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diff --git a/old/1270-h/1270-h.htm b/old/1270-h/1270-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..11f6181 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1270-h/1270-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4795 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken</title> + +<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: In Defense of Women</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. L. Mencken</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1998 [eBook #1270]<br /> +[Most recently updated: October 10, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Joseph Gallanar and David Widger</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN ***</div> + +<h1>IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by H. L. Mencken</h2> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_INTR"> Introduction</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>I. The Feminine Mind</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> 1. The Maternal Instinct</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> 2. Women’s Intelligence</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> 3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> 4. Why Women Fail</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> 5. The Thing Called Intuition</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> <b>II. The War Between the Sexes</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> 6. How Marriages are Arranged</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> 7. The Feminine Attitude</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> 8. The Male Beauty</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> 9. Men as Aesthetes</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> 10. The Process of Delusion</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> 11. Biological Considerations</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> 12. Honour</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> 13. Women and the Emotions</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> 14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> 15. Mythical Anthropophagi</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> 16. A Conspiracy of Silence</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> <b>III. Marriage</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> 17. Fundamental Motives</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> 18. The Process of Courtship</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> 19. The Actual Husband</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> 20. The Unattainable Ideal</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> 21. The Effect on the Race</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> 22. Compulsory Marriage</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> 23. Extra-Legal Devices</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> 24. Intermezzo on Monogamy</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> 25. Late Marriages</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> 26. Disparate Unions</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> 27. The Charm of Mystery</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> 28. Woman as Wife</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> 29. Marriage and the Law</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> 30. The Emancipated Housewife</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> <b>IV. Woman Suffrage</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> 31. The Crowning Victory</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> 32. The Woman Voter</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> 33. A Glance Into the Future</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> 34. The Suffragette</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> 35. A Mythical Dare-Devil</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> 36. The Origin of a Delusion</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> 37. Women as Martyrs</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> 38. Pathological Effects</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> 39. Women as Christians</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> 40. Piety as a Social Habit</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0046"> 41. The Ethics of Women</a><br /><br /></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0047"> <b>V. The New Age</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0048"> 42. The Transvaluation of Values</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0049"> 43. The Lady of Joy</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0050"> 44. The Future of Marriage</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0051"> 45. Effects of the War</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0052"> 46. The Eternal Romance</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0053"> 47. Apologia in Conclusion</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_INTR"></a> +Introduction</h2> + +<p> +As a professional critic of life and letters, my principal business in the +world is that of manufacturing platitudes for tomorrow, which is to say, ideas +so novel that they will be instantly rejected as insane and outrageous by all +right thinking men, and so apposite and sound that they will eventually conquer +that instinctive opposition, and force themselves into the traditional wisdom +of the race. I hope I need not confess that a large part of my stock in trade +consists of platitudes rescued from the cobwebbed shelves of yesterday, with +new labels stuck rakishly upon them. This borrowing and refurbishing of +shop-worn goods, as a matter of fact, is the invariable habit of traders in +ideas, at all times and everywhere. It is not, however, that all the +conceivable human notions have been thought out; it is simply, to be quite +honest, that the sort of men who volunteer to think out new ones seldom, if +ever, have wind enough for a full day’s work. The most they can ever accomplish +in the way of genuine originality is an occasional brilliant spurt, and half a +dozen such spurts, particularly if they come close together and show a certain +co-ordination, are enough to make a practitioner celebrated, and even immortal. +Nature, indeed, conspires against all such genuine originality, and I have no +doubt that God is against it on His heavenly throne, as His vicars and +partisans unquestionably are on this earth. The dead hand pushes all of us into +intellectual cages; there is in all of us a strange tendency to yield and have +done. Thus the impertinent colleague of Aristotle is doubly beset, first by a +public opinion that regards his enterprise as subversive and in bad taste, and +secondly by an inner weakness that limits his capacity for it, and especially +his capacity to throw off the prejudices and superstitions of his race, culture +anytime. The cell, said Haeckel, does not act, it reacts—and what is the +instrument of reflection and speculation save a congeries of cells? At the +moment of the contemporary metaphysician’s loftiest flight, when he is most +gratefully warmed by the feeling that he is far above all the ordinary airlanes +and has absolutely novel concept by the tail, he is suddenly pulled up by the +discovery that what is entertaining him is simply the ghost of some ancient +idea that his school-master forced into him in 1887, or the mouldering corpse +of a doctrine that was made official in his country during the late war, or a +sort of fermentation-product, to mix the figure, of a banal heresy launched +upon him recently by his wife. This is the penalty that the man of intellectual +curiosity and vanity pays for his violation of the divine edict that what has +been revealed from Sinai shall suffice for him, and for his resistance to the +natural process which seeks to reduce him to the respectable level of a patriot +and taxpayer. +</p> + +<p> +I was, of course, privy to this difficulty when I planned the present work, and +entered upon it with no expectation that I should be able to embellish it with, +almost, more than a very small number of hitherto unutilized notions. Moreover, +I faced the additional handicap of having an audience of extraordinary +antipathy to ideas before me, for I wrote it in war-time, with all foreign +markets cut off, and so my only possible customers were Americans. Of their +unprecedented dislike for novelty in the domain of the intellect I have often +discoursed in the past, and so there is no need to go into the matter again. +All I need do here is to recall the fact that, in the United States, alone +among the great nations of history, there is a right way to think and a wrong +way to think in everything—not only in theology, or politics, or economics, but +in the most trivial matters of everyday life. Thus, in the average American +city the citizen who, in the face of an organized public clamour (usually +managed by interested parties) for the erection of an equestrian statue of +Susan B. Anthony, the apostle of woman suffrage, in front of the chief railway +station, or the purchase of a dozen leopards for the municipal zoo, or the +dispatch of an invitation to the Structural Iron Workers’ Union to hold its +next annual convention in the town Symphony Hall—the citizen who, for any +logical reason, opposes such a proposal—on the ground, say, that Miss Anthony +never mounted a horse in her life, or that a dozen leopards would be less +useful than a gallows to hang the City Council, or that the Structural Iron +Workers would spit all over the floor of Symphony Hall and knock down the busts +of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms—this citizen is commonly denounced as an +anarchist and a public enemy. It is not only erroneous to think thus; it has +come to be immoral. And many other planes, high and low. For an American to +question any of the articles of fundamental faith cherished by the majority is +for him to run grave risks of social disaster. The old English offence of +“imagining the King’s death” has been formally revived by the American courts, +and hundreds of men and women are in jail for committing it, and it has been so +enormously extended that, in some parts of the country at least, it now +embraces such remote acts as believing that the negroes should have equality +before the law, and speaking the language of countries recently at war with the +Republic, and conveying to a private friend a formula for making synthetic gin. +All such toyings with illicit ideas are construed as attentats against +democracy, which, in a sense, perhaps they are. For democracy is grounded upon +so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid +system of taboos, else even half-wits would argue it to pieces. Its first +concern must thus be to penalize the free play of ideas. In the United States +this is not only its first concern, but also its last concern. No other +enterprise, not even the trade in public offices and contracts, occupies the +rulers of the land so steadily, or makes heavier demands upon their ingenuity +and their patriotic passion. +</p> + +<p> +Familiar with the risks flowing out of it—and having just had to change the +plates of my “Book of Prefaces,” a book of purely literary criticism, wholly +without political purpose or significance, in order to get it through the +mails, I determined to make this brochure upon the woman question extremely +pianissimo in tone, and to avoid burdening it with any ideas of an unfamiliar, +and hence illegal nature. So deciding, I presently added a bravura touch: the +unquenchable vanity of the intellectual snob asserting itself over all +prudence. That is to say, I laid down the rule that no idea should go into the +book that was not already so obvious that it had been embodied in the +proverbial philosophy, or folk-wisdom, of some civilized nation, including the +Chinese. To this rule I remained faithful throughout. In its original form, as +published in 1918, the book was actually just such a pastiche of proverbs, many +of them English, and hence familiar even to Congressmen, newspaper editors and +other such illiterates. It was not always easy to hold to this program; over +and over again I was tempted to insert notions that seemed to have escaped the +peasants of Europe and Asia. But in the end, at some cost to the form of the +work, I managed to get through it without compromise, and so it was put into +type. There is no need to add that my ideational abstinence went unrecognized +and unrewarded. In fact, not a single American reviewer noticed it, and most of +them slated the book violently as a mass of heresies and contumacies, a +deliberate attack upon all the known and revered truths about the woman +question, a headlong assault upon the national decencies. In the South, where +the suspicion of ideas goes to extraordinary lengths, even for the United +States, some of the newspapers actually denounced the book as German +propaganda, designed to break down American morale, and called upon the +Department of Justice to proceed against me for the crime known to American law +as “criminal anarchy,” i.e., “imagining the King’s death.” Why the Comstocks +did not forbid it the mails as lewd and lascivious I have never been able to +determine. Certainly, they received many complaints about it. I myself, in +fact, caused a number of these complaints to be lodged, in the hope that the +resultant buffooneries would give me entertainment in those dull days of war, +with all intellectual activities adjourned, and maybe promote the sale of the +book. But the Comstocks were pursuing larger fish, and so left me to the +righteous indignation of right-thinking reviewers, especially the suffragists. +Their concern, after all, is not with books that are denounced; what they +concentrate their moral passion on is the book that is praised. +</p> + +<p> +The present edition is addressed to a wider audience, in more civilized +countries, and so I have felt free to introduce a number of propositions, not +to be found in popular proverbs, that had to be omitted from the original +edition. But even so, the book by no means pretends to preach revolutionary +doctrines, or even doctrines of any novelty. All I design by it is to set down +in more or less plain form certain ideas that practically every civilized man +and woman holds in petto, but that have been concealed hitherto by the vast +mass of sentimentalities swathing the whole woman question. It is a question of +capital importance to all human beings, and it deserves to be discussed +honestly and frankly, but there is so much of social reticence, of religious +superstition and of mere emotion intermingled with it that most of the enormous +literature it has thrown off is hollow and useless. I point for example, to the +literature of the subsidiary question of woman suffrage. It fills whole +libraries, but nine tenths of it is merely rubbish, for it starts off from +assumptions that are obviously untrue and it reaches conclusions that are at +war with both logic and the facts. So with the question of sex specifically. I +have read, literally, hundreds of volumes upon it, and uncountable numbers of +pamphlets, handbills and inflammatory wall-cards, and yet it leaves the primary +problem unsolved, which is to say, the problem as to what is to be done about +the conflict between the celibacy enforced upon millions by civilization and +the appetites implanted in all by God. In the main, it counsels yielding to +celibacy, which is exactly as sensible as advising a dog to forget its fleas. +Here, as in other fields, I do not presume to offer a remedy of my own. In +truth, I am very suspicious of all remedies for the major ills of life, and +believe that most of them are incurable. But I at least venture to discuss the +matter realistically, and if what I have to say is not sagacious, it is at all +events not evasive. This, I hope, is something. Maybe some later investigator +will bring a better illumination to the subject. +</p> + +<p> +It is the custom of The Free-Lance Series to print a paragraph or two about the +author in each volume. I was born in Baltimore, September 12, 1880, and come of +a learned family, though my immediate forebears were business men. The +tradition of this ancient learning has been upon me since my earliest days, and +I narrowly escaped becoming a doctor of philosophy. My father’s death, in 1899, +somehow dropped me into journalism, where I had a successful career, as such +careers go. At the age of 25 I was the chief editor of a daily newspaper in +Baltimore. During the same year I published my first book of criticism. +Thereafter, for ten or twelve years, I moved steadily from practical +journalism, with its dabbles in politics, economics and soon, toward purely +aesthetic concerns, chiefly literature and music, but of late I have felt a +strong pull in the other direction, and what interests me chiefly today is what +may be called public psychology, ie., the nature of the ideas that the larger +masses of men hold, and the processes whereby they reach them. If I do any +serious writing hereafter, it will be in that field. In the United States I am +commonly held suspect as a foreigner, and during the war I was variously +denounced. Abroad, especially in England, I am sometimes put to the torture for +my intolerable Americanism. The two views are less far apart than they seem to +be. The fact is that I am superficially so American, in ways of speech and +thought, that the foreigner is deceived, whereas the native, more familiar with +the true signs, sees that under the surface there is incurable antagonism to +most of the ideas that Americans hold to be sound. Thus I fall between two +stools—but it is more comfortable there on the floor than sitting up tightly. I +am wholly devoid of public spirit or moral purpose. This is incomprehensible to +many men, and they seek to remedy the defect by crediting me with purposes of +their own. The only thing I respect is intellectual honesty, of which, of +course, intellectual courage is a necessary part. A Socialist who goes to jail +for his opinions seems to me a much finer man than the judge who sends him +there, though I disagree with all the ideas of the Socialist and agree with +some of those of the judge. But though he is fine, the Socialist is +nevertheless foolish, for he suffers for what is untrue. If I knew what was +true, I’d probably be willing to sweat and strive for it, and maybe even to die +for it to the tune of bugle-blasts. But so far I have not found it. +</p> + +<p> +H. L. Mencken +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0002"></a> +I. The Feminine Mind</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0003"></a> +1. The Maternal Instinct</h2> + +<p> +A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and +authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to +pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the +actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this +fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the +common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The mark of that so-called +intuition is simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, an habitual +immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for distinguishing +clearly between the appearance and the substance. The appearance, in the normal +family circle, is a hero, magnifico, a demigod. The substance is a poor +mountebank. +</p> + +<p> +The proverb that no man is a hero to his valet is obviously of masculine +manufacture. It is both insincere and untrue: insincere because it merely masks +the egotistic doctrine that he is potentially a hero to everyone else, and +untrue because a valet, being a fourth-rate man himself, is likely to be the +last person in the world to penetrate his master’s charlatanry. Who ever heard +of valet who didn’t envy his master wholeheartedly? who wouldn’t willingly +change places with his master? who didn’t secretly wish that he was his master? +A man’s wife labours under no such naive folly. She may envy her husband, true +enough, certain of his more soothing prerogatives and sentimentalities. She may +envy him his masculine liberty of movement and occupation, his impenetrable +complacency, his peasant-like delight in petty vices, his capacity for hiding +the harsh face of reality behind the cloak of romanticism, his general +innocence and childishness. But she never envies him his puerile ego; she never +envies him his shoddy and preposterous soul. +</p> + +<p> +This shrewd perception of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute +understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that +compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A +woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his +need of an amiable environment, his touching self delusion. That ironical note +is not only daily apparent in real life; it sets the whole tone of feminine +fiction. The woman novelist, if she be skillful enough to arise out of mere +imitation into genuine self-expression, never takes her heroes quite seriously. +From the day of George Sand to the day of Selma Lagerlof she has always got +into her character study a touch of superior aloofness, of ill-concealed +derision. I can’t recall a single masculine figure created by a woman who is +not, at bottom, a booby. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0004"></a> +2. Women’s Intelligence</h2> + +<p> +That it should still be necessary, at this late stage in the senility of the +human race to argue that women have a fine and fluent intelligence is surely an +eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable prejudice, and general +imbecility of their lords and masters. One finds very few professors of the +subject, even among admitted feminists, approaching the fact as obvious; +practically all of them think it necessary to bring up a vast mass of evidence +to establish what should be an axiom. Even the Franco Englishman, W. L. George, +one of the most sharp-witted of the faculty, wastes a whole book up on the +demonstration, and then, with a great air of uttering something new, gives it +the humourless title of “The Intelligence of Women.” The intelligence of women, +forsooth! As well devote a laborious time to the sagacity of serpents, +pickpockets, or Holy Church! +</p> + +<p> +Women, in truth, are not only intelligent; they have almost a monopoly of +certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence. The thing itself, +indeed, might be reasonably described as a special feminine character; there is +in it, in more than one of its manifestations, a femaleness as palpable as the +femaleness of cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are strong. Men are brave in +physical combat. Men have sentiment. Men are romantic, and love what they +conceive to be virtue and beauty. Men incline to faith, hope and charity. Men +know how to sweat and endure. Men are amiable and fond. But in so far as they +show the true fundamentals of intelligence—in so far as they reveal a capacity +for discovering the kernel of eternal verity in the husk of delusion and +hallucination and a passion for bringing it forth—to that extent, at least, +they are feminine, and still nourished by the milk of their mothers. “Human +creatures,” says George, borrowing from Weininger, “are never entirely male or +entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual +majorities.” Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free from +sentimentality and illusion, a man hard to deceive, a man of the first class, +and I’ll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him. Bonaparte had it; +Goethe had it; Schopenhauer had it; Bismarck and Lincoln had it; in +Shakespeare, if the Freudians are to be believed, it amounted to downright +homosexuality. The essential traits and qualities of the male, the hallmarks of +the unpolluted masculine, are at the same time the hall-marks of the +Schalskopf. The caveman is all muscles and mush. Without a woman to rule him +and think for him, he is a truly lamentable spectacle: a baby with whiskers, a +rabbit with the frame of an aurochs, a feeble and preposterous caricature of +God. +</p> + +<p> +It would be an easy matter, indeed, to demonstrate that superior talent in man +is practically always accompanied by this feminine flavour—that complete +masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable. Lest I be misunderstood +I hasten to add that I do not mean to say that masculinity contributes nothing +to the complex of chemico-physiological reactions which produces what we call +talent; all I mean to say is that this complex is impossible without the +feminine contribution that it is a product of the interplay of the two +elements. In women of genius we see the opposite picture. They are commonly +distinctly mannish, and shave as well as shine. Think of George Sand, Catherine +the Great, Elizabeth of England, Rosa Bonheur, Teresa Carreo or Cosima Wagner. +The truth is that neither sex, without some fertilization by the complementary +characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavour. +Man, without a saving touch of woman in him, is too doltish, too naive and +romantic, too easily deluded and lulled to sleep by his imagination to be +anything above a cavalryman, a theologian or a bank director. And woman, +without some trace of that divine innocence which is masculine, is too harshly +the realist for those vast projections of the fancy which lie at the heart of +what we call genius. Here, as elsewhere in the universe, the best effects are +obtained by a mingling of elements. The wholly manly man lacks the wit +necessary to give objective form to his soaring and secret dreams, and the +wholly womanly woman is apt to be too cynical a creature to dream at all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0005"></a> +3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks</h2> + +<p> +What men, in their egoism, constantly mistake for a deficiency of intelligence +in woman is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small intellectual +tricks, that complex of petty knowledges, that collection of cerebral rubber +stamps, which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male. A man +thinks that he is more intelligent than his wife because he can add up a column +of figures more accurately, and because he understands the imbecile jargon of +the stock market, and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of +rival politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and +degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the law. But these empty +talents, of course, are not really signs of a profound intelligence; they are, +in fact, merely superficial accomplishments, and their acquirement puts little +more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning how to +catch a penny or scratch a match. The whole bag of tricks of the average +business man, or even of the average professional man, is inordinately +childish. It takes no more actual sagacity to carry on the everyday hawking and +haggling of the world, or to ladle out its normal doses of bad medicine and +worse law, than it takes to operate a taxicab or fry a pan of fish. No +observant person, indeed, can come into close contact with the general run of +business and professional men—I confine myself to those who seem to get on in +the world, and exclude the admitted failures—without marvelling at their +intellectual lethargy, their incurable ingenuousness, their appalling lack of +ordinary sense. The late Charles Francis Adams, a grandson of one American +President and a great-grandson of another, after a long lifetime in intimate +association with some of the chief business “geniuses” of that paradise of +traders and usurers, the United States, reported in his old age that he had +never heard a single one of them say anything worth hearing. These were +vigorous and masculine men, and in a man’s world they were successful men, but +intellectually they were all blank cartridges. +</p> + +<p> +There is, indeed, fair ground for arguing that, if men of that kidney were +genuinely intelligent, they would never succeed at their gross and driveling +concerns—that their very capacity to master and retain such balderdash as +constitutes their stock in trade is proof of their inferior mentality. The +notion is certainly supported by the familiar incompetency of first rate men +for what are called practical concerns. One could not think of Aristotle or +Beethoven multiplying 3,472,701 by 99,999 without making a mistake, nor could +one think of him remembering the range of this or that railway share for two +years, or the number of ten-penny nails in a hundred weight, or the freight on +lard from Galveston to Rotterdam. And by the same token one could not imagine +him expert at billiards, or at grouse-shooting, or at golf, or at any other of +the idiotic games at which what are called successful men commonly divert +themselves. In his great study of British genius, Havelock Ellis found that an +incapacity for such petty expertness was visible in almost all first rate men. +They are bad at tying cravats. They do not understand the fashionable card +games. They are puzzled by book-keeping. They know nothing of party politics. +In brief, they are inert and impotent in the very fields of endeavour that see +the average men’s highest performances, and are easily surpassed by men who, in +actual intelligence, are about as far below them as the Simidae. +</p> + +<p> +This lack of skill at manual and mental tricks of a trivial character—which +must inevitably appear to a barber or a dentist as stupidity, and to a +successful haberdasher as downright imbecility—is a character that men of the +first class share with women of the first, second and even third classes. There +is at the bottom of it, in truth, something unmistakably feminine; its +appearance in a man is almost invariably accompanied by the other touch of +femaleness that I have described. Nothing, indeed, could be plainer than the +fact that women, as a class, are sadly deficient in the small expertness of men +as a class. One seldom, if ever, hears of them succeeding in the occupations +which bring out such expertness most lavishly—for example, tuning pianos, +repairing clocks, practising law, (ie., matching petty tricks with some other +lawyer), painting portraits, keeping books, or managing factories—despite the +circumstance that the great majority of such occupations are well within their +physical powers, and that few of them offer any very formidable social barriers +to female entrance. There is no external reason why women shouldn’t succeed as +operative surgeons; the way is wide open, the rewards are large, and there is a +special demand for them on grounds of modesty. Nevertheless, not many women +graduates in medicine undertake surgery and it is rare for one of them to make +a success of it. There is, again, no external reason why women should not +prosper at the bar, or as editors of newspapers, or as managers of the lesser +sort of factories, or in the wholesale trade, or as hotel-keepers. The taboos +that stand in the way are of very small force; various adventurous women have +defied them with impunity; once the door is entered there remains no special +handicap within. But, as every one knows, the number of women actually +practising these trades and professions is very small, and few of them have +attained to any distinction in competition with men. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0006"></a> +4. Why Women Fail</h2> + +<p> +The cause thereof, as I say, is not external, but internal. It lies in the same +disconcerting apprehension of the larger realities, the same impatience with +the paltry and meretricious, the same disqualification for mechanical routine +and empty technic which one finds in the higher varieties of men. Even in the +pursuits which, by the custom of Christendom, are especially their own, women +seldom show any of that elaborately conventionalized and half automatic +proficiency which is the pride and boast of most men. It is a commonplace of +observation, indeed, that a housewife who actually knows how to cook, or who +can make her own clothes with enough skill to conceal the fact from the most +casual glance, or who is competent to instruct her children in the elements of +morals, learning and hygiene—it is a platitude that such a woman is very rare +indeed, and that when she is encountered she is not usually esteemed for her +general intelligence. This is particularly true in the United States, where the +position of women is higher than in any other civilized or semi-civilized +country, and the old assumption of their intellectual inferiority has been most +successfully challenged. The American dinner-table, in truth, becomes a +monument to the defective technic of the American housewife. The guest who +respects his oesophagus, invited to feed upon its discordant and ill-prepared +victuals, evades the experience as long and as often as he can, and resigns +himself to it as he might resign himself to being shaved by a paralytic. +Nowhere else in the world have women more leisure and freedom to improve their +minds, and nowhere else do they show a higher level of intelligence, or take +part more effectively in affairs of the first importance. But nowhere else is +there worse cooking in the home, or a more inept handling of the whole domestic +economy, or a larger dependence upon the aid of external substitutes, by men +provided, for the skill that is wanting where it theoretically exists. It is +surely no mere coincidence that the land of the emancipated and enthroned woman +is also the land of canned soup, of canned pork and beans, of whole meals in +cans, and of everything else ready-made. And nowhere else is there more +striking tendency to throw the whole business of training the minds of children +upon professional teachers, and the whole business of instructing them in +morals and religion upon so-called Sunday-schools, and the whole business of +developing and caring for their bodies upon playground experts, sex hygienists +and other such professionals, most of them mountebanks. +</p> + +<p> +In brief, women rebel—often unconsciously, sometimes even submitting all the +while—against the dull, mechanical tricks of the trade that the present +organization of society compels them to practise for a living, and that +rebellion testifies to their intelligence. If they enjoyed and took pride in +those tricks, and showed it by diligence and skill, they would be on all fours +with such men as are headwaiters, ladies’ tailors, schoolmasters or +carpet-beaters, and proud of it. The inherent tendency of any woman above the +most stupid is to evade the whole obligation, and, if she cannot actually evade +it, to reduce its demands to the minimum. And when some accident purges her, +either temporarily or permanently, of the inclination to marriage (of which +much more anon), and she enters into competition with men in the general +business of the world, the sort of career that she commonly carves out offers +additional evidence of her mental peculiarity. In whatever calls for no more +than an invariable technic and a feeble chicanery she usually fails; in +whatever calls for independent thought and resourcefulness she usually +succeeds. Thus she is almost always a failure as a lawyer, for the law requires +only an armament of hollow phrases and stereotyped formulae, and a mental habit +which puts these phantasms above sense, truth and justice; and she is almost +always a failure in business, for business, in the main, is so foul a compound +of trivialities and rogueries that her sense of intellectual integrity revolts +against it. But she is usually a success as a sick-nurse, for that profession +requires ingenuity, quick comprehension, courage in the face of novel and +disconcerting situations, and above all, a capacity for penetrating and +dominating character; and whenever she comes into competition with men in the +arts, particularly on those secondary planes where simple nimbleness of mind is +unaided by the masterstrokes of genius, she holds her own invariably. The best +and most intellectual—i.e., most original and enterprising play-actors are not +men, but women, and so are the best teachers and blackmailers, and a fair share +of the best writers, and public functionaries, and executants of music. In the +demimonde one will find enough acumen and daring, and enough resilience in the +face of special difficulties, to put the equipment of any exclusively male +profession to shame. If the work of the average man required half the mental +agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the +average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0007"></a> +5. The Thing Called Intuition</h2> + +<p> +Men, as every one knows, are disposed to question this superior intelligence of +women; their egoism demands the denial, and they are seldom reflective enough +to dispose of it by logical and evidential analysis. Moreover, as we shall see +a bit later on, there is a certain specious appearance of soundness in their +position; they have forced upon women an artificial character which well +conceals their real character, and women have found it profitable to encourage +the deception. But though every normal man thus cherishes the soothing unction +that he is the intellectual superior of all women, and particularly of his +wife, he constantly gives the lie to his pretension by consulting and deferring +to what he calls her intuition. That is to say, he knows by experience that her +judgment in many matters of capital concern is more subtle and searching than +his own, and, being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a more +competent intelligence, he takes refuge behind the doctrine that it is due to +some impenetrable and intangible talent for guessing correctly, some half +mystical super sense, some vague (and, in essence, infra-human) instinct. +</p> + +<p> +The true nature of this alleged instinct, however, is revealed by an +examination of the situations which inspire a man to call it to his aid. These +situations do not arise out of the purely technical problems that are his daily +concern, but out of the rarer and more fundamental, and hence enormously more +difficult problems which beset him only at long and irregular intervals, and so +offer a test, not of his mere capacity for being drilled, but of his capacity +for genuine ratiocination. No man, I take it, save one consciously inferior and +hen-pecked, would consult his wife about hiring a clerk, or about extending +credit to some paltry customer, or about some routine piece of tawdry +swindling; but not even the most egoistic man would fail to sound the sentiment +of his wife about taking a partner into his business, or about standing for +public office, or about combating unfair and ruinous competition, or about +marrying off their daughter. Such things are of massive importance; they lie at +the foundation of well-being; they call for the best thought that the man +confronted by them can muster; the perils hidden in a wrong decision overcome +even the clamors of vanity. It is in such situations that the superior mental +grasp of women is of obvious utility, and has to be admitted. It is here that +they rise above the insignificant sentimentalities, superstitions and formulae +of men, and apply to the business their singular talent for separating the +appearance from the substance, and so exercise what is called their intuition. +</p> + +<p> +Intuition? With all respect, bosh! Then it was intuition that led Darwin to +work out the hypothesis of natural selection. Then it was intuition that +fabricated the gigantically complex score of “Die Walkure.” Then it was +intuition that convinced Columbus of the existence of land to the west of the +Azores. All this intuition of which so much transcendental rubbish is +merchanted is no more and no less than intelligence—intelligence so keen that +it can penetrate to the hidden truth through the most formidable wrappings of +false semblance and demeanour, and so little corrupted by sentimental prudery +that it is equal to the even more difficult task of hauling that truth out into +the light, in all its naked hideousness. Women decide the larger questions of +life correctly and quickly, not because they are lucky guessers, not because +they are divinely inspired, not because they practise a magic inherited from +savagery, but simply and solely because they have sense. They see at a glance +what most men could not see with searchlights and telescopes; they are at grips +with the essentials of a problem before men have finished debating its mere +externals. They are the supreme realists of the race. Apparently illogical, +they are the possessors of a rare and subtle super-logic. Apparently whimsical, +they hang to the truth with a tenacity which carries them through every phase +of its incessant, jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily +deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the same +merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself—men recognized to be more aloof +and uninflammable than the general—men of special talent for the +logical—sardonic men, cynics. Men, too, sometimes have brains. But that is a +rare, rare man, I venture, who is as steadily intelligent, as constantly sound +in judgment, as little put off by appearances, as the average women of +forty-eight. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0008"></a> +II. The War Between the Sexes</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0009"></a> +6. How Marriages are Arranged</h2> + +<p> +I have said that women are not sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit mere +emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation. The doctrine, +perhaps, will raise a protest. The theory that they are is itself a favourite +sentimentality; one sentimentality will be brought up to substantiate another; +dog will eat dog. But an appeal to a few obvious facts will be enough to +sustain my contention, despite the vast accumulation of romantic rubbish to the +contrary. +</p> + +<p> +Turn, for example, to the field in which the two sexes come most constantly +into conflict, and in which, as a result, their habits of mind are most clearly +contrasted—to the field, to wit, of monogamous marriage. Surely no long +argument is needed to demonstrate the superior competence and effectiveness of +women here, and therewith their greater self-possession, their saner weighing +of considerations, their higher power of resisting emotional suggestion. The +very fact that marriages occur at all is a proof, indeed, that they are more +cool-headed than men, and more adept in employing their intellectual resources, +for it is plainly to a man’s interest to avoid marriage as long as possible, +and as plainly to a woman’s interest to make a favourable marriage as soon as +she can. The efforts of the two sexes are thus directed, in one of the capital +concerns of life, to diametrically antagonistic ends. Which side commonly +prevails? I leave the verdict to the jury. All normal men fight the thing off; +some men are successful for relatively long periods; a few extraordinarily +intelligent and courageous men (or perhaps lucky ones) escape altogether. But, +taking one generation with another, as every one knows, the average man is duly +married and the average woman gets a husband. Thus the great majority of women, +in this clear-cut and endless conflict, make manifest their substantial +superiority to the great majority of men. +</p> + +<p> +Not many men, worthy of the name, gain anything of net value by marriage, at +least as the institution is now met with in Christendom. Even assessing its +benefits at their most inflated worth, they are plainly overborne by crushing +disadvantages. When a man marries it is no more than a sign that the feminine +talent for persuasion and intimidation—i.e., the feminine talent for survival +in a world of clashing concepts and desires, the feminine competence and +intelligence—has forced him into a more or less abhorrent compromise with his +own honest inclinations and best interests. Whether that compromise be a sign +of his relative stupidity or of his relative cowardice it is all one: the two +things, in their symptoms and effects, are almost identical. In the first case +he marries because he has been clearly bowled over in a combat of wits; in the +second he resigns himself to marriage as the safest form of liaison. In both +cases his inherent sentimentality is the chief weapon in the hand of his +opponent. It makes him cherish the fiction of his enterprise, and even of his +daring, in the midst of the most crude and obvious operations against him. It +makes him accept as real the bold play-acting that women always excel at, and +at no time more than when stalking a man. It makes him, above all, see a +glamour of romance in a transaction which, even at its best, contains almost as +much gross trafficking, at bottom, as the sale of a mule. +</p> + +<p> +A man in full possession of the modest faculties that nature commonly +apportions to him is at least far enough above idiocy to realize that marriage +is a bargain in which he gets the worse of it, even when, in some detail or +other, he makes a visible gain. He never, I believe, wants all that the thing +offers and implies. He wants, at most, no more than certain parts. He may +desire, let us say, a housekeeper to protect his goods and entertain his +friends—but he may shrink from the thought of sharing his bathtub with anyone, +and home cooking may be downright poisonous to him. He may yearn for a son to +pray at his tomb—and yet suffer acutely at the mere approach of +relatives-in-law. He may dream of a beautiful and complaisant mistress, less +exigent and mercurial than any a bachelor may hope to discover—and stand aghast +at admitting her to his bank-book, his family-tree and his secret ambitions. He +may want company and not intimacy, or intimacy and not company. He may want a +cook and not a partner in his business, or a partner in his business and not a +cook. But in order to get the precise thing or things that he wants, he has to +take a lot of other things that he doesn’t want—that no sane man, in truth, +could imaginably want—and it is to the enterprise of forcing him into this +almost Armenian bargain that the woman of his “choice” addresses herself. Once +the game is fairly set, she searches out his weaknesses with the utmost +delicacy and accuracy, and plays upon them with all her superior resources. He +carries a handicap from the start. His sentimental and unintelligent belief in +theories that she knows quite well are not true—e.g., the theory that she +shrinks from him, and is modestly appalled by the banal carnalities of marriage +itself—gives her a weapon against him which she drives home with instinctive +and compelling art. The moment she discerns this sentimentality bubbling within +him—that is, the moment his oafish smirks and eye rollings signify that he has +achieved the intellectual disaster that is called falling in love—he is hers to +do with as she will. Save for acts of God, he is forthwith as good as married. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0010"></a> +7. The Feminine Attitude</h2> + +<p> +This sentimentality in marriage is seldom, if ever, observed in women. For +reasons that we shall examine later, they have much more to gain by the +business than men, and so they are prompted by their cooler sagacity to enter +upon it on the most favourable terms possible, and with the minimum admixture +of disarming emotion. Men almost invariably get their mates by the process +called falling in love; save among the aristocracies of the North and Latin +men, the marriage of convenience is relatively rare; a hundred men marry +“beneath” them to every woman who perpetrates the same folly. And what is meant +by this so-called falling in love? What is meant by it is a procedure whereby a +man accounts for the fact of his marriage, after feminine initiative and +generalship have made it inevitable, by enshrouding it in a purple maze of +romance—in brief, by setting up the doctrine that an obviously self-possessed +and mammalian woman, engaged deliberately in the most important adventure of +her life, and with the keenest understanding of its utmost implications, is a +naive, tender, moony and almost disembodied creature, enchanted and made +perfect by a passion that has stolen upon her unawares, and which she could not +acknowledge, even to herself, without blushing to death. By this preposterous +doctrine, the defeat and enslavement of the man is made glorious, and even +gifted with a touch of flattering naughtiness. The sheer horsepower of his +wooing has assailed and overcome her maiden modesty; she trembles in his arms; +he has been granted a free franchise to work his wicked will upon her. Thus do +the ambulant images of God cloak their shackles proudly, and divert the +judicious with their boastful shouts. +</p> + +<p> +Women, it is almost needless to point out, are much more cautious about +embracing the conventional hocus-pocus of the situation. They never acknowledge +that they have fallen in love, as the phrase is, until the man has formally +avowed the delusion, and so cut off his retreat; to do otherwise would be to +bring down upon their heads the mocking and contumely of all their sisters. +With them, falling in love thus appears in the light of an afterthought, or, +perhaps more accurately, in the light of a contagion. The theory, it would +seem, is that the love of the man, laboriously avowed, has inspired it +instantly, and by some unintelligible magic; that it was non-existent until the +heat of his own flames set it off. This theory, it must be acknowledged, has a +certain element of fact in it. A woman seldom allows herself to be swayed by +emotion while the principal business is yet afoot and its issue still in doubt; +to do so would be to expose a degree of imbecility that is confined only to the +half-wits of the sex. But once the man is definitely committed, she frequently +unbends a bit, if only as a relief from the strain of a fixed purpose, and so, +throwing off her customary inhibitions, she, indulges in the luxury of a more +or less forced and mawkish sentiment. It is, however, almost unheard of for her +to permit herself this relaxation before the sentimental intoxication of the +man is assured. To do otherwise—that is, to confess, even post facto, to an +anterior descent,—would expose her, as I have said, to the scorn of all other +women. Such a confession would be an admission that emotion had got the better +of her at a critical intellectual moment, and in the eyes of women, as in the +eyes of the small minority of genuinely intelligent men, no treason to the +higher cerebral centres could be more disgraceful. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0011"></a> +8. The Male Beauty</h2> + +<p> +This disdain of sentimental weakness, even in those higher reaches where it is +mellowed by aesthetic sensibility, is well revealed by the fact that women are +seldom bemused by mere beauty in men. Save on the stage, the handsome fellow +has no appreciable advantage in amour over his more Gothic brother. In real +life, indeed, he is viewed with the utmost suspicion by all women save the most +stupid. In him the vanity native to his sex is seen to mount to a degree that +is positively intolerable. It not only irritates by its very nature; it also +throws about him a sort of unnatural armour, and so makes him resistant to the +ordinary approaches. For this reason, the matrimonial enterprises of the more +reflective and analytical sort of women are almost always directed to men whose +lack of pulchritude makes them easier to bring down, and, what is more +important still, easier to hold down. The weight of opinion among women is +decidedly against the woman who falls in love with an Apollo. She is regarded, +at best, as flighty creature, and at worst, as one pushing bad taste to the +verge of indecency. Such weaknesses are resigned to women approaching senility, +and to the more ignoble variety of women labourers. A shop girl, perhaps, may +plausibly fall in love with a moving-picture actor, and a half-idiotic old +widow may succumb to a youth with shoulders like the Parthenon, but no woman of +poise and self-respect, even supposing her to be transiently flustered by a +lovely buck, would yield to that madness for an instant, or confess it to her +dearest friend. Women know how little such purely superficial values are worth. +The voice of their order, the first taboo of their freemasonry, is firmly +against making a sentimental debauch of the serious business of marriage. +</p> + +<p> +This disdain of the pretty fellow is often accounted for by amateur +psychologists on the ground that women are anesthetic to beauty—that they lack +the quick and delicate responsiveness of man. Nothing could be more absurd. +Women, in point of fact, commonly have a far keener aesthetic sense than men. +Beauty is more important to them; they give more thought to it; they crave more +of it in their immediate surroundings. The average man, at least in England and +America, takes a sort of bovine pride in his anaesthesia to the arts; he can +think of them only as sources of tawdry and somewhat discreditable amusement; +one seldom hears of him showing half the enthusiasm for any beautiful thing +that his wife displays in the presence, of a fine fabric, an effective colour, +or a graceful form, say in millinery. The truth is that women are resistant to +so-called beauty in men for the simple and sufficient reason that such beauty +is chiefly imaginary. A truly beautiful man, indeed, is as rare as a truly +beautiful piece of jewelry. What men mistake for beauty in themselves is +usually nothing save a certain hollow gaudiness, a revolting flashiness, the +superficial splendour of a prancing animal. The most lovely moving picture +actor, considered in the light of genuine aesthetic values, is no more than a +piece of vulgarity; his like is to be found, not in the Uffizi gallery or among +the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo clocks and +hand-painted oil-paintings of a third-rate auction room. All women, save the +least intelligent, penetrate this imposture with sharp eyes. They know that the +human body, except for a brief time in infancy, is not a beautiful thing, but a +hideous thing. Their own bodies give them no delight; it is their constant +effort to disguise and conceal them; they never expose them aesthetically, but +only as an act of the grossest sexual provocation. If it were advertised that a +troupe of men of easy virtue were to appear half-clothed upon a public stage, +exposing their chests, thighs, arms and calves, the only women who would go to +the entertainment would be a few delayed adolescents, a psychopathic old maid +or two, and a guard of indignant members of the parish Ladies Aid Society. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0012"></a> +9. Men as Aesthetes</h2> + +<p> +Men show no such sagacious apprehension of the relatively feeble loveliness of +the human frame. The most effective lure that a woman can hold out to a man is +the lure of what he fatuously conceives to be her beauty. This so-called +beauty, of course, is almost always a pure illusion. The female body, even at +its best is very defective in form; it has harsh curves and very clumsily +distributed masses; compared to it the average milk-jug, or even cuspidor, is a +thing of intelligent and gratifying design—in brief, an objet d’art. The fact +was curiously (and humorously) display during the late war, when great numbers +of women in all the belligerent countries began putting on uniforms. Instantly +they appeared in public in their grotesque burlesques of the official garb of +aviators, elevator boys, bus conductors, train guards, and so on, their +deplorable deficiency in design was unescapably revealed. A man, save he be +fat, i.e., of womanish contours, usually looks better in uniform than in mufti; +the tight lines set off his figure. But a woman is at once given away: she look +like a dumbbell run over by an express train. Below the neck by the bow and +below the waist astern there are two masses that simply refuse to fit into a +balanced composition. Viewed from the side, she presents an exaggerated S +bisected by an imperfect straight line, and so she inevitably suggests a +drunken dollar-mark. Her ordinary clothing cunningly conceals this fundamental +imperfection. It swathes those impossible masses in draperies soothingly +uncertain of outline. But putting her into uniform is like stripping her. +Instantly all her alleged beauty vanishes. +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, it is extremely rare to find a woman who shows even the modest +sightliness that her sex is theoretically capable of; it is only the rare +beauty who is even tolerable. The average woman, until art comes to her aid, is +ungraceful, misshapen, badly calved and crudely articulated, even for a woman. +If she has a good torso, she is almost sure to be bow-legged. If she has good +legs, she is almost sure to have bad teeth. If she has good teeth, she is +almost sure to have scrawny hands, or muddy eyes, or hair like oakum, or no +chin. A woman who meets fair tests all ’round is so uncommon that she becomes a +sort of marvel, and usually gains a livelihood by exhibiting herself as such, +either on the stage, in the half-world, or as the private jewel of some wealthy +connoisseur. +</p> + +<p> +But this lack of genuine beauty in women lays on them no practical disadvantage +in the primary business of their sex, for its effects are more than overborne +by the emotional suggestibility, the herculean capacity for illusion, the +almost total absence of critical sense of men. Men do not demand genuine +beauty, even in the most modest doses; they are quite content with the mere +appearance of beauty. That is to say, they show no talent whatever for +differentiating between the artificial and the real. A film of face powder, +skilfully applied, is as satisfying to them as an epidermis of damask. The hair +of a dead Chinaman, artfully dressed and dyed, gives them as much delight as +the authentic tresses of Venus. A false hip intrigues them as effectively as +the soundest one of living fascia. A pretty frock fetches them quite as surely +and securely as lovely legs, shoulders, hands or eyes. In brief, they estimate +women, and hence acquire their wives, by reckoning up purely superficial +aspects, which is just as intelligent as estimating an egg by purely +superficial aspects. They never go behind the returns; it never occurs to them +to analyze the impressions they receive. The result is that many a man, +deceived by such paltry sophistications, never really sees his wife—that if, as +God is supposed to see her, and as the embalmer will see her—until they have +been married for years. All the tricks may be infantile and obvious, but in the +face of so naive a spectator the temptation to continue practising them is +irresistible. A trained nurse tells me that even when undergoing the extreme +discomforts of parturition the great majority of women continue to modify their +complexions with pulverized talcs, and to give thought to the arrangement of +their hair. Such transparent devices, to be sure, reduce the psychologist to a +sour sort of mirth, and yet it must be plain that they suffice to entrap and +make fools of men, even the most discreet. I know of no man, indeed, who is +wholly resistant to female beauty, and I know of no man, even among those +engaged professionally by aesthetic problems, who habitually and automatically +distinguishes the genuine, from the imitation. He may do it now and then; he +may even preen himself upon his unusual discrimination; but given the right +woman and the right stage setting, and he will be deceived almost as readily as +a yokel fresh from the cabbage-field. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0013"></a> +10. The Process of Delusion</h2> + +<p> +Such poor fools, rolling their eyes in appraisement of such meagre female +beauty as is on display in Christendom, bring to their judgments a capacity but +slightly greater than that a cow would bring to the estimation of +epistemologies. They are so unfitted for the business that they are even unable +to agree upon its elements. Let one such man succumb to the plaster charms of +some prancing miss, and all his friends will wonder what is the matter with +him. No two are in accord as to which is the most beautiful woman in their own +town or street. Turn six of them loose in millinery shop or the parlour of a +bordello, and there will be no dispute whatsoever; each will offer the crown of +love and beauty to a different girl. +</p> + +<p> +And what aesthetic deafness, dumbness and blindness thus open the way for, +vanity instantly reinforces. That is to say, once a normal man has succumbed to +the meretricious charms of a definite fair one (or, more accurately, once a +definite fair one has marked him out and grabbed him by the nose), he defends +his choice with all the heat and steadfastness appertaining to the defense of a +point of the deepest honour. To tell a man flatly that his wife is not +beautiful, or even that his stenographer or manicurist is not beautiful, is so +harsh and intolerable an insult to his taste that even an enemy seldom ventures +upon it. One would offend him far less by arguing that his wife is an idiot. +One would relatively speaking, almost caress him by spitting into his eye. The +ego of the male is simply unable to stomach such an affront. It is a weapon as +discreditable as the poison of the Borgias. +</p> + +<p> +Thus, on humane grounds, a conspiracy of silence surrounds the delusion of +female beauty, and so its victim is permitted to get quite as much delight out +of it as if it were sound. The baits he swallows most are not edible and +nourishing baits, but simply bright and gaudy ones. He succumbs to a pair of +well-managed eyes, a graceful twist of the body, a synthetic complexion or a +skilful display of ankles without giving the slightest thought to the fact that +a whole woman is there, and that within the cranial cavity of the woman lies a +brain, and that the idiosyncrasies of that brain are of vastly more importance +than all imaginable physical stigmata combined. Those idiosyncrasies may make +for amicable relations in the complex and difficult bondage called marriage; +they may, on the contrary, make for joustings of a downright impossible +character. But not many men, laced in the emotional maze preceding, are capable +of any very clear examination of such facts. The truth is that they dodge the +facts, even when they are favourable, and lay all stress upon the surrounding +and concealing superficialities. The average stupid and sentimental man, if he +has a noticeably sensible wife, is almost apologetic about it. The ideal of his +sex is always a pretty wife, and the vanity and coquetry that so often go with +prettiness are erected into charms. In other words, men play the love game so +unintelligently that they often esteem a woman in proportion as she seems to +disdain and make a mock of her intelligence. Women seldom, if ever, make that +blunder. What they commonly value in a man is not mere showiness, whether +physical or spiritual, but that compound of small capacities which makes up +masculine efficiency and passes for masculine intelligence. This intelligence, +at its highest, has a human value substantially equal to that of their own. In +a man’s world it at least gets its definite rewards; it guarantees security, +position, a livelihood; it is a commodity that is merchantable. Women thus +accord it a certain respect, and esteem it in their husbands, and so seek it +out. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0014"></a> +11. Biological Considerations</h2> + +<p> +So far as I can make out by experiments on laboratory animals and by such +discreet vivisections as are possible under our laws, there is no biological +necessity for the superior acumen and circumspection of women. That is to say, +it does not lie in any anatomical or physiological advantage. The essential +feminine machine is no better than the essential masculine machine; both are +monuments to the maladroitness of a much over-praised Creator. Women, it would +seem, actually have smaller brains than men, though perhaps not in proportion +to weight. Their nervous responses, if anything, are a bit duller than those of +men; their muscular coordinations are surely no prompter. One finds quite as +many obvious botches among them; they have as many bodily blemishes; they are +infested by the same microscopic parasites; their senses are as obtuse; their +ears stand out as absurdly. Even assuming that their special malaises are +wholly offset by the effects of alcoholism in the male, they suffer patently +from the same adenoids, gastritis, cholelithiasis, nephritis, tuberculosis, +carcinoma, arthritis and so on—in short, from the same disturbances of +colloidal equilibrium that produce religion, delusions of grandeur, democracy, +pyaemia, night sweats, the yearning to save humanity, and all other such +distempers in men. They have, at bottom, the same weaknesses and appetites. +They react in substantially the same way to all chemical and mechanical agents. +A dose of hydrocyanic acid, administered <i>per ora</i> to the most sagacious +woman imaginable, affects her just as swiftly and just as deleteriously as it +affects a tragedian, a crossing-sweeper, or an ambassador to the Court of St. +James. And once a bottle of Cote Rotie or Scharlachberger is in her, even the +least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man +shows, and is as maudlin and idiotic as he is. +</p> + +<p> +Nay; the superior acumen and self-possession of women is not inherent in any +peculiarity of their constitutions, and above all, not in any advantage of a +purely physical character. Its springs are rather to be sought in a physical +disadvantage—that is, in the mechanical inferiority of their frames, their +relative lack of tractive capacity, their deficiency as brute engines. That +deficiency, as every one knows, is partly a direct heritage from those females +of the Pongo pygmaeus who were their probable fore-runners in the world; the +same thing is to be observed in the females of almost all other species of +mammals. But it is also partly due to the effects of use under civilization, +and, above all, to what evolutionists call sexual selection. In other words, +women were already measurably weaker than men at the dawn of human history, and +that relative weakness has been progressively augmented in the interval by the +conditions of human life. For one thing, the process of bringing forth young +has become so much more exhausting as refinement has replaced savage sturdiness +and callousness, and the care of them in infancy has become so much more +onerous as the growth of cultural complexity has made education more intricate, +that the two functions now lay vastly heavier burdens upon the strength and +attention of a woman than they lay upon the strength and attention of any other +female. And for another thing, the consequent disability and need of physical +protection, by feeding and inflaming the already large vanity of man, have +caused him to attach a concept of attractiveness to feminine weakness, so that +he has come to esteem his woman, not in proportion as she is self-sufficient as +a social animal but in proportion as she is dependent. In this vicious circle +of influences women have been caught, and as a result their chief physical +character today is their fragility. A woman cannot lift as much as a man. She +cannot walk as far. She cannot exert as much mechanical energy in any other +way. Even her alleged superior endurance, as Havelock Ellis has demonstrated in +“Man and Woman,” is almost wholly mythical; she cannot, in point of fact, stand +nearly so much hardship as a man can stand, and so the law, usually an ass, +exhibits an unaccustomed accuracy of observation in its assumption that, +whenever husband and wife are exposed alike to fatal suffering, say in a +shipwreck, the wife dies first. +</p> + +<p> +So far we have been among platitudes. There is less of overt platitude in the +doctrine that it is precisely this physical frailty that has given women their +peculiar nimbleness and effectiveness on the intellectual side. Nevertheless, +it is equally true. What they have done is what every healthy and elastic +organism does in like case; they have sought compensation for their impotence +in one field by employing their resources in another field to the utmost, and +out of that constant and maximum use has come a marked enlargement of those +resources. On the one hand the sum of them present in a given woman has been +enormously increased by natural selection, so that every woman, so to speak, +inherits a certain extra-masculine mental dexterity as a mere function of her +femaleness. And on the other hand every woman, over and above this almost +unescapable legacy from her actual grandmothers, also inherits admission to +that traditional wisdom which constitutes the esoteric philosophy of woman as a +whole. The virgin at adolescence is thus in the position of an unusually +fortunate apprentice, for she is not only naturally gifted but also apprenticed +to extraordinarily competent masters. While a boy at the same period is +learning from his elders little more than a few empty technical tricks, a few +paltry vices and a few degrading enthusiasms, his sister is under instruction +in all those higher exercises of the wits that her special deficiencies make +necessary to her security, and in particular in all those exercises which aim +at overcoming the physical, and hence social and economic superiority of man by +attacks upon his inferior capacity for clear reasoning, uncorrupted by illusion +and sentimentality. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0015"></a> +12. Honour</h2> + +<p> +Here, it is obvious, the process of intellectual development takes colour from +the Sklavenmoral, and is, in a sense, a product of it. The Jews, as Nietzsche +has demonstrated, got their unusual intelligence by the same process; a +contrary process is working in the case of the English and the Americans, and +has begun to show itself in the case of the French and Germans. The sum of +feminine wisdom that I have just mentioned—the body of feminine devices and +competences that is handed down from generation to generation of women—is, in +fact, made up very largely of doctrines and expedients that infallibly appear +to the average sentimental man, helpless as he is before them, as cynical and +immoral. He commonly puts this aversion into the theory that women have no +sense of honour. The criticism, of course, is characteristically banal. Honour +is a concept too tangled to be analyzed here, but it may be sufficient to point +out that it is predicated upon a feeling of absolute security, and that, in +that capital conflict between man and woman out of which rises most of man’s +complaint of its absence—to wit, the conflict culminating in marriage, already +described—the security of the woman is not something that is in actual being, +but something that she is striving with all arms to attain. In such a conflict +it must be manifest that honor can have no place. An animal fighting for its +very existence uses all possible means of offence and defence, however foul. +Even man, for all his boasting about honor, seldom displays it when he has +anything of the first value at hazard. He is honorable, perhaps, in gambling, +for gambling is a mere vice, but it is quite unusual for him to be honorable in +business, for business is bread and butter. He is honorable (so long as the +stake is trivial) in his sports, but he seldom permits honor to interfere with +his perjuries in a lawsuit, or with hitting below the belt in any other sort of +combat that is in earnest. The history of all his wars is a history of mutual +allegations of dishonorable practices, and such allegations are nearly always +well grounded. The best imitation of honor that he ever actually achieves in +them is a highly self-conscious sentimentality which prompts him to be humane +to the opponent who has been wounded, or disarmed, or otherwise made innocuous. +Even here his so-called honor is little more than a form of playacting, both +maudlin and dishonest. In the actual death-struggle he invariably bites. +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps one of the chief charms of woman lies precisely in the fact that they +are dishonorable, i.e., that they are relatively uncivilized. In the midst of +all the puerile repressions and inhibitions that hedge them round, they +continue to show a gipsy spirit. No genuine woman ever gives a hoot for law if +law happens to stand in the way of her private interest. She is essentially an +outlaw, a rebel, what H. G. Wells calls a nomad. The boons of civilization are +so noisily cried up by sentimentalists that we are all apt to overlook its +disadvantages. Intrinsically, it is a mere device for regimenting men. Its +perfect symbol is the goose-step. The most civilized man is simply that man who +has been most successful in caging and harnessing his honest and natural +instincts-that is, the man who has done most cruel violence to his own ego in +the interest of the commonweal. The value of this commonweal is always +overestimated. What is it at bottom? Simply the greatest good to the greatest +number—of petty rogues, ignoramuses and poltroons. +</p> + +<p> +The capacity for submitting to and prospering comfortably under this +cheese-monger’s civilization is far more marked in men than in women, and far +more in inferior men than in men of the higher categories. It must be obvious +to even so pathetic an ass as a university professor of history that very few +of the genuinely first-rate men of the race have been, wholly civilized, in the +sense that the term is employed in newspapers and in the pulpit. Think of +Caesar, Bonaparte, Luther, Frederick the Great, Cromwell, Barbarossa, Innocent +III, Bolivar, Hannibal, Alexander, and to come down to our own time, Grant, +Stonewall Jackson, Bismarck, Wagner, Garibaldi and Cecil Rhodes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0016"></a> +13. Women and the Emotions</h2> + +<p> +The fact that women have a greater capacity than men for controlling and +concealing their emotions is not an indication that they are more civilized, +but a proof that they are less civilized. This capacity, so rare today, and +withal so valuable and worthy of respect, is a characteristic of savages, not +of civilized men, and its loss is one of the penalties that the race has paid +for the tawdry boon of civilization. Your true savage, reserved, dignified, and +courteous, knows how to mask his feelings, even in the face of the most +desperate assault upon them; your civilized man is forever yielding to them. +Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially +under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole +aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous +to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them +imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of +judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the +effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a +panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury. Here the effect +of civilization has been to reduce the noblest of the arts, once the repository +of an exalted etiquette and the chosen avocation of the very best men of the +race, to the level of a riot of peasants. All the wars of Christendom are now +disgusting and degrading; the conduct of them has passed out of the hands of +nobles and knights and into the hands of mob-orators, money-lenders, and +atrocity-mongers. To recreate one’s self with war in the grand manner, as +Prince Eugene, Marlborough and the Old Dessauer knew it, one must now go among +barbarian peoples. +</p> + +<p> +Women are nearly always against war in modern times, for the reasons brought +forward to justify it are usually either transparently dishonest or childishly +sentimental, and hence provoke their scorn. But once the business is begun, +they commonly favour its conduct outrance, and are thus in accord with the +theory of the great captains of more spacious days. In Germany, during the late +war, the protests against the Schrecklichkeit practised by the imperial army +and navy did not come from women, but from sentimental men; in England and the +United States there is no record that any woman ever raised her voice against +the blockade which destroyed hundreds of thousands of German children. I was on +both sides of the bloody chasm during the war, and I cannot recall meeting a +single woman who subscribed to the puerile doctrine that, in so vast a combat +between nations, there could still be categories of non-combatants, with a +right of asylum on armed ships and in garrisoned towns. This imbecility was +maintained only by men, large numbers of whom simultaneously took part in +wholesale massacres of such non-combatants. The women were superior to such +hypocrisy. They recognized the nature of modern war instantly and accurately, +and advocated no disingenuous efforts to conceal it. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0017"></a> +14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia</h2> + +<p> +The feminine talent for concealing emotion is probably largely responsible for +the common masculine belief that women are devoid of passion, and contemplate +its manifestations in the male with something akin to trembling. Here the +talent itself is helped out by the fact that very few masculine observers, on +the occasions when they give attention to the matter, are in a state of mind +conducive to exact observation. The truth is, of course, that there is +absolutely no reason to believe that the normal woman is passionless, or that +the minority of women who unquestionably are is of formidable dimensions. To be +sure, the peculiar vanity of men, particularly in the Northern countries, makes +them place a high value upon the virginal type of woman, and so this type tends +to grow more common by sexual selection, but despite that fact, it has by no +means superseded the normal type, so realistically described by the theologians +and publicists of the Middle Ages. It would, however, be rash to assert that +this long continued sexual selection has not made itself felt, even in the +normal type. Its chief effect, perhaps, is to make it measurably easier for a +woman to conquer and conceal emotion than it is for a man. But this is a mere +reinforcement of a native quality or, at all events, a quality long antedating +the rise of the curious preference just mentioned. That preference obviously +owes its origin to the concept of private property and is most evident in those +countries in which the largest proportion of males are property owners, i.e., +in which the property-owning caste reaches down into the lowest conceivable +strata of bounders and ignoramuses. The low-caste man is never quite sure of +his wife unless he is convinced that she is entirely devoid of amorous +susceptibility. Thus he grows uneasy whenever she shows any sign of responding +in kind to his own elephantine emotions, and is apt to be suspicious of even so +trivial a thing as a hearty response to a connubial kiss. If he could manage to +rid himself of such suspicions, there would be less public gabble about +anesthetic wives, and fewer books written by quacks with sure cures for them, +and a good deal less cold-mutton formalism and boredom at the domestic hearth. +</p> + +<p> +I have a feeling that the husband of this sort—he is very common in the United +States, and almost as common among the middle classes of England, Germany and +Scandinavia—does himself a serious disservice, and that he is uneasily +conscious of it. Having got himself a wife to his austere taste, he finds that +she is rather depressing—that his vanity is almost as painfully damaged by her +emotional inertness as it would have been by a too provocative and hedonistic +spirit. For the thing that chiefly delights a man, when some woman has gone +through the solemn buffoonery of yielding to his great love, is the sharp and +flattering contrast between her reserve in the presence of other men and her +enchanting complaisance in the presence of himself. Here his vanity is +enormously tickled. To the world in general she seems remote and +unapproachable; to him she is docile, fluttering, gurgling, even a bit +abandoned. It is as if some great magnifico male, some inordinate czar or +kaiser, should step down from the throne to play dominoes with him behind the +door. The greater the contrast between the lady’s two fronts, the greater his +satisfaction-up to, of course, the point where his suspicions are aroused. Let +her diminish that contrast ever so little on the public side—by smiling at a +handsome actor, by saying a word too many to an attentive head-waiter, by +holding the hand of the rector of the parish, by winking amiably at his brother +or at her sister’s husband—and at once the poor fellow begins to look for +clandestine notes, to employ private inquiry agents, and to scrutinize the +eyes, ears, noses and hair of his children with shameful doubts. This explains +many domestic catastrophes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0018"></a> +15. Mythical Anthropophagi</h2> + +<p> +The man-hating woman, like the cold woman, is largely imaginary. One often +encounters references to her in literature, but who has ever met her in real +life? As for me, I doubt that such a monster has ever actually existed. There +are, of course, women who spend a great deal of time denouncing and reviling +men, but these are certainly not genuine man-haters; they are simply women who +have done their utmost to snare men, and failed. Of such sort are the majority +of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex-hygiene and birth-control species. The +rigid limitation of offspring, in fact, is chiefly advocated by women who run +no more risk of having unwilling motherhood forced upon them than so many +mummies of the Tenth Dynasty. All their unhealthy interest in such noisome +matters has behind it merely a subconscious yearning to attract the attention +of men, who are supposed to be partial to enterprises that are difficult or +forbidden. But certainly the enterprise of dissuading such a propagandist from +her gospel would not be difficult, and I know of no law forbidding it. +</p> + +<p> +I’ll begin to believe in the man-hater the day I am introduced to a woman who +has definitely and finally refused a chance of marriage to a man who is of her +own station in life, able to support her, unafflicted by any loathsome disease, +and of reasonably decent aspect and manners—in brief a man who is thoroughly +eligible. I doubt that any such woman breathes the air of Christendom. Whenever +one comes to confidential terms with an unmarried woman, of course, she favours +one with a long chronicle of the men she has refused to marry, greatly to their +grief. But unsentimental cross-examination, at least in my experience, always +develops the fact that every one of these suffered from some obvious and +intolerable disqualification. Either he had a wife already and was vague about +his ability to get rid of her, or he was drunk when he was brought to his +proposal and repudiated it or forgot it the next day, or he was a bankrupt, or +he was old and decrepit, or he was young and plainly idiotic, or he had +diabetes or a bad heart, or his relatives were impossible, or he believed in +spiritualism, or democracy, or the Baconian theory, or some other such +nonsense. Restricting the thing to men palpably eligible, I believe thoroughly +that no sane woman has ever actually muffed a chance. Now and then, perhaps, a +miraculously fortunate girl has two victims on the mat simultaneously, and has +to lose one. But they are seldom, if ever, both good chances; one is nearly +always a duffer, thrown in in the telling to make the bourgeoisie marvel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0019"></a> +16. A Conspiracy of Silence</h2> + +<p> +The reason why all this has to be stated here is simply that women, who could +state it much better, have almost unanimously refrained from discussing such +matters at all. One finds, indeed, a sort of general conspiracy, infinitely +alert and jealous, against the publication of the esoteric wisdom of the sex, +and even against the acknowledgment that any such body of erudition exists at +all. Men, having more vanity and less discretion, area good deal less cautious. +There is, in fact, a whole literature of masculine babbling, ranging from +Machiavelli’s appalling confession of political theory to the egoistic +confidences of such men as Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Casanova, Max +Stirner, Benvenuto Cellini, Napoleon Bonaparte and Lord Chesterfield. But it is +very rarely that a Marie Bashkirtsev or Margot Asquith lets down the veils +which conceal the acroamatic doctrine of the other sex. It is transmitted from +mother to daughter, so to speak, behind the door. One observes its practical +workings, but hears little about its principles. The causes of this secrecy are +obvious. Women, in the last analysis, can prevail against men in the great +struggle for power and security only by keeping them disarmed, and, in the +main, unwarned. In a pitched battle, with the devil taking the hindmost, their +physical and economic inferiority would inevitably bring them to disaster. Thus +they have to apply their peculiar talents warily, and with due regard to the +danger of arousing the foe. He must be attached without any formal challenge, +and even without any suspicion of challenge. This strategy lies at the heart of +what Nietzsche called the slave morality—in brief, a morality based upon a +concealment of egoistic purpose, a code of ethics having for its foremost +character a bold denial of its actual aim. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0020"></a> +III. Marriage</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0021"></a> +17. Fundamental Motives</h2> + +<p> +How successful such a concealment may be is well displayed by the general +acceptance of the notion that women are reluctant to enter into marriage—that +they have to be persuaded to it by eloquence and pertinacity, and even by a +sort of intimidation. The truth is that, in a world almost divested of +intelligible idealism, and hence dominated by a senseless worship of the +practical, marriage offers the best career that the average woman can +reasonably aspire to, and, in the case of very many women, the only one that +actually offers a livelihood. What is esteemed and valuable, in our +materialistic and unintelligent society, is precisely that petty practical +efficiency at which men are expert, and which serves them in place of free +intelligence. A woman, save she show a masculine strain that verges upon the +pathological, cannot hope to challenge men in general in this department, but +it is always open to her to exchange her sexual charm for a lion’s share in the +earnings of one man, and this is what she almost invariably tries to do. That +is to say, she tries to get a husband, for getting a husband means, in a sense, +enslaving an expert, and so covering up her own lack of expertness, and +escaping its consequences. Thereafter she has at least one stout line of +defence against a struggle for existence in which the prospect of survival is +chiefly based, not upon the talents that are typically hers, but upon those +that she typically lacks. Before the average woman succumbs in this struggle, +some man or other must succumb first. Thus her craft converts her handicap into +an advantage. +</p> + +<p> +In this security lies the most important of all the benefits that a woman +attains by marriage. It is, in fact, the most important benefit that the mind +can imagine, for the whole effort of the human race, under our industrial +society, is concentrated upon the attainment of it. But there are other +benefits, too. One of them is that increase in dignity which goes with an +obvious success; the woman who has got herself a satisfactory husband, or even +a highly imperfect husband, is regarded with respect by other women, and has a +contemptuous patronage for those who have failed to do likewise. Again, +marriage offers her the only safe opportunity, considering the levantine view +of women as property which Christianity has preserved in our civilization, to +obtain gratification for that powerful complex of instincts which we call the +sexual, and, in particular, for the instinct of maternity. The woman who has +not had a child remains incomplete, ill at ease, and more than a little +ridiculous. She is in the position of a man who has never stood in battle; she +has missed the most colossal experience of her sex. Moreover, a social odium +goes with her loss. Other women regard her as a sort of permanent tyro, and +treat her with ill-concealed disdain, and deride the very virtue which lies at +the bottom of her experiential penury. There would seem to be, indeed, but +small respect among women for virginity per se. They are against the woman who +has got rid of hers outside marriage, not because they think she has lost +anything intrinsically valuable, but because she has made a bad bargain, and +one that materially diminishes the sentimental respect for virtue held by men, +and hence one against the general advantage and well-being of the sex. In other +words, it is a guild resentment that they feel, not a moral resentment. Women, +in general, are not actively moral, nor, for that matter, noticeably modest. +Every man, indeed, who is in wide practice among them is occasionally astounded +and horrified to discover, on some rainy afternoon, an almost complete absence +of modesty in some women of the highest respectability. +</p> + +<p> +But of all things that a woman gains by marriage the most valuable is economic +security. Such security, of course, is seldom absolute, but usually merely +relative: the best provider among husbands may die without enough life +insurance, or run off with some preposterous light of love, or become an +invalid or insane, or step over the intangible and wavering line which +separates business success from a prison cell. Again, a woman may be deceived: +there are stray women who are credulous and sentimental, and stray men who are +cunning. Yet again, a woman may make false deductions from evidence accurately +before her, ineptly guessing that the clerk she marries today will be the head +of the firm tomorrow, instead of merely the bookkeeper tomorrow. But on the +whole it must be plain that a woman, in marrying, usually obtains for herself a +reasonably secure position in that station of life to which she is accustomed. +She seeks a husband, not sentimentally, but realistically; she always gives +thought to the economic situation; she seldom takes a chance if it is possible +to avoid it. It is common for men to marry women who bring nothing to the joint +capital of marriage save good looks and an appearance of vivacity; it is almost +unheard of for women to neglect more prosaic inquiries. Many a rich man, at +least in America, marries his typist or the governess of his sister’s children +and is happy thereafter, but when a rare woman enters upon a comparable +marriage she is commonly set down as insane, and the disaster that almost +always ensues quickly confirms the diagnosis. +</p> + +<p> +The economic and social advantage that women thus seek in marriage—and the +seeking is visible no less in the kitchen wench who aspires to the heart of a +policeman than in the fashionable flapper who looks for a husband with a +Rolls-Royce—is, by a curious twist of fate, one of the underlying causes of +their precarious economic condition before marriage rescues them. In a +civilization which lays its greatest stress upon an uninspired and almost +automatic expertness, and offers its highest rewards to the more intricate +forms thereof, they suffer the disadvantage of being less capable of it than +men. Part of this disadvantage, as we have seen, is congenital; their very +intellectual enterprise makes it difficult for them to become the efficient +machines that men are. But part of it is also due to the fact that, with +marriage always before them, coloring their every vision of the future, and +holding out a steady promise of swift and complete relief, they are under no +such implacable pressure as men are to acquire the sordid arts they revolt +against. The time is too short and the incentive too feeble. Before the woman +employee of twenty-one can master a tenth of the idiotic “knowledge” in the +head of the male clerk of thirty, or even convince herself that it is worth +mastering, she has married the head of the establishment or maybe the clerk +himself, and so abandons the business. It is, indeed, not until a woman has +definitely put away the hope of marriage, or, at all events, admitted the +possibility that she, may have to do so soon or late, that she buckles down in +earnest to whatever craft she practises, and makes a genuine effort to develop +competence. No sane man, seeking a woman for a post requiring laborious +training and unremitting diligence, would select a woman still definitely young +and marriageable. To the contrary, he would choose either a woman so +unattractive sexually as to be palpably incapable of snaring a man, or one so +embittered by some catastrophe of amour as to be pathologically emptied of the +normal aspirations of her sex. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0022"></a> +18. The Process of Courtship</h2> + +<p> +This bemusement of the typical woman by the notion of marriage has been noted +as self-evident by every literate student of the phenomena of sex, from the +early Christian fathers down to Nietzsche, Ellis and Shaw. That it is denied by +the current sentimentality of Christendom is surely no evidence against it. +What we have in this denial, as I have said, is no more than a proof of woman’s +talent for a high and sardonic form of comedy and of man’s infinite vanity. “I +wooed and won her,” says Sganarelle of his wife. “I made him run,” says the +hare of the hound. When the thing is maintained, not as a mere windy +sentimentality, but with some notion of carrying it logically, the result is +invariably a display of paralogy so absurd that it becomes pathetic. Such +nonsense one looks for in the works of gyneophile theorists with no experience +of the world, and there is where one finds it. It is almost always wedded to +the astounding doctrine that sexual frigidity, already disposed of, is normal +in the female, and that the approach of the male is made possible, not by its +melting into passion, but by a purely intellectual determination, inwardly +revolting, to avoid his ire by pandering to his gross appetites. Thus the thing +is stated in a book called “The Sexes in Science and History,” by Eliza Burt +Gamble, an American lady anthropologist: +</p> + +<p> +The beautiful coloring of male birds and fishes, and the various appendages +acquired by males throughout the various orders below man, and which, sofar as +they themselves are concerned, serve no other useful purpose than to aid them +in securing the favours of the females, have by the latter been turned to +account in the processes of reproduction. The female made the male beautiful +<i>That She Might Endure His Caresses</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The italics are mine. From this premiss the learned doctor proceeds to the +classical sentimental argument that the males of all species, including man, +are little more than chronic seducers, and that their chief energies are +devoted to assaulting and breaking down the native reluctance of the aesthetic +and anesthetic females. In her own words: “Regarding males, outside of the +instinct for self-preservation, which, by the way is often overshadowed by +their great sexual eagerness, no discriminating characters have been acquired +and transmitted, other than those which have been the result of passion, +namely, pugnacity and perseverance.” Again the italics are mine. What we have +here is merely the old, old delusion of masculine enterprise in amour—the +concept of man as a lascivious monster and of woman as his shrinking victim—in +brief, the Don Juan idea in fresh bib and tucker. In such bilge lie the springs +of many of the most vexatious delusions of the world, and of some of its +loudest farce no less. It is thus that fatuous old maids are led to look under +their beds for fabulous ravishers, and to cry out that they have been stabbed +with hypodermic needles in cinema theatres, and to watch furtively for white +slavers in railroad stations. It is thus, indeed, that the whole white-slave +mountebankery has been launched, with its gaudy fictions and preposterous +alarms. And it is thus, more importantly, that whole regiments of neurotic +wives have been convinced that their children are monuments, not to a +co-operation in which their own share was innocent and cordial, but to the +solitary libidinousness of their swinish and unconscionable husbands. +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Gamble, of course, is speaking of the lower fauna in the time of Noah. A +literal application of her theory to man today is enough to bring it to a +reductio ad absurdum. Which sex of Homo sapiens actually does the primping and +parading that she describes? Which runs to “beautiful coloring,” sartorial, +hirsute, facial? Which encases itself in vestments which “serve no other useful +purpose than to aid in securing the favours” of the other? The insecurity of +the gifted savante’s position is at once apparent. The more convincingly she +argues that the primeval mud-hens and she mackerel had to be anesthetized with +spectacular decorations in order to “endure the caresses” of their beaux, the +more she supports the thesis that men have to be decoyed and bamboozled into +love today. In other words, her argument turns upon and destroys itself. +Carried to its last implication, it holds that women are all Donna Juanitas, +and that if they put off their millinery and cosmetics, and abandoned the +shameless sexual allurements of their scanty dress, men could not “endure their +caresses.” +</p> + +<p> +To be sure, Dr. Gamble by no means draws this disconcerting conclusion herself. +To the contrary, she clings to the conventional theory that the human female of +today is no more than the plaything of the concupiscent male, and that she must +wait for the feminist millenium to set her free from his abominable pawings. +But she can reach this notion only by standing her whole structure of reasoning +on its head—in fact, by knocking it over and repudiating it. On the one hand, +she argues that splendour of attire is merely a bait to overcome the reluctance +of the opposite sex, and on the other hand she argues, at least by fair +inference, that it is not. This grotesque switching of horses, however, need +not detain us. The facts are too plain to be disposed of by a lady +anthropologist’s theorizings. Those facts are supported, in the field of animal +behaviour, by the almost unanimous evidence of zoologists, including that of +Dr. Gamble herself. They are supported, in the field of human behaviour, by a +body of observation and experience so colossal that it would be quite out of +the question to dispose of it. Women, as I have shown, have a more delicate +aesthetic sense than men; in a world wholly rid of men they would probably +still array themselves with vastly more care and thought of beauty than men +would ever show in like case. But with the world what it is, it must be obvious +that their display of finery—to say nothing of their display of epidermis—has +the conscious purpose of attracting the masculine eye. A normal woman, indeed, +never so much as buys a pair of shoes or has her teeth plugged without +considering, in the back of her mind, the effect upon some unsuspecting +candidate for her “reluctant” affections. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0023"></a> +19. The Actual Husband</h2> + +<p> +So far as I can make out, no woman of the sort worth hearing—that is, no woman +of intelligence, humour and charm, and hence of success in the duel of sex—has +ever publicly denied this; the denial is confined entirely to the absurd sect +of female bachelors of arts and to the generality of vain and unobservant men. +The former, having failed to attract men by the devices described, take refuge +behind the sour grapes doctrine that they have never tried, and the latter, +having fallen victims, sooth their egoism by arrogating the whole agency to +themselves, thus giving it a specious appearance of the volitional, and even of +the audacious. The average man is an almost incredible popinjay; he can think +of himself only as at the centre of situations. All the sordid transactions of +his life appear to him, and are depicted in his accounts of them, as feats, +successes, proofs of his acumen. He regards it as an almost magical exploit to +operate a stock-brokerage shop, or to get elected to public office, or to +swindle his fellow knaves in some degrading commercial enterprise, or to +profess some nonsense or other in a college, or to write so platitudinous a +book as this one. And in the same way he views it as a great testimony to his +prowess at amour to yield up his liberty, his property and his soul to the +first woman who, in despair of finding better game, turns her appraising eye +upon him. But if you want to hear a mirthless laugh, just present this +masculine theory to a bridesmaid at a wedding, particularly after alcohol and +crocodile tears have done their disarming work upon her. That is to say, just +hint to her that the bride harboured no notion of marriage until stormed into +acquiescence by the moonstruck and impetuous bridegroom. +</p> + +<p> +I have used the phrase, “in despair of finding better game.” What I mean is +this that not one woman in a hundred ever marries her first choice among +marriageable men. That first choice is almost invariably one who is beyond her +talents, for reasons either fortuitous or intrinsic. Let us take, for example, +a woman whose relative naivete makes the process clearly apparent, to wit, a +simple shop-girl. Her absolute first choice, perhaps, is not a living man at +all, but a supernatural abstraction in a book, say, one of the heroes of Hall +Caine, Ethel M. Dell, or Marie Corelli. After him comes a moving-picture actor. +Then another moving-picture actor. Then, perhaps, many more—ten or fifteen +head. Then a sebaceous young clergyman. Then the junior partner in the firm she +works for. Then a couple of department managers. Then a clerk. Then a young man +with no definite profession or permanent job—one of the innumerable host which +flits from post to post, always restive, always trying something new—perhaps a +neighborhood garage-keeper in the end. Well, the girl begins with the Caine +colossus: he vanishes into thin air. She proceeds to the moving picture actors: +they are almost as far beyond her. And then to the man of God, the junior +partner, the department manager, the clerk; one and all they are carried off by +girls of greater attractions and greater skill—girls who can cast gaudier +flies. In the end, suddenly terrorized by the first faint shadows of +spinsterhood, she turns to the ultimate numskull—and marries him out of hand. +</p> + +<p> +This, allowing for class modifications, is almost the normal history of a +marriage, or, more accurately, of the genesis of a marriage, under Protestant +Christianity. Under other rites the business is taken out of the woman’s hands, +at least partly, and so she is less enterprising in her assembling of +candidates and possibilities. But when the whole thing is left to her own +heart—i.e., to her head—it is but natural that she should seek as wide a range +of choice as the conditions of her life allow, and in a democratic society +those conditions put few if any fetters upon her fancy. The servant girl, or +factory operative, or even prostitute of today may be the chorus girl or moving +picture vampire of tomorrow and the millionaire’s wife of next year. In +America, especially, men have no settled antipathy to such stooping alliances; +in fact, it rather flatters their vanity to play Prince Charming to Cinderella. +The result is that every normal American young woman, with the practicality of +her sex and the inner confidence that goes therewith, raises her amorous eye as +high as it will roll. And the second result is that every American man of +presentable exterior and easy means is surrounded by an aura of discreet +provocation: he cannot even dictate a letter, or ask for a telephone number +without being measured for his wedding coat. On the Continent of Europe, and +especially in the Latin countries, where class barriers are more formidable, +the situation differs materially, and to the disadvantage of the girl. If she +makes an overture, it is an invitation to disaster; her hope of lawful marriage +by such means is almost nil. In consequence, the prudent and decent girl avoids +such overtures, and they must be made by third parties or by the man himself. +This is the explanation of the fact that a Frenchman, say, is habitually +enterprising in amour, and hence bold and often offensive, whereas an American +is what is called chivalrous. The American is chivalrous for the simple reason +that the initiative is not in his hands. His chivalry is really a sort of +coquetry. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0024"></a> +20. The Unattainable Ideal</h2> + +<p> +But here I rather depart from the point, which is this: that the average woman +is not strategically capable of bringing down the most tempting game within her +purview, and must thus content herself with a second, third, or nth choice. The +only women who get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous +luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal—two very small classes, it must +be obvious. A few women, true enough, are so pertinacious that they prefer +defeat to compromise. That is to say, they prefer to put off marriage +indefinitely rather than to marry beneath the highest leap of their fancy. But +such women may be quickly dismissed as abnormal, and perhaps as downright +diseased in mind; the average woman is well-aware that marriage is far better +for her than celibacy, even when it falls a good deal short of her primary +hopes, and she is also well aware that the differences between man and man, +once mere money is put aside, are so slight as to be practically almost +negligible. Thus the average woman is under none of the common masculine +illusions about elective affinities, soul mates, love at first sight, and such +phantasms. She is quite ready to fall in love, as the phrase is, with any man +who is plainly eligible, and she usually knows a good many more such men than +one. Her primary demand in marriage is not for the agonies of romance, but for +comfort and security; she is thus easier satisfied than a man, and oftener +happy. One frequently hears of remarried widowers who continue to moon about +their dead first wives, but for a remarried widow to show any such +sentimentality would be a nine days’ wonder. Once replaced, a dead husband is +expunged from the minutes. And so is a dead love. +</p> + +<p> +One of the results of all this is a subtle reinforcement of the contempt with +which women normally regard their husbands—a contempt grounded, as I have +shown, upon a sense of intellectual superiority. To this primary sense of +superiority is now added the disparagement of a concrete comparison, and over +all is an ineradicable resentment of the fact that such a comparison has been +necessary. In other words, the typical husband is a second-rater, and no one is +better aware of it than his wife. He is, taking averages, one who has been +loved, as the saying goes, by but one woman, and then only as a second, third +or nth choice. If any other woman had ever loved him, as the idiom has it, she +would have married him, and so made him ineligible for his present happiness. +But the average bachelor is a man who has been loved, so to speak, by many +women, and is the lost first choice of at least some of them. Here presents the +unattainable, and hence the admirable; the husband is the attained and +disdained. +</p> + +<p> +Here we have a sufficient explanation of the general superiority of bachelors, +so often noted by students of mankind—a superiority so marked that it is +difficult, in all history, to find six first-rate philosophers who were married +men. The bachelor’s very capacity to avoid marriage is no more than a proof of +his relative freedom from the ordinary sentimentalism of his sex—in other +words, of his greater approximation to the clear headedness of the enemy sex. +He is able to defeat the enterprise of women because he brings to the business +an equipment almost comparable to their own. Herbert Spencer, until he was +fifty, was ferociously harassed by women of all sorts. Among others, George +Eliot tried very desperately to marry him. But after he had made it plain, over +a long series of years, that he was prepared to resist marriage to the full +extent of his military and naval power, the girls dropped off one by one, and +so his last decades were full of peace and he got a great deal of very +important work done. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0025"></a> +21. The Effect on the Race</h2> + +<p> +It is, of course, not well for the world that the highest sort of men are thus +selected out, as the biologists say, and that their superiority dies with them, +whereas the ignoble tricks and sentimentalities of lesser men are infinitely +propagated. Despite a popular delusion that the sons of great men are always +dolts, the fact is that intellectual superiority is inheritable, quite as +easily as bodily strength; and that fact has been established beyond cavil by +the laborious inquiries of Galton, Pearson and the other anthropometricians of +the English school. If such men as Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and +Nietzsche had married and begotten sons, those sons, it is probable, would have +contributed as much to philosophy as the sons and grandsons of Veit Bach +contributed to music, or those of Erasmus Darwin to biology, or those of Henry +Adams to politics, or those of Hamilcar Barca to the art of war. I have said +that Herbert Spencer’s escape from marriage facilitated his life-work, and so +served the immediate good of English philosophy, but in the long run it will +work a detriment, for he left no sons to carry on his labours, and the +remaining Englishmen of his time were unable to supply the lack. His celibacy, +indeed, made English philosophy co-extensive with his life; since his death the +whole body of metaphysical speculation produced in England has been of little +more, practical value to the world than a drove of bogs. In precisely the same +way the celibacy of Schopenhauer, Kant and Nietzsche has reduced German +philosophy to feebleness. +</p> + +<p> +Even setting aside this direct influence of heredity, there is the equally +potent influence of example and tuition. It is a gigantic advantage to live on +intimate terms with a first-rate man, and have his care. Hamilcar not only gave +the Carthagenians a great general in his actual son; he also gave them a great +general in his son-in-law, trained in his camp. But the tendency of the +first-rate man to remain a bachelor is very strong, and Sidney Lee once showed +that, of all the great writers of England since the Renaissance, more than half +were either celibates or lived apart from their wives. Even the married ones +revealed the tendency plainly. For example, consider Shakespeare. He was forced +into marriage while still a minor by the brothers of Ann Hathaway, who was +several years his senior, and had debauched him and gave out that she was +enceinte by him. He escaped from her abhorrent embraces as quickly as possible, +and thereafter kept as far away from her as he could. His very distaste for +marriage, indeed, was the cause of his residence in London, and hence, in all +probability, of the labours which made him immortal. +</p> + +<p> +In different parts of the world various expedients have been resorted to to +overcome this reluctance to marriage among the better sort of men. +Christianity, in general, combats it on the ground that it is offensive to +God—though at the same time leaning toward an enforced celibacy among its own +agents. The discrepancy is fatal to the position. On the one hand, it is +impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a +bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin, and on the other hand, it is +obvious that the average cleric would be damaged but little, and probably +improved appreciably, by having a wife to think for him, and to force him to +virtue and industry, and to aid him otherwise in his sordid profession. Where +religious superstitions have died out the institution of the dot prevails—an +idea borrowed by Christians from the Jews. The dot is simply a bribe designed +to overcome the disinclination of the male. It involves a frank recognition of +the fact that he loses by marriage, and it seeks to make up for that loss by a +money payment. Its obvious effect is to give young women a wider and better +choice of husbands. A relatively superior man, otherwise quite out of reach, +may be brought into camp by the assurance of economic ease, and what is more, +he may be kept in order after he has been taken by the consciousness of his +gain. Among hardheaded and highly practical peoples, such as the Jews and the +French, the dot flourishes, and its effect is to promote intellectual +suppleness in the race, for the average child is thus not inevitably the +offspring of a woman and a noodle, as with us, but may be the offspring of a +woman and a man of reasonable intelligence. But even in France, the very +highest class of men tend to evade marriage; they resist money almost as +unanimously as their Anglo-Saxon brethren resist sentimentality. +</p> + +<p> +In America the dot is almost unknown, partly because money-getting is easier to +men than in Europe and is regarded as less degrading, and partly because +American men are more naive than Frenchmen and are thus readily intrigued +without actual bribery. But the best of them nevertheless lean to celibacy, and +plans for overcoming their habit are frequently proposed and discussed. One +such plan involves a heavy tax on bachelors. The defect in it lies in the fact +that the average bachelor, for obvious reasons, is relatively well to do, and +would pay the tax rather than marry. Moreover, the payment of it would help to +salve his conscience, which is now often made restive, I believe, by a maudlin +feeling that he is shirking his duty to the race, and so he would be confirmed +and supported in his determination to avoid the altar. Still further, he would +escape the social odium which now attaches to his celibacy, for whatever a man +pays for is regarded as his right. As things stand, that odium is of definite +potency, and undoubtedly has its influence upon a certain number of men in the +lower ranks of bachelors. They stand, so to speak, in the twilight zone of +bachelorhood, with one leg furtively over the altar rail; it needs only an +extra pull to bring them to the sacrifice. But if they could compound for their +immunity by a cash indemnity it is highly probable that they would take on new +resolution, and in the end they would convert what remained of their present +disrepute into a source of egoistic satisfaction, as is done, indeed, by a +great many bachelors even today. These last immoralists are privy to the +elements which enter into that disrepute: the ire of women whose devices they +have resisted and the envy of men who have succumbed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0026"></a> +22. Compulsory Marriage</h2> + +<p> +I myself once proposed an alternative scheme, to wit, the prohibition of +sentimental marriages by law, and the substitution of match-making by the +common hangman. This plan, as revolutionary as it may seem, would have several +plain advantages. For one thing, it would purge the serious business of +marriage of the romantic fol-de-rol that now corrupts it, and so make for the +peace and happiness of the race. For another thing, it would work against the +process which now selects out, as I have said, those men who are most fit, and +so throws the chief burden of paternity upon the inferior, to the damage of +posterity. The hangman, if he made his selections arbitrarily, would try to +give his office permanence and dignity by choosing men whose marriage would +meet with public approbation, i.e., men obviously of sound stock and talents, +i.e., the sort of men who now habitually escape. And if he made his selection +by the hazard of the die, or by drawing numbers out of a hat, or by any other +such method of pure chance, that pure chance would fall indiscriminately upon +all orders of men, and the upper orders would thus lose their present +comparative immunity. True enough, a good many men would endeavour to influence +him privately to their own advantage, and it is probable that he would +occasionally succumb, but it must be plain that the men most likely to prevail +in that enterprise would not be philosophers, but politicians, and so there +would be some benefit to the race even here. Posterity surely suffers no very +heavy loss when a Congressman, a member of the House of Lords or even an +ambassador or Prime Minister dies childless, but when a Herbert Spencer goes to +the grave without leaving sons behind him there is a detriment to all the +generations of the future. +</p> + +<p> +I did not offer the plan, of course, as a contribution to practical politics, +but merely as a sort of hypothesis, to help clarify the problem. Many other +theoretical advantages appear in it, but its execution is made impossible, not +only by inherent defects, but also by a general disinclination to abandon the +present system, which at least offers certain attractions to concrete men and +women, despite its unfavourable effects upon the unborn. Women would oppose the +substitution of chance or arbitrary fiat for the existing struggle for the +plain reason that every woman is convinced, and no doubt rightly, that her own +judgment is superior to that of either the common hangman or the gods, and that +her own enterprise is more favourable to her opportunities. And men would +oppose it because it would restrict their liberty. This liberty, of course, is +largely imaginary. In its common manifestation, it is no more, at bottom, than +the privilege of being bamboozled and made a mock of by the first woman who +ventures to essay the business. But none the less it is quite as precious to +men as any other of the ghosts that their vanity conjures up for their +enchantment. They cherish the notion that unconditioned volition enters into +the matter, and that under volition there is not only a high degree of sagacity +but also a touch of the daring and the devilish. A man is often almost as much +pleased and flattered by his own marriage as he would be by the achievement of +what is currently called a seduction. In the one case, as in the other, his +emotion is one of triumph. The substitution of pure chance would take away that +soothing unction. +</p> + +<p> +The present system, to be sure, also involves chance. Every man realizes it, +and even the most bombastic bachelor has moments in which he humbly whispers: +“There, but for the grace of God, go I.” But that chance has a sugarcoating; it +is swathed in egoistic illusion; it shows less stark and intolerable +chanciness, so to speak, than the bald hazard of the die. Thus men prefer it, +and shrink from the other. In the same way, I have no doubt, the majority of +foxes would object to choosing lots to determine the victim of a projected +fox-hunt. They prefer to take their chances with the dogs. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0027"></a> +23. Extra-Legal Devices</h2> + +<p> +It is, of course, a rhetorical exaggeration to say that all first-class men +escape marriage, and even more of an exaggeration to say that their high +qualities go wholly untransmitted to posterity. On the one hand it must be +obvious that an appreciable number of them, perhaps by reason of their very +detachment and preoccupation, are intrigued into the holy estate, and that not +a few of them enter it deliberately, convinced that it is the safest form of +liaison possible under Christianity. And on the other hand one must not forget +the biological fact that it is quite feasible to achieve offspring without the +imprimatur of Church and State. The thing, indeed, is so commonplace that I +need not risk a scandal by uncovering it in detail. What I allude to, I need +not add, is not that form of irregularity which curses innocent children with +the stigma of illegitimacy, but that more refined and thoughtful form which +safeguards their social dignity while protecting them against inheritance from +their legal fathers. English philosophy, as I have shown, suffers by the fact +that Herbert Spencer was too busy to permit himself any such romantic +altruism—just as American literature gains enormously by the fact that Walt +Whitman adventured, leaving seven sons behind him, three of whom are now +well-known American poets and in the forefront of the New Poetry movement. +</p> + +<p> +The extent of this correction of a salient evil of monogamy is very +considerable; its operations explain the private disrepute of perhaps a +majority of first-rate men; its advantages have been set forth in George +Moore’s “Euphorion in Texas,” though in a clumsy and sentimental way. What is +behind it is the profound race sense of women—the instinct which makes them +regard the unborn in their every act—perhaps, too, the fact that the interests +of the unborn are here identical, as in other situations, with their own +egoistic aspirations. As a popular philosopher has shrewdly observed, the +objections to polygamy do not come from women, for the average woman is +sensible enough to prefer half or a quarter or even a tenth of a first-rate man +to the whole devotion of a third-rate man. Considerations of much the same sort +also justify polyandry—if not morally, then at least biologically. The average +woman, as I have shown, must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain +disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling +that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father, +nor can she help feeling guilty about it; for she knows that he is their father +only by reason of her own initiative in the proceedings anterior to her +marriage. If, now, an opportunity presents itself to remove that handicap from +at least some of them, and at the same time to realize her ideal and satisfy +her vanity—if such a chance offers it is no wonder that she occasionally +embraces it. +</p> + +<p> +Here we have an explanation of many lamentable and otherwise inexplicable +violations of domestic integrity. The woman in the case is commonly dismissed +as vicious, but that is no more than a new example of the common human tendency +to attach the concept of viciousness to whatever is natural, and intelligent, +and above the comprehension of politicians, theologians and green-grocers. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0028"></a> +24. Intermezzo on Monogamy</h2> + +<p> +The prevalence of monogamy in Christendom is commonly ascribed to ethical +motives. This is quite as absurd as ascribing wars to ethical motives which is, +of course, frequently done. The simple truth is that ethical motives are no +more than deductions from experience, and that they are quickly abandoned +whenever experience turns against them. In the present case experience is still +overwhelming on the side of monogamy; civilized men are in favour of it because +they find that it works. And why does it work? Because it is the most effective +of all available antidotes to the alarms and terrors of passion. Monogamy, in +brief, kills passion—and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving +enemies to what we call civilization, which is based upon order, decorum, +restraint, formality, industry, regimentation. The civilized man—the ideal +civilized man—is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his +private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love +passionately—when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive +experience from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for +replenishing armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, +reducing the infant death-rate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, +and making it possible for the Polizei to know where every citizen is at any +hour of the day or night. Monogamy accomplishes this, not by producing satiety, +but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so +gradually kills it. +</p> + +<p> +The advocates of monogamy, deceived by its moral overtones, fail to get all the +advantage out of it that is in it. Consider, for example, the important moral +business of safeguarding the virtue of the unmarried—that is, of the still +passionate. The present plan in dealing, say, with a young man of twenty, is to +surround him with scare-crows and prohibitions—to try to convince him logically +that passion is dangerous. This is both supererogation and +imbecility—supererogation because he already knows that it is dangerous, and +imbecility because it is quite impossible to kill a passion by arguing against +it. The way to kill it is to give it rein under unfavourable and dispiriting +conditions—to bring it down, by slow stages, to the estate of an absurdity and +a horror. How much more, then, could be accomplished if the wild young man were +forbidden polygamy, before marriage, but permitted monogamy! The prohibition in +this case would be relatively easy to enforce, instead of impossible, as in the +other. Curiosity would be satisfied; nature would get out of her cage; even +romance would get an inning. Ninety-nine young men out of a hundred would +submit, if only because it would be much easier to submit that to resist. +</p> + +<p> +And the result? Obviously, it would be laudable—that is, accepting current +definitions of the laudable. The product, after six months, would be a +well-regimented and disillusioned young man, as devoid of disquieting and +demoralizing passion as an ancient of eighty—in brief, the ideal citizen of +Christendom. The present plan surely fails to produce a satisfactory crop of +such ideal citizens. On the one hand its impossible prohibitions cause a +multitude of lamentable revolts, often ending in a silly sort of running amok. +On the other hand they fill the Y. M. C. A.’s with scared poltroons full of +indescribably disgusting Freudian suppressions. Neither group supplies many +ideal citizens. Neither promotes the sort of public morality that is aimed at. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0029"></a> +25. Late Marriages</h2> + +<p> +The marriage of a first-rate man, when it takes place at all, commonly takes +place relatively late. He may succumb in the end, but he is almost always able +to postpone the disaster a good deal longer than the average poor clodpate, or +normal man. If he actually marries early, it is nearly always proof that some +intolerable external pressure has been applied to him, as in Shakespeare’s +case, or that his mental sensitiveness approaches downright insanity, as in +Shelley’s. This fact, curiously enough, has escaped the observation of an +otherwise extremely astute observer, namely Havelock Ellis. In his study of +British genius he notes the fact that most men of unusual capacities are the +sons of relatively old fathers, but instead of exhibiting the true cause +thereof, he ascribes it to a mysterious quality whereby a man already in +decline is capable of begetting better offspring than one in full vigour. This +is a palpable absurdity, not only because it goes counter to facts long +established by animal breeders, but also because it tacitly assumes that +talent, and hence the capacity for transmitting it, is an acquired character, +and that this character may be transmitted. Nothing could be more unsound. +Talent is not an acquired character, but a congenital character, and the man +who is born with it has it in early life quite as well as in later life, though +Its manifestation may have to wait. James Mill was yet a young man when his +son, John Stuart Mill, was born, and not one of his principle books had been +written. But though the “Elements of Political Economy” and the “Analysis of +the Human Mind” were thus but vaguely formulated in his mind, if they were +actually so much as formulated at all, and it was fifteen years before he wrote +them, he was still quite able to transmit the capacity to write them to his +son, and that capacity showed itself, years afterward, in the latter’s +“Principles of Political Economy” and “Essay on Liberty.” +</p> + +<p> +But Ellis’ faulty inference is still based upon a sound observation, to wit, +that the sort of man capable of transmitting high talents to a son is +ordinarily a man who does not have a son at all, at least in wedlock, until he +has advanced into middle life. The reasons which impel him to yield even then +are somewhat obscure, but two or three of them, perhaps, may be vaguely +discerned. One lies in the fact that every man, whether of the first-class or +of any other class, tends to decline in mental agility as he grows older, +though in the actual range and profundity of his intelligence he may keep on +improving until he collapses into senility. Obviously, it is mere agility of +mind, and not profundity, that is of most value and effect in so tricky and +deceptive a combat as the duel of sex. The aging man, with his agility +gradually withering, is thus confronted by women in whom it still luxuriates as +a function of their relative youth. Not only do women of his own age aspire to +ensnare him, but also women of all ages back to adolescence. Hence his average +or typical opponent tends to be progressively younger and younger than he is, +and in the end the mere advantage of her youth may be sufficient to tip over +his tottering defences. This, I take it, is why oldish men are so often +intrigued by girls in their teens. It is not that age calls maudlinly to youth, +as the poets would have it; it is that age is no match for youth, especially +when age is male and youth is female. The case of the late Henrik Ibsen was +typical. At forty Ibsen was a sedate family man, and it is doubtful that he +ever so much as glanced at a woman; all his thoughts were upon the composition +of “The League of Youth,” his first social drama. At fifty he was almost as +preoccupied; “A Doll’s House” was then hatching. But at sixty, with his best +work all done and his decline begun, he succumbed preposterously to a +flirtatious damsel of eighteen, and thereafter, until actual insanity released +him, he mooned like a provincial actor in a sentimental melodrama. Had it not +been, indeed, for the fact that he was already married, and to a very sensible +wife, he would have run off with this flapper, and so made himself publicly +ridiculous. +</p> + +<p> +Another reason for the relatively late marriages of superior men is found, +perhaps, in the fact that, as a man grows older, the disabilities he suffers by +marriage tend to diminish and the advantages to increase. At thirty a man is +terrified by the inhibitions of monogamy and has little taste for the so-called +comforts of a home; at sixty he is beyond amorous adventure and is in need of +creature ease and security. What he is oftenest conscious of, in these later +years, is his physical decay; he sees himself as in imminent danger of falling +into neglect and helplessness. He is thus confronted by a choice between +getting a wife or hiring a nurse, and he commonly chooses the wife as the less +expensive and exacting. The nurse, indeed, would probably try to marry him +anyhow; if he employs her in place of a wife he commonly ends by finding +himself married and minus a nurse, to his confusion and discomfiture, and to +the far greater discomfiture of his heirs and assigns. This process is so +obvious and so commonplace that I apologize formally for rehearsing it. What it +indicates is simply this: that a man’s instinctive aversion to marriage is +grounded upon a sense of social and economic self-sufficiency, and that it +descends into a mere theory when this self-sufficiency disappears. After all, +nature is on the side of mating, and hence on the side of marriage, and vanity +is a powerful ally of nature. If men, at the normal mating age, had half as +much to gain by marriage as women gain, then, all men would be as ardently in +favour of it as women are. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0030"></a> +26. Disparate Unions</h2> + +<p> +This brings us to a fact frequently noted by students of the subject: that +first-rate men, when they marry at all, tend to marry noticeably inferior +wives. The causes of the phenomenon, so often discussed and so seldom +illuminated, should be plain by now. The first-rate man, by postponing marriage +as long as possible, often approaches it in the end with his faculties crippled +by senility, and is thus open to the advances of women whose attractions are +wholly meretricious, e.g., empty flappers, scheming widows, and trained nurses +with a highly developed professional technic of sympathy. If he marries at all, +indeed, he must commonly marry badly, for women of genuine merit are no longer +interested in him; what was once a lodestar is now no more than a smoking +smudge. It is this circumstance that account for the low calibre of a good many +first-rate men’s sons, and gives a certain support to the common notion that +they are always third-raters. Those sons inherit from their mothers as well as +from their fathers, and the bad strain is often sufficient to obscure and +nullify the good strain. Mediocrity, as every Mendelian knows, is a dominant +character, and extraordinary ability is recessive character. In a marriage +between an able man and a commonplace woman, the chances that any given child +will resemble the mother are, roughly speaking, three to one. +</p> + +<p> +The fact suggests the thought that nature is secretly against the superman, and +seeks to prevent his birth. We have, indeed, no ground for assuming that the +continued progress visualized by man is in actual accord with the great flow of +the elemental forces. Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be +just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man +is made in God’s image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly +superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his +superiority perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how +difficult it is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a +conspiracy to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, +but a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the +reproduction of philosophers. +</p> + +<p> +Per corollary, it is notorious that women of merit frequently marry second-rate +men, and bear them children, thus aiding in the war upon progress. One is often +astonished to discover that the wife of some sordid and prosaic manufacturer or +banker or professional man is a woman of quick intelligence and genuine charm, +with intellectual interests so far above his comprehension that he is scarcely +so much as aware of them. Again, there are the leading feminists, women artists +and other such captains of the sex; their husbands are almost always inferior +men, and sometimes downright fools. But not paupers! Not incompetents in a +man’s world! Not bad husbands! What we here encounter, of course, is no more +than a fresh proof of the sagacity of women. The first-rate woman is a realist. +She sees clearly that, in a world dominated by second-rate men, the special +capacities of the second-rate man are esteemed above all other capacities and +given the highest rewards, and she endeavours to get her share of those rewards +by marrying a second-rate man at the top of his class. The first-rate man is an +admirable creature; his qualities are appreciated by every intelligent woman; +as I have just said, it may be reasonably argued that he is actually superior +to God. But his attractions, after a certain point, do not run in proportion to +his deserts; beyond that he ceases to be a good husband. Hence the pursuit of +him is chiefly maintained, not by women who are his peers, but by women who are +his inferiors. +</p> + +<p> +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, the charm +of the unlike, <i>heliogabalisme</i>. As Shakespeare has put it, there must be +some mystery in love—and there can be no mystery between intellectual equals. I +dare say that many a woman marries an inferior man, not primarily because he is +a good provider (though it is impossible to imagine her overlooking this), but +because his very inferiority interests her, and makes her want to remedy it and +mother him. Egoism is in the impulse: it is pleasant to have a feeling of +superiority, and to be assured that it can be maintained. If now, that feeling +be mingled with sexual curiosity and economic self-interest, it obviously +supplies sufficient motivation to account for so natural and banal a thing as a +marriage. Perhaps the greatest of all these factors is the mere disparity, the +naked strangeness. A woman could not love a man, as the phrase is, who wore +skirts and pencilled his eye-brows, and by the same token she would probably +find it difficult to love a man who matched perfectly her own sharpness of +mind. What she most esteems in marriage, on the psychic plane, is the chance it +offers for the exercise of that caressing irony which I have already described. +She likes to observe that her man is a fool—dear, perhaps, but none the less +damned. Her so-called love for him, even at its highest, is always somewhat +pitying and patronizing. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0031"></a> +27. The Charm of Mystery</h2> + +<p> +Monogamous marriage, by its very conditions, tends to break down this +strangeness. It forces the two contracting parties into an intimacy that is too +persistent and unmitigated; they are in contact at too many points, and too +steadily. By and by all the mystery of the relation is gone, and they stand in +the unsexed position of brother and sister. Thus that “maximum of temptation” +of which Shaw speaks has within itself the seeds of its own decay. A husband +begins by kissing a pretty girl, his wife; it is pleasant to have her so handy +and so willing. He ends by making machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the +every day sharer of his meals, books, bath towels, pocketbook, relatives, +ambitions, secrets, malaises and business: a proceeding about as romantic as +having his boots blacked. The thing is too horribly dismal for words. Not all +the native sentimentalism of man can overcome the distaste and boredom that get +into it. Not all the histrionic capacity of woman can attach any appearance of +gusto and spontaneity to it. +</p> + +<p> +An estimable lady psychologist of the American Republic, Mrs. Marion Cox, in a +somewhat florid book entitled “Ventures into Worlds,” has a sagacious essay +upon this subject. She calls the essay “Our Incestuous Marriage,” and argues +accurately that, once the adventurous descends to the habitual, it takes on an +offensive and degrading character. The intimate approach, to give genuine joy, +must be a concession, a feat of persuasion, a victory; once it loses that +character it loses everything. Such a destructive conversion is effected by the +average monogamous marriage. It breaks down all mystery and reserve, for how +can mystery and reserve survive the use of the same hot water bag and a joint +concern about butter and egg bills? What remains, at least on the husband’s +side, is esteem—the feeling one, has for an amiable aunt. And confidence—the +emotion evoked by a lawyer, a dentist or a fortune-teller. And habit—the thing +which makes it possible to eat the same breakfast every day, and to windup +one’s watch regularly, and to earn a living. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Cox, if I remember her dissertation correctly, proposes to prevent this +stodgy dephlogistication of marriage by interrupting its course—that is, by +separating the parties now and then, so that neither will become too familiar +and commonplace to the other. By this means, she, argues, curiosity will be +periodically revived, and there will be a chance for personality to expand a +cappella, and so each reunion will have in it something of the surprise, the +adventure and the virtuous satanry of the honeymoon. The husband will not come +back to precisely the same wife that he parted from, and the wife will not +welcome precisely the same husband. Even supposing them to have gone on +substantially as if together, they will have gone on out of sight and hearing +of each other, Thus each will find the other, to some extent at least, a +stranger, and hence a bit challenging, and hence a bit charming. The scheme has +merit. More, it has been tried often, and with success. It is, indeed, a +familiar observation that the happiest couples are those who are occasionally +separated, and the fact has been embalmed in the trite maxim that absence makes +the heart grow fonder. Perhaps not actually fonder, but at any rate more +tolerant, more curious, more eager. Two difficulties, however, stand in the way +of the widespread adoption of the remedy. One lies in its costliness: the +average couple cannot afford a double establishment, even temporarily. The +other lies in the fact that it inevitably arouses the envy and ill-nature of +those who cannot adopt it, and so causes a gabbling of scandal. The world +invariably suspects the worst. Let man and wife separate to save their +happiness from suffocation in the kitchen, the dining room and the connubial +chamber, and it will immediately conclude that the corpse is already laid out +in the drawing-room. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0032"></a> +28. Woman as Wife</h2> + +<p> +This boredom of marriage, however, is not nearly so dangerous a menace to the +institution as Mrs. Cox, with evangelistic enthusiasm, permits herself to think +it is. It bears most harshly upon the wife, who is almost always the more +intelligent of the pair; in the case of the husband its pains are usually +lightened by that sentimentality with which men dilute the disagreeable, +particularly in marriage. Moreover, the average male gets his living by such +depressing devices that boredom becomes a sort of natural state to him. A man +who spends six or eight hours a day acting as teller in a bank, or sitting upon +the bench of a court, or looking to the inexpressibly trivial details of some +process of manufacturing, or writing imbecile articles for a newspaper, or +managing a tramway, or administering ineffective medicines to stupid and +uninteresting patients—a man so engaged during all his hours of labour, which +means a normal, typical man, is surely not one to be oppressed unduly by the +dull round of domesticity. His wife may bore him hopelessly as mistress, just +as any other mistress inevitably bores a man (though surely not so quickly and +so painfully as a lover bores a woman), but she is not apt to bore him so badly +in her other capacities. What he commonly complains about in her, in truth, is +not that she tires him by her monotony, but that she tires him by her +variety—not that she is too static, but that she is too dynamic. He is weary +when he gets home, and asks only the dull peace of a hog in a comfortable sty. +This peace is broken by the greater restlessness of his wife, the fruit of her +greater intellectual resilience and curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +Of far more potency as a cause of connubial discord is the general inefficiency +of a woman at the business of what is called keeping house—a business founded +upon a complex of trivial technicalities. As I have argued at length, women are +congenitally less fitted for mastering these technicalities than men; the +enterprise always costs them more effort, and they are never able to reinforce +mere diligent application with that obtuse enthusiasm which men commonly bring +to their tawdry and childish concerns. But in addition to their natural +incapacity, there is a reluctance based upon a deficiency in incentive, and +deficiency in incentive is due to the maudlin sentimentality with which men +regard marriage. In this sentimentality lie the germs of most of the evils +which beset the institution in Christendom, and particularly in the United +States, where sentiment is always carried to inordinate lengths. Having +abandoned the mediaeval concept of woman as temptress the men of the Nordic +race have revived the correlative mediaeval concept of woman as angel and to +bolster up that character they have create for her a vast and growing mass of +immunities culminating of late years in the astounding doctrine that, under the +contract of marriage, all the duties lie upon the man and all the privileges +appertain to the woman. In part this doctrine has been established by the +intellectual enterprise and audacity of woman. Bit by bit, playing upon +masculine stupidity, sentimentality and lack of strategical sense, they have +formulated it, developed it, and entrenched it in custom and law. But in other +part it is the plain product of the donkeyish vanity which makes almost every +man view the practical incapacity of his wife as, in some vague way, a tribute +to his own high mightiness and consideration. Whatever is revolt against her +immediate indolence and efficiency, his ideal is nearly always a situation in +which she will figure as a magnificent drone, a sort of empress without +portfolio, entirely discharged from every unpleasant labour and responsibility. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0033"></a> +29. Marriage and the Law</h2> + +<p> +This was not always the case. No more than a century ago, even by American law, +the most sentimental in the world, the husband was the head of the family firm, +lordly and autonomous. He had authority over the purse-strings, over the +children, and even over his wife. He could enforce his mandates by appropriate +punishment, including the corporal. His sovereignty and dignity were carefully +guarded by legislation, the product of thousands of years of experience and +ratiocination. He was safeguarded in his self-respect by the most elaborate and +efficient devices, and they had the support of public opinion. +</p> + +<p> +Consider, now, the changes that a few short years have wrought. Today, by the +laws of most American states—laws proposed, in most cases, by maudlin and often +notoriously extravagant agitators, and passerby sentimental orgy—all of the old +rights of the husband have been converted into obligations. He no longer has +any control over his wife’s property; she may devote its income to the family +or she may squander that income upon idle follies, and he can do nothing. She +has equal authority in regulating and disposing of the children, and in the +case of infants, more than he. There is no law compelling her to do her share +of the family labour: she may spend her whole time in cinema theatres or +gadding about the shops as she will. She cannot be forced to perpetuate the +family name if she does not want to. She cannot be attacked with masculine +weapons, e.g., fists and firearms, when she makes an assault with feminine +weapons, e.g., snuffling, invective and sabotage. Finally, no lawful penalty +can be visited upon her if she fails absolutely, either deliberately or through +mere incapacity, to keep the family habitat clean, the children in order, and +the victuals eatable. +</p> + +<p> +Now view the situation of the husband. The instant he submits to marriage, his +wife obtains a large and inalienable share in his property, including all he +may acquire in future; in most American states the minimum is one-third, and, +failing children, one-half. He cannot dispose of his real estate without her +consent; he cannot even deprive her of it by will. She may bring up his +children carelessly and idiotically, cursing them with abominable manners and +poisoning their nascent minds against him, and he has no redress. She may +neglect her home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon his +table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers, hand over his home +to the Periplaneta americana, accuse him falsely of preposterous adulteries, +affront his friends, and lie about him to the neighbours—and he can do nothing. +She may compromise his honour by indecent dressing, write letters to +moving-picture actors, and expose him to ridicule by going into politics—and he +is helpless. +</p> + +<p> +Let him undertake the slightest rebellion, over and beyond mere rhetorical +protest, and the whole force of the state comes down upon him. If he corrects +her with the bastinado or locks her up, he is good for six months in jail. If +he cuts off her revenues, he is incarcerated until he makes them good. And if +he seeks surcease in flight, taking the children with him, he is pursued by the +gendarmerie, brought back to his duties, and depicted in the public press as a +scoundrelly kidnapper, fit only for the knout. In brief, she is under no legal +necessity whatsoever to carry out her part of the compact at the altar of God, +whereas he faces instant disgrace and punishment for the slightest failure to +observe its last letter. For a few grave crimes of commission, true enough, she +may be proceeded against. Open adultery is a recreation that is denied to her. +She cannot poison her husband. She must not assault him with edged tools, or +leave him altogether, or strip off her few remaining garments and go naked. But +for the vastly more various and numerous crimes of omission—and in sum they are +more exasperating and intolerable than even overt felony—she cannot be brought +to book at all. +</p> + +<p> +The scene I depict is American, but it will soon extend its horrors to all +Protestant countries. The newly enfranchised women of every one of them cherish +long programs of what they call social improvement, and practically the whole +of that improvement is based upon devices for augmenting their own relative +autonomy and power. The English wife of tradition, so thoroughly a femme +covert, is being displaced by a gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, +full of strange new ideas about her rights, and strongly disinclined to submit +to her husband’s authority, or to devote herself honestly to the upkeep of his +house, or to bear him a biological sufficiency of heirs. And the German +Hausfrau, once so innocently consecrated to Kirche, Kuche und Kinder, is going +the same way. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0034"></a> +30. The Emancipated Housewife</h2> + +<p> +What has gone on in the United States during the past two generations is full +of lessons and warnings for the rest of the world. The American housewife of an +earlier day was famous for her unremitting diligence. She not only cooked, +washed and ironed; she also made shift to master such more complex arts as +spinning, baking and brewing. Her expertness, perhaps, never reached a high +level, but at all events she made a gallant effort. But that was long, long +ago, before the new enlightenment rescued her. Today, in her average +incarnation, she is not only incompetent (alack, as I have argued, rather +beyond her control); she is also filled with the notion that a conscientious +discharge of her few remaining duties is, in some vague way, discreditable and +degrading. To call her a good cook, I daresay, was never anything but flattery; +the early American cuisine was probably a fearful thing, indeed. But today the +flattery turns into a sort of libel, and she resents it, or, at all events, +does not welcome it. I used to know an American literary man, educated on the +Continent, who married a woman because she had exceptional gifts in this +department. Years later, at one of her dinners, a friend of her husband’s tried +to please her by mentioning the fact, to which he had always been privy. But +instead of being complimented, as a man might have been if told that his wife +had married him because he was a good lawyer, or surgeon, or blacksmith, this +unusual housekeeper, suffering a renaissance of usualness, denounced the guest +as a liar, ordered him out of the house, and threatened to leave her husband. +</p> + +<p> +This disdain of offices that, after all, are necessary, and might as well be +faced with some show of cheerfulness, takes on the character of a definite cult +in the United States, and the stray woman who attends to them faithfully is +laughed at as a drudge and a fool, just as she is apt to be dismissed as a +“brood sow” (I quote literally, craving absolution for the phrase: a jury of +men during the late war, on very thin patriotic grounds, jailed the author of +it) if she favours her lord with viable issue. One result is the notorious +villainousness of American cookery—a villainousness so painful to a cultured +uvula that a French hack-driver, if his wife set its masterpieces before him, +would brain her with his linoleum hat. To encounter a decent meal in an +American home of the middle class, simple, sensibly chosen and competently +cooked, becomes almost as startling as to meet a Y. M. C. A. secretary in a +bordello, and a good deal rarer. Such a thing, in most of the large cities of +the Republic, scarcely has any existence. If the average American husband wants +a sound dinner he must go to a restaurant to get it, just as if he wants to +refresh himself with the society of charming and well-behaved children, he has +to go to an orphan asylum. Only the immigrant can take his case and invite his +soul within his own house. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0035"></a> +IV. Woman Suffrage</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0036"></a> +31. The Crowning Victory</h2> + +<p> +It is my sincere hope that nothing I have here exhibited will be mistaken by +the nobility and gentry for moral indignation. No such feeling, in truth, is in +my heart. Moral judgments, as old Friedrich used to say, are foreign to my +nature. Setting aside the vast herd which shows no definable character at all, +it seems to me that the minority distinguished by what is commonly regarded as +an excess of sin is very much more admirable than the minority distinguished by +an excess of virtue. My experience of the world has taught me that the average +wine-bibber is a far better fellow than the average prohibitionist, and that +the average rogue is better company than the average poor drudge, and that the +worst white, slave trader of my acquaintance is a decenter man than the best +vice crusader. In the same way I am convinced that the average woman, whatever +her deficiencies, is greatly superior to the average man. The very ease with +which she defies and swindles him in several capital situations of life is the +clearest of proofs of her general superiority. She did not obtain her present +high immunities as a gift from the gods, but only after a long and often bitter +fight, and in that fight she exhibited forensic and tactical talents of a truly +admirable order. There was no weakness of man that she did not penetrate and +take advantage of. There was no trick that she did not put to effective use. +There was no device so bold and inordinate that it daunted her. +</p> + +<p> +The latest and greatest fruit of this feminine talent for combat is the +extension of the suffrage, now universal in the Protestant countries, and even +advancing in those of the Greek and Latin rites. This fruit was garnered, not +by an attack en masse, but by a mere foray. I believe that the majority of +women, for reasons that I shall presently expose, were not eager for the +extension, and regard it as of small value today. They know that they can get +what they want without going to the actual polls for it; moreover, they are out +of sympathy with most of the brummagem reforms advocated by the professional +suffragists, male and female. The mere statement of the current suffragist +platform, with its long list of quack sure-cures for all the sorrows of the +world, is enough to make them smile sadly. In particular, they are sceptical of +all reforms that depend upon the mass action of immense numbers of voters, +large sections of whom are wholly devoid of sense. A normal woman, indeed, no +more believes in democracy in the nation than she believes in democracy at her +own fireside; she knows that there must be a class to order and a class to +obey, and that the two can never coalesce. Nor is she susceptible to the stock +sentimentalities upon which the whole democratic process is based. This was +shown very dramatically in the United States at the national election of 1920, +in which the late Woodrow Wilson was brought down to colossal and ignominious +defeat—the first general election in which all American women could vote. All +the sentimentality of the situation was on the side of Wilson, and yet fully +three-fourths of the newly-enfranchised women voters voted against him. He is, +despite his talents for deception, a poor popular psychologist, and so he made +an inept effort to fetch the girls by tear-squeezing: every connoisseur will +remember his bathos about breaking the heart of the world. Well, very few women +believe in broken hearts, and the cause is not far to seek: practically every +woman above the age of twenty-five has a broken heart. That is to say, she has +been vastly disappointed, either by failing to nab some pretty fellow that her +heart was set on, or, worse, by actually nabbing him, and then discovering him +to be a bounder or an imbecile, or both. Thus walking the world with broken +hearts, women know that the injury is not serious. When he pulled out the Vox +angelica stop and began sobbing and snuffling and blowing his nose tragically, +the learned doctor simply drove all the women voters into the arms of the Hon. +Warren Gamaliel Harding, who was too stupid to invent any issues at all, but +simply took negative advantage of the distrust aroused by his opponent. +</p> + +<p> +Once the women of Christendom become at ease in the use of the ballot, and get +rid of the preposterous harridans who got it for them and who now seek to tell +them what to do with it, they will proceed to a scotching of many of the +sentimentalities which currently corrupt politics. For one thing, I believe +that they will initiate measures against democracy—the worst evil of the +present-day world. When they come to the matter, they will certainly not ordain +the extension of the suffrage to children, criminals and the insane in brief, +to those ever more inflammable and knavish than the male hinds who have enjoyed +it for so long; they will try to bring about its restriction, bit by bit, to +the small minority that is intelligent, agnostic and self-possessed—say six +women to one man. Thus, out of their greater instinct for reality, they will +make democracy safe for a democracy. +</p> + +<p> +The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woes, is his stupendous +capacity for believing the incredible. He is forever embracing delusions, and +each new one is worse than all that have gone before. But where is the delusion +that women cherish—I mean habitually, firmly, passionately? Who will draw up a +list of propositions, held and maintained by them in sober earnest, that are +obviously not true? (I allude here, of course, to genuine women, not to +suffragettes and other such pseudo-males). As for me, I should not like to +undertake such a list. I know of nothing, in fact, that properly belongs to it. +Women, as a class, believe in none of the ludicrous rights, duties and pious +obligations that men are forever gabbling about. Their superior intelligence is +in no way more eloquently demonstrated than by their ironical view of all such +phantasmagoria. Their habitual attitude toward men is one of aloof disdain, and +their habitual attitude toward what men believe in, and get into sweats about, +and bellow for, is substantially the same. It takes twice as long to convert a +body of women to some new fallacy as it takes to convert a body of men, and +even then they halt, hesitate and are full of mordant criticisms. The women of +Colorado had been voting for 21 years before they succumbed to prohibition +sufficiently to allow the man voters of the state to adopt it; their own +majority voice was against it to the end. During the interval the men voters of +a dozen non-suffrage American states had gone shrieking to the mourners’ bench. +In California, enfranchised in 1911, the women rejected the dry revelation in +1914. National prohibition was adopted during the war without their votes—they +did not get the franchise throughout the country until it was in the +Constitution—and it is without their support today. The American man, despite +his reputation for lawlessness, is actually very much afraid of the police, and +in all the regions where prohibition is now actually enforced he makes excuses +for his poltroonish acceptance of it by arguing that it will do him good in the +long run, or that he ought to sacrifice his private desires to the common weal. +But it is almost impossible to find an American woman of any culture who is in +favour of it. One and all, they are opposed to the turmoil and corruption that +it involves, and resentful of the invasion of liberty underlying it. Being +realists, they have no belief in any program which proposes to cure the natural +swinishness of men by legislation. Every normal woman believes, and quite +accurately, that the average man is very much like her husband, John, and she +knows very well that John is a weak, silly and knavish fellow, and that any +effort to convert him into an archangel overnight is bound to come to grief. As +for her view of the average creature of her own sex, it is marked by a cynicism +so penetrating and so destructive that a clear statement of it would shock +beyond endurance. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0037"></a> +32. The Woman Voter</h2> + +<p> +Thus there is not the slightest chance that the enfranchised women of +Protestantdom, once they become at ease in the use of the ballot, will give any +heed to the ex-suffragettes who now presume to lead and instruct them in +politics. Years ago I predicted that these suffragettes, tried out by victory, +would turn out to be idiots. They are now hard at work proving it. Half of them +devote themselves to advocating reforms, chiefly of a sexual character, so +utterly preposterous that even male politicians and newspaper editors laugh at +them; the other half succumb absurdly to the blandishments of the old-time male +politicians, and so enroll themselves in the great political parties. A woman +who joins one of these parties simply becomes an imitation man, which is to +say, a donkey. Thereafter she is nothing but an obscure cog in an ancient and +creaking machine, the sole intelligible purpose of which is to maintain a horde +of scoundrels in public office. Her vote is instantly set off by the vote of +some sister who joins the other camorra. Parenthetically, I may add that all of +the ladies to take to this political immolation seem to me to be frightfully +plain. I know those of England, Germany and Scandinavia only by their portraits +in the illustrated papers, but those of the United States I have studied at +close range at various large political gatherings, including the two national +conventions first following the extension of the suffrage. I am surely no +fastidious fellow—in fact, I prefer a certain melancholy decay in women to the +loud, circus-wagon brilliance of youth—but I give you my word that there were +not five women at either national convention who could have embraced me in +camera without first giving me chloral. Some of the chief stateswomen on show, +in fact, were so downright hideous that I felt faint every time I had to look +at them. +</p> + +<p> +The reform-monging suffragists seem to be equally devoid of the more caressing +gifts. They may be filled with altruistic passion, but they certainly have bad +complexions, and not many of them know how to dress their hair. Nine-tenths of +them advocate reforms aimed at the alleged lubricity of the male-the single +standard, medical certificates for bridegrooms, birth-control, and so on. The +motive here, I believe, is mere rage and jealousy. The woman who is not pursued +sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it +a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes +masculine admiration, however violently expressed, and is quite able to take +care of herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to +offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her extremely +cynical of all women who complain of being harassed, beset, storied, and +seduced. All the more intelligent women that I know, indeed, are unanimously of +the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced +since the world began; whenever they hear of a case, they sympathize with the +man. Yet more, the normal woman of lively charms, roving about among men, +always tries to draw the admiration of those who have previously admired +elsewhere; she prefers the professional to the amateur, and estimates her skill +by the attractiveness of the huntresses who have hitherto stalked it. The +iron-faced suffragist propagandist, if she gets a man at all, must get one +wholly without sentimental experience. If he has any, her crude manoeuvres make +him laugh and he is repelled by her lack of pulchritude and amiability. All +such suffragists (save a few miraculous beauties) marry ninth-rate men when +they marry at all. They have to put up with the sort of castoffs who are almost +ready to fall in love with lady physicists, embryologists, and embalmers. +</p> + +<p> +Fortunately for the human race, the campaigns of these indignant viragoes will +come to naught. Men will keep on pursuing women until hell freezes over, and +women will keep luring them on. If the latter enterprise were abandoned, in +fact, the whole game of love would play out, for not many men take any notice +of women spontaneously. Nine men out of ten would be quite happy, I believe, if +there were no women in the world, once they had grown accustomed to the quiet. +Practically all men are their happiest when they are engaged upon +activities—for example, drinking, gambling, hunting, business, adventure—to +which women are not ordinarily admitted. It is women who seduce them from such +celibate doings. The hare postures and gyrates in front of the hound. The way +to put an end to the gaudy crimes that the suffragist alarmists talk about is +to shave the heads of all the pretty girls in the world, and pluck out their +eyebrows, and pull their teeth, and put them in khaki, and forbid them to +wriggle on dance-floors, or to wear scents, or to use lip-sticks, or to roll +their eyes. Reform, as usual, mistakes the fish for the fly. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0038"></a> +33. A Glance Into the Future</h2> + +<p> +The present public prosperity of the ex-suffragettes is chiefly due to the fact +that the old-time male politicians, being naturally very stupid, mistake them +for spokesmen for the whole body of women, and so show them politeness. But +soon or late—and probably disconcertingly soon—the great mass of sensible and +agnostic women will turn upon them and depose them, and thereafter the woman +vote will be no longer at the disposal of bogus Great Thinkers and messiahs. If +the suffragettes continue to fill the newspapers with nonsense, once that +change has been effected, it will be only as a minority sect of tolerated +idiots, like the Swedenborgians, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists +and other such fanatics of today. This was the history of the extension of the +suffrage in all of the American states that made it before the national +enfranchisement of women and it will be repeated in the nation at large, and in +Great Britain and on the Continent. Women are not taken in by quackery as +readily as men are; the hardness of their shell of logic makes it difficult to +penetrate to their emotions. For one woman who testifies publicly that she has +been cured of cancer by some swindling patent medicine, there are at least +twenty masculine witnesses. Even such frauds as the favourite American elixir, +Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, which are ostensibly remedies for +specifically feminine ills, anatomically impossible in the male, are chiefly +swallowed, so an intelligent druggist tells me, by men. +</p> + +<p> +My own belief, based on elaborate inquiries and long meditation, is that the +grant of the ballot to women marks the concealed but none the less real +beginning of an improvement in our politics, and, in the end, in our whole +theory of government. As things stand, an intelligent grappling with some of +the capital problems of the commonwealth is almost impossible. A politician +normally prospers under democracy, not in proportion as his principles are +sound and his honour incorruptible, but in proportion as she excels in the +manufacture of sonorous phrases, and the invention of imaginary perils and +imaginary defences against them. Our politics thus degenerates into a mere +pursuit of hobgoblins; the male voter, a coward as well as an ass, is forever +taking fright at a new one and electing some mountebank to lay it. For a +hundred years past the people of the United States, the most terrible existing +democratic state, have scarcely had a political campaign that was not based +upon some preposterous fear—first of slavery and then of the manumitted slave, +first of capitalism and then of communism, first of the old and then of the +novel. It is a peculiarity of women that they are not easily set off by such +alarms, that they do not fall readily into such facile tumults and phobias. +What starts a male meeting to snuffling and trembling most violently is +precisely the thing that would cause a female meeting to sniff. What we need, +to ward off mobocracy and safeguard a civilized form of government, is more of +this sniffing. What we need—and in the end it must come—is a sniff so powerful +that it will call a halt upon the navigation of the ship from the forecastle, +and put a competent staff on the bridge, and lay a course that is describable +in intelligible terms. +</p> + +<p> +The officers nominated by the male electorate in modern democracies before the +extension of the suffrage were usually chosen, not for their competence but for +their mere talent for idiocy; they reflected accurately the male weakness for +whatever is rhetorical and sentimental and feeble and untrue. Consider, for +example, what happened in a salient case. Every four years the male voters of +the United States chose from among themselves one who was put forward as the +man most fit, of all resident men, to be the first citizen of the commonwealth. +He was chosen after interminable discussion; his qualifications were thoroughly +canvassed; very large powers and dignities were put into his hands. Well, what +did we commonly find when we examined this gentleman? We found, not a profound +thinker, not a leader of sound opinion, not a man of notable sense, but merely +a wholesaler of notions so infantile that they must needs disgust a sentient +suckling—in brief, a spouting geyser of fallacies and sentimentalities, a +cataract of unsupported assumptions and hollow moralizings, a tedious +phrase-merchant and platitudinarian, a fellow whose noblest flights of thought +were flattered when they were called comprehensible—specifically, a Wilson, a +Taft, a Roosevelt, or a Harding. +</p> + +<p> +This was the male champion. I do not venture upon the cruelty of comparing his +bombastic flummeries to the clear reasoning of a woman of like fame and +position; all I ask of you is that you weigh them, for sense, for shrewdness, +for intelligent grasp of obscure relations, for intellectual honesty and +courage, with the ideas of the average midwife. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0039"></a> +34. The Suffragette</h2> + +<p> +I have spoken with some disdain of the suffragette. What is the matter with +her, fundamentally, is simple: she is a woman who has stupidly carried her envy +of certain of the superficial privileges of men to such a point that it takes +on the character of an obsession, and makes her blind to their valueless and +often chiefly imaginary character. In particular, she centres this frenzy of +hers upon one definite privilege, to wit, the alleged privilege of promiscuity +in amour, the modern droit du seigneur. Read the books of the chief lady +Savonarolas, and you will find running through them an hysterical denunciation +of what is called the double standard of morality; there is, indeed, a whole +literature devoted exclusively to it. The existence of this double standard +seems to drive the poor girls half frantic. They bellow raucously for its +abrogation, and demand that the frivolous male be visited with even more +idiotic penalties than those which now visit the aberrant female; some even +advocate gravely his mutilation by surgery, that he may be forced into +rectitude by a physical disability for sin. +</p> + +<p> +All this, of course, is hocus-pocus, and the judicious are not deceived by it +for an instant. What these virtuous bel dames actually desire in their hearts +is not that the male be reduced to chemical purity, but that the franchise of +dalliance be extended to themselves. The most elementary acquaintance with +Freudian psychology exposes their secret animus. Unable to ensnare males under +the present system, or at all events, unable to ensnare males sufficiently +appetizing to arouse the envy of other women, they leap to the theory that it +would be easier if the rules were less exacting. This theory exposes their +deficiency in the chief character of their sex: accurate observation. The fact +is that, even if they possessed the freedom that men are supposed to possess, +they would still find it difficult to achieve their ambition, for the average +man, whatever his stupidity, is at least keen enough in judgment to prefer a +single wink from a genuinely attractive woman to the last delirious favours of +the typical suffragette. Thus the theory of the whoopers and snorters of the +cause, in its esoteric as well as in its public aspect, is unsound. They are +simply women who, in their tastes and processes of mind, are two-thirds men, +and the fact explains their failure to achieve presentable husbands, or even +consolatory betrayal, quite as effectively as it explains the ready credence +they give to political and philosophical absurdities. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0040"></a> +35. A Mythical Dare-Devil</h2> + +<p> +The truth is that the picture of male carnality that such women conjure up +belongs almost wholly to fable, as I have already observed in dealing with the +sophistries of Dr. Eliza Burt Gamble, a paralogist on a somewhat higher plane. +As they depict him in their fevered treatises on illegitimacy, white-slave +trading and ophthalmia neonatorum, the average male adult of the Christian and +cultured countries leads a life of gaudy lubricity, rolling magnificently from +one liaison to another, and with an almost endless queue of ruined milliners, +dancers, charwomen, parlour-maids and waitresses behind him, all dying of +poison and despair. The life of man, as these furiously envious ones see it, is +the life of a leading actor in a boulevard revue. He is a polygamous, +multigamous, myriadigamous; an insatiable and unconscionable debauche, a +monster of promiscuity; prodigiously unfaithful to his wife, and even to his +friends’ wives; fathomlessly libidinous and superbly happy. +</p> + +<p> +Needless to say, this picture bears no more relation to the facts than a +dissertation on major strategy by a military “expert” promoted from dramatic +critic. If the chief suffragette scare mongers (I speak without any +embarrassing naming of names) were attractive enough to men to get near enough +to enough men to know enough about them for their purpose they would paralyze +the Dorcas societies with no such cajoling libels. As a matter of sober fact, +the average man of our time and race is quite incapable of all these +incandescent and intriguing divertisements. He is far more virtuous than they +make him out, far less schooled in sin, far less enterprising and ruthless. I +do not say, of course, that he is pure in heart, for the chances are that he +isn’t; what I do say is that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, he is pure +in act, even in the face of temptation. And why? For several main reasons, not +to go into minor ones. One is that he lacks the courage. Another is that he +lacks the money. Another is that he is fundamentally moral, and has a +conscience. It takes more sinful initiative than he has in him to plunge into +any affair save the most casual and sordid; it takes more ingenuity and +intrepidity than he has in him to carry it off; it takes more money than he can +conceal from his consort to finance it. A man may force his actual wife to +share the direst poverty, but even the least vampirish woman of the third part +demands to be courted in what, considering his station in life, is the grand +manner, and the expenses of that grand manner scare off all save a small +minority of specialists in deception. So long, indeed, as a wife knows her +husband’s income accurately, she has a sure means of holding him to his oaths. +</p> + +<p> +Even more effective than the fiscal barrier is the barrier of poltroonery. The +one character that distinguishes man from the other higher vertebrate, indeed, +is his excessive timorousness, his easy yielding to alarms, his incapacity for +adventure without a crowd behind him. In his normal incarnation he is no more +capable of initiating an extra-legal affair—at all events, above the mawkish +harmlessness of a flirting match with a cigar girl in a cafe-than he is of +scaling the battlements of hell. He likes to think of himself doing it, just as +he likes to think of himself leading a cavalry charge or climbing the +Matterhorn. Often, indeed, his vanity leads him to imagine the thing done, and +he admits by winks and blushes that he is a bad one. But at the bottom of all +that tawdry pretence there is usually nothing more material than an oafish +smirk at some disgusted shop-girl, or a scraping of shins under the table. Let +any woman who is disquieted by reports of her husband’s derelictions figure to +herself how long it would have taken him to propose to her if left to his own +enterprise, and then let her ask herself if so pusillanimous a creature could +be imaged in the role of Don Giovanni. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, there is his conscience—the accumulated sediment of ancestral +faintheartedness in countless generations, with vague religious fears and +superstitions to leaven and mellow it. What! a conscience? Yes, dear friends, a +conscience. That conscience may be imperfect, inept, unintelligent, brummagem. +It may be indistinguishable, at times, from the mere fear that someone may be +looking. It may be shot through with hypocrisy, stupidity, play-acting. But +nevertheless, as consciences go in Christendom, it is genuinely entitled to the +name—and it is always in action. A man, remember, is not a being in vacuo; he +is the fruit and slave of the environment that bathes him. One cannot enter the +House of Commons, the United States Senate, or a prison for felons without +becoming, in some measure, a rascal. One cannot fall overboard without shipping +water. One cannot pass through a modern university without carrying away scars. +And by the same token one cannot live and have one’s being in a modern +democratic state, year in and year out, without falling, to some extent at +least, under that moral obsession which is the hall-mark of the mob-man set +free. A citizen of such a state, his nose buried in Nietzsche, “Man and +Superman,” and other such advanced literature, may caress himself with the +notion that he is an immoralist, that his soul is full of soothing sin, that he +has cut himself loose from the revelation of God. But all the while there is a +part of him that remains a sound Christian, a moralist, a right thinking and +forward-looking man. And that part, in times of stress, asserts itself. It may +not worry him on ordinary occasions. It may not stop him when he swears, or +takes a nip of whiskey behind the door, or goes motoring on Sunday; it may even +let him alone when he goes to a leg-show. But the moment a concrete Temptress +rises before him, her nose snow-white, her lips rouged, her eyelashes drooping +provokingly—the moment such an abandoned wench has at him, and his lack of +ready funds begins to conspire with his lack of courage to assault and wobble +him—at that precise moment his conscience flares into function, and so finishes +his business. First he sees difficulty, then he sees the danger, then he sees +wrong. The result is that he slinks off in trepidation, and another vampire is +baffled of her prey. +</p> + +<p> +It is, indeed, the secret scandal of Christendom, at least in the Protestant +regions, that most men are faithful to their wives. You will a travel a long +way before you find a married man who will admit that he is, but the facts are +the facts, and I am surely not one to flout them. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0041"></a> +36. The Origin of a Delusion</h2> + +<p> +The origin of the delusion that the average man is a Leopold II or Augustus the +Strong, with the amorous experience of a guinea pig, is not far to seek. It +lies in three factors, the which I rehearse briefly: +</p> + +<p> +1. The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either by open +lying or sinister hints. +</p> + +<p> +2. The notions of vice crusaders, nonconformist divines, Y. M. C. A. +secretaries, and other such libidinous poltroons as to what they would do +themselves if they had the courage. +</p> + +<p> +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. +</p> + +<p> +Here you have the genesis of a generalization that gives the less critical sort +of women a great deal of needless uneasiness and vastly augments the natural +conceit of men. Some pornographic old fellow, in the discharge of his duties as +director of an anti-vice society, puts in an evening ploughing through such +books as “The Memoirs of Fanny Hill,” Casanova’s Confessions, the Cena +Trimalchionis of Gaius Petronius, and II Samuel. From this perusal he arises +with the conviction that life amid the red lights must be one stupendous whirl +of deviltry, that the clerks he sees in Broadway or Piccadilly at night are out +for revels that would have caused protests in Sodom and Nineveh, that the +average man who chooses hell leads an existence comparable to that of a Mormon +bishop, that the world outside the Bible class is packed like a sardine-can +with betrayed salesgirls, that every man who doesn’t believe that Jonah +swallowed the whale spends his whole leisure leaping through the seventh hoop +of the Decalogue. “If I were not saved and anointed of God,” whispers the vice +director into his own ear, “that is what I, the Rev. Dr. Jasper Barebones, +would be doing. The late King David did it; he was human, and hence immoral. +The late King Edward VII was not beyond suspicion: the very numeral in his name +has its suggestions. Millions of others go the same route.... Ergo, Up, guards, +and at ’em! Bring me the pad of blank warrants! Order out the seachlights and +scaling-ladders! Swear in four hundred more policemen! Let us chase these +hell-hounds out of Christendom, and make the world safe for monogamy, poor +working girls, and infant damnation!” +</p> + +<p> +Thus the hound of heaven, arguing fallaciously from his own secret aspirations. +Where he makes his mistake is in assuming that the unconsecrated, while sharing +his longing to debauch and betray, are free from his other weaknesses, e.g., +his timidity, his lack of resourcefulness, his conscience. As I have said, they +are not. The vast majority of those who appear in the public haunts of sin are +there, not to engage in overt acts of ribaldry, but merely to tremble agreeably +upon the edge of the abyss. They are the same skittish experimentalists, +precisely, who throng the midway at a world’s fair, and go to smutty shows, and +take in sex magazines, and read the sort of books that our vice crusading +friend reads. They like to conjure up the charms of carnality, and to help out +their somewhat sluggish imaginations by actual peeps at it, but when it comes +to taking a forthright header into the sulphur they usually fail to muster up +the courage. For one clerk who succumbs to the houris of the pave, there are +five hundred who succumb to lack of means, the warnings of the sex hygienists, +and their own depressing consciences. For one “clubman”—i.e., bagman or +suburban vestryman—who invades the women’s shops, engages the affection of some +innocent miss, lures her into infamy and then sells her to the Italians, there +are one thousand who never get any further than asking the price of cologne +water and discharging a few furtive winks. And for one husband of the Nordic +race who maintains a blonde chorus girl in oriental luxury around the corner, +there are ten thousand who are as true to their wives, year in and year out, as +so many convicts in the death-house, and would be no more capable of any such +loathsome malpractice, even in the face of free opportunity, than they would be +of cutting off the ears of their young. +</p> + +<p> +I am sorry to blow up so much romance. In particular, I am sorry for the +suffragettes who specialize in the double standard, for when they get into +pantaloons at last, and have the new freedom, they will discover to their +sorrow that they have been pursuing a chimera—that there is really no such +animal as the male anarchist they have been denouncing and envying—that the +wholesale fornication of man, at least under Christian democracy, has little +more actual existence than honest advertising or sound cooking. They have +followed the porno maniacs in embracing a piece of buncombe, and when the day +of deliverance comes it will turn to ashes in their arms. +</p> + +<p> +Their error, as I say, lies in overestimating the courage and enterprise of +man. They themselves, barring mere physical valour, a quality in which the +average man is far exceeded by the average jackal or wolf, have more of both. +If the consequences, to a man, of the slightest descent from virginity were +one-tenth as swift and barbarous as the consequences to a young girl in like +case, it would take a division of infantry to dredge up a single male flouter +of that lex talionis in the whole western world. As things stand today, even +with the odds so greatly in his favour, the average male hesitates and is thus +not lost. Turn to the statistics of the vice crusaders if you doubt it. They +show that the weekly receipts of female recruits upon the wharves of sin are +always more than the demand; that more young women enter upon the vermilion +career than can make respectable livings at it; that the pressure of the +temptation they hold out is the chief factor in corrupting our undergraduates. +What was the first act of the American Army when it began summoning its young +clerks and college boys and plough hands to conscription camps? Its first act +was to mark off a so-called moral zone around each camp, and to secure it with +trenches and machine guns, and to put a lot of volunteer termagants to +patrolling it, that the assembled jeunesse might be protected in their +rectitude from the immoral advances of the adjacent milkmaids and poor working +girls. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0042"></a> +37. Women as Martyrs</h2> + +<p> +I have given three reasons for the prosperity of the notion that man is a +natural polygamist, bent eternally upon fresh dives into Lake of Brimstone No. +7. To these another should be added: the thirst for martyrdom which shows +itself in so many women, particularly under the higher forms of civilization. +This unhealthy appetite, in fact, may be described as one of civilization’s +diseases; it is almost unheard of in more primitive societies. The savage +woman, unprotected by her rude culture and forced to heavy and incessant +labour, has retained her physical strength and with it her honesty and +self-respect. The civilized woman, gradually degenerated by a greater ease, and +helped down that hill by the pretensions of civilized man, has turned her +infirmity into a virtue, and so affects a feebleness that is actually far +beyond the reality. It is by this route that she can most effectively disarm +masculine distrust, and get what she wants. Man is flattered by any +acknowledgment, however insincere, of his superior strength and capacity. He +likes to be leaned upon, appealed to, followed docilely. And this tribute to +his might caresses him on the psychic plane as well as on the plane of the +obviously physical. He not only enjoys helping a woman over a gutter; he also +enjoys helping her dry her tears. The result is the vast pretence that +characterizes the relations of the sexes under civilization—the double pretence +of man’s cunning and autonomy and of woman’s dependence and deference. Man is +always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder +to put her head on. +</p> + +<p> +This feminine affectation, of course, has gradually taken on the force of a +fixed habit, and so it has got a certain support, by a familiar process of +self-delusion, in reality. The civilized woman inherits that habit as she +inherits her cunning. She is born half convinced that she is really as weak and +helpless as she later pretends to be, and the prevailing folklore offers her +endless corroboration. One of the resultant phenomena is the delight in +martyrdom that one so often finds in women, and particularly in the least alert +and introspective of them. They take a heavy, unhealthy pleasure in suffering; +it subtly pleases them to be hard put upon; they like to picture themselves as +slaughtered saints. Thus they always find something to complain of; the very +conditions of domestic life give them a superabundance of clinical material. +And if, by any chance, such material shows a falling off, they are uneasy and +unhappy. Let a woman have a husband whose conduct is not reasonably open to +question, and she will invent mythical offences to make him bearable. And if +her invention fails she will be plunged into the utmost misery and humiliation. +This fact probably explains many mysterious divorces: the husband was not too +bad, but too good. For public opinion among women, remember, does not favour +the woman who is full of a placid contentment and has no masculine torts to +report; if she says that her husband is wholly satisfactory she is looked upon +as a numskull even more dense that he is himself. A man, speaking of his wife +to other men, always praises her extravagantly. Boasting about her soothes his +vanity; he likes to stir up the envy of his fellows. But when two women talk of +their husbands it is mainly atrocities that they describe. The most esteemed +woman gossip is the one with the longest and most various repertoire of +complaints. +</p> + +<p> +This yearning for martyrdom explains one of the commonly noted characters of +women: their eager flair for bearing physical pain. As we have seen, they have +actually a good deal less endurance than men; massive injuries shock them more +severely and kill them more quickly. But when acute algesia is unaccompanied by +any profounder phenomena they are undoubtedly able to bear it with a far +greater show of resignation. The reason is not far to seek. In pain a man sees +only an invasion of his liberty, strength and self-esteem. It floors him, +masters him, and makes him ridiculous. But a woman, more subtle and devious in +her processes of mind, senses the dramatic effect that the spectacle of her +suffering makes upon the spectators, already filled with compassion for her +feebleness. She would thus much rather be praised for facing pain with a +martyr’s fortitude than for devising some means of getting rid of it--the first +thought of a man. No woman could have invented chloroform, nor, for that +matter, alcohol. Both drugs offer an escape from situations and experiences +that, even in aggravated forms, women relish. The woman who drinks as men +drink—that is, to raise her threshold of sensation and ease the agony of +living—nearly always shows a deficiency in feminine characters and an undue +preponderance of masculine characters. Almost invariably you will find her vain +and boastful, and full of other marks of that bombastic exhibitionism which is +so sterlingly male. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0043"></a> +38. Pathological Effects</h2> + +<p> +This feminine craving for martyrdom, of course, often takes on a downright +pathological character, and so engages the psychiatrist. Women show many other +traits of the same sort. To be a woman under our Christian civilization, +indeed, means to live a life that is heavy with repression and dissimulation, +and this repression and dissimulation, in the long run, cannot fail to produce +effects that are indistinguishable from disease. You will find some of them +described at length in any handbook on psychoanalysis. The Viennese, Adler, and +the Dane, Poul Bjerre, argue, indeed, that womanliness itself, as it is +encountered under Christianity, is a disease. All women suffer from a +suppressed revolt against the inhibitions forced upon them by our artificial +culture, and this suppressed revolt, by well known Freudian means, produces a +complex of mental symptoms that is familiar to all of us. At one end of the +scale we observe the suffragette, with her grotesque adoption of the male +belief in laws, phrases and talismans, and her hysterical demand for a sexual +libertarianism that she could not put to use if she had it. And at the other +end we find the snuffling and neurotic woman, with her bogus martyrdom, her +extravagant pruderies and her pathological delusions. As Ibsen observed long +ago, this is a man’s world. Women have broken many of their old chains, but +they are still enmeshed in a formidable network of man-made taboos and +sentimentalities, and it will take them another generation, at least, to get +genuine freedom. That this is true is shown by the deep unrest that yet marks +the sex, despite its recent progress toward social, political and economic +equality. It is almost impossible to find a man who honestly wishes that he +were a woman, but almost every woman, at some time or other in her life, is +gnawed by a regret that she is not a man. +</p> + +<p> +Two of the hardest things that women have to bear are (a) the stupid masculine +disinclination to admit their intellectual superiority, or even their equality, +or even their possession of a normal human equipment for thought, and (b) the +equally stupid masculine doctrine that they constitute a special and ineffable +species of vertebrate, without the natural instincts and appetites of the +order—to adapt a phrase from Hackle, that they are transcendental and almost +gaseous mammals, and marked by a complete lack of certain salient mammalian +characters. The first imbecility has already concerned us at length. One finds +traces of it even in works professedly devoted to disposing of it. In one such +book, for example, I come upon this: “What all the skill and constructive +capacity of the physicians in the Crimean War failed to accomplish Florence +Nightingale accomplished by her beautiful femininity and nobility of soul.” In +other words, by her possession of some recondite and indescribable magic, +sharply separated from the ordinary mental processes of man. The theory is +unsound and preposterous. Miss Nightingale accomplished her useful work, not by +magic, but by hard common sense. The problem before her was simply one of +organization. Many men had tackled it, and all of them had failed stupendously. +What she did was to bring her feminine sharpness of wit, her feminine +clear-thinking, to bear upon it. Thus attacked, it yielded quickly, and once it +had been brought to order it was easy for other persons to carry on what she +had begun. But the opinion of a man’s world still prefers to credit her success +to some mysterious angelical quality, unstatable in lucid terms and having no +more reality than the divine inspiration of an archbishop. Her extraordinarily +acute and accurate intelligence is thus conveniently put upon the table, and +the amour propre of man is kept inviolate. To confess frankly that she had more +sense than any male Englishman of her generation would be to utter a truth too +harsh to be bearable. +</p> + +<p> +The second delusion commonly shows itself in the theory, already discussed, +that women are devoid of any sex instinct—that they submit to the odious +caresses of the lubricious male only by a powerful effort of the will, and with +the sole object of discharging their duty to posterity. It would be impossible +to go into this delusion with proper candour and at due length in a work +designed for reading aloud in the domestic circle; all I can do is to refer the +student to the books of any competent authority on the psychology of sex, say +Ellis, or to the confidences (if they are obtainable) of any complaisant +bachelor of his acquaintance. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0044"></a> +39. Women as Christians</h2> + +<p> +The glad tidings preached by Christ were obviously highly favourable to women. +He lifted them to equality before the Lord when their very possession of souls +was still doubted by the majority of rival theologians. Moreover, He esteemed +them socially and set value upon their sagacity, and one of the most disdained +of their sex, a lady formerly in public life, was among His regular advisers. +Mariolatry is thus by no means the invention of the mediaeval popes, as +Protestant theologians would have us believe. On the contrary, it is plainly +discernible in the Four Gospels. What the mediaeval popes actually invented +(or, to be precise, reinvented, for they simply borrowed the elements of it +from St. Paul) was the doctrine of women’s inferiority, the precise opposite of +the thing credited to them. Committed, for sound reasons of discipline, to the +celibacy of the clergy, they had to support it by depicting all traffic with +women in the light of a hazardous and ignominious business. The result was the +deliberate organization and development of the theory of female triviality, +lack of responsibility and general looseness of mind. Woman became a sort of +devil, but without the admired intelligence of the regular demons. The +appearance of women saints, however, offered a constant and embarrassing +criticism of this idiotic doctrine. If occasional women were fit to sit upon +the right hand of God—and they were often proving it, and forcing the church to +acknowledge it—then surely all women could not be as bad as the books made them +out. There thus arose the concept of the angelic woman, the natural vestal; we +see her at full length in the romances of mediaeval chivalry. What emerged in +the end was a sort of double doctrine, first that women were devils and +secondly that they were angels. This preposterous dualism has merged, as we +have seen, into a compromise dogma in modern times. By that dogma it is held, +on the one hand, that women are unintelligent and immoral, and on the other +hand, that they are free from all those weaknesses of the flesh which +distinguish men. This, roughly speaking, is the notion of the average male +numskull today. +</p> + +<p> +Christianity has thus both libelled women and flattered them, but with the +weight always on the side of the libel. It is therefore, at bottom, their +enemy, as the religion of Christ, now wholly extinct, was their friend. And as +they gradually throw off the shackles that have bound them for a thousand years +they show appreciation of the fact. Women, indeed, are not naturally religious, +and they are growing less and less religious as year chases year. Their +ordinary devotion has little if any pious exaltation in it; it is a routine +practice, force on them by the masculine notion that an appearance of holiness +is proper to their lowly station, and a masculine feeling that church-going +somehow keeps them in order, and out of doings that would be less reassuring. +When they exhibit any genuine religious fervour, its sexual character is +usually so obvious that even the majority of men are cognizant of it. Women +never go flocking ecstatically to a church in which the agent of God in the +pulpit is an elderly asthmatic with a watchful wife. When one finds them driven +to frenzies by the merits of the saints, and weeping over the sorrows of the +heathen, and rushing out to haul the whole vicinage up to grace, and spending +hours on their knees in hysterical abasement before the heavenly throne, it is +quite safe to assume, even without an actual visit, that the ecclesiastic who +has worked the miracle is a fair and toothsome fellow, and a good deal more +aphrodisiacal than learned. All the great preachers to women in modern times +have been men of suave and ingratiating habit, and the great majority of them, +from Henry Ward Beecher up and down, have been taken, soon or late, in +transactions far more suitable to the boudoir than to the footstool of the +Almighty. Their famous killings have always been made among the silliest sort +of women—the sort, in brief, who fall so short of the normal acumen of their +sex that they are bemused by mere beauty in men. +</p> + +<p> +Such women are in a minority, and so the sex shows a good deal fewer religious +enthusiasts per mille than the sex of sentiment and belief. Attending, several +years ago, the gladiatorial shows of the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, the celebrated +American pulpit-clown, I was constantly struck by the great preponderance of +males in the pen devoted to the saved. Men of all ages and in enormous numbers +came swarming to the altar, loudly bawling for help against their sins, but the +women were anything but numerous, and the few who appeared were chiefly either +chlorotic adolescents or pathetic old Saufschwestern. For six nights running I +sat directly beneath the gifted exhorter without seeing a single female convert +of what statisticians call the child-bearing age—that is, the age of maximum +intelligence and charm. Among the male simpletons bagged by his yells during +this time were the president of a railroad, half a dozen rich bankers and +merchants, and the former governor of an American state. But not a woman of +comparable position or dignity. Not a woman that any self-respecting bachelor +would care to chuck under the chin. +</p> + +<p> +This cynical view of religious emotionalism, and with it of the whole stock of +ecclesiastical balderdash, is probably responsible, at least in part, for the +reluctance of women to enter upon the sacerdotal career. In those Christian +sects which still bar them from the pulpit—usually on the imperfectly concealed +ground that they are not equal to its alleged demands upon the morals and the +intellect—one never hears of them protesting against the prohibition; they are +quite content to leave the degrading imposture to men, who are better fitted +for it by talent and conscience. And in those baroque sects, chiefly American, +which admit them they show no eagerness to put on the stole and chasuble. When +the first clergywoman appeared in the United States, it was predicted by +alarmists that men would be driven out of the pulpit by the new competition. +Nothing of the sort has occurred, nor is it in prospect. The whole corps of +female divines in the country might be herded into one small room. Women, when +literate at all, are far too intelligent to make effective ecclesiastics. Their +sharp sense of reality is in endless opposition to the whole sacerdotal +masquerade, and their cynical humour stands against the snorting that is +inseparable from pulpit oratory. +</p> + +<p> +Those women who enter upon the religious life are almost invariably moved by +some motive distinct from mere pious inflammation. It is a commonplace, indeed, +that, in Catholic countries, girls are driven into convents by economic +considerations or by disasters of amour far oftener than they are drawn there +by the hope of heaven. Read the lives of the female saints, and you will see +how many of them tried marriage and failed at it before ever they turned to +religion. In Protestant lands very few women adopt it as a profession at all, +and among the few a secular impulse is almost always visible. The girl who is +suddenly overcome by a desire to minister to the heathen in foreign lands is +nearly invariably found, on inspection, to be a girl harbouring a theory that +it would be agreeable to marry some heroic missionary. In point of fact, she +duly marries him. At home, perhaps, she has found it impossible to get a +husband, but in the remoter marches of China, Senegal and Somaliland, with no +white competition present, it is equally impossible to fail. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0045"></a> +40. Piety as a Social Habit</h2> + +<p> +What remains of the alleged piety of women is little more than a social habit, +reinforced in most communities by a paucity of other and more inviting +divertissements. If you have ever observed the women of Spain and Italy at +their devotions you need not be told how much the worship of God may be a mere +excuse for relaxation and gossip. These women, in their daily lives, are +surrounded by a formidable network of mediaeval taboos; their normal human +desire for ease and freedom in intercourse is opposed by masculine distrust and +superstition; they meet no strangers; they see and hear nothing new. In the +house of the Most High they escape from that vexing routine. Here they may +brush shoulders with a crowd. Here, so to speak, they may crane their mental +necks and stretch their spiritual legs. Here, above all, they may come into +some sort of contact with men relatively more affable, cultured and charming +than their husbands and fathers—to wit, with the rev. clergy. +</p> + +<p> +Elsewhere in Christendom, though women are not quite so relentlessly watched +and penned up, they feel much the same need of variety and excitement, and both +are likewise on tap in the temples of the Lord. No one, I am sure, need be told +that the average missionary society or church sewing circle is not primarily a +religious organization. Its actual purpose is precisely that of the absurd +clubs and secret orders to which the lower and least resourceful classes of men +belong: it offers a means of refreshment, of self-expression, of personal +display, of political manipulation and boasting, and, if the pastor happens to +be interesting, of discreet and almost lawful intrigue. In the course of a life +largely devoted to the study of pietistic phenomena, I have never met a single +woman who cared an authentic damn for the actual heathen. The attraction in +their salvation is always almost purely social. Women go to church for the same +reason that farmers and convicts go to church. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, there is the aesthetic lure. Religion, in most parts of Christendom, +holds out the only bait of beauty that the inhabitants are ever cognizant of. +It offers music, dim lights, relatively ambitious architecture, eloquence, +formality and mystery, the caressing meaninglessness that is at the heart of +poetry. Women are far more responsive to such things than men, who are +ordinarily quite as devoid of aesthetic sensitiveness as so many oxen. The +attitude of the typical man toward beauty in its various forms is, in fact, an +attitude of suspicion and hostility. He does not regard a work of art as merely +inert and stupid; he regards it as, in some indefinable way, positively +offensive. He sees the artist as a professional voluptuary and scoundrel, and +would no more trust him in his household than he would trust a coloured +clergyman in his hen-yard. It was men, and not women, who invented such sordid +and literal faiths as those of the Mennonites, Dunkards, Wesleyans and Scotch +Presbyterians, with their antipathy to beautiful ritual, their obscene +buttonholing of God, their great talent for reducing the ineffable mystery of +religion to a mere bawling of idiots. The normal woman, in so far as she has +any religion at all, moves irresistibly toward Catholicism, with its poetical +obscurantism. The evangelical Protestant sects have a hard time holding her. +She can no more be an actual Methodist than a gentleman can be a Methodist. +</p> + +<p> +This inclination toward beauty, of course, is dismissed by the average male +blockhead as no more than a feeble sentimentality. The truth is that it is +precisely the opposite. It is surely not sentimentality to be moved by the +stately and mysterious ceremony of the mass, or even, say, by those timid +imitations of it which one observes in certain Protestant churches. Such +proceedings, whatever their defects from the standpoint of a pure aesthetic, +are at all events vastly more beautiful than any of the private acts of the +folk who take part in them. They lift themselves above the barren +utilitarianism of everyday life, and no less above the maudlin sentimentalities +that men seek pleasure in. They offer a means of escape, convenient and +inviting, from that sordid routine of thought and occupation which women revolt +against so pertinaciously. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0046"></a> +41. The Ethics of Women</h2> + +<p> +I have said that the religion preached by Jesus (now wholly extinct in the +world) was highly favourable to women. This was not saying, of course, that +women have repaid the compliment by adopting it. They are, in fact, indifferent +Christians in the primitive sense, just as they are bad Christians in the +antagonistic modern sense, and particularly on the side of ethics. If they +actually accept the renunciations commanded by the Sermon on the Mount, it is +only in an effort to flout their substance under cover of their appearance. No +woman is really humble; she is merely politic. No woman, with a free choice +before her, chooses self-immolation; the most she genuinely desires in that +direction is a spectacular martyrdom. No woman delights in poverty. No woman +yields when she can prevail. No woman is honestly meek. +</p> + +<p> +In their practical ethics, indeed, women pay little heed to the precepts of the +Founder of Christianity, and the fact has passed into proverb. Their +gentleness, like the so-called honour of men, is visible only in situations +which offer them no menace. The moment a woman finds herself confronted by an +antagonist genuinely dangerous, either to her own security or to the well-being +of those under her protection—say a child or a husband—she displays a +bellicosity which stops at nothing, however outrageous. In the courts of law +one occasionally encounters a male extremist who tells the truth, the whole +truth and nothing but the truth, even when it is against his cause, but no such +woman has ever been on view since the days of Justinian. It is, indeed, an +axiom of the bar that women invariably lie upon the stand, and the whole effort +of a barrister who has one for a client is devoted to keeping her within +bounds, that the obtuse suspicions of the male jury may not be unduly aroused. +Women litigants almost always win their cases, not, as is commonly assumed, +because the jurymen fall in love with them, but simply and solely because they +are clear-headed, resourceful, implacable and without qualms. +</p> + +<p> +What is here visible in the halls of justice, in the face of a vast technical +equipment for combating mendacity, is ten times more obvious in freer fields. +Any man who is so unfortunate as to have a serious controversy with a woman, +say in the departments of finance, theology or amour, must inevitably carry +away from it a sense of having passed through a dangerous and almost gruesome +experience. Women not only bite in the clinches; they bite even in open +fighting; they have a dental reach, so to speak, of amazing length. No attack +is so desperate that they will not undertake it, once they are aroused; no +device is so unfair and horrifying that it stays them. In my early days, +desiring to improve my prose, I served for a year or so as reporter for a +newspaper in a police court, and during that time I heard perhaps four hundred +cases of so-called wife-beating. The husbands, in their defence, almost +invariably pleaded justification, and some of them told such tales of studied +atrocity at the domestic hearth, both psychic and physical, that the learned +magistrate discharged them with tears in his eyes and the very catchpolls in +the courtroom had to blow their noses. Many more men than women go insane, and +many more married men than single men. The fact puzzles no one who has had the +same opportunity that I had to find out what goes on, year in and year out, +behind the doors of apparently happy homes. A woman, if she hates her husband +(and many of them do), can make life so sour and obnoxious to him that even +death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison. This hatred, of course, is +often, and perhaps almost invariably, quite justified. To be the wife of an +ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The +hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his +puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, +his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his +loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above the +lowest. To be the object of the oafish affections of such a creature, even when +they are honest and profound, cannot be expected to give any genuine joy to a +woman of sense and refinement. His performance as a gallant, as Honor de Balzac +long ago observed, unescapably suggests a gorilla’s efforts to play the violin. +Women survive the tragicomedy only by dint of their great capacity for +play-acting. They are able to act so realistically that often they deceive even +themselves; the average woman’s contentment, indeed, is no more than a tribute +to her histrionism. But there must be innumerable revolts in secret, even so, +and one sometimes wonders that so few women, with the thing so facile and so +safe, poison their husbands. Perhaps it is not quite as rare as vital +statistics make it out; the deathrate among husbands is very much higher than +among wives. More than once, indeed, I have gone to the funeral of an +acquaintance who died suddenly, and observed a curious glitter in the eyes of +the inconsolable widow. +</p> + +<p> +Even in this age of emancipation, normal women have few serious transactions in +life save with their husbands and potential husbands; the business of marriage +is their dominant concern from adolescence to senility. When they step outside +their habitual circle they show the same alert and eager wariness that they +exhibit within it. A man who has dealings with them must keep his wits about +him, and even when he is most cautious he is often flabbergasted by their +sudden and unconscionable forays. Whenever woman goes into trade she quickly +gets a reputation as a sharp trader. Every little town in America has its Hetty +Green, each sweating blood from turnips, each the terror of all the male +usurers of the neighbourhood. The man who tackles such an amazon of barter +takes his fortune into his hands; he has little more chance of success against +the feminine technique in business than he has against the feminine technique +in marriage. In both arenas the advantage of women lies in their freedom from +sentimentality. In business they address themselves wholly to their own profit, +and give no thought whatever to the hopes, aspirations and amour propre of +their antagonists. And in the duel of sex they fence, not to make points, but +to disable and disarm. A man, when he succeeds in throwing off a woman who has +attempted to marry him, always carries away a maudlin sympathy for her in her +defeat and dismay. But no one ever heard of a woman who pitied the poor fellow +whose honest passion she had found it expedient to spurn. On the contrary, +women take delight in such clownish agonies, and exhibit them proudly, and +boast about them to other women. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0047"></a> +V. The New Age</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0048"></a> +42. The Transvaluation of Values</h2> + +<p> +The gradual emancipation of women that has been going on for the last century +has still a long way to proceed before they are wholly delivered from their +traditional burdens and so stand clear of the oppressions of men. But already, +it must be plain, they have made enormous progress—perhaps more than they made +in the ten thousand years preceding. The rise of the industrial system, which +has borne so harshly upon the race in general, has brought them certain +unmistakable benefits. Their economic dependence, though still sufficient to +make marriage highly attractive to them, is nevertheless so far broken down +that large classes of women are now almost free agents, and quite independent +of the favour of men. Most of these women, responding to ideas that are still +powerful, are yet intrigued, of course, by marriage, and prefer it to the +autonomy that is coming in, but the fact remains that they now have a free +choice in the matter, and that dire necessity no longer controls them. After +all, they needn’t marry if they don’t want to; it is possible to get their +bread by their own labour in the workshops of the world. Their grandmothers +were in a far more difficult position. Failing marriage, they not only suffered +a cruel ignominy, but in many cases faced the menace of actual starvation. +There was simply no respectable place in the economy of those times for the +free woman. She either had to enter a nunnery or accept a disdainful patronage +that was as galling as charity. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing could be plainer than the effect that the increasing economic security +of women is having upon their whole habit of life and mind. The diminishing +marriage rate and the even more rapidly diminishing birth rates show which way +the wind is blowing. It is common for male statisticians, with characteristic +imbecility, to ascribe the fall in the marriage rate to a growing +disinclination on the male side. This growing disinclination is actually on the +female side. Even though no considerable body of women has yet reached the +definite doctrine that marriage is less desirable than freedom, it must be +plain that large numbers of them now approach the business with far greater +fastidiousness than their grandmothers or even their mothers exhibited. They +are harder to please, and hence pleased less often. The woman of a century ago +could imagine nothing more favourable to her than marriage; even marriage with +a fifth rate man was better than no marriage at all. This notion is gradually +feeling the opposition of a contrary notion. Women in general may still prefer +marriage to work, but there is an increasing minority which begins to realize +that work may offer the greater contentment, particularly if it be mellowed by +a certain amount of philandering. +</p> + +<p> +There already appears in the world, indeed, a class of women, who, while still +not genuinely averse to marriage, are yet free from any theory that it is +necessary, or even invariably desirable. Among these women are a good many +somewhat vociferous propagandists, almost male in their violent earnestness; +they range from the man-eating suffragettes to such preachers of free +motherhood as Ellen Key and such professional shockers of the bourgeoisie as +the American prophetess of birth-control, Margaret Sanger. But among them are +many more who wake the world with no such noisy eloquence, but content +themselves with carrying out their ideas in a quiet and respectable manner. The +number of such women is much larger than is generally imagined, and that number +tends to increase steadily. They are women who, with their economic +independence assured, either by inheritance or by their own efforts, chiefly in +the arts and professions, do exactly as they please, and make no pother about +it. Naturally enough, their superiority to convention and the common frenzy +makes them extremely attractive to the better sort of men, and so it is not +uncommon for one of them to find herself voluntarily sought in marriage, +without any preliminary scheming by herself—surely an experience that very few +ordinary women ever enjoy, save perhaps in dreams or delirium. +</p> + +<p> +The old order changeth and giveth place to the new. Among the women’s clubs and +in the women’s colleges, I have no doubt, there is still much debate of the old +and silly question: Are platonic relations possible between the sexes? In other +words, is friendship possible without sex? Many a woman of the new order +dismisses the problem with another question: Why without sex? With the decay of +the ancient concept of women as property there must come inevitably a +reconsideration of the whole sex question, and out of that reconsideration +there must come a revision of the mediaeval penalties which now punish the +slightest frivolity in the female. The notion that honour in women is +exclusively a physical matter, that a single aberrance may convert a woman of +the highest merits into a woman of none at all, that the sole valuable thing a +woman can bring to marriage is virginity—this notion is so preposterous that no +intelligent person, male or female, actually cherishes it. It survives as one +of the hollow conventions of Christianity; nay, of the levantine barbarism that +preceded Christianity. As women throw off the other conventions which now bind +them they will throw off this one, too, and so their virtue, grounded upon +fastidiousness and self-respect instead of upon mere fear and conformity, will +become afar more laudable thing than it ever can be under the present system. +And for its absence, if they see fit to dispose of it, they will no more +apologize than a man apologizes today. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0049"></a> +43. The Lady of Joy</h2> + +<p> +Even prostitution, in the long run, may become a more or less respectable +profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks. That quality will surely +attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary; whatever is unnecessary is +always respectable, for example, religion, fashionable clothing, and a +knowledge of Latin grammar. The prostitute is disesteemed today, not because +her trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but +because she is currently assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity, +against her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is usually unsound is +no objection to it; nearly all the thinking of the world, particularly in the +field of morals, is based upon unsound assumption, e.g., that God observes the +fall of a sparrow and is shocked by the fall of a Sunday-school superintendent. +The truth is that prostitution is one of the most attractive of the occupations +practically open to the sort of women who engage in it, and that the prostitute +commonly likes her work, and would not exchange places with a shop-girl or a +waitress for anything in the world. The notion to the contrary is propagated by +unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the hands of professional reformers, and +who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter in order to cultivate their +good will, just as convicts in prison, questioned by tee-totalers, always +ascribe their rascality to alcohol. No prostitute of anything resembling normal +intelligence is under the slightest duress; she is perfectly free to abandon +her trade and go into a shop or factory or into domestic service whenever the +impulse strikes her; all the prevailing gabble about white slave jails and +kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a living by feeding such nonsense +to the credulous. So long as the average prostitute is able to make a good +living, she is quite content with her lot, and disposed to contrast it +egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters. If she complains of it, +then you may be sure that her success is below her expectations. A starving +lawyer always sees injustice, in the courts. A bad physician is a bitter critic +of Ehrlich and Pasteur. And when a suburban clergyman is forced out of his cure +by a vestry-room revolution he almost invariably concludes that the sinfulness +of man is incurable, and sometimes he even begins to doubt some of the +typographical errors in Holy Writ. +</p> + +<p> +The high value set upon virginity by men, whose esteem of it is based upon a +mixture of vanity and voluptuousness, causes many women to guard it in their +own persons with a jealousy far beyond their private inclinations and +interests. It is their theory that the loss of it would materially impair their +chances of marriage. This theory is not supported by the facts. The truth is +that the woman who sacrifices her chastity, everything else being equal, stands +a much better chance of making a creditable marriage than the woman who remains +chaste. This is especially true of women of the lower economic classes. At once +they come into contact, hitherto socially difficult and sometimes almost +impossible, with men of higher classes, and begin to take on, with the curious +facility of their sex, the refinements and tastes and points of view of those +classes. The mistress thus gathers charm, and what has begun as a sordid sale +of amiability not uncommonly ends with formal marriage. The number of such +marriages is enormously greater than appears superficially, for both parties +obviously make every effort to conceal the facts. Within the circle of my +necessarily limited personal acquaintance I know of scores of men, some of them +of wealth and position, who have made such marriages, and who do not seem to +regret it. It is an old observation, indeed, that a woman who has previously +disposed of her virtue makes a good wife. The common theory is that this is +because she is grateful to her husband for rescuing her from social outlawry; +the truth is that she makes a good wife because she is a shrewd woman, and has +specialized professionally in masculine weakness, and is thus extra-competent +at the traditional business of her sex. Such a woman often shows a truly +magnificent sagacity. It is very difficult to deceive her logically, and it is +impossible to disarm her emotionally. Her revolt against the pruderies and +sentimentalities of the world was evidence, to begin with, of her intellectual +enterprise and courage, and her success as a rebel is proof of her +extraordinary pertinacity, resourcefulness and acumen. +</p> + +<p> +Even the most lowly prostitute is better off, in all worldly ways, than the +virtuous woman of her own station in life. She has less work to do, it is less +monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a far greater variety of men, and they +are of classes distinctly beyond her own. Nor is her occupation hazardous and +her ultimate fate tragic. A dozen or more years ago I observed a somewhat +amusing proof of this last. At that time certain sentimental busybodies of the +American city in which I lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution +therein, and some of them came to me in advance, as a practical journalist, for +advice as to how to proceed. I found that all of them shared the common +superstition that the professional life of the average prostitute is only five +years long, and that she invariably ends in the gutter. They were enormously +amazed when they unearthed the truth. This truth was to the effect that the +average prostitute of that town ended her career, not in the morgue but at the +altar of God, and that those who remained unmarried often continued in practice +for ten, fifteen and even twenty years, and then retired on competences. It was +established, indeed, that fully eighty per cent married, and that they almost +always got husbands who would have been far beyond their reach had they +remained virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there were a +dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen, small shopkeepers and minor +officials, and at least two or three who married well-to-do tradesmen and +professional men. Among the thousands whose careers were studied there was +actually one who ended as the wife of the town’s richest banker—that is, one +who bagged the best catch in the whole community. This woman had begun as a +domestic servant, and abandoned that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel. +Her experiences there polished and civilized her, and in her old age she was a +grande dame of great dignity. Much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the +ancient profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward +it. An educated woman, hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is expected +to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from +such contacts, and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely. +What she overlooks is that these men, however gross and repulsive they may +appear to her, are measurably superior to men of the prostitute’s own class—say +her father and brothers—and that communion with them, far from being +disgusting, is often rather romantic. I well remember observing, during my +collaboration with the vice-crusaders aforesaid, the delight of a lady of joy +who had attracted the notice of a police lieutenant; she was intensely pleased +by the idea of having a client of such haughty manners, such brilliant dress, +and what seemed to her to be so dignified a profession. It is always forgotten +that this weakness is not confined to prostitutes, but run through the whole +female sex. The woman who could not imagine an illicit affair with a wealthy +soap manufacturer or even with a lawyer finds it quite easy to imagine herself +succumbing to an ambassador or a duke. There are very few exceptions to this +rule. In the most reserved of modern societies the women who represent their +highest flower are notoriously complaisant to royalty. And royal women, to +complete the circuit, not infrequently yield to actors and musicians, i.e., to +men radiating a glamour not encountered even in princes. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0050"></a> +44. The Future of Marriage</h2> + +<p> +The transvaluation of values that is now in progress will go on slowly and for +a very long while. That it will ever be quite complete is, of course, +impossible. There are inherent differences will continue to show themselves +until the end of time. As woman gradually becomes convinced, not only of the +possibility of economic independence, but also of its value, she will probably +lose her present overmastering desire for marriage, and address herself to +meeting men in free economic competition. That is to say, she will address +herself to acquiring that practical competence, that high talent for puerile +and chiefly mechanical expertness, which now sets man ahead of her in the +labour market of the world. To do this she will have to sacrifice some of her +present intelligence; it is impossible to imagine a genuinely intelligent human +being becoming a competent trial lawyer, or buttonhole worker, or newspaper +sub-editor, or piano tuner, or house painter. Women, to get upon all fours with +men in such stupid occupations, will have to commit spiritual suicide, which is +probably much further than they will ever actually go. Thus a shade of their +present superiority to men will always remain, and with it a shade of their +relative inefficiency, and so marriage will remain attractive to them, or at +all events to most of them, and its overthrow will be prevented. To abolish it +entirely, as certain fevered reformers propose, would be as difficult as to +abolish the precession of the equinoxes. +</p> + +<p> +At the present time women vacillate somewhat absurdly between two schemes of +life, the old and the new. On the one hand, their economic independence is +still full of conditions, and on the other hand they are in revolt against the +immemorial conventions. The result is a general unrest, with many symptoms of +extravagant and unintelligent revolt. One of those symptoms is the appearance +of intellectual striving in women—not a striving, alas, toward the genuine +pearls and rubies of the mind, but one merely toward the acquirement of the +rubber stamps that men employ in their so-called thinking. Thus we have women +who launch themselves into party politics, and fill their heads with a vast +mass of useless knowledge about political tricks, customs, theories and +personalities. Thus, too, we have the woman social reformer, trailing along +ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians, each with +something to sell. And thus we have the woman who goes in for advanced wisdom +of the sort on draught in women’s clubs—in brief, the sort of wisdom which +consists entirely of a body of beliefs and propositions that are ignorant, +unimportant and untrue. Such banal striving is most prodigally on display in +the United States, where superficiality amounts to a national disease. Its +popularity is due to the relatively greater leisure of the American people, who +work less than any other people in the world, and, above all, to the relatively +greater leisure of American women. Thousands of them have been emancipated from +any compulsion to productive labour without having acquired any compensatory +intellectual or artistic interest or social duty. The result is that they swarm +in the women’s clubs, and waste their time, listening to bad poetry, worse +music, and still worse lectures on Maeterlinck, Balkan politics and the +subconscious. It is among such women that one observes the periodic rages for +Bergsonism, the Montessori method, the twilight sleep and other such follies, +so pathetically characteristic of American culture. +</p> + +<p> +One of the evil effects of this tendency I have hitherto descanted upon, to +wit, the growing disposition of American women to regard all routine labour, +particularly in the home, as infra dignitatem and hence intolerable. Out of +that notion arise many lamentable phenomena. On the one hand, we have the +spectacle of a great number of healthy and well-fed women engaged in public +activities that, nine times out of ten, are meaningless, mischievous and a +nuisance, and on the other hand we behold such a decay in the domestic arts +that, at the first onslaught of the late war, the national government had to +import a foreign expert to teach the housewives of the country the veriest +elements of thrift. No such instruction was needed by the housewives of the +Continent. They were simply told how much food they could have, and their +natural competence did the rest. There is never any avoidable waste there, +either in peace or in war. A French housewife has little use for a garbage can, +save as a depository for uplifting literature. She does her best with the means +at her disposal, not only in war time but at all times. +</p> + +<p> +As I have said over and over again in this inquiry, a woman’s disinclination to +acquire the intricate expertness that lies at the bottom of good housekeeping +is due primarily to her active intelligence; it is difficult for her to +concentrate her mind upon such stupid and meticulous enterprises. But whether +difficult or easy, it is obviously important for the average woman to make some +effort in that direction, for if she fails to do so there is chaos. That chaos +is duly visible in the United States. Here women reveal one of their +subterranean qualities: their deficiency in conscientiousness. They are quite +without that dog-like fidelity to duty which is one of the shining marks of +men. They never summon up a high pride in doing what is inherently +disagreeable; they always go to the galleys under protest, and with vows of +sabotage; their fundamental philosophy is almost that of the syndicalists. The +sentimentality of men connives at this, and is thus largely responsible for it. +Before the average puella, apprenticed in the kitchen, can pick up a fourth of +the culinary subtleties that are commonplace even to the chefs on dining cars, +she has caught a man and need concern herself about them no more, for he has to +eat, in the last analysis, whatever she sets before him, and his lack of +intelligence makes it easy for her to shut off his academic criticisms by bald +appeals to his emotions. By an easy process he finally attaches a positive +value to her indolence. It is a proof, he concludes, of her fineness of soul. +In the presence of her lofty incompetence he is abashed. +</p> + +<p> +But as women, gaining economic autonomy, meet men in progressively bitterer +competition, the rising masculine distrust and fear of them will be reflected +even in the enchanted domain of marriage, and the husband, having yielded up +most of his old rights, will begin to reveal a new jealousy of those that +remain, and particularly of the right to a fair quid pro quo for his own docile +industry. In brief, as women shake off their ancient disabilities they will +also shake off some of their ancient immunities, and their doings will come to +be regarded with a soberer and more exigent scrutiny than now prevails. The +extension of the suffrage, I believe, will encourage this awakening; in +wresting it from the reluctant male the women of the western world have planted +dragons’ teeth, the which will presently leap up and gnaw them. Now that women +have the political power to obtain their just rights, they will begin to lose +their old power to obtain special privileges by sentimental appeals. Men, +facing them squarely, will consider them anew, not as romantic political and +social invalids, to be coddled and caressed, but as free competitors in a harsh +world. When that reconsideration gets under way there will be a general +overhauling of the relations between the sexes, and some of the fair ones, I +suspect, will begin to wonder why they didn’t let well enough alone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0051"></a> +45. Effects of the War</h2> + +<p> +The present series of wars, it seems likely, will continue for twenty or thirty +years, and perhaps longer. That the first clash was inconclusive was shown +brilliantly by the preposterous nature of the peace finally reached—a peace so +artificial and dishonest that the signing of it was almost equivalent to a new +declaration of war. At least three new contests in the grand manner are plainly +insight—one between Germany and France to rectify the unnatural tyranny of a +weak and incompetent nation over a strong and enterprising nation, one between +Japan and the United States for the mastery of the Pacific, and one between +England and the United States for the control of the sea. To these must be +added various minor struggles, and perhaps one or two of almost major +character: the effort of Russia to regain her old unity and power, the effort +of the Turks to put down the slave rebellion (of Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, +etc.)which now menaces them, the effort of the Latin-Americans to throw off the +galling Yankee yoke, and the joint effort of Russia and Germany (perhaps with +England and Italy aiding) to get rid of such international nuisances as the +insane Polish republic, the petty states of the Baltic, and perhaps also most +of the Balkan states. I pass over the probability of a new mutiny in India, of +the rising of China against the Japanese, and of a general struggle for a new +alignment of boundaries in South America. All of these wars, great and small, +are probable; most of them are humanly certain. They will be fought +ferociously, and with the aid of destructive engines of the utmost efficiency. +They will bring about an unparalleled butchery of men, and a large proportion +of these men will be under forty years of age. +</p> + +<p> +As a result there will be a shortage of husbands in Christendom, and as a +second result the survivors will be appreciably harder to snare than the men of +today. Every man of agreeable exterior and easy means will be pursued, not +merely by a few dozen or score of women, as now, but by whole battalions and +brigades of them, and he will be driven in sheer self-defence into very sharp +bargaining. Perhaps in the end the state will have to interfere in the +business, to prevent the potential husband going to waste in the turmoil of +opportunity. +</p> + +<p> +Just what form this interference is likely to take has not yet appeared +clearly. In France there is already a wholesale legitimization of children born +out of wedlock and in Eastern Europe there has been a clamour for the +legalization of polygamy, but these devices do not meet the main problem, which +is the encouragement of monogamy to the utmost. A plan that suggests itself is +the amelioration of the position of the monogamous husband, now rendered +increasingly uncomfortable by the laws of most Christian states. I do not think +that the more intelligent sort of women, faced by a perilous shortage of men, +would object seriously to that amelioration. They must see plainly that the +present system, if it is carried much further, will begin to work powerfully +against their best interests, if only by greatly reinforcing the disinclination +to marriage that already exists among the better sort of men. The woman of true +discretion, I am convinced, would much rather marry a superior man, even on +unfavourable terms, than make John Smith her husband, serf and prisoner at one +stroke. +</p> + +<p> +The law must eventually recognize this fact and make provision for it. The +average husband, perhaps, deserves little succour. The woman who pursues and +marries him, though she may be moved by selfish aims, should be properly +rewarded by the state for her service to it—a service surely not to be lightly +estimated in a military age. And that reward may conveniently take the form, as +in the United States, of statutes giving her title to a large share of his real +property and requiring him to surrender most of his income to her, and +releasing her from all obedience to him and from all obligation to keep his +house in order. But the woman who aspires to higher game should be quite +willing, it seems to me, to resign some of these advantages in compensation for +the greater honour and satisfaction of being wife to a man of merit, and mother +to his children. All that is needed is laws allowing her, if she will, to +resign her right of dower, her right to maintenance and her immunity from +discipline, and to make any other terms that she may be led to regard as +equitable. At present women are unable to make most of these concessions even +if they would: the laws of the majority of western nations are inflexible. If, +for example, an Englishwoman should agree, by an ante-nuptial contract, to +submit herself to the discipline, not of the current statutes, but of the elder +common law, which allowed a husband to correct his wife corporally with a stick +no thicker than his thumb, it would be competent for any sentimental neighbour +to set the agreement at naught by haling her husband before a magistrate for +carrying it out, and it is a safe wager that the magistrate would jail him. +</p> + +<p> +This plan, however novel it may seem, is actually already in operation. Many a +married woman, in order to keep her husband from revolt, makes more or less +disguised surrenders of certain of the rights and immunities that she has under +existing laws. There are, for example, even in America, women who practise the +domestic arts with competence and diligence, despite the plain fact that no +legal penalty would be visited upon them if they failed to do so. There are +women who follow external trades and professions, contributing a share to the +family exchequer. There are women who obey their husbands, even against their +best judgments. There are, most numerous of all, women who wink discreetly at +husbandly departures, overt or in mere intent, from the oath of chemical purity +taken at the altar. It is a commonplace, indeed, that many happy marriages +admit a party of the third part. There would be more of them if there were more +women with enough serenity of mind to see the practical advantage of the +arrangement. The trouble with such triangulations is not primarily that they +involve perjury or that they offer any fundamental offence to the wife; if she +avoids banal theatricals, in fact, they commonly have the effect of augmenting +the husband’s devotion to her and respect for her, if only as the fruit of +comparison. The trouble with them is that very few men among us have sense +enough to manage them intelligently. The masculine mind is readily taken in by +specious values; the average married man of Protestant Christendom, if he +succumbs at all, succumbs to some meretricious and flamboyant creature, bent +only upon fleecing him. Here is where the harsh realism of the Frenchman shows +its superiority to the sentimentality of the men of the Teutonic races. A +Frenchman would no more think of taking a mistress without consulting his wife +than he would think of standing for office without consulting his wife. The +result is that he is seldom victimized. For one Frenchman ruined by women there +are at least a hundred Englishmen and Americans, despite the fact that a +hundred times as many Frenchmen engage in that sort of recreation. The case of +Zola is typical. As is well known, his amours were carefully supervised by Mme. +Zola from the first days of their marriage, and in consequence his life was +wholly free from scandals and his mind was never distracted from his work. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0052"></a> +46. The Eternal Romance</h2> + +<p> +But whatever the future of monogamous marriage, there will never be any decay +of that agreeable adventurousness which now lies at the bottom of all +transactions between the sexes. Women may emancipate themselves, they may +borrow the whole bag of masculine tricks, and they may cure themselves of their +present desire for the vegetable security of marriage, but they will never +cease to be women, and so long as they are women they will remain provocative +to men. Their chief charm today lies precisely in the fact that they are +dangerous, that they threaten masculine liberty and autonomy, that their sharp +minds present a menace vastly greater than that of acts of God and the public +enemy—and they will be dangerous for ever. Men fear them, and are fascinated by +them. They know how to show their teeth charmingly; the more enlightened of +them have perfected a superb technique of fascination. It was Nietzsche who +called them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, remember, but of +the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capacity for rewarding +masculine industry and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their +acute understanding combines with their capacity for evoking ideas of beauty to +make them incomparable companions when the serious business of the day is done, +and the time has come to expand comfortably in the interstellar ether. +</p> + +<p> +Every man, I daresay, has his own notion of what constitutes perfect peace and +contentment, but all of those notions, despite the fundamental conflict of the +sexes, revolve around women. As for me—and I hope I may be pardoned, at this +late stage in my inquiry, for intruding my own personality—I reject the two +commonest of them: passion, at least in its more adventurous and melodramatic +aspects, is too exciting and alarming for so indolent a man, and I am too +egoistic to have much desire to be mothered. What, then, remains for me? Let me +try to describe it to you. +</p> + +<p> +It is the close of a busy and vexatious day—say half past five or six o’clock +of a winter afternoon. I have had a cocktail or two, and am stretched out on a +divan in front of a fire, smoking. At the edge of the divan, close enough for +me to reach her with my hand, sits a woman not too young, but still +good-looking and well-dressed—above all, a woman with a soft, low-pitched, +agreeable voice. As I snooze she talks—of anything, everything, all the things +that women talk of: books, music, the play, men, other women. No politics. No +business. No religion. No metaphysics. Nothing challenging and vexatious—but +remember, she is intelligent; what she says is clearly expressed, and often +picturesquely. I observe the fine sheen of her hair, the pretty cut of her +frock, the glint of her white teeth, the arch of her eye-brow, the graceful +curve of her arm. I listen to the exquisite murmur of her voice. Gradually I +fall asleep—but only for an instant. At once, observing it, she raises her +voice ever so little, and I am awake. Then to sleep again—slowly and charmingly +down that slippery hill of dreams. And then awake again, and then asleep again, +and so on. +</p> + +<p> +I ask you seriously: could anything be more unutterably beautiful? The +sensation of falling asleep is to me the most exquisite in the world. I delight +in it so much that I even look forward to death itself with a sneaking wonder +and desire. Well, here is sleep poetized and made doubly sweet. Here is sleep +set to the finest music in the world. I match this situation against any that +you ran think of. It is not only enchanting; it is also, in a very true sense, +ennobling. In the end, when the girl grows prettily miffed and throws me out, I +return to my sorrows somehow purged and glorified. I am a better man in my own +sight. I have grazed upon the fields of asphodel. I have been genuinely, +completely and unregrettably happy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="link2H_4_0053"></a> +47. Apologia in Conclusion</h2> + +<p> +At the end I crave the indulgence of the cultured reader for the imperfections +necessarily visible in all that I have here set down—imperfections not only due +to incomplete information and fallible logic, but also, and perhaps more +importantly, to certain fundamental weaknesses of the sex to which I have the +honour to belong. A man is inseparable from his congenital vanities and +stupidities, as a dog is inseparable from its fleas. They reveal themselves in +everything he says and does, but they reveal themselves most of all when he +discusses the majestic mystery of woman. Just as he smirks and rolls his eyes +in her actual presence, so he puts on apathetic and unescapable clownishness +when he essays to dissect her in the privacy of the laboratory. There is no +book on woman by a man that is not a stupendous compendium of posturings and +imbecilities. There are but two books that show even a superficial desire to be +honest—“The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage,” by Sir Almroth Wright, +and this one. Wright made a gallant attempt to tell the truth, but before he +got half way through his task his ineradicable donkeyishness as a male overcame +his scientific frenzy as a psychologist, and so he hastily washed his hands of +the business, and affronted the judicious with a half baked and preposterous +book. Perhaps I have failed too, and even more ingloriously. If so, I am full +of sincere and indescribable regret. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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