Why woman’s choice is not impersonal is only one of the many things that cannot be explained by the theory that makes her desire for children the sole cause of attraction. It does not explain too many things: faithless wives, some childless marriages, children found on door-steps, abortions, some prostitution, why some women never marry for fear of children, or why man is not the coy, reluctant, elusive creature defined, though not pictured, by Dawson and Shaw.
No wonder it fails to explain; for children, instead of being the whole cause are the result of only a part of the cause, mate hunger—a hunger of body, mind, and spirit. Love is the feeling for the one that seems to supply those needs, the impulse toward that one. The sooner we realize that the attraction between men and women is not all physical any more than it is all mental and spiritual, and that sex is in all three phases, the sooner shall we reach the truth; the sooner shall we hear the last of one type that prudishly denies physical attraction or else tries to “purify” it by making it a means to an end, and of the other type that sees in marriage only physical union.
The theory will not stand either a logical or an emotional test. Not only can it not explain this confusion of cause and effect, this mistaking the part of love for its whole; but it also cannot answer why it should look to the future for a cause when love is so vitally a thing of the present; nor why it was ever thought necessary to find any explanation outside of itself for the attraction between men and women. If there is any passion in the world that does not need a justification other than its mere existence, it is love. For though realizing the exaltation of moral passion, the exhilaration of mental passion, no one can deny that it is through love we know intense, vivid personal happiness—happiness that is vibrant, full of color, rapturous.
But it is absurd to try to analyze it; it is even more so to argue about it: but really women have grown very tired of having men tell them why they marry, tired of this confusion of result with cause, of a part with the whole, tired of the belittling of love by people who have never experienced it, tired of this sex obsession. It is doubly absurd to waste time in arguing when the best argument I can offer against the Raft theory is the book itself, where the author spends most of his time disproving his own definitely-stated idea through the actions of his characters. It is interesting to see that both Dawson and Shaw should, by methods diametrically opposite, show how fallacious is their statement by exactly the same circumstance,—that is, by having the woman care passionately for the man, not a man. That fact alone routs the whole theory. Certainly Cherry and Jehane have very decided personal preferences regardless of the next generation; moreover the Golden Woman and “heaps of other well-bred women” will not marry for fear of children; and Peter, Ockey, and the Faun Man insist on being ardent lovers that vainly pursue.
Notwithstanding these contradictions throughout the book, the author keeps on bravely and inartistically reiterating his Raft motives, as if to keep up his courage. Possibly because he realizes that he is losing his theme, he starts another which is really the one consistently developed. This second theme is that love is never reciprocal: that at the best it is a case of one loving, the other allowing; that usually it is a case of one loving and the other not even allowing. He starts an endless chain of unrequited affection: Glory loves Peter; Peter loves Cherry; Cherry, the Faun Man; the Faun the Golden Woman; the Golden Woman, herself—or is it Peter? That is one chain; and another is Ockey loves Jehane; Jehane, Barrington; Barrington, Nan.
These two themes working at cross purposes are typical of the book which is a mass of contradictions of this author’s own definitely expressed ideas, and of life. So many things do not ring true: the labored, morbid, commonplace treatment of Peter, “the ’maginative child,” as an exponent of the artistic temperament; the lack of love as the sole cause of Ockey’s failure, when he needs so many other things to make a man of him; the marriage of Nan and Barrington as the ideal union, when neither one has a nature intense enough to feel a great love, when even such love as they know has never been put to the merciless tests that life uses; the brooding, year in and year out, of the unmarried women over the loss of the joys of motherhood, and their lack of interest in any other phase of life; Jehane’s unworthiness, emphasized by the author in person and through his characters, when her actions with different treatment might have made her almost a heroine; the declared finality of so many things that are really only initial steps; platitudes as answers to the vital questions of life.
Most of these false notes come from the fact that the theories of the author and the actions of his characters are not in harmony. Whenever I hear writers talking of such discords and saying that they are obliged to let their characters work out their own salvations, I always consider the attitude an affectation. But I have changed my mind. Dawson seems to be left alone on his Raft, shouting his untenable theories till he is hoarse; while his characters, ignoring him, have reached land and are living their own lives. I found myself in the absurd position of resenting the author’s interference with those vivid, distinctive, powerful characters he had created; of wanting to tell him to keep his hands off, and let them tell their own story.
And left to themselves they tell it unflinchingly. What if the treatment is obvious and conventional? It is obvious treatment of the great mysteries of life; conventional treatment of its beauties.
The advancement of science at the expense of man is one of the most pernicious things in the world. The stunted man is a retrogression in the human race: he throws a shadow over all succeeding generations. The tendencies and natural purpose of the individual science become degenerate, and science itself is finally shipwrecked: it has made progress, but has either no effect at all on life or else an immoral one.—Nietzsche.