The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

"There is no subject," says Bernard Shaw in his delightful preface to Getting Married, "on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage." And, in truth, it is not easy to avoid such foolishness if we understand at all the complexity of the relationship of the sexes. Sentiment rules our actions in this connection, whereas our talk on the subject is directed by intellect. And the demands of the emotions are at once more imperious and tyrannical, and more fastidious and more critical, than are the demands of the mind. Thus the more firmly reason checks the riot of imagination the greater the danger of error. Of all of which what is the moral? This: It is useless to talk or to think unless it is also possible and expedient to act.

Be it noted, then, first that our marriage customs and laws are founded and have been framed not for, or by, the personal needs—that is, the likes and dislikes of men and women, but by the exigencies of social and economic necessities. Now, from this it will be readily seen that individual inclinations are very likely, even if not bound, to clash with, as they seek to conform to, the usages of society. Always there will tend to be prevalent everywhere a hostility—at times latent, at others active—between these two forces; against the special desires of women and men on the one hand, and the laws enforced by a social and economic community on the other. Always there will tend to arise some who will desire to change the accepted marriage form, those who, considering first the personal needs, will advocate the loosening or the breaking of the marriage-bond; while others, looking only to the stability which they believe to be founded in law and custom, will seek to keep and to make the tie indissoluble.

This perpetual conflict is, it seems to me, the greatest difficulty that has to be faced in any effort to readjust the conditions of marriage. In our contemporary society there is a deep-lying dissatisfaction with the existing relations of the sexes, a yearning and restless need for change. In no other direction are the confusions and uncertainty of the contemporary mind more manifest. The change that has taken place so rapidly in the attitudes of women and men has brought with it a very strong and, what seems to be a new, revolt against the ignominious conditions of our amatory life as bound by coercive monogamy. We are questioning where before we have accepted, and are seeking out new ways in which mankind will go—will go because it must.

Yet just because of this imperative urging the greater caution is called for in introducing any changes in the laws or customs affecting marriage. Present social and economic conditions are to a great extent chaotic. It would be a sorry thing if in haste we were to establish practices that must come to an end, when we have freed ourselves from the present transition; changes that would not be for the welfare of generations still unborn. It will, however, hardly be denied by any one that reform is needed. All will admit that a change must be made in some direction, and an attempt to say where it should be tried must therefore be faced.

Does Nature give us any help in solving the problem? None whatever. It would seem, indeed, that Nature has in some ways arranged the love relation in regard to the needs of the two sexes very badly. But putting this aside for the present, it is clear that in regard to the form of marriage Nature has no preference; all ways are equal to her, provided that the race profits by them, or at least does not suffer too much from them. We found abundant proof of this in our examination of marriage and the family as established already in the animal kingdom; the modes of sexual association offer great variety, no species being of necessity restricted to any one form of union. Polygamy, polyandry, and monogamy all are practised. The family is sometimes patriarchal, though more often it is matriarchal, with the female the centre of it, and her love for the young infinitely stronger and more devoted than the male, though even in this direction there are many and notable exceptions. When we came to study the history of mankind we found similar conditions persisting. Separate groups living as they best could without caring about theories; their sexual conduct ordered by a compromise between the procreative needs on the one hand, and the necessities of the social conditions on the other. Marriage forms, as we understand them, were for long unknown, the relations of the sexes slowly evolving from a more or less restricted promiscuity to a family union at first merely temporary, and only later becoming fixed and permanent. Thus very gradually the primitive instinctive sex impulses underwent expansion, and always in the direction of the control of the individual desires in the interest of the family.

The unit of the group or state is the family, therefore sex-customs arise and laws are made not to suit the convenience of the woman or the man, but for the preservation and good of the family. In a word, the children—they are the pivot about which all regulations of marriage should turn.

It is certain, however, that such control and such laws have never in the past, and never in the future can be fixed to one unchanging form. In proof of this I must refer the reader back to the historical section of this book, where nothing stands out clearer than that the most diverse morality and customs prevail in matters of sex. Wherever for any reason there arises a tendency towards any form of sexual association, such form is likely to be established as a habit, and, persisting, it comes to be regarded as right, and is enforced by custom and later by law, and also sometimes sanctified by religion. It comes to be regarded as moral, and other forms become immoral.

Now, all this may seem to be rather far away from the matter we are discussing—the present dissatisfaction with our marriage system. But the point I want to make clear is this: there is no rigid and unchangeable code of right or wrong in the sexual relationship. Our opinions here are based for the most part on traditional morality, which accepts what is as right because it is established. A small but growing minority, looking in an exact opposite direction, turn to an ideal morality, considering the facts of sex not as they are, but as they think they ought to be. Both these attitudes are alike harmful. The one refuses to go forward, the other rushes on blindly, goaded by sentiment or by personal desires. And to-day the greater danger seems to me to rest with the hasty reformers. It is an essentially feminine crusade. By this I do not mean that it is advocated alone by women, but that in itself it must be regarded as feminine; a view which elevates a subjective ideal relationship of sex above all objective facts. The desires and feelings and sentiments are set up in opposition to historical experience and communal tradition. We hear much, and especially in the writings and talk of women, of such vapid phrases as "Self-realisation in love," "The enhancement of the individual life," and "The spiritualising of sex." Such personal views, which exalt the passing needs of the individual above the enduring interests of the race, are in direct opposition to progress. What is rather needed is an examination of marriage and other forms of our sexual relationships by practical morality, by which I mean the estimating of their merits and defects in relation to the vital needs of the community under the circumstances of the present.

To do this we must first clear our minds from the belief that regards our present form of monogamic marriage as ordained by Nature and sanctified by God. He who accepts the development of the love of one man for one woman from other and earlier forms of association may well look forward in faith to a future progress from our existing marriage: yet, though eager for reform, he will, remembering the slowness of this steady upward progress in love's refinement in the past, refrain from acting in haste, understanding the impossibility of forcing any Utopia of the sexes. No change can be made in a matter so intimate as marriage by a mere altering of the law. Only such reforms as are the natural outgrowth of an enlightened public feeling can be of benefit, and thus permanent in their result. I must go further than this and say that what may very possibly be right for the few cannot be regarded as practically moral and good until it can be accepted and acted upon by the people at large. In sex more than in any other department of life we are all linked together; we are our brother's keeper, and the blood of the race will be required at our hands. Many women, and some men, do not realise at all the immense complications of sex and the claims passion makes on many natures. I am sure that this is the explanation of much of the foolish talk that one hears. I tried to make clear in the first chapters of this book the irresistible elemental power of the uncurbed sexual instincts. And this force is at least as strong now as it was in the beginning of life. For in sex we have, as yet, learnt very little. We who are living among the sophistication of aeroplanes, the inheritors of the knowledge of all the ages, have still to pass in wonder along the paths of love, entering into it blindly and making all the old mistakes.

Am I, then, afraid that I plead thus for caution? No, I am not. I rest my faith in the development of the racial element in love side by side with its personal ends of physical and spiritual joy. For the sex impulses, which have ruled women and men, will assuredly come to be ruled by them. Just as in the past life has been moulded and carried on by love's selection, acting unconsciously and ignorant of the ends it followed, so in the future the race will be developed and carried onwards by deliberate selection, and the creative energy of love will become the servant of women and men. The mighty dynamic force will then be capable of further and, as yet, unrealised development. This is no vain hope. It has its proof in the past history of the selective power of love. The problems of our individual loves are linked on to the racial life. The hope for improvement rests thus in a growing understanding of the individual's relation to the race, and in an expansion of our knowledge and practice of the high duties love enforces.