Only recently, for instance, when the 1921 census revealed that there were approximately 2,000,000 more women than men in Great Britain—that is to say, 2,000,000 women who on the monogamous principle could not be expected to find mates—several prominent people wrote to the papers protesting indignantly that these women were not superfluous, and arguing that there was “enough work in the world” for all the women. These people wrote as if the whole question were an economic one, and that, provided the two million unmated women could only make themselves self-supporting in their singleness, the difficulties of the case would be entirely overcome.[15] But this attitude towards the question was ridiculously unsympathetic. For, if the only object in life were to become self-supporting by means of work, one would not require to be either a man or a woman; a neuter, after the style of the worker-bee, would be all that one required to resemble. But the attitude of these prominent people was unfortunately worse than unsympathetic; it was insulting and dishonest. For, to tell a body of two million women that they need not despair, that even if they could find no mates, there would be work enough for them in order to render them self-supporting, was to assume, without enquiry, that they were neuters, or that they were capable of leading satisfactory lives as neuters. It was at least tantamount to assuming that they would be content in leading the lives of neuters—an assumption insulting both to their physical as well as to their mental development, and one which, having not a fact to support it, was entirely dishonest. Apart from all this, however, it amounted to a vulgar narrowing down of all earthly aspirations and desires, to the economic struggle—to success in the task of finding sustenance.
The Holy Catholic Church was more honest in this, and more practical than we are. It told all those women for whom society failed to provide their principal adaptations, that they could find comfort, occupation, and even a high purpose, by entering the Church, but it was frank enough to add: if you do so you must turn your back for ever upon those things for which you were built, those things to which your whole body was ingeniously and artfully adjusted and contrived.
And even when the system broke down, as it frequently did,[16] at least where Life was illicitly found in the convent or the monastery, it was found and enjoyed secretly, under the respectable auspices of a powerful institution, and not on the streets of big cities where the fruits are nothing but distress, disgrace and disease.
But behind all this unwillingness to recognize or admit that Woman cannot really be “adapted” (which is simply a biological way of saying she cannot be really happy or well) without fulfilling the destiny that her rôle in the process of evolution, and not man, stamped indelibly upon her body from the start, is the very same insidious and devastating force that has made her unhappy in other directions, that has reduced her men, for instance, to nincompoops. I refer to Puritanism.[17]
Puritanism, always so hostile to sex, would fondly like one to believe that sex is no longer one of the first considerations of Life, even for women. It would give a good deal, and has given a good deal, to convince everybody that one can “get on without it”! And, indeed, its values and atmosphere have now reared so many thousands of wretched, lank, bloodless and lifeless men and women who can get on without it, and who do get on without it, that quite a large number of people are beginning to believe that Puritanism is right. In any case, it is to these unconscious victims of its system that it now has the effrontery to point as evidence of its criminal contention when it seeks to persuade the unwary that it is right.
When, therefore, the cruel solution of modern sex problems (problems that only arose through the kind of society Puritanism has created) was supposed to have been found by telling women that “they really did not want men or children, and could easily ‘get on’ without either,” it was the voice of Puritanism that was distinct and persuasive here; Puritanism at last within an ace of complete triumph, and exulting over having achieved what to all intents and purposes must have seemed an impossible undertaking from the start.
When, however, one remembers how carefully and skilfully the ground had been prepared, when one remembers how unscrupulously every possible means had been exploited in order to consummate the end in view, how can one wonder at the unravelment!
After having reduced man to a mere shadow of his former self, after having atrophied, besmirched and slandered the sex instinct until it was literally ashamed to show its face (fancy, the fundamental instinct of life being ashamed to show its face!)—after having heaped up so much odium on the waning innocence of sexual beauties and the sacred joys of procreation that shame descended upon them like a deadly and withering shroud—no wonder that there were some, nay, thousands, who were ready to acknowledge that there was a life away from the fundamental instinct of life!
For fire alone purifies; fire alone renders some fusions and combinations possible. Damp the ardour of man, therefore, reduce his fire, and the sexual act does indeed become an affair from which many might be justified in shrinking. The procreative love of human beings was obviously designed on the presumption that they would remain warm-blooded animals. Once they grew to be cold-blooded, it of necessity became improper, impious. The procreation of fish is accomplished without any embrace, without any étreinte of male and female: but fish are cold-blooded.
Thus in support of the Puritan’s chilling cry that there was a life away from the fundamental instinct of Life, there arose very soon a chorus of disillusioned and indignant married women’s voices, who knew the anguish and embarrassment of human sexual life with a human fish, and who were not in the least prepared to conceal its horrors.