First published 1910. All rights reserved

CONTENTS

PREFACE
Mr. Galsworthy’s toy dog—Jewish religion—
Embryology		page [7]
I
THE VOTE
Latent period before explosion—Refusal of the vote
has given impetus to revolutionary enthusiasm—Thin
end of the wedge—Ingenuity of women—A
working woman and the hospital official’s
chivalry—Thirty-two million workers, half-million
independent means, two million of idle spinsters
in England and Wales—Our wants		[15]
II
WOMEN’S INCOMES
Lucrative professions for women—Opera singing—Theatrical,
Literature, Medical, Expert, and
average incomes—Other work—Independent incomes—Marriage
for money—Courtesans, prostitutes,
and riff-raff—Economic independence is a
way of ennobling sex relations—Marriage often
settles down into business partnership—The working
man’s wife—Eugenic advantages of economic
independence—Racial and social ideals are opposed
to each other at present 		[25]
III
THE VARIATIONS OF LOVE
The difficulty of a lasting attachment—Enthusiasm
of youth—English girls apt to mistake interest for
love—The virtuous wife—The flow and ebb of the
tide of love—Permanent relations often founded
on mutual contempt—Jealousy of relations—Mr.
Harold Gorst’s Philosophy of Love—The marriage
tie must persist because it suits one half of the
population—Six million bachelors and seven
million spinsters in England and Wales—The
ostracism of the unfaithful is more often the cause
of disease becoming serious than infidelity—The
emotional degradation of a loveless marriage		[33]
IV
THE SORDID DIVORCE
Marriage laws to be reformed—Binding marriage in
the Catholic Church—Bond of parenthood—The
bond between the unattractive people—Heiresses—The
childless—The extraordinarily attractive—Sordidness
of English divorce—Restitution of conjugal
rights—Suggested reform—Agreement in
wishing for divorce should be the first cause for it—Questions
of fortune or wealth to be fought out
on economic grounds—Boredom the chief reason
that people part, but too insulting to be mentioned
in public—French dot—Sale of beauty—Sale of
helpmate—Fixed allowance for “bed” and fixed
allowance for “board”—The birth of child should
automatically make a bond as in remote country
places—The Saturday orgy and prudence—Drugging
and prudence—The police court and the
wife’s housekeeping money—A romance of the
mining world		[41]
V
THE GREEN HOUSES OF JAPAN
Edmond de Goncourt’s account of courtesans in Tokio—Urgent
danger of delay in reform—Fear of the
spread of contagious disease—A trades union for
prostitutes—The good of Public Health in this
matter the good of future generations—Clean bill
of health gives special susceptibility—Les Avariés—Anti-social
rage—The various moral standards
of women—Dangers of promiscuity not so great
as the dangers of a cut finger or chapped lip—The
sale of virginity—Intoxication leads to
promiscuity, but it is not natural to the average
woman—The ardour of a fresh lover her greatest
temptation—Is charm of value as a racial factor?
The attitude of marrying women		[53]
VI
BEAUTY AND MOTHERHOOD
The terror of motherhood—Women will specialize—Lovers
of men and lovers of children—A woman
has an instinct for the right father for her child;
but often chooses a bad lifelong companion for
herself—Useless old ethical codes—Practical suggestion
for race betterment—Sterilization of the
unfit—Education in the laws of sexual health—Motherly
women with no chance of children—Unmotherly
women attractive to men and very
good helpmates—Surgical aid for the tuberculosis
child-producer—Prejudices—Intellectual education		[63]
VII
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
Life Consciousness—The Man, the Insect, the Tree
are representatives of Intellect, Instinct, and
Torpid Consciousness—Henri Bergson and William
James—The interplay of the three kinds of consciousness—Motherhood
and the vegetative consciousness—Choosing
the mate and the instinctive
consciousness—The Matriarchal civilization—The
surprises instinct prepares for intellect in dreams
and inventions		[70]
VIII
THE IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
Physical love, reproduction—Emotional love, a
satisfaction or enjoyment—Scientific curiosity
about love—Philosophic and sympathetic understanding
of all sorts of love—Imaginative love
makes the consciousness elemental—The glory
and danger of imagination—Vicarious imagination
in reading—The middle-aged suppress imagination
in the young—Saintly beauty—Philosophy,
Criticism, Sensuousness, and commonplace life—Madness,
Folly, Drink, Drugging—The imaginative
man is womanly in these respects—Weiningen’s
Sex and Character—Forel, Bloch—Mr.
Austen Chamberlain		[78]
IX
EXPERIMENTS
Solitude and family—The home—The gay societies
of the past—Solemn experiments in love—Civilization
a protection from, or concealment of, the
animal necessities—Eating in public—Privacy—When
truth is goodness—Useful conventions—Saint
Teresa and her men friends—Lead the way
if you want to make an experiment; if you want
to follow anyone, it is a sign you should follow the herd		[84]
X
THE SAVAGE, THE BARBARIAN, THE CIVILIZED
The Spaniard, the Russian, the Parisian—Intellect,
art, morals, religion, and women—Conspicuousness—The
fight against the patriarchal goat—The
passing love—The necessity of many friends—The
real play of the life to come		[91]

PREFACE

There is a great difficulty in writing of the women of the first ten years of the twentieth century. This is to be the Woman’s Century. In it she is to awake from her long sleep and come into her kingdom; but when I look about me I find myself surrounded by the most terribly contradictory facts. We know there is to be a revaluation of all values—we know that old rubbish is to be burnt up, that the social world is to be melted down and remoulded “nearer to the heart’s desire”; but at the same time we have to recognize that in spite of the enthusiasm of the alchemists and the transmuters of base metal into gold, the main body of society is as yet hardly aware of the fire that is to burn it.

In writing of this change I have to explain to one set of women, who will think me outrageously advanced, my opinions of another set of women, who will think me absurdly conventional.