Is it I? A book for every man.

by Horatio Robinson Storer

VI. Should mere Instinct, or Reason, be the Rule?

I have said that while some men are brutal in their conjugal relations, others are simply inconsiderate; and I have referred somewhat plainly to very important matters that “prurient prudes” would keep concealed. I have expressed my condemnation of the vile practices by which the size of families is kept in these latter days at the minimum. In ancient commonwealths, the most fruitful mother was considered to have deserved well of her nation, and a statue was erected in her honor. Now, on the contrary, such a wife is considered as almost the greatest misfortune that can occur to a man, and women have learned to consider the carrying into effect the noblest purposes of their being as alike a disaster and a disgrace.

There are some husbands who, while shocked at the idea of interfering in any way with the natural course of events, should such be really established, yet consider excessive carnal indulgence necessary for the preservation of their own physical vigor—a most mistaken opinion. There are others who could not be persuaded to resort to direct measures of a preventive character, and yet indulge in excessive sexual intercourse for this very end, on the ground, say they, that prostitutes, in proportion as they are constant in their attention to their vile trade, are usually childless; and this opinion, true to a certain extent, is yet in its effects as prejudicial as the other. The sterility of prostitutes is in great measure owing to disease that has been occasioned by the constant local excitement to which they are exposed; I am not now speaking of lesions of a specific or infectious character, but merely of those diseases which may be occasioned in any wife when treated by her husband as a prostitute. It is well known also that the common woman usually soon breaks down in health, and dies early, not so much from the other forms of debauchery to which she is exposed, as for the reason to which I have now referred. Woe therefore to the man who would thus cause within his own house disease and death.

As to the former of the excuses given: we are all of us prone in early life to excess, and especially so during the first years following marriage. As we grow older, we are compelled to live more moderately, and it becomes very necessary for us to apply the brakes when beginning to descend the down grade of life. Often, after a period of abstinence or semi-abstinence, anything like the license of earlier life becomes dangerous, or even fatal; and this it is that explains the rapid decadence so often observed in men who have married late in life, or in widowers, who, after a long period of rest, have taken to themselves a youthful spouse.

In advising, as I am compelled to do, moderation, that golden mean, wherein lie the highest duty and the truest happiness, it is necessary that I refer to a still additional class of husbands—those who, endeavoring to be reasonable in their demands, yet manage, for one reason or another, to keep their wives in the state of gestation the greater part of the time. From such, physicians often hear complaints; but not so often as from their consorts. Extremes, it is true, are dangerous: it is almost sure to be detrimental to a woman living in wedlock to intentionally continue sterile: it is frequently depressing to a woman’s health to be allowed no interval of rest between her pregnancies. This fact, however, affords no excuse, as it is constantly constrained to do, for preventing impregnation or inducing a miscarriage. The remedy lies often in the strictest continence, and in continence alone; for whatever care be used as to the observance of certain times and seasons,—and such is now the popular knowledge of physiology, that even little boys and girls know at what times conception is, and at what times it is not, probable,—accidents will sometimes occur. Ova, it is true, are probably only disengaged from the ovary at the menstrual period; but these in exceptional cases may be, and undoubtedly often are, retained for a longer time than usual in a place and condition favorable to impregnation. Moreover, while nursing women, as is generally supposed, do not often conceive until after the re-establishment of the catamenia, still they sometimes seem to do so; the error probably being one of observation, and either from a colorless leucorrhœa having taken the place of the usual sanguineous discharge, or from the latter having been just about to show itself, and having been suppressed, as an effect, by impregnation.

However this may be, it is clearly the husband’s duty to care for his wife rather than for himself. Every married woman, save in very exceptional cases, which should only be allowed to be such by the decision of a competent physician, every married woman, until near the so-called turn of life, should occasionally bear a child; not as a duty to the community merely, nor a compliment to her husband, nor even an additional bond of union between him and herself, but as the best means of insuring her own permanent good health. How frequently should this be? Usually the interval should be from two to two and a half or three years, so as to allow a sufficient time for nursing, so important both for the welfare of the child and its mother, and an interval of subsequent rest. Did women half appreciate the importance of lactation as a means, by establishing for a sufficiently long period a tendency of the circulation towards the breasts and away from the womb, of averting many of the common varieties of uterine disease, fashion in this matter would have fewer votaries.

Is it asked, whether by my above remarks I intend to imply that the conjugal approach should never be indulged in, save for the sole purpose of begetting children? I hold no such opinion. The case is a very parallel one to that concerning diet. Had it been intended that we should confine ourselves, in amount and character of food, to only so much as would barely support life, and this of the simplest character, we should hardly have been supplied with such exquisitely sensitive gustatory nerves. It cannot be said that this was necessary to insure a proper consumption of food, for the languor and craving induced by fasting would have been sufficient for this. The pleasures of the table, restrained within due bounds, serve not only to enhance the comfort of the individual, but they form that centre of social attraction which serves to cement friendships, and to increase as well as to render permanent the sweet communion of each regularly assembling family circle. And so with the pleasures of venery. Restrained within due bounds as to frequency, they serve to add a charm to life, and to give fresh courage for enduring all its vicissitudes. But to gain these, one single rule must be observed: it is this—that the husband compel his wife to nothing that she herself does not freely assent to. A forced union is even worse than the solitary vice, whose baneful character was alluded to in an earlier portion of this essay. It is even worse, for it is compelling an unwilling and often a chaste-minded person to pander to the basest of lusts. When such habits exist, we are not wholly to blame the woman if she seek to avert her impending maternity, even though at the risk of her life; forced upon her, it is repulsive, and her whole nature rebels, even her most natural of instincts. It is rather the husband who is to be condemned; his selfish hardness of heart, his brutality, are the cause of her crime.

VII. Arguments and Counter Arguments as to Divorce.

The ease with which marriages are consummated in this country, and their bonds loosed again, are among the features of our social system that are most wonderful to foreigners.[39] Some of our States have acquired an unenviable reputation as places of unshacklement for those who tire of their self-imposed burdens, and journeys have repeatedly been made, of hundreds of miles, that, by a short sojourn at this distance from home, the lenient legal requisitions might be complied with, and the knot unloosed that in old time only death could sever.

Of the thousand reasons alleged for divorce, most of them depend upon the simple cause for unhappiness I have already indicated. The parties tire of each other, the wife wearied by her husband’s unreasonableness, and the husband, still more unreasonable, complaining of the very weariness he has himself occasioned. Cases undoubtedly occur where disability for marriage originally existed, there being some physical impediment or some disenabling disease of body or mind, such as is adjudged by courts to be a sufficient bar. As to these, however, the progress of medical and surgical science has rendered it now possible, in many instances, to effect a cure, and to change the husband’s or wife’s disappointment into joy. In many of the instances referred to, the parties live unhappily on, dreading the scandal of a public application for divorce or trial in court, and ignorant that relief is ever otherwise possible. The extent at times of their unhappiness may be judged, when it is stated that, in cases of deformity, men have repeatedly, through mistake, been married as women, and women as men. For every instance of the kind that has been publicly reported, it is probable that a hundred have occurred.