Many women and men of exceptional gifts and character, conscious of an increasing intolerance against the makeshift morality imposed upon our sexual life, are standing outside of marriage and evading parentage. For this waste we are responsible to the future. Thus, finally, we find this truth: the principle of divorce reform forms the most practical foundation—and one waiting ready to our hands—for the reformation of marriage and the re-establishment of its sanctity. It also has direct and urgent bearing on many of the problems of womanhood.
III.—Prostitution
"Nought so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor nought so good but strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse:
Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied,
And vice sometimes by action dignified."—Romeo and Juliet.
"In nature there's no blemish but the mind,
None can be called deformed but the unkind."—Twelfth Night.
A brief and final section of this chapter on the sexual relationships must be devoted to the question of the conditions of prostitution, which are really part of the conditions of marriage, being correlated with that institution in its present coercive form, in fact, part of it and growing out of it.
The extent of the problems involved here are so immense, the difficulties so great and the issues so involved that I hesitate at making any attempt to treat so wide a subject briefly and necessarily inadequately in the short space at my disposal. Yet it seems to me impossible to take the easy way and pass it over in silence, and I may be able to contribute a word or two of worth to this very complex social phenomenon. I shall limit myself to the aspects of the question that seem to me important, choosing in preference the facts about which I have some little personal knowledge.
Essentially this is a woman's question. What do women know about it? Almost nothing. We are really as ignorant of the character, moral, mental and physical of "the fallen woman," as if she belonged to an extinct species. We know her only to pity her or to despise her, which is, in result, to know nothing that is true about her. To deal with the problem needs women and men of the finest character and the widest sympathy. There are some of them at work now, but these, for the most part, are engaged in the almost impossible task of rescue work, which does not bring, I think, a real understanding of the facts in their wider social aspect.
Women are, however, realising that they cannot continue to shirk this part of their civic duties. These "painted tragedies" of our streets have got to be recognised and dealt with; and this not so much for the sake of the prostitute, but for all women's safety and the health of the race. The time is not far distant when the mothers of the community, the sheltered wives of respectable homes, must come to understand that their own position of moral safety is maintained at the expense of a traffic whose very name they will not mention. For the prostitute, though unable to avenge herself, has had a mighty ally in Nature, who has taken her case in hand and has avenged it on the women and their children, who have received the benefits of our legal marriage system. M. Brieux deals with this question in Les Avariés: it is a tragedy that should be read by all women.
For this reason, if for no other, the existence of prostitution has to be faced by women. Apathy and ignorance will no longer be accepted as excuse, in the light of the sins against the race slowly piled up through the centuries by vice and disease. But what will be the result of women's action in this matter? What will they do? What changes in the law will they demand? The importance of these questions forces itself upon all those who realise at all the difficulties of the problem. What we see and hear does not, I think, give great hopes. Every woman who dares to speak on this great burked subject seems to have "a remedy" ready to her hand. What one hears most frequently are unconsidered denunciations of "the men who are responsible." For example, I heard one woman of education state publicly that there was no problem of prostitution! I mention this because it seems to me a very grave danger, an instance of the feminine over-haste in reform, which, while casting out one devil, but prepares the way for seven other devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect to solve problems that have vexed civilisation since the beginnings of society. This attitude is a little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to grapple with prostitution has been a failure. Women have to remember that it has existed as an institution in nearly all historic times and among nearly all races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage, and maybe the result of that form of the sexual relationship, and not, as some have held, a survival of primitive sexual licence. The action of women in this question must be based on an educated opinion, which is cognisant with the past history of prostitution, recognises the facts of its action to-day in all civilised countries, and understands the complexity of the problem from the man's side as well as the woman's. Nothing less than this is necessary if any fruitful change is to be effected, when women shall come to have a voice to direct the action the State should assume towards this matter. The one measure which has recently been brought forward and passed, largely aided by women, especially the militant Suffragists—I refer to the White Slave Traffic Bill—is just the most useless, ill-devised and really preposterous law with which this tremendous problem could be mocked. As Bernard Shaw has recently said—
"The act is the final triumph of the vice it pretends to repress. There is one remedy and one alone, for the White Slave Traffic. Make it impossible, by the enactment of a Minimum Wage law and by the proper provision of the unemployed, for any woman to be forced to choose between prostitution and penury, and the White Slaver will have no more power over the daughters of labourers, artisans and clerks than he (or under the New Act she) will have over the wives of Bishops."