandic Hava Maél contains this caustic apophthegm “Trust not the words of a girl, neither to those which a woman utters, for their hearts have been made like the wheel that turns round; levity was put into their bosoms. Trust not to the ice on one day’s freezing, neither to the serpent which lies asleep, nor to the caresses of her you are going to marry.”

III

Now, it may be asked: What has all this to do with Elsie Lindtner? My answer is: “Everything!” The customs of a past social life do subsist beneath the surface of modern society; we cannot without strong effort escape from the chains of our inheritance. In the sad nations of the cold north, where the natural joy of the body has been regarded as something to be fought with and denied, a perpetual confusion has arisen at the very source of life. For the sex-passion is a force, huge and fateful, which has to be reckoned with. Woman is more primitive, more intuitive, more emotional than man. And the outlets allowed to her in the past have been more restricted; thus the price she pays for any repression of the natural rights of love is heavier. Elsie Lindtner’s history is a sermon to all those who set up the false god of chastity for women.

I am aware that this statement will arouse opposition—especially in women. To-day we hear much talk, and often among women who are working nobly for the better life for women, of control of sex and the need of imposing on men the same code of repression which for so long has been imposed upon them. This is, of course, very natural, but that does not make it wise. It is a truth realised by few women that repression is not, and never can be, control. There seems to be a very widespread opinion that to use the divine gift of sex even in marriage, for joy, is wrong. One would be inclined to laugh, if the sadness of this falsehood did not make one want to weep.

The whole subject, wide as life itself, escapes anything like adequate treatment. The lady—the Elsie Lindtners of society—the household drudge and the prostitute, are the three main types of women resulting in our so-called civilisation of to-day, from the process of the past, and it is hard to know which is the most wretched, which is the most wronged, the most destructive, and the furthest removed from that ideal woman which a happier future may evolve.

What, then, in conclusion, is the lesson to be learnt from this “Tract for the Times?” Women must be free—free to work and free to love. Then, and then only, can they claim to be the fitting mates of men, then and then only, will they be able to fulfil aright their supreme work as the mothers of the sons and daughters of the race. This is the path along which freedom is to be found. What, then, is the individual woman to do? This question is one which women at the present have to answer for themselves. But one thing is certain—they must have the courage to tear from their eyes the old and the new bandages that have kept them, and still keep them, in the darkness of ignorance; better even to sin and know the truth than to live in falsehood and in a child’s world of pretence.

THE LEGAL POSITION OF THE MOTHER

In spite of the rapid advance that has been made, the legal disabilities of women are still great. Especially is this so in their relationship to their children.

Here where they should be supreme women have really no rights at all under our laws.

They are not the legal parents of their own children. Only if their child is illegitimately born, have they any rights of guardianship. The law recognises the father as the one parent. He is entitled to the custody of the children. He alone can say where they shall live or how they shall be brought up: he alone has the legal right to decide how they shall be educated or what religion they shall follow. No promise that he makes, either before or after marriage is binding. The man may change his mind at any time. The woman has no remedy. It is evident how terrible a force for evil these rights may easily become in the hands of an unscrupulous or vindictive man. If, for instance, the woman does not choose to live where the husband directs, he may take her children from her. Again, if there is any difference of opinion between the two parents the opinion of the one parent—the father, must prevail. And this is so even when the mother, and not he, is the supporter of the family.

And the injustice continues even after death. The father has the right to appoint a guardian to act with the mother, but a guardian appointed by the mother can act only after both parents are dead. The children have to be brought up according to any wishes expressed by the father or even which it is inferred he has intended to express. This is especially apt to cause trouble with regard to religion. Any relation of the father (even when he himself has been either indifferent or irreligious) may claim to have a woman’s children trained, _against her wishes_, in the religion professed by the father’s family on the ground that the father was nominally a member of that church.

Of course, when there is agreement between the parents, as happily is the case in the great majority of marriages, the law does not matter. Indeed very few mothers have any conception of their position under the law. That is the only reason why these horrible and out-of-date laws have not been repealed.

Fortunately they are unlikely to remain a dark blot upon our statute book. An admirable Bill has been formulated under the direction of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, which will remedy this long-standing injustice. It has the long title of the Guardianship, Maintenance, Custody and Marriage of Infants Bill. Its two great objects are:—

(1) To make the mother as well as the father the legal parent of her children.

(2) To impose upon both fathers and mothers the liability to maintain their children according to their means.

There are many further admirable provisions, as for instance, the one which gives both parents equal rights in appointing guardians. Where the child is under 16 and has no property, present or expectant, the case may be dealt with in Courts of Summary Jurisdiction (or Police Courts). This is most important, as it makes the benefits of the equal guardianship possible to the working classes, which would not be so, if cases, as at present, had to be heard in High Courts or County Courts.

I shall not trouble to answer the few determined obstructionists who have opposed this Bill. They say that it will cause difficulty in the home, and provide a reason for quarrel between husband and wife. I have too high an opinion of men and women and of their love of their children to believe this. The cases of dispute, sufficiently serious to be brought into the courts, will always be comparatively few. And a decision of justice will be much easier when the partners have an equal status. Then the welfare of the children will be the decisive factor and not as now, the desires of the parents.

Equal guardianship laws are in operation already in many countries: and wherever they have been established they have worked excellently and must be regarded as a complete success.

PROBLEMS OF BIRTH CONTROL

It is generally admitted that there is much to be gloomy about in these days of bad trade and post-war morals. And yet, perhaps, the poor old world does improve in some respects.

One of the most hopeful signs of this improvement to me is the very widespread interest that has been taken of late in birth control. Conferences are held, law-suits are fought and won; pamphlets are written and in almost every town lectures are given, and everywhere groups of earnest-minded people come together to discuss and to learn. Our sense of responsibility has been quickened in connection with birth and the bringing a new life into the world. In a deeper and more practical way we have come to know that no child should be born _unwanted_.