It is now no longer possible either medically or psychologically to support (1), consequently the cold-blooded moral inference in (2) falls to the ground. The evils of abstinence among men are certainly in this country more serious than those of indulgence, while the evils resulting from a total absence of experience in sexual matters among young men are perhaps the worst of all.
The present obvious duty of civilization, therefore, short of so revolutionizing society as to make parthenogamy a thing of the past, and late marriages unnecessary, is to see that the sexual relief measure and school that the modern world provides for its young men are placed upon a sounder, a purer and a more humane basis, free from the ignorant bias of puritanical busy-bodies, and secured from the dangers that now attend them.
It only remains now to say a word on the position of the prostitute herself. From the psychological and physical point of view the sadness of her plight does not reside, as the Puritans of England suppose, in the moral turpitude of her lot, or in her loathing of it—for that is simply high-falutin’ nonsense.[124] It resides in the fact that her very taste for her calling, or the very desire that drew her into it—that she herself in fact—is a physiological misunderstanding. Her calling, like that of the childless married woman, presupposes that she will have to cry “Halt!” to a physiological process in her being, which only finds its first step in the coitus. By a false analogy with man’s sexual life the orgasm, which to woman is only the beginning of a long cycle of sex-experiences which end with the weaning of the child, is the only part of the female cycle which is vouchsafed her. Like the barren woman, she is denied the whole of the subsequent stages of the cycle, so rich in delightful experiences to her, and continues like a man to confine herself to orgasms—orgasms ad infinitum.[125]
It is this that constitutes the sad side of the prostitute’s life. If she have a tragedy, this is her tragedy. But for fear lest, prompted by vague moral prejudices, we feel tempted to make too much even of this aspect of her life—generally overlooked, by the by, in all dissertations I have read about her—we should remember that she shares this sad experience not only with thousands of spinsters, but also with thousands of married women who, from some cause or other, frequently economic pressure, are compelled to remain childless.[126]
From the national point of view, the feature about modern prostitution (apart from the evils incidental to it which are preventable) which is most strongly to be deprecated, is the fact that, since it is from working-class girls that its ranks are largely recruited, the danger is that it is upon the most temperamental and most positive of these girls—upon the most desirable of these girls, therefore—that the temptation to illicit relations with men is likely to exercise the most potent influence.
(2) THE NEGATIVE SPINSTER
I now come to the consideration of the negative spinster, and when once I shall have dealt with her, a few remarks about the characteristics common both to the positive and negative spinster will conclude the chapter.
The negative spinster, unlike her positive sister, is not a great conscious sufferer from her condition. She may ail as the result of constitutional debility incidental to the inferior vitality which causes her to be negative; but, from the absence of that element in her life which consummates a woman’s destiny, she will not be conscious of suffering very severely.
The physical equipment for marriage, and the traditional impetus derived from the ancestral habits of her sex, are both present in her, but their urge is faint, the inner voice, far from being loud and insistent, is barely audible, and she is harassed by little of that importunacy on the part of her reproductive organs which compels her sister either to adapt herself normally to life, or else to seek compensations and to develop acute nervous symptoms in so doing.
Her own and her friends’ failure to recognize the true nature of her condition, however, frequently, if not invariably, leads to misinterpretations of her precise value as an individual which are as gross as they are dangerous—gross because they apply moral values to a condition that is primarily physical, dangerous because they lead the rest of the world into a misunderstanding concerning the importance of a normal sexual life to the individual, and the worth of life generally.