Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Now, my experience and desire for truth forces me to doubt the reality of this view. I believe that the woman’s superiority in this matter of constancy, even when it is present, is not fundamental to the female character any more than it is fundamental to the character of the male, and, indeed, I am inclined to think that it is the man who in his desire is more bent than woman towards complete faithfulness in the sexual partnership, and if it is the wife who more often is apparently and outwardly constant in marriage than the husband, it is because such conduct is expected of her and has been forced upon her by the conventions of her life. We must see things a little more as they are. Compared with woman, man is a comparatively constant creature, romantic, and not readily moved from his love when once it is fixed. I am very certain that I am right in this. No man leaves a woman till she sends him from her: while she wants him, and lets him feel that she wants him, he is hers.

What is symbolised by the myth representing Eve as first eating of the fruit and then offering it to Adam: the representation of the man in subjection to the woman, the bending of his action to her will through his need of her; the active rôle being here rightly attributed to the woman which man in the blindness of his masculine conceit has pretended to hold himself: this piece of symbolism has left deep marks throughout the entire history of marriage and is active in all the relationships of the two sexes.

Maybe woman is what man has made her; but this is an outside thing, a social tag, having reference only to her position in the world. Man has not touched woman’s soul. He cannot. There are many things which a man must learn that woman knows from the beginning. To love is one of them. Woman teaches man that, and he does not learn easily. And it is in these trials, these efforts of his to find himself, that woman contributes in so great a measure to the making or the marring, of the man. The soul of a man passes from the hollow of one woman’s hand to the hollow of another’s. He loves first that extension of himself called “mother,” and from her he passes on to other less individualised relationships. And each woman, with cruel hands or with kind, presses deep the imprint of her hold upon his plastic clay.

Yes, it is women who mould the lives of men as it is women who give them birth.

It is strangely difficult to induce in good women to-day a practical understanding of their almost limitless power over men. Each woman is able to create perpetually in the man she loves the qualities she desires; a power infinitely greater, as I believe, than can be ever gained through individual self-assertion.

And if woman feels this power of being the source of creating energy to man (and it belongs to all women, although many of them have lost the consciousness of their gift), this knowledge is the very centre of her being, the flame which feeds life; and she is intensely and supremely happy just in so far as she is steeped in sacrifice. I do not hope, however, to convince any woman who does not know within herself already the gladness of this service to man, and I diverge a little from my main subject in making these remarks.

A glance back at the beginnings of marriage should teach women a little modesty, for there we see that the wife’s constancy was directly dependent on the conditions of her marriage. Under the maternal form, where the husband lived in the home of the wife, her sexual liberty was in many cases greater than his. And there is abundant proof that full advantage was taken both by unmarried and married women of such freedom wherever it was allowed.[76] Woman is not instinctively inclined to virtue. And an inherent desire towards faithfulness in marriage has not, I am certain, always acted more strongly in women than it has in men; indeed, I am not sure that the opposite is not true.

The development of the personal relationship in marriage is intimately dependent on patriarchy. Again I am compelled to assert this truth. The establishment of paternity as a working and acknowledged fact was comparatively a late achievement. Under the conditions of the maternal clan, the family was incomplete; it consisted only of the mother and children. This was not a natural condition, and therefore was not permanent. The new stage was ushered in by what may perhaps be called “the social annunciation of paternity.” And this led eventually to the establishment of marriage in the form in which we understand it to-day.

Now for the first time the home was firmly founded. The father was the head of the domestic hearth: he was the priest of sacrifice at the domestic altar. His ancestors were present in the spirit and all the members of the family honoured them. And in their presence nothing unclean was tolerated. The wife at the moment when, as a bride, she crossed the threshold of the home, or was carried across it, gave up her own kindred and her own gods. Her husband’s home was now her home, his gods were her gods.[77]

So strong an insistence has been made on the evils of the wife’s subjection to the husband, which arose under this system of marriage, that we have lost sight of the enduring benefits that from the beginning to the end must be connected with it. There is much nonsense talked and written about the patriarchal home. Its conditions and rules were slowly established for the workable happiness of all its members, not, as is too often assumed, arbitrarily imposed by the will of men. The duties of the husband and the wife were regulated by tradition, and all the service in the home was a holy service. By fixing the father to the family and securing his protection and toil for the children a future stability as well as fuller happiness was made possible. I do not see that this advantage could have been gained, or can now be maintained, under any other form of marriage. Nature herself seems to condemn man in his capacity as father. So delicate is the bond which binds him to the child compared with the bond which binds the mother, so readily can he be pushed outside the circle of the family, where, as a member apart, he will inevitably seek his own interests and pleasure.