VIII.—A Plea for Woman.
In bringing this essay, which I hope has not wholly been a tedious one to my readers, to a close, I cannot do better than recapitulate my reasons for writing it, the main argument that I have advanced, and the end or effect I have labored to accomplish, the latter being to cure, as a physician, the great and festering sore on our body politic, corrupting its life-blood and threatening its very existence.
I have endeavored to discuss the relations of the sexes to each other in their social bearings and from a professional standpoint, and have been moved so to do from a belief, resting upon my own careful investigations into the subject as a medical man, and upon the confessions of many men and the allegations of many women, that these relations are very frequently unlike what they should be in the better, the more respectable walks of life. Lest I be said to judge of others by myself, I will frankly state that I make no pretence to be, naturally, more effeminate or more apathetic than the average of men, and I hold that to most of us refinement, purification, godliness, come less by grace than by fire. Assailed by temptations from without and within, all of which are so freely acknowledged by Dr. Ware, and other candid writers upon the subject, the boy runs a gantlet which is not ended with manhood. We dig pitfalls for women; they, deceived, if surviving their disappointment, in turn lay snares for us. Happy those of either sex who have never suffered themselves, nor caused others to suffer!
Starting with the premises that for much the greater part of the domestic woes in this world our own sex is to blame, and for much of the wrong and wickedness committed by women we ourselves are accountable, I proceeded to show that by natural instinct, divinely implanted for the furtherance of the Infinite Plan, we are forced from our earliest childhood to perceive that it is not good to be alone, and that both sexes are impelled, the male by far the more strongly, towards bodily union.
Conscious or unconscious of the desires awakened within him, the man instinctively seeks their gratification. Sometimes, and very often it is, in the middle aged as in the young, he endeavors to find pleasure or relief in an unnatural and wholly selfish abasement of himself; sometimes, and very often this is also, he consorts with abandoned women, and thus degrades himself to their level; sometimes, though this is comparatively seldom, until by impure thought or improper deed he has bestained himself (for if a man lusteth after a woman hath he not already committed adultery?) he seeks legitimate happiness in honorable marriage, blending the physical with the spiritual union, the earthly with that which we hope may survive all time.
By remarks such as these, it will be probably said by those whose professions have been of a higher character than their lives, I but lower the standard, and nature, and objects of marriage. I would not intentionally or willingly do so. But that it may be seen that I have reasoned only in accordance with the fact, I shall draw once more from that unchallenged authority, who was to myself, while a student, the same teacher I would fain make him to be for my fellow-men. His voice now comes to us from the grave; it is none the less earnest or impressive for this. “It is easier,” says Dr. Ware, “to show that a remedy is needed than to discover and apply it. In this case, indeed, we encounter the most difficult question presented to us in the moral education of our race. At the early age at which the evil begins to exist, when it is gradually creeping into the thoughts and habits of the child, how are we to detect and counteract it? In the present state of the relations between the old and the young, between parents and children, this is a task of extreme delicacy. It can only be done by the judicious observation and management of the associations, the conversation, the intercourse, the amusements, and the habits of children from their earliest days, both in families and in schools. But alas! how few parents, how few instructors, have the knowledge, the discretion, the tact, the judgment, to qualify them for such an office! How often must those who are fully aware of their duty shrink from its performance, from the apprehension that they may suggest, instead of preventing, the evil they fear!
“At a later period of life, the attempt to counteract the tendency to sensual indulgence is also encompassed with great difficulties, though there is less embarrassment as to the exact means which are to be put in force to accomplish the object. At this age, we are to depend not so much upon the watchful care of others as upon the establishment in the mind of the young man himself of a principle of resistance founded upon reason and conscience. We can often succeed in doing this, and although, where the mind and body have both been debauched by early training, the mind filled with impure images, and the body stimulated by unnatural gratification, the struggle is painful and often protracted, yet it is frequently effectual.
“The young man who becomes sensible of the dangers to which he is exposed, should fortify himself by every motive that can aid him in his endeavor to escape them. A regard to reputation, the fear of disease, may do much to restrain, and these are considerations not unworthy of regard; but the surest safeguard is to be found in the cultivation of an internal principle of resistance to evil because it is evil. Much may be done by those who sincerely aim to save themselves from these early temptations by a sedulous discipline of the thoughts, and a corresponding carefulness of words. Thoughts lead to words, and words lead to thoughts; both are liable to be consummated in actions. Purity of language in the intercourse of society should be regarded as an essential quality of the gentleman, and the want of it exclude him from good company as much as any other vulgar habit.
“Another safeguard is to be found in the cultivation of a just perception of the true relation of the sexes. Let the young man cherish a high estimate of, and a reverence for, the character of the true and pure woman, and a corresponding detestation and horror of her who abuses and prostitutes the privileges of her sex. Such a view of this relation as has been inculcated, if it be fully appreciated and heartily received, will lead him to regard a legitimate and permanent union with one of the other sex as the most desirable object in life, and will fill him with a loathing for any other than such a union. The young man who looks forward with honorable feelings to such a connection with a congenial and virtuous woman, will find in the hopes and prospects which it opens to him in life the surest defence against the temptations which continually assail him.”[40]
Reasoning from the above, I endeavored to show that while very early marriages were probably contracted at the expense of the vigor of their offspring, it was yet well to begin to found one’s home while young, and pointed out that a house was never a home till it contained one’s children. The rights of the husband, alleged and actual, were then discussed; and it was proved to a demonstration that so far from being absolute, these rights are all of them reciprocal with duties, and that in their assertion and realization reason rather than mere instinct must govern us. From this point, glancing at its relations to divorce, as affording arguments and counter arguments, I have come to the recapitulation, which, rightly weighed, of itself affords one of the strongest of pleas for woman.
She pleads for what? For undue power in public life, for undue control in domestic affairs, for privileges not justly her own? The true wife desires none of these. Suffering through the centuries, and the varying phases of social civilization, she has been consecutively man’s slave, his idol for the moment, his toy. If recognized at all as in equality of rights, it has been in the right to suffer, and lest by nature she should not possess enough of this, woes unnecessary, unmentionable, innumerable, have been heaped upon her. Every one knows this, whether man or woman, and if woman’s voice has till now been nearly silent, she will none the less value these words of grateful appreciation, of sympathy, and of appeal to my fellows. We owe kindness to her for her kindness to us; we owe it, that we may still possess her to comfort and to cheer us; we owe it, for the sake of our children, that they may be healthy and well cared for, that indeed they may be born. The terrible fashion now so prevalent, of slaughtering the innocents while still in nature’s lap, is, in great measure, attributable to our own apathy, our own neglect, our own teachings, our own cruelty, and it behooves every one of us to make such amends as he best can. By his own life and his own example every man can show his detestation of that depravity of spirit which would turn a woman’s purity into an offence, and would nail to the block of sensuality and licentiousness the wings of angels,—so much chaster are women than ourselves. Woe unto those of us by whom such offences come.
As very pertinent to this especial point, I shall here present portions of a private letter, written to me by a lady of great intellectual and moral worth, well known indeed throughout the country.[41] Her remarks are of a kind to rivet attention, plain spoken and yet delicate as they are. “I have just laid down,” she says, “your ‘Book for Every Woman,’ and I want to thank you with all my heart for having written it. I was very slow to be convinced that any woman of decent character would consciously perpetrate an abortion; still slower to see how any woman calling herself pure minded could so degrade the sanctities of marriage as to make steady and persistent attempts to prevent impregnation,—and yet I had for many years felt sure that a great many so-called ‘female diseases’ were incited and developed by the luxurious and indolent habits of our women, which permit them, when neither cultivated nor philanthropic, to become conscious of every phase of gestative action or sexual excitement. To live straight on is the only wholesome way to live, and I could see that women were not doing this, but watching themselves in a morbid fashion sure to make mischief.
“When my friend, Dr. E. H. C., had opened my eyes to the actual fact, I felt so disgusted that I could have prayed to die. Since I could not do that, I did not hesitate to speak with unction to the large class of women who privately appealed to me, and to whose plain language I had not before known how to return any adequate answer.
“Will you believe me, when I say that I usually find it easier to induce the victim of seduction to take the consequences of her weakness than to persuade the fashionable woman to refrain from crime? The nether millstone is not so hard as the heart of a worldly woman. You will hardly concede to me the right to speak to you upon the matter in a physiological way, but will you overlook the seeming want of modesty which permits me to say that there is one argument which has weight with this class of women that has not been appealed to? From the moment that I understood the frequency of the attempts made to prevent impregnation and induce abortion, I felt that I had a key to the loss of beauty, of expression, and the sweet maternal charm, which every one who thinks must miss in this generation of women.
“You speak feelingly of the large families which used to make the homestead charming and attractive, but you say nothing of that element of motherliness, which I have missed for years, and especially of that genial, loving, thoughtful grandmother who used to be the beneficent fairy of childhood.
“I despised myself for it, but I did look in women’s faces to see what marks their lives had left, and I tell you that it is a simple fact, that women who habitually prevent impregnation grow cold, debased, unlovely in their expression, and that those who resort to abortion become sharp, irritable, and ungenial, everything, in short, that we mean by unmotherly.
“Now we may predict disease and death to these fashionable women forever in vain. They will not believe; they are sure they shall escape whoever else is lost; but if you tell them that they are destroying all sweetness, grace, and charm, and that this innermost secret of their lives is written plain on lip and brow for him who runs to read, the mirror itself will bear witness to them. And if to their startled consciousness you go on to urge the loveliness which wraps that woman round who gives herself gracefully to this, the highest function of her life, not merely loving him who gives her children to her, but loving them so much that she would rather live on the simplest food, and wear the plainest dress, draped and crowned with this maternal honor, than have all luxury and all power, about an unlovely and lonely way,—I think one often may, through woman’s very weakness, appeal to and touch the most sacred impulses of her nature.
“But the book needs a counterpart addressed to men. Till they are willing to spend as freely for wife and children as for the mistress, hidden but a few doors off, women will hardly be free agents in this matter. No woman dreads her travail, as she dreads the loss of what she calls, in her unhappy ignorance and blindness, her husband’s love. O, that we could restore the happy simplicity of thirty years ago, when there were homes where we now have houses, mothers and housekeepers in the place of lady patronesses, fathers and husbands instead of loungers at the club! But the world moves onward, never backward, and you must ring the bugle call again and again, till it brings conscience and harmony into the irregular and ‘purposeless’ march.”
Before this, however, can be done, men must have a higher respect for women. They must be taught that in childhood the female mind is far oftener stainless than that of the male, and that, saving only those exceptional cases where unchastity, like other family diseases, seems to descend from parent to child, the vice, really such, has been engendered, fostered, developed in woman by man. So truly is this the case, that I have never hesitated to consider the victims of seduction as generally sinned against rather than sinning, and to teach that even in the mire may be found many pearls of great price well worth the saving.
It is not generally known, though most men have had individual experience of the fact, that a large majority of married women, whatever their natural temperament, become considerably or entirely apathetic after a few years of conjugal life; that many married women never become sexually awakened at all, so far as sensations of pleasure or physical yearning are concerned, and that, despite all the evil in the world, and all the spread of knowledge, advisable and unadvisable, there still exist many unmarried women, not only entirely innocent of improper act or thought, but foolishly, inexcusably ignorant concerning matters which every mother who would save her daughters from the chance of great risk, and possibly still greater mental and bodily suffering, should teach them beforehand, as is done to so much greater extent in England than in this country.
These are the facts, and it is an insult to the sex when men treat women, whether single or even their own wives, as though they were as sensually minded as themselves. Says Acton, “We offer, I think, no apology for light conduct when we admit that there are some few women, who, like men, in consequence of hereditary predisposition or ill-directed moral education, find it difficult to restrain their passions, while their more fortunate sisters have never been tempted, and have, therefore, never fallen. This, however, does not alter the fact which I would venture again to impress on the reader, that in general women do not feel any great sexual tendencies. The unfortunately large numbers whose lives would seem to prove the contrary, are to be accounted for on much more mercenary motives—vanity, giddiness, greediness, love of dress, distress, hunger, make women prostitutes, but not generally sensuality.”[42]
I know that there are none so prone to plunge a fallen woman deeper into the mire, alike by their acts and their tongues, as women themselves. Thoughtless, forgetting that if exposed to the same dangers or the same temptations they also might have erred, women too often give to us men the impression that they are themselves but hypocrites and whited sepulchres; too often the first step towards a woman’s ruin has been from mere curiosity to see if she were really the immaculate and unapproachable creature her words would proclaim her. A woman’s hasty and uncharitable condemnation of an erring sister may well serve as a challenge to the tester of souls. As for us, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone.
Men often complain of the apathy in their wives, to which I have just referred, and improperly attribute it to want of affection. It is in no small number of cases the result of physical suffering, often extreme, and sometimes endured without a word of complaint even to the end. The spirit prompting this great patience is one of the truest and most self-sacrificing heroism. I do not, however, hesitate to pronounce it wrong, and to declare the silence of one woman, under such circumstances, is a positive harm to her whole sex. It is often through a mistaken sense of duty—an opinion encouraged of course by the husband, and sometimes even by the medical attendant, to whom the simplest principles of his science should teach a more reasonable view. Thus one eminent writer remarks: “In some instances, indeed, feeling has been sacrificed to duty, and the wife has endured, with all the self-martyrdom of womanhood, what was almost worse than death.”[43] Even in these later days, since it has been discovered that there almost always exists a physical cause for all the many peculiar woes that women suffer, there are still many husbands, there are still physicians, who see in a wife’s languor, a wife’s disability, a wife’s complaints, but the vain imaginings of a distempered mind, or the restless chafing of a soured and impatient disposition, and think that by according even but trifling sympathy, they are encouraging a groundless whim, or exciting to ennui, hysteria, or rebellion. Hard, indeed, the lives of these poor sufferers,—who, if half confessing their secret distress, are thought to exaggerate a trifling ailment, or to fabricate one for the occasion. And yet it is upon just these troubles, actual and very real, upon just these sufferings, harassing and often very intense, that half the woes of a woman’s life are based. They cause her to reject her husband, to destroy her unborn offspring; they make her moody and despondent, and to look forward without hope; they often send her to the insane asylum, and not unfrequently cause her to take her life; just these simple troubles, so easily detected when searched for, and many of them so easily cured.
These are matters upon which we may well ponder. They concern every man, whether gentleman by birth, education, or pretence, and he who scoffs at the word as usurped, yet generally makes of its idea the standard he would be glad to reach. If we have no such aim, we do not deserve to live; and of all the tests of such, the one always nominally most acknowledged, has been respectful conduct towards women, and the endeavor to protect them from harm. Courteous to strangers, we should be still more so to our own, and so be most truly brave in fighting down and conquering ourselves. To aid us in such chivalrous work was one chief end of The Good Physician; himself master of self, and, therefore, free from sin. It is surely no slight labor to endeavor thus to evangelize, no slight gain can we but thus be chastened, for chasteness is only to be gained by strict self-chastening, which, fruit from a perfect blossom, is the sign of a fuller love thus gained to us, both human and divine.
How can I better close my plea for a purer port towards woman than by the pungent, sensible, philosophical maxims of Jeremy Taylor? Let this good old prelate, whose whole life was in accordance with his own unsullied precepts, be to ourselves as to those who long ago preceded us, a Ductor Dubitantium, to lead us from the devious paths of sensuality into the Golden Grove of an earthly paradise.[44]
“Married persons,” he says, “must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts with arts and misbecoming devices. It is the duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures. In their permissions and license, they must be sure to observe the order of nature and the ends of God. He is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot, having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done without satisfying that desire, yet since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends,—with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other; but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from those ends which hallow it.”[45]
There are men who live thus soberly and wisely. Let each of my readers, before closing this book, again ask himself, “Is it I?”