Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles

by C. W. Saleeby

To one who knew nothing of human nature it might sound as if we were asking more of womanhood than is within its capacity. But many a man and many a woman will know better. The right kind of woman can be and is mother, wife and daughter to her husband; and in every one of these capacities she strengthens her hold in the other two. Let the happily married examine their happiness, and they will discover that the Preacher was right when he said: "and a threefold cord is not quickly broken."

What has here been said is perhaps far more fundamental, just because it is based upon the primary instincts of humanity, than much of the ordinary talk about intellectual companionship and the like. What a man wants is sympathy, not intellectual companionship as such; what a man wants from another man, indeed, is sympathy, and not merely intellectual parity as such. The man who annoys us is not he who is incapable of appreciating our arguments, or he who does not share our knowledge, but he who is out of sympathy with us, and we find far more happiness with the rawest youth who, though entirely ignorant, is at least on our side—caring for the things for which we care. Capacity to share the same intellectual work may be a very pleasant addition to marriage, but it is no essential. What a man wants is that his wife shall be on his side in his pursuits. A boy does not require that his mother shall be able to play football with him, but he does require that she shall care whether his side wins or loses. The wife who is a true mother to her husband, in this sense, need not be concerned because she cannot, let us say, follow his working out of a geometrical proposition. Let her be on his side whether he fails or succeeds, thus playing the mother; and for the rest, if she asks him what those funny marks mean, she can play the daughter too, and hold his heart with both hands at once.

It is to be hoped that such arguments as these will persuade the reader to assent to our rejection of the psychological grounds on which it is proposed to abolish monogamy. We extend all the sympathy in the world to those whose fortune has been unfortunate, and we admit that the ideal does not always coincide with the real, but we deny that the supposed argument against monogamy is based upon a sound understanding of human nature, its needs and its unity in multiplicity.

If we are to stand by monogamy it behoves us to examine very carefully certain of its present conditions which militate against the full realization of its value for the individual and for the race. The disproportion of the sexes we have already discussed, and it may here be assumed that that grave obstacle to the success of monogamy is removed. There remains the fact, probably on the whole a quite new fact of our day, that under modern conditions a large proportion of women, whose quality we must consider, are declining monogamy as at present constituted.

Let it be granted that a certain number of these women are cranks, aberrant in various directions, unfitted for any kind of marriage, undesirable from the eugenic standpoint, and perhaps less often declining to be married than failing of the opportunity. There remains the fact that a large and probably increasing number of women are nowadays being educated up to such a standard of ideals that, even though their decision involves the sacrifice of motherhood, they cannot consent to marriage under present conditions. It is not that they are without opportunity, for many of them during ten or fifteen years of their lives may refuse one proposal after another, and spend the intervals in avoiding the onset of such attentions. It is not necessarily that the men who propose are of an inferior type. Such women may refuse many men who come well up to or far surpass the modern male standard. It is not that they are by any means without capacity for affection; nor can one be at all certain that in many cases they would not do better to marry, after all, heavy though the price may be.

What we have to recognize is that this is a phenomenon in every way evil. There must be something wrong with any institution which does not appeal to many members of the highest types of womanhood. Perhaps in certain of its details this institution must be an anachronism, a survival from times to which it may have been well suited when the development of womanhood was habitually stunted, but inadequate to satisfy the demands of fully developed womanhood in our own days. Now from the eugenic point of view it is of course the finest kind of women that we desire to be the mothers of the future—the more and not the less fastidious, those who are capable of the highest development, those who hold themselves in the highest honour, those who are least willing to renounce their possession of themselves.

Men are to be heard who say that this is all nonsense; that it is natural for women to surrender themselves, that motherhood is a splendid reward, and that they are handsomely paid as well in material things. But how many men would be willing to marry on the conditions with which marriage is offered to a woman? How many men would be willing to surrender their possession of themselves to an owner for life, so that at no future hour can they have the right to privacy? Of course if the conditions for marriage were for a man what they are for a woman, scarcely any men would marry, and men would very soon see to it that these conditions were utterly altered. They are conditions imposed in a past age by the stronger sex upon the weaker, and no moral defence of them is possible. It may be argued, and might long have been argued, that a practical defence of them is possible, but that is undermined in our own time when we find that under these conditions marriage is declined by a large number of the best women. The practical argument is now the other way. In the interests of elementary justice, of marriage, of the individual and of the race, the conditions of marriage must be so modified that they shall be equal for both sexes, and that the best members of both sexes shall find them acceptable. This last is of course the fundamental eugenic requirement.

The initial criticism of some will be, no doubt, that many men who now marry will decline the bargain. But surely we need not care at all—if the right kind of men accept it. As for the others, in the coming time, when we take more care of our womanhood, and when they are deprived of the economic weapon, they may go whither they will, their non-representation in the future of the race being precisely what we desire.

Women, then, are entitled to demand that the conditions of marriage be so modified as, above all things, to allow them the possession of themselves as the married man has possession of himself. The imposition of motherhood upon a married woman in absolute despite of her health and of the interests of the children is none the less an iniquity because it has at present the approval of Church and State. It is woman who bears the great burden of parenthood, and with her the decision must rest. It is idle to reply that this is impossible, for it is possible, as there are not a few happy wives throughout the civilized world to bear testimony. Every new life that comes into being is to be regarded as sacred from the first. The accident of birth at a particular stage in its development does not in the slightest degree affect this ethical principle, as even the law, for a wonder, recognizes. The full acceptance of the principle that woman must decide is, I am convinced, the only right and effective way in which to abolish altogether the dangers at present run by the life which is at once unborn and unwanted. The decision must be made once and for all before the new life is called into initial being, and the last word must lie with her who is to bear it. I am strengthened in the enunciation of this principle by the reflection that it would be ridiculed and condemned by the vote of every public-house and music-hall throughout the civilized world.

Let it be observed that in thus allowing the wife the possession of her own person, we are giving her only what her husband possesses, and that her possession of herself is of vastly more moment to her than his own liberty to him. Nothing more than sheer equality is being claimed for her, and the claim in her case has a double strength, since it is made valid not only by her own interests but by those of the future. The future must be protected, and therefore she who is its vessel must be protected. This is no more than the sub-human mother everywhere has as her birthright, and however much this teaching may offend the common male assumption that a wife is a form of property, the future certainly holds within itself the establishment of this principle.