Fig. [1].—Curve of the sexual life of woman from the tenth to the sixtieth year of life.
Not in this respect alone, however, is the sexual life of woman of paramount importance; it is, in addition, the mainspring of the well-being and progress of the family, of the nation, of the entire human race. In the evolution of man from the primitive state in which he existed merely for the performance of vegetative functions up to the highest stage of contemporary culture, in the history of all races and of all times, the sexual life has been a most potent determining factor. With that life, religion, philosophy, ethics, natural science, and hygiene, have been most intimately related; for that life, they have furnished precepts and laws. The history of the sexual life is identical with the history of human culture.
In a primitive condition of society, among people living in a state of nature and among the lower races of mankind, the sexual life of woman possesses no great general interest, the female being merely a chattel; the ownership of this chattel, moreover, being often temporary and transient. The investigations of anthropologists have shown that among primitive people this form of property is neither highly esteemed nor carefully safeguarded. In such societies no restraint is imposed on the sexual impulse, which is gratified without shame and without formality. No hindrance is offered to the mutual intercourse of the two sexes. Chastity in the females is not prized by the males, nor do the latter compete for the favors of the former. Procreation is no more than a gregarious impulse of the masses among whom the common ownership of all booty is a matter of tribal custom. The woman has no disposing power over that which every one desires and which every one has the right to demand. Very gradually, however, a change takes place in this respect, so that in every period of social life since the very earliest, the modesty of young girls, the high valuation put upon the preservation of virginity, the ethical approbation of chastity in the wife, respect for the duties and rights of the mother, the reverence felt for the matron—all these, throughout the sexual life of woman, have had a civilizing, ennobling, and elevating effect. Thus, as family life has become developed, and as love and marriage have been more highly esteemed, woman has become the much-prized embodiment of all that is beautiful and good, of all that is summed up in the idea of the “housewife,” and her sexual life has been more completely, more ideally admired. The danger is not remote, however, that the leveling tendencies of the present day, and an inclination to despise the sexual life of woman, far from resulting in a further elevation of the social status of womanhood, will result rather in its abasement.
The Bible, as we may expect from the patriarchal relationships of the women of that time, bears witness to the worth of woman, and, whilst esteeming child-bearing, refers to yet higher duties. Precise religious and social precepts are furnished for all the phases of sexual life.
In classical antiquity, also, we see that woman rose to some extent above the low position she had previously occupied in the family circle and in society at large. Both among the Greeks and among the Romans, there was open to women a more intimate place in social life and a more influential rôle in the life of the family, than would have been their portion regarded merely in relation to their child-bearing activity. Amongst the Germans in the very earliest times, chastity gave rise to purer and more moral sexual relations; whereas among the Slavonic peoples the conception of woman as the childbearer continued to dominate these relations.
In consequence of the diffusion of Christianity, woman became man’s companion and equal, and her life, the sexual life included, acquired a deeper significance, owing to the stress which that religion laid on chastity as a virtue, and as a result of the educational influence of woman in the family circle.
With the progress of civilization the sexual life of woman comes to exhibit its activities only within the bounds of morality and law, which in human society have replaced the crude rule of nature, and have supplied regulations adapted to the changing phases of sexual vital manifestations. The wise adaptation of these regulations requires, however, a full understanding of the mental and physical processes, an exact recognition of the bodily states and intellectual sensibilities, of woman regarded as a sexual being.
Modern culture and the social organization of the present day, in association with the resulting sexual neuropathy of women, have exercised on their sexual life an influence as powerful as it is unfavorable, manifesting itself in the overpowering frequency of the diseases of women. In one of the most thoughtful books ever written on the subject of woman, Michelet’s L’Amour,[[13]] the author remarks that every century is characterized by the prevalence of certain diseases: thus, in the thirteenth century, leprosy was the dominant disease; the fourteenth century was devastated by bubonic plague, then known as the black death; the sixteenth century witnessed the appearance of syphilis; finally, as regards the nineteenth century, “se siècle sera nommé celui des maladies de la matrice”.[[14]] It is certain that the education and mode of life of the modern woman belonging to the so-called upper classes are, as far as sexual matters are concerned, in direct opposition to those that are agreeable to nature and those that the laws of health demand.
Even before sexual development begins, before the physical ripening of the reproductive organs to functional activity, the imagination of young girls is often prematurely occupied with sexual ideas in consequence of unsuitable literature, owing to visits to theatres and exhibitions, or on account of social intercourse with young men who are not overscrupulous in the selection of topics for conversation. From the time of puberty up to the time of marriage the growing woman is under the influence of the now awakened sexual impulse, which experiences ever-renewed stimulation. A sedentary mode of life, unsuitable nutriment, and the early enjoyment of alcoholic beverages, exhibit their inevitable result in the frequency with which, in this epoch of the sexual life, chlorotic blood-changes, neurasthenic conditions, and diverse symptoms of irritation of the genital organs, make their appearance. Thus, when marriage, so often unduly postponed in consequence of the condition of modern society, does at length take place, it is apt to find the woman not only fully enlightened as regards sexual matters, but often in a state of nervous weakness from sexual stimulation, one of the type whose characteristics have been happily summed up by the French writer Prévost in the expression demi-vierge.[[15]] The conjunction of this state of affairs in the bride with the frequent partial impotence of the bridegroom, who has already dissipated the greater part of his virile power before entering upon marriage, leads often to the appearance of vaginismus and other sexual neuroses in young married women. Even more disastrous in its consequences as regards the future sexual life of the wife is the ever-increasing frequency of gonorrhœal infection in the first days of marital intercourse, with all the evil results of that infection. On the other hand, an ever-larger proportion of girls belonging to the “middle and upper classes,” abstaining alike from the good and the evil results of marriage, falls under the yoke of sexual impulses denied satisfaction or gratified by abnormal means, and suffers in consequence both physically and mentally. Further sources of injury arising from the conditions of modern social life are to be found in the neglect by women of the well-to-do classes of the duty of suckling their children, and in the ever-increasing frequency with which the women of these classes, after giving birth to one or two children, resort to the use of measures for the prevention of pregnancy, which result in serious consequences as regards both the nervous system and the genital organs of the women concerned. Thus there comes an accelerated ebb in the sexual life, leading to a premature appearance of the general phenomena of senility, with a cessation of the menstrual flow. The modern wife, who claims the right to lead the life that best pleases her, will be more rapidly overtaken by sexual death.