Before this, however, can be done, men must have a higher respect for women. They must be taught that in childhood the female mind is far oftener stainless than that of the male, and that, saving only those exceptional cases where unchastity, like other family diseases, seems to descend from parent to child, the vice, really such, has been engendered, fostered, developed in woman by man. So truly is this the case, that I have never hesitated to consider the victims of seduction as generally sinned against rather than sinning, and to teach that even in the mire may be found many pearls of great price well worth the saving.
It is not generally known, though most men have had individual experience of the fact, that a large majority of married women, whatever their natural temperament, become considerably or entirely apathetic after a few years of conjugal life; that many married women never become sexually awakened at all, so far as sensations of pleasure or physical yearning are concerned, and that, despite all the evil in the world, and all the spread of knowledge, advisable and unadvisable, there still exist many unmarried women, not only entirely innocent of improper act or thought, but foolishly, inexcusably ignorant concerning matters which every mother who would save her daughters from the chance of great risk, and possibly still greater mental and bodily suffering, should teach them beforehand, as is done to so much greater extent in England than in this country.
These are the facts, and it is an insult to the sex when men treat women, whether single or even their own wives, as though they were as sensually minded as themselves. Says Acton, “We offer, I think, no apology for light conduct when we admit that there are some few women, who, like men, in consequence of hereditary predisposition or ill-directed moral education, find it difficult to restrain their passions, while their more fortunate sisters have never been tempted, and have, therefore, never fallen. This, however, does not alter the fact which I would venture again to impress on the reader, that in general women do not feel any great sexual tendencies. The unfortunately large numbers whose lives would seem to prove the contrary, are to be accounted for on much more mercenary motives—vanity, giddiness, greediness, love of dress, distress, hunger, make women prostitutes, but not generally sensuality.”[42]
I know that there are none so prone to plunge a fallen woman deeper into the mire, alike by their acts and their tongues, as women themselves. Thoughtless, forgetting that if exposed to the same dangers or the same temptations they also might have erred, women too often give to us men the impression that they are themselves but hypocrites and whited sepulchres; too often the first step towards a woman’s ruin has been from mere curiosity to see if she were really the immaculate and unapproachable creature her words would proclaim her. A woman’s hasty and uncharitable condemnation of an erring sister may well serve as a challenge to the tester of souls. As for us, he that is without sin let him cast the first stone.
Men often complain of the apathy in their wives, to which I have just referred, and improperly attribute it to want of affection. It is in no small number of cases the result of physical suffering, often extreme, and sometimes endured without a word of complaint even to the end. The spirit prompting this great patience is one of the truest and most self-sacrificing heroism. I do not, however, hesitate to pronounce it wrong, and to declare the silence of one woman, under such circumstances, is a positive harm to her whole sex. It is often through a mistaken sense of duty—an opinion encouraged of course by the husband, and sometimes even by the medical attendant, to whom the simplest principles of his science should teach a more reasonable view. Thus one eminent writer remarks: “In some instances, indeed, feeling has been sacrificed to duty, and the wife has endured, with all the self-martyrdom of womanhood, what was almost worse than death.”[43] Even in these later days, since it has been discovered that there almost always exists a physical cause for all the many peculiar woes that women suffer, there are still many husbands, there are still physicians, who see in a wife’s languor, a wife’s disability, a wife’s complaints, but the vain imaginings of a distempered mind, or the restless chafing of a soured and impatient disposition, and think that by according even but trifling sympathy, they are encouraging a groundless whim, or exciting to ennui, hysteria, or rebellion. Hard, indeed, the lives of these poor sufferers,—who, if half confessing their secret distress, are thought to exaggerate a trifling ailment, or to fabricate one for the occasion. And yet it is upon just these troubles, actual and very real, upon just these sufferings, harassing and often very intense, that half the woes of a woman’s life are based. They cause her to reject her husband, to destroy her unborn offspring; they make her moody and despondent, and to look forward without hope; they often send her to the insane asylum, and not unfrequently cause her to take her life; just these simple troubles, so easily detected when searched for, and many of them so easily cured.
These are matters upon which we may well ponder. They concern every man, whether gentleman by birth, education, or pretence, and he who scoffs at the word as usurped, yet generally makes of its idea the standard he would be glad to reach. If we have no such aim, we do not deserve to live; and of all the tests of such, the one always nominally most acknowledged, has been respectful conduct towards women, and the endeavor to protect them from harm. Courteous to strangers, we should be still more so to our own, and so be most truly brave in fighting down and conquering ourselves. To aid us in such chivalrous work was one chief end of The Good Physician; himself master of self, and, therefore, free from sin. It is surely no slight labor to endeavor thus to evangelize, no slight gain can we but thus be chastened, for chasteness is only to be gained by strict self-chastening, which, fruit from a perfect blossom, is the sign of a fuller love thus gained to us, both human and divine.
How can I better close my plea for a purer port towards woman than by the pungent, sensible, philosophical maxims of Jeremy Taylor? Let this good old prelate, whose whole life was in accordance with his own unsullied precepts, be to ourselves as to those who long ago preceded us, a Ductor Dubitantium, to lead us from the devious paths of sensuality into the Golden Grove of an earthly paradise.[44]
“Married persons,” he says, “must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other that they never force themselves into high and violent lusts with arts and misbecoming devices. It is the duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures. In their permissions and license, they must be sure to observe the order of nature and the ends of God. He is an ill husband that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot, having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done without satisfying that desire, yet since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends,—with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other; but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from those ends which hallow it.”[45]
There are men who live thus soberly and wisely. Let each of my readers, before closing this book, again ask himself, “Is it I?”