Woman

by Anthony M. Ludovici

Nothing is more instructive than to proceed from a general to a particular case; and nothing, at all events, could possibly be more instructive where women are concerned, than to select the positive English girl as the particular case; because it is in her heart that the conflict between the sound promptings of the body, and the unsound external promptings of the modern world rages most fiercely and most dramatically. It is in her heart that the issue of the conflict has its most momentous and far-reaching consequences.

To a heart overflowing with human sympathy, there is something infinitely wistful and pathetic in the appearance of this apparently careless and blooming maiden. For, has not every circumstance of her education and upbringing conspired to make her believe that all those things which to-morrow will be the meaning and explanation of her existence, are the very things that yesterday were most concealed, most “tabooed,” most anxiously hushed up?

The transition from indifference, here, to keen disconcerting interest, is an effort of the first magnitude—however willing and eager the body may be to assist in the change of standpoint.

Her soul is very self-contemptuous, self-condemnatory, pessimistic. And the more positive she is, the more this will be so; because the greater will be her feeling of conflict with it. She feels she must be wrong, and her soul and the world right. She is on the verge of morbid self-dislike, self-rejection. But how can it be otherwise? Her body is a scandalous and exuberant old Pagan, and every minute of the day is whispering all kinds of shameless “indecencies” to her modern high-school soul. And she has been taught to value her modern high-school soul more than anything on earth. How can she help despising herself from the standpoint of a first-class high-school upbringing, when the latter constantly snorts prudishly at everything her other self—her body, dares to hint to her reluctantly attentive ear? Who is there to tell her that her high-school soul is entirely wrong in making her despise herself?

But it is her pessimism that is so terrible and so virulent. All ill-adapted creatures are prone to be pessimistic, and she is horribly ill-adapted. Beneath all her tennis-playing, her hockey-playing, her bright and cheerful manner, that always utterly deceives her parents and the superficial adults about her, this pessimism clings to her like a limpet. But how could she help feeling ill-adapted and pessimistic, in the face of the terrible alternative that now confronts her—the alternative consisting of either doing violence to the healthy dictates of her body, or of rejecting all the deepest beliefs of her childhood and adolescence?

And that is why an everlasting curse must surely hang over every creature, woman or man, who can be so unscrupulous as to exploit this temporary pessimism of healthy English female adolescence, and to turn it to negative account. For all those who, in the nefarious traffic of political or religious propaganda, avail themselves of it in order to turn a girl against Life finally and irrevocably, no punishment that can be imagined is sufficiently severe. Let them draw the unhealthy, negative girl over to their side; for it is better for all concerned if she and her like are converted to Life-Heresy; but let them leave the healthy positive girl alone, to fight her own battle with her high-school soul.

But the healthy English “Flapper” is courageous and infinitely enduring. And this is the secret of her constant success against her high-school soul. For, what is it that really matters in her apparently uneven conflict between soul and body—a conflict, remember, in which all the weight of her environment and education is on the side of the soul? What matters is her body. Now her body knows quite well that everything is all right, and it has its tongue in its cheek the whole time, more particularly when the girl herself dallies with thoughts of the convent or of suicide. Besides, even her high-school soul has elements that can be persuaded and lured over to the other party. She is attractive, and is beginning to receive attention. The vanity in her soul, therefore, soon forms a league with the instincts of her body. Her soul also wants power, and this power her body guarantees to give her, if only she will snub the importunate high-school portions of herself, and neither balk nor overlook its designs. Above all, her soul is aching with curiosity concerning the secret of life, and the happiness of life; and as her body’s irrepressible lust of life is always at hand to lend support to any intellectual inquisitiveness, a combination of forces is effected that is as formidable as it is usually triumphant.

Where is the party on earth that could survive all these defections from its ranks? That is why, if left alone, the negative side of her, her high-school, puritanical soul, is bound to be defeated; that is why she ultimately rises superior to her shame, her apprehension and her pessimism.

But it would be a mistake to underrate her struggle, to minimize her qualms, or to scoff at her cryptic religiosity; her conviction that she is tremendously deep—all people are deep who have a fight raging in them—and that she stands on the brink of an even deeper abyss! Even the haughty manner in which she holds her inexperienced nose high in the air is instructive. She is trying her hardest to appear as if she were already above the struggle that is not yet over. Besides, all people who are in pain, not only feel deep and proud, but are deeper and prouder than those who do not suffer. Pain not only delves, it also distinguishes.

Her confusion and the conflict raging inside her, are inclined to make her ill at ease with all men except the youth of seventeen; for, since she feels years his senior, he cannot disturb her. She will readily kill time with him, and with his assistance play an empty game while she is waiting for the forces in her body to readjust themselves to the new facts. Then she will not even look at him. Then it is business. Lads of seventeen will strike her as raw, ridiculous! Even full-grown men will interest her only to the extent to which they mean business. They will evoke her blessing only to the extent to which they realize that she too is in earnest about life, and takes it perfectly seriously. Then woe to her if one who attracts her heedlessly passes on! But woe to him, above all, who while promising business, and undertaking it legally and conscientiously with all the sanction of society and the Church, yet undeceives her, and disappoints her when it comes to the point, and drives her back to the pessimism of her youth, and the doubts and shame she had so valiantly overcome. For the duty of the positive man is to give woman a perfectly clean conscience in regard to sex and its pleasures. As the Church of England Prayer Book nobly and rightly puts it: “The husband ... is the Saviour of the body.” He who does not realize the profundity of this passage in the Church of England Prayer Book had better put the present work aside; for he will never be able to sympathize with anything in it. No man who is not the “Saviour of the body” of his wife can help being anything else than a thing of torment and torture to her; while her love and her devotion to him are increased a thousandfold, and her fidelity to him probably secured for life, if only he knows how to confirm and consolidate the triumph her body once achieved, single-handed, over her high-school soul during the trying period of her adolescence.