[102] In the Laws of Manu (Bk. IX, 89) there is a passage which seems to show that spinsterhood of this kind is specially recommended by the religious Founder of Brahmanism. In Bk. IX, verse 89, we read: “But the maiden, though marriageable, should rather stop in her father’s house until death, than that he should ever give her to a man destitute of good qualities.”
[104] See Arabella Kenealy (Op. cit., p. 105), where, referring to the vital impulses of woman, she says: “When these are not expended, as is normal, in the creation of and ministration to living and beloved things, they generate warped, erratic and chaotic aberrations.”
[105] “With reference to the marked predominance of female suicides [in England] over male suicides in the 15-20 age period, Ogle remarks that this is also ‘the only period in which the general death rates, as shown in the Registrar-General’s returns, is higher in the female sex, and also is marked, as the census returns for 1881 show, by an exceptionally higher rate of lunacy (exclusive of idiocy or imbecility) for females than for males.’... In France, the chief age at which men commit suicide is from 40 to 50, while for women it is between 15 to 20.” (Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, pp. 382-383.) The census of 1911 also gives higher figures for female than for male lunacy—a difference of 10,000, and these are chiefly unmarried women. The unmarried numbered 54,223, the married 21,299, widowed 9,229.
[106] H. Ellis, Op. cit., p. 388: “There are some who believe (Dr. H. Campbell amongst them) that although the number of women of all ages who commit suicide is less than the number of men, many more women than men contemplate suicide habitually, i.e. many more women than men are suicidal, although they may not always carry it into practice.”
[107] The facts collected by the psycho-analysts, Freud and Dr. E. Jones, on this phenomenon were not new to me. I had already observed them in numerous cases, and my observations on the point were but confirmed by the psycho-analysts’ theory of the transference of orgastic sensations from the genitalia to other parts of the body.
[108] See Martial, III, 82, 9; also Senecae Dialogorum Liber XII, 10, 3. While Hugo Blümner in his Römischen Privataltertümer (1922), p. 399, gives a brief description of this practice.
[109] See Papers on Psycho-Analysis (London, 1918), p. 599. In regard to this question parents are also entitled to ask what influence the spinster’s outlook on life has upon their children, particularly upon their daughters. It is impossible entirely to divorce from one’s moral influence upon children the prejudices and prepossessions of one’s particular position in life, and one’s general attitude towards fundamental problems. Now, since the spinster’s particular position in life is an abnormal one, it is questionable whether she can help her influence from imparting something of her own abnormality. When we bear in mind that, according to the census of 1911 there were 187,283 female teachers in England and Wales, 171,480 of whom were unmarried, the gravity of this aspect alone of spinsterhood cannot be denied.
[110] And neurosis in later life.
[111] “The most serious manifestation of disordered conduct in hysteria is, however, the development of the appetite for teasing—for giving pain and annoyance to others” (see Charles Mercier, M.B., Sanity and Insanity, London, 1890, p. 215). Long after Mercier wrote this his views were confirmed by the school of psycho-analysts. I give the reference to Mercier to show that the fact was observed before the psycho-analysts, so much detested in certain quarters, had come to the fore.