Women's Wild Oats Part 11

There is (I must again insist upon this), whether we like it or not, a new kind of woman about, who is to s.n.a.t.c.h from life the freedom that men have had, and to do this, she knows, if she thinks at all, that she must keep marriage at bay. For marriage binds the woman while it frees the man, and this injustice--if so you like to term it--is dependent on something fundamental; something that will not be changed by endowment of motherhood, an equal moral standard in the marriage laws, or any of the modern patent medicines for giving health to marriage and liberty to wives. There is an inescapable difference in the results of marriage on the two partners. I mean, marriage holds the woman bound through her emotions, while it liberates the man through what he receives from her.

The woman gains her greatest liberation only from the child, but again that holds her bound. Perhaps this is the way nature will not let women get away from their service to life.

Sometimes there is the necessity of purifying by loss. I do not believe in changing the ideal of marriage so that its duties are less binding on women, already we have gone too far in that direction. Thus, I think it better to make provision for other partners.h.i.+ps to meet the s.e.x-needs (for we can cause nothing but evil by failing to meet them) of those women who, desiring the same freedom as the man, would delegate the duties of wife and mother to the odd moments of life, and choose to pursue work or pleasure unvexed and unimpeded by the home duties and care of children. Marriage also is a trust; we are the trustees to the future for the most sacred inst.i.tution of life.

VIII

A society parched for honesty cannot suffer the ignominious and chaotic conditions of our s.e.xual lives to go on as they have been lately among us, for it is plain to me that our moral code--that marriage itself cannot stand, and, indeed, is not standing, the strain of our dishonesties. Our social life is worm-eaten and crumbling into rottenness with secret and scandalous hidden relations.h.i.+ps; these dark and musty by-ways and corners of s.e.xual conduct want to be spring-cleaned and made decent. Never before have we needed so urgently to put our house in order. We must begin to tidy up and begin soon. If we cut out some parts of the labyrinth, we shall give the young a surer chance of finding their way out of the rest of the labyrinth.

IX

An open recognition of unions outside of marriage would prevent the present easy escape on the part of so many men and women from responsible conduct in these unregulated relations.h.i.+ps. It is because I believe this that I am advocating this course, which will not make immorality easier, but rather will impose definite obligations where now none exist.

This proposal is not made lightly. I am not advocating such a course as being in itself desirable or undesirable. I am attempting merely to estimate the drift and tendency of the times, considering those forces which for long have been in action and, as I think, must continue to act with even greater urgency in the difficult years that are before us.

I must affirm how necessary, in my opinion, is some kind of fixed recognition for every form of s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p between a woman and a man, so that there may be an accepted standard of conduct for the partners entering into them. Regulation is more necessary in s.e.x than in any other department of conduct, for the plain reason that we are dealing with a force that pierces the slashes through our conscious wills, holding us often helpless in its power; a force which often finds its momentum in atavisms stored up through countless ages before ever society began; a force merely glossed over, as it were, by a worn smudge of civilization. And to-day "the smudge" has grown more than ever ineffective.

May not something be done now, when we are being forced to consider these questions, to make some wider recognition possible. Partners.h.i.+ps other than marriage have had a place as a recognized and guarded inst.i.tution in many older, and in some ways wiser, societies, and, it may be that the conditions brought upon us after the World War may act in forcing upon us a similar acceptance. I believe that, in face of much that is happening to-day--the terrible disorder, like spreading-sores, infesting our s.e.xual lives--such a change would work for good, and not for evil, that it would not destroy marriage, but might re-establish its sanct.i.ty.

X

I can antic.i.p.ate an objection that probably will be raised. Why, I shall be asked, if s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps are to be acknowledged outside of marriage, preserve marriages at all? This question can be answered confidently. Marriage in its permanent monogamous form will be maintained because the great majority of women and men want it to be maintained. The contract-partners.h.i.+ps I have suggested will be powerless to harm wedded love, of which the child is the glorious symbol. No law is needed to protect this beauty. There will always remain a penalty to those who seek variety in love, in that unrest that is the other side of variety.

It is the highest type of men and women who will seek to marry and be best and happiest, if living together as faithful husband and wife, as devoted father and mother, I do, however, hold, that there are others--women and men--without the gifts that make for successful parenthood or happy permanent marriage. I would recognize this frankly, and let those who do not desire marriage be openly permitted to live together in honorable temporary unions.

Surely it is the wisest arrangement for the man and woman worker who do not want children, and, not wis.h.i.+ng for the bondage of a continuous companions.h.i.+p, desire to pa.s.s their lives in liberty. It is possible that in some cases such friends.h.i.+p-contracts might serve as a preliminary to marriage, while, under our present disastrous conditions, they might also be made by those who are unsuitably mated and yet are unable, or do not wish, to sever the bond with some other partner. Such contracts would open up possibilities of honorable relations to many who now are driven into shameful and secret unions.

In this way much evil would be prevented. As time went on, hasty marriage would come to be looked on with disapproval, and many unions would be prevented that now inevitably come to disaster. And this would leave greater chances of marriage and child-bearing for others and more suitable types; while further, these sterile unions would, by their childlessness, act to remove for ever from the world those unsuited to be parents. It is this last result that matters most.

XI

The whole question of any s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps outside of marriage in the past has been left in the gutters, so to speak, of necessity made disreputable by the shames of concealment. Much of this would be changed. Moreover, prost.i.tution, and also the diseases so closely connected with prost.i.tution, would be greatly lessened, though I do not think s.e.xual sins would cease. There will always be, for a very long time at least, men and women who will be attracted to wild-love. This we have to recognize. No one, however, need be driven into the dark paths of irresponsible love.

It is the results that have almost always followed these irregular unions that have always branded them as anti-social acts. But irresponsible conduct, such, for instance, as the desertion of women, which is made easy by the condition of secrecy under which they now exist, would be put an end to. And by doing this would follow another and, perhaps, even greater gain. The recognition of these partners.h.i.+ps would prevent the ostracism which even yet falls on the discarded mistress. There are many women who dread this more than anything else. A woman is hounded out of decent life, if the facts of her history become known; honorable love is closed to her, too often she finds the easiest and pleasantest life is that of the streets.

One reason why extra-conjugal relations.h.i.+ps are discredited is, because the difficulties placed around all who enter them are so numerous that, as a rule, it is the weak, the foolish and the irresponsible who undertake these partners.h.i.+ps. Of course, this is not always true. Men and women, against their wills and often before they know, become entangled in a net of furtive and dishonorable acts. Squalid intrigues are the shadow that I want to eliminate out of existence. But make these partners.h.i.+ps honorable, and the men and women who enter into them will act honorably. I do not see that we can forbid or treat with bitterness any union that is openly entered into and in which the duties undertaken are faithfully fulfilled. It is our att.i.tude of blame that so often makes decent conduct impossible; forces men and women into corners where there is no escape from embittered rebellious sin.

XII

I have sought to put these matters as plainly as may be in the conviction that nothing can be gained without honesty. Anyone who writes on such a question is, I know, very open to misconception. It will not be realized by many that my effort is not to lessen responsibility,--to weaken at all the bonds between the s.e.xes, rather my desire is to strengthen them; but, I know, the form of the bonds will have to be made wider. We shall have more morality in too much wideness than in too little.

Matters are likely to get worse and not better. And the answer I would give to those who fear an increase of immorality from any openly recognized provision for s.e.xual partners.h.i.+ps outside of permanent marriage is that no deliberate change made in this direction can conceivably make the moral conditions of our society, in the future, worse than they have been in the recent past. As a matter of fact, every form of irregular union has existed and does exist to-day, but shamefully and hidden. It is certain that they will continue and that their numbers will not lessen, but increase.

The only logical objection that I can think of being advanced against an honorable recognition of these partners.h.i.+ps is that, by doing away with all necessity for concealments, their number is likely to be much larger than if the old penalties were maintained. I doubt if this would happen, but, even if it were so, and more of these partners.h.i.+ps were entered into; it is also true that recognition is the only possible way in which such union can cease to be shameful. We have, then, to choose whether we will accept recognition and regulations, unless, indeed, we prefer the continuance and increase of unregulated secret vice.

There is no other choice, at least I can find none; no other way except to establish responsibility in all our s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps. Secret relations.h.i.+ps must be contraband in the new order.

FOOTNOTES:

[193:1] Some parts of this essay appeared, in 1913, in the _English Review_. The article created some interest at that time, especially in America, where it was published (with two other articles from the _English Review_) in a little book, "Women and Morality." My opinions have changed little since I wrote it. In my last book, "Motherhood and the Relations.h.i.+ps of the s.e.xes," I again treat the subject in a chapter ent.i.tled _s.e.xual Relations.h.i.+ps outside of Marriage_. I am now strengthened in my certainty that responsibility must be fixed and regulated in all s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps if moral health is to be restored.

[200:1] A clever novel, "Three Women," by Miss Netta Syrett, gives an illuminating picture of modern womanhood.

[208:1] See I. Bloch, "s.e.xual History of our Times," pp. 320-322.

CONCLUSION

WITHOUT VISION

"Where there is no vision, the people perish."--Pro. xxix. 18.

I began this book on Armistice day, and am ending it on Peace day. This period of about eight months has been a time of great disillusionment.

Even those little inclined to be deceived by the customary exaggerations of politicians, and little disposed to believe in sudden conversions, had hoped that the immense effort of this Great War was to awaken the deadened conscience of the world; to leave a permanent improvement in social and international relations; making cla.s.s and individual and s.e.x compet.i.tion, as also national rivalry, a less p.r.o.nounced feature in the new order; replacing greed by desire for service, war by a League of Nations to enforce justice. But a war of justice was followed by a peace of trickery and injustice. The victors (if not every one of them, still collectively) claimed their spoils as in earlier wars. Clemenceau's desire for vengeance triumphed over Wilson's principles in the center of the world stage.

More than ever we search the future with anxiety. Amid the confusions and compulsions, the changes unavoidable in this time of uncertainty, it is immensely more difficult to act wisely. In the old days it all seemed so much easier, as if life could be shuffled, like a pack of cards, into new arrangements. War has made a difference to the whole of life, shattered everything, as it were, in our hands, made the daily duties of most of us much harder. We have been robbed of serenity.

When you stand at the threshold of this new difficult world, knowing, as I do, that the milestones marking the backward path tell you, with certainty, that the greater part of your life and your work lies behind you, then, in these waiting days of urgency, you will want to hold a reckoning with yourself and with life, in humility to question everything, your own faith and what you have tried to teach to others with all the honesty you have.

My task has been a difficult one, and it is made much more difficult by reason of the uncertainties of our outlook, because there are now so few principles accepted by all of us as true; every principle is faced by a counter principle. It is so much easier to have fixed standards of conduct than to argue every case that occurs. We have failed in every direction to establish ideals fine enough and complete enough, and useful enough to hold our imagination and our wills. Everyone seems to be more or less at loose ends of conflicting purposes. Morals now are like clothes, made to measure and to fit each wearer. Too often, in important particulars, they change as easily and foolishly as the fas.h.i.+ons change.

I wish to bring people back to a disciplined freedom; to a recognition of their own needs and the needs of others--the deepest desires of life.

A morality based on individual values is breaking down in every direction, under the temptations and unsettlements, increased and hastened by the war, but brought about primarily by profit seeking, by the struggle of everyone doing as he likes, by a society so large, so ill organized and so hurried that personal intercourse gives way to mechanical relations.h.i.+ps.

My position is all the more difficult as, while inclining more to the spirit of those who, in relation to the moral questions I have dealt with, are conservative, I yet regard very many of our accepted conventions and our laws as productive of evil. I realize the way in which they act so disastrously in hindering the spiritual and physical health of our society. I am, therefore, eager for certain very wide-reaching reforms.

I have not great patience with abstract theories of right and wrong, rather I would test every law and every inst.i.tution by its usefulness in helping men and women. However imperfectly I have succeeded, I have set _this aim of helpfulness_ steadfastly before me in every proposal I have made for changes in our marriage laws and in the hindering laws which regulate personal conduct. I do not want to discuss and consider humanity, life, or anything else as I would like them to be, but, as honestly as I can, I would observe and then help them as they are.

So many calamities and so much sin that could be prevented are listlessly accepted by us as inevitable. New ideas and needs are entangled among old; there is much of the new that is desirable to preserve, much of the old that needs to be reformed. I would wish to oppose two tendencies: I would prevent the too ready acceptance of the fas.h.i.+ons of the day, and I would also prevent a too loyal obedience to the prejudices of yesterday. I would unite the intelligence of the modern with the pa.s.sion and sincerity of the ancient.

Such is the immensely difficult task that must be faced by every one of us to-day. All of us are charged with heavy responsibility. Ours is a greater inheritance than ever before there has been in the world. We have all of us become responsible in a new and sterner way; to unite in our search to find the new right paths. Three generations of industrialism have created hideous abuses; we have to end them. With our wider vision and more knowledge, with the lessons we have learned, with the pain of our suffering, and our sacrifices still branded on our hearts, we have to unite one with the other and all of us together to renew and to justify life. We have to remake the world.