Woman

by Anthony M. Ludovici

I am quite prepared to admit without further ado that there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of noble and eminently desirable women in England to-day who have remained spinsters from deliberate choice. I have no doubt that if I had been a woman and had entertained anything approximately like my present opinion of modern men, I too would have remained a spinster, maybe from sheer nausea.[102] The majority of modern men are so very much below even a modest idea of what man should be, they have been so much besotted and debilitated through generations of unmanly labours and occupations, that it is not merely conceivable that many women should prefer not to condescend, it is almost inconceivable that any woman can be found who imagines she has found her match. Let us clearly define, however, what we have set ourselves out to investigate. We have not undertaken in this chapter to show the multifarious reasons why a woman may elect spinsterhood as her rôle in life. We have undertaken the more important task of discovering her relation to society when once the rôle of spinster has been assumed. Whether she has remained a spinster from deliberate choice, therefore, or whether she is a spinster owing to the loss of her fiancé at sea or in a railway accident, matters but little. The fact is that, as the result of circumstances which may or may not have been beyond her control, she has remained unmarried. As a spinster she will inevitably develop characteristics more or less true to type. These characteristics will exercise some influence on her own life and that of others. It is this influence that we propose to consider, irrespective of the causes which brought the spinster herself into being.

From the outset, therefore, it is as well for everybody to bear this in mind in regard to spinsterhood in general, namely, that since the spinsters of any country represent a body of human beings who are not leading natural lives, and whose fundamental instincts are able to find no normal expression or satisfaction, it follows, on a priori grounds alone, apart from any question of evidence, which we may ultimately find for or against, that the influence of this body of spinsters on the life of the nation to which they belong, must be abnormal, and therefore contrary to the normal needs and the natural development of that nation. Moreover, since the abnormal, when it is not supernormal, tends constantly to gravitate into the morbid, it is not inconsistent with this principle, but rather a necessary conclusion from it, to say that the presence of a body of unadapted spinsters in any nation must exercise a morbid influence upon the life of that nation.

The attitude of the average thinker to this conclusion is, as a rule, to shrug his shoulders and to exclaim: “What would you do with them, poor things? They must live!” Certainly. And it is precisely because they must live that they cannot help exercising a baneful influence on the life of the community. The fact that modern society can offer no satisfactory solution of the surplus-woman question does not justify us in overlooking the evils which are the outcome of surplus women in our midst. The fact that we can devise no adaptation for them, does not relieve us of the duty of investigating the nature of the evils to which their non-adaptedness gives rise.

To concentrate upon the economic aspect of the question, and to say as many do, that provided these surplus women can support themselves, the problem of their lives, and the difficulty of their evil influence upon their nation, is entirely solved, is simply to draw a red herring across the path of our inquiry. For self-support is not even the consummation of the life of man. How then could it be the consummation of the life of woman, in whom a very much more elaborate equipment than man’s for a definite calling, demands a far more complicated range of bodily activities than any to which an occupation providing merely self-support can possibly lead? Self-support is never more than a means to an end. The needs of a full and complete life, therefore, cannot be met by self-support and the industry by which it is achieved.

Neither is it any satisfactory reply to the question, How can we correct or eliminate the evils of spinsterhood? to point to the number of spinsters who are doing what is called “useful work.” In the first place, it is always wise when such a plea is advanced, to inquire into the “useful” work in question, in order to discover (a) how much of it has been rendered necessary by the very existence of spinsters in large numbers, (b) how much of it is the creation of the spinsters themselves in their resolute insistence on acquiring some importance, (c) how much of it is actually harmful, (d) how much of it is not essentially woman’s work at all. Finally, when these questions have been gone into with sufficient care, we find ourselves back at the old objection that, however useful the employment may be at which spinsters may be working, since it cannot thoroughly adapt them (except in the event of its conforming to two additional conditions which shall be discussed later),[103] it must leave them still abnormal members of the community, and therefore a morbid influence.

I propose to discuss the whole question of spinsterhood from the age when, in healthy girls, the condition begins to prove noticeably deleterious to health and spirits, to the time when, if marriage has not taken place, no fertilization can occur.

I therefore have for my subject the general question of spinsterhood, from the time when a virgin reaches the age of twenty-five, to the time when she is fifty or more. And very naturally I propose to concern myself not with spinsters in the legal sense, but only with spinsters who are entitled to the epithet intacta.

Proceeding along the accustomed lines, spinsters shall accordingly be classified as follows:—

(1) Positive virgins.

(2) Negative virgins.