I have mentioned before that the deterioration of men from the standpoint of Life—i.e. their gradual approximation to a purely, or relatively, negative type—has been a process that, in England at least, has been going on for almost 270 years. In this time a good deal can be accomplished in the matter of altering a type, and there can be no doubt that a good deal has indeed been accomplished. Fortunately, however, apart from the actual deterioration through bad food and unhealthy living and work (which, as I have shown elsewhere, are the indirect results of Puritanical values), Puritanism has not done much to affect the positiveness of the poorest classes in England. Where it has proved most formidable is in (1) the plutocracy, (2) the middle classes, and (3) the lower middle classes. In these the ravages of Puritanical tradition on the constitutions and outlook of the men is everywhere noticeable; and that which makes the incidence of this evil all the harder to bear is the fact that the women of all these classes have not suffered nearly to the same extent from this tradition.
Whereas, therefore, it is a more or less common experience to find a positive girl in all these classes, the appearance of a truly positive man is excessively rare. I may have occasion to refer to this state of affairs again in Part II; but, for the present, let us examine its immediate effects on the positive girl who has just married.
The positive girl extends her hand confidently, bravely and hopefully to Life. She does not expect to draw it back empty; she does not desire to draw it back full of bliss. She is brave enough, rational enough, and above all exuberant enough, to expect to draw it back with its full quantum of pleasure and pain. She wants Life, and what though Life means some pain, willy-nilly she will have it notwithstanding, and her heart whispers “damn the consequences.”
But there is something she does expect, something she has a right to expect; and that is that her husband himself should be her guide, her mentor and initiator. From time immemorial it is his sex that has been prehensile. Throughout the higher animal kingdom, prehension in the sex act is the exclusive attribute of the male. He often has the organs for it, and he almost always has the superior strength for it—even when his strength is not required for other purposes. But just think what prehension means! It involves initiation; it means taking the first steps; it is certainly tantamount to setting the tone, the manner, the order of an encounter. Traditionally, then, for millions of years the male has had his particular rôle, the rôle of prehension, with all its correlative virtues and qualities. Before self-consciousness dawned in the human being, he was prehensile in the sexual act—and his rôle therein involved, as I think it necessary to repeat, powers of initiation, the ability to take the first steps, the necessary mastery over sex, to set the tone, the manner and the order of the sexual encounter. What does all this imply? It is obvious! It implies that for an equal number of millions of years the female of the species has expected this prehension and all its correlative qualities in the male. It means that now, to this very day, her deepest feelings tell her that it is only right, only proper, and only becoming, that he should possess and display a certain mastery, a certain free virtuosity—that virtuosity of a flame in a roaring fire—in the matter of sex, and that his very ardour, his very virtuosity, his very ease in mastery, should finally seal the coffin of all that guilty feeling towards sex which she had almost killed in her youth, and which she now expects to be buried once and for all.
This, positive Woman understands. This is what she has a right to expect; this is what makes her serene, content, free in conscience and in gait, confident that life is worth living and that her positive impulses have been correct all along.
But what is it that happens so frequently that often a sense of shame regarding sex actually begins in a positive woman on the very day of her marriage—never again to be completely dissipated?
—The unfortunate modern man whom our positive girl marries, is often as remote from any mastery over sex, or from any ease or free virtuosity where it is concerned, as a marble statue. Thanks to the prudish nature of his upbringing, his environment and his outlook, and also to the general lack of sexual exuberance in his constitution, he is frequently as terrified of the subject as is his spinster aunt, and he knows no more about taking the initiative properly, artistically, capably, than a child of three. As for that impetuosity that carries everything before it, even the girl’s natural modesty, and releases the pent-up demons of roguery so long stifled in her breast!—poor man! far from releasing them he would prefer a thousand times to slip another bolt across the door that imprisons them! Hesitation, shame, disgust, a sense of guilt and of discomfort, often followed by incredibly long periods of post-conjugal virginity and chastity, are frequently the result, and with general consequences that are most deeply to be deplored.
Prehension!—He has not even comprehension where sex is concerned! And since in this matter, which is rightly so delicate and therefore so dependent upon consummate art, the Woman is utterly dependent upon him, a miserable, uncomfortable and clammy atmosphere is straightway generated in a new home, in which everything could otherwise be so bright, so clean, so full of mutual confidence and good spirits. And in all this, mark you, no reference is made to the need of child-bearing for the woman, which here is left indefinitely ungratified and unconsidered.
How many women ever survive this first great shock to their positiveness it is impossible to say; but that a very large number undoubtedly do grow negative from the effects of it, I myself have been able to ascertain and to record, even in my own small but fairly representative circle.