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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1270-0.txt b/1270-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a08be73 --- /dev/null +++ b/1270-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4109 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1270 *** + +IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN + +by H. L. Mencken + + + + +CONTENTS + + Introduction + + I. The Feminine Mind + 1. The Maternal Instinct + 2. Women’s Intelligence + 3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks + 4. Why Women Fail + 5. The Thing Called Intuition + + II. The War Between the Sexes + 6. How Marriages are Arranged + 7. The Feminine Attitude + 8. The Male Beauty + 9. Men as Aesthetes + 10. The Process of Delusion + 11. Biological Considerations + 12. Honour + 13. Women and the Emotions + 14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia + 15. Mythical Anthropophagi + 16. A Conspiracy of Silence + + III. Marriage + 17. Fundamental Motives + 18. The Process of Courtship + 19. The Actual Husband + 20. The Unattainable Ideal + 21. The Effect on the Race + 22. Compulsory Marriage + 23. Extra-Legal Devices + 24. Intermezzo on Monogamy + 25. Late Marriages + 26. Disparate Unions + 27. The Charm of Mystery + 28. Woman as Wife + 29. Marriage and the Law + 30. The Emancipated Housewife + + IV. Woman Suffrage + 31. The Crowning Victory + 32. The Woman Voter + 33. A Glance Into the Future + 34. The Suffragette + 35. A Mythical Dare-Devil + 36. The Origin of a Delusion + 37. Women as Martyrs + 38. Pathological Effects + 39. Women as Christians + 40. Piety as a Social Habit + 41. The Ethics of Women + + V. The New Age + 42. The Transvaluation of Values + 43. The Lady of Joy + 44. The Future of Marriage + 45. Effects of the War + 46. The Eternal Romance + 47. Apologia in Conclusion + + + + +Introduction + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +H. L. Mencken + + + + +I. The Feminine Mind + + + + +1. The Maternal Instinct + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +2. Women’s Intelligence + + +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! + +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. + +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. + + + + +3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +4. Why Women Fail + + +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. + +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. + + + + +5. The Thing Called Intuition + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +II. The War Between the Sexes + + + + +6. How Marriages are Arranged + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +7. The Feminine Attitude + + +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. + +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. + + + + +8. The Male Beauty + + +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. + +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. + + + + +9. Men as Aesthetes + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +10. The Process of Delusion + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +11. Biological Considerations + + +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 _per ora_ +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +12. Honour + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +13. Women and the Emotions + + +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. + +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. + + + + +14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia + + +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. + +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. + + + + +15. Mythical Anthropophagi + + +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. + +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. + + + + +16. A Conspiracy of Silence + + +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. + + + + +III. Marriage + + + + +17. Fundamental Motives + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +18. The Process of Courtship + + +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: + +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 _That She Might Endure +His Caresses_. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + + + + +19. The Actual Husband + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +20. The Unattainable Ideal + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +21. The Effect on the Race + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +22. Compulsory Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +23. Extra-Legal Devices + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +24. Intermezzo on Monogamy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +25. Late Marriages + + +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.” + +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. + +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. + + + + +26. Disparate Unions + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, the +charm of the unlike, _heliogabalisme_. 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. + + + + +27. The Charm of Mystery + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +28. Woman as Wife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +29. Marriage and the Law + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +30. The Emancipated Housewife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +IV. Woman Suffrage + + + + +31. The Crowning Victory + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +32. The Woman Voter + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +33. A Glance Into the Future + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +34. The Suffragette + + +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. + +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. + + + + +35. A Mythical Dare-Devil + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +36. The Origin of a Delusion + + +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: + +1. The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either +by open lying or sinister hints. + +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. + +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. + +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!” + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +37. Women as Martyrs + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +38. Pathological Effects + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +39. Women as Christians + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +40. Piety as a Social Habit + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +41. The Ethics of Women + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +V. The New Age + + + + +42. The Transvaluation of Values + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +43. The Lady of Joy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +44. The Future of Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +45. Effects of the War + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +46. The Eternal Romance + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +47. Apologia in Conclusion + + +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. + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1270 *** diff --git a/1270-h/1270-h.htm b/1270-h/1270-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5828ac5 --- /dev/null +++ b/1270-h/1270-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4337 @@ +<!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. 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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>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1270 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e89f9d9 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #1270 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1270) diff --git a/old/1270-0.txt b/old/1270-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..129693c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/1270-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4483 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken + +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 +www.gutenberg.org. 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. + +Title: In Defense of Women + +Author: H. L. Mencken + +Release Date: April, 1998 [eBook #1270] +[Most recently updated: October 10, 2023] + +Language: English + +Produced by: Joseph Gallanar and David Widger + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN *** + + + + +IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN + +by H. L. Mencken + + + + +CONTENTS + + Introduction + + I. The Feminine Mind + 1. The Maternal Instinct + 2. Women’s Intelligence + 3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks + 4. Why Women Fail + 5. The Thing Called Intuition + + II. The War Between the Sexes + 6. How Marriages are Arranged + 7. The Feminine Attitude + 8. The Male Beauty + 9. Men as Aesthetes + 10. The Process of Delusion + 11. Biological Considerations + 12. Honour + 13. Women and the Emotions + 14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia + 15. Mythical Anthropophagi + 16. A Conspiracy of Silence + + III. Marriage + 17. Fundamental Motives + 18. The Process of Courtship + 19. The Actual Husband + 20. The Unattainable Ideal + 21. The Effect on the Race + 22. Compulsory Marriage + 23. Extra-Legal Devices + 24. Intermezzo on Monogamy + 25. Late Marriages + 26. Disparate Unions + 27. The Charm of Mystery + 28. Woman as Wife + 29. Marriage and the Law + 30. The Emancipated Housewife + + IV. Woman Suffrage + 31. The Crowning Victory + 32. The Woman Voter + 33. A Glance Into the Future + 34. The Suffragette + 35. A Mythical Dare-Devil + 36. The Origin of a Delusion + 37. Women as Martyrs + 38. Pathological Effects + 39. Women as Christians + 40. Piety as a Social Habit + 41. The Ethics of Women + + V. The New Age + 42. The Transvaluation of Values + 43. The Lady of Joy + 44. The Future of Marriage + 45. Effects of the War + 46. The Eternal Romance + 47. Apologia in Conclusion + + + + +Introduction + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +H. L. Mencken + + + + +I. The Feminine Mind + + + + +1. The Maternal Instinct + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +2. Women’s Intelligence + + +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! + +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. + +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. + + + + +3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +4. Why Women Fail + + +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. + +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. + + + + +5. The Thing Called Intuition + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +II. The War Between the Sexes + + + + +6. How Marriages are Arranged + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +7. The Feminine Attitude + + +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. + +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. + + + + +8. The Male Beauty + + +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. + +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. + + + + +9. Men as Aesthetes + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +10. The Process of Delusion + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +11. Biological Considerations + + +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 _per ora_ +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +12. Honour + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +13. Women and the Emotions + + +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. + +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. + + + + +14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia + + +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. + +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. + + + + +15. Mythical Anthropophagi + + +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. + +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. + + + + +16. A Conspiracy of Silence + + +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. + + + + +III. Marriage + + + + +17. Fundamental Motives + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +18. The Process of Courtship + + +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: + +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 _That She Might Endure +His Caresses_. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + + + + +19. The Actual Husband + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +20. The Unattainable Ideal + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +21. The Effect on the Race + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +22. Compulsory Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +23. Extra-Legal Devices + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +24. Intermezzo on Monogamy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +25. Late Marriages + + +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.” + +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. + +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. + + + + +26. Disparate Unions + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, the +charm of the unlike, _heliogabalisme_. 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. + + + + +27. The Charm of Mystery + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +28. Woman as Wife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +29. Marriage and the Law + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +30. The Emancipated Housewife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +IV. Woman Suffrage + + + + +31. The Crowning Victory + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +32. The Woman Voter + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +33. A Glance Into the Future + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +34. The Suffragette + + +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. + +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. + + + + +35. A Mythical Dare-Devil + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +36. The Origin of a Delusion + + +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: + +1. The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either +by open lying or sinister hints. + +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. + +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. + +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!” + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +37. Women as Martyrs + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +38. Pathological Effects + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +39. Women as Christians + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +40. Piety as a Social Habit + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +41. The Ethics of Women + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +V. The New Age + + + + +42. The Transvaluation of Values + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +43. The Lady of Joy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +44. The Future of Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +45. Effects of the War + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +46. The Eternal Romance + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +47. Apologia in Conclusion + + +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. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +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. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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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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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 www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: In Defense of Women + +Author: H. L. Mencken + +Posting Date: August 26, 2008 [EBook #1270] +Release Date: April, 1998 +[Last updated: June 22, 1011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN *** + + + + +Produced by Joseph Gallanar + + + + + +IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN + +by H. L. Mencken + + + + +Contents + + Introduction + I The Feminine Mind + II The War between The Sexes + III Marriage + IV Woman Suffrage + V The New Age + + + + +Introduction + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 all 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. + +H. L. Mencken + + + + +I. The Feminine Mind + + + + +1. The Maternal Instinct + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +2. Women's Intelligence + + +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! + +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. + +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. + + + + +3. The Masculine Bag of Tricks + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +4. Why Women Fail + + +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. + +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. + + + + +5. The Thing Called Intuition + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +II. The War Between the Sexes + + + +6. How Marriages are Arranged + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +7. The Feminine Attitude + + +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. + +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. + + + + +8. The Male Beauty + + +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. + +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. + + + + +9. Men as Aesthetes + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +10. The Process of Delusion + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +11. Biological Considerations + + +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 _per ora_ 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 Rtoie 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +12. Honour + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +13. Women and the Emotions + + +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. + +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. + + + + +14. Pseudo-Anaesthesia + + +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. + +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. + + + + +15. Mythical Anthropophagi + + +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. + +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. + + + + +16. A Conspiracy of Silence + + + +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. + + + + +III. Marriage + + + + +17. Fundamental Motives + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +18. The Process of Courtship + + +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: + +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 _That She Might Endure His Caresses_. + +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. + +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." + +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. + + + + +19. The Actual Husband + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +20. The Unattainable Ideal + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +21. The Effect on the Race + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +22. Compulsory Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +23. Extra-Legal Devices + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +24. Intermezzo on Monogamy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +25. Late Marriages + + +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." + +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. + +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. + + + + +26. Disparate Unions + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, the +charm of the unlike, _heliogabalisme_. 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. + + + + +27. The Charm of Mystery + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +28. Woman as Wife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +29. Marriage and the Law + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +30. The Emancipated Housewife + + +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. + +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. + + + + +IV. Woman Suffrage + + + + +31. The Crowning Victory + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +32. The Woman Voter + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +33. A Glance Into the Future + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +34. The Suffragette + + +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. + +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. + + + + +35. A Mythical Dare-Devil + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +36. The Origin of a Delusion + + +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: + +1. The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either +by open lying or sinister hints. + +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. + +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +37. Women as Martyrs + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +38. Pathological Effects + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +39. Women as Christians + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +40. Piety as a Social Habit + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +41. The Ethics of Women + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +V. The New Age + + + + +42. The Transvaluation of Values + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +43. The Lady of Joy + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +44. The Future of Marriage + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +45. Effects of the War + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +46. The Eternal Romance + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +47. Apologia in Conclusion + + +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. + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN *** + +***** This file should be named 1270.txt or 1270.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/7/1270/ + +Produced by Joseph Gallanar + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions 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-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Mencken + + + + + +Contents + +Introduction +I The Feminine Mind +II The War between The Sexes +III Marriage +IV Woman Suffrage +V The New Age + + + + +Introduction + + +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. + + + +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. + +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 actuary 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. + + +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 he 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 todiscuss 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. + + +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 1 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 If all 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. + + +H. L. Mencken + + + + +The Feminine Mind + + + + + + + +The Maternal Instinct + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +2. + + +Women's Intelligence + + +That is 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! + + +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 aman 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 +down right 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. + + +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. + + + + +3. + + +The Masculine Bag of Tricks + + + +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 intakes 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. + + +There is, indeed, fair ground for arguing that, if men of that kidney +were genuinely intelligent, they would never succeed at their gross +an 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +4. + + +Why Women Fail + + +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 toit 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 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. + + +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. + + + + + +5. + + +The Thing Called Intuition + + +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. + + +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 go 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. + + +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, +sometime shave 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. + + + + + + + + +The War Between the Sexes + + +II + + + + +6. How Marriages are Arranged + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 [caroche] 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. + + +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 marriages 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 me reapproach 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 be 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. + + + + +7. + + +The Feminine Attitude + + +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 tenter 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. + + +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 he +more disgraceful. + + + + +8. + + +The Male Beauty + + +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. + + +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, buta 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. + + + + +9. + + +Men as Aesthetes + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 doit now and then; he may even preen himself +upon is on 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. + + + + +10. + +The Process of Delusion + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 be 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. + + + + +11. + + +Biological Considerations + + +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 per ora 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 +Cte Rtie 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. + + +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 derricked 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 aman 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +12. + + +Honour + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +13. + + +Women and the Emotions + + +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. + + +Women are nearly always against war in modem 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 aright 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. + + + + +14. + + +Pseudo-Anaesthesia + + +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. + + +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'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. + + + + +15. + + +Mythical Anthropophagi + + +The man-hating woman, like the cold woman, is largely imaginary. +One often encounters references to her in literature, but who has +ever met hex 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. + + +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 aman 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. + + + + +16. + + +A Conspiracy of Silence + + + +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. + + + + +Marriage + + +III + + +17. + + +Fundamental Motives + + +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. + + +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 an dwell-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. + + +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. + + +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 employs 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. + + + + +18. + + +The Process of Courtship + + +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: + + +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 +THAT SHE MIGHT ENDURE HIS CARESSES. + + +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 character shave 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. + + +Dr. Gamble, of course, is speaking of the lower fauna in the time of +Noah. A literal application of her theory toman 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." + + +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. Anormal 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. + + + + + + +19. + + +The Actual Husband + + +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. + + +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 navet 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. + + +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. Inconsequence, 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. + + + + +20. + + +The Unattainable Ideal + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +21. + + +The Effect on the Race + + +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 Barcato 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. + + +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; be 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. + + +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, be 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. + + +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 init 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. + + + + +22. + + +Compulsory Marriage + + +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, orby 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. + + + + +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 menas 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. + + +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. + + + + +23. + + +Extra-Legal Devices + + + +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. + + +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. Inconsequence, 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. + + +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. + + + + +24. + + +Intermezzo on Monogamy + + +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. + + +The advocates of monogamy, deceived by its moral overtones, fail +to get all the advantage out of it that is init. 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. + + +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. + + + + +25. + + +Late Marriages + + + + +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 muchas 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." + + +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. + + +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 aman 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 aman'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. + + + + +26. + + +Disparate Unions + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 to 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. + + +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, +the charm of the unlike, hliogabalisme. 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. + + + + +27. + + +The Charm of Mystery + + +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 toit. + + +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 ora +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 cam a living. + + +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 be 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. + + + + +28. + + +Woman as Wife + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +29. + + +Marriage and the Law + + +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. + + +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 an 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. + + +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 be is helpless. + + +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. + + + + +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, Kche und Kinder, is +going the same way. + + + + +30. + + +The Emancipated Housewife + + +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 +be had always been privy. But instead of being complimented, as a +man might have been if told that his wife had married him because +be 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. + + +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. + + + + +IV + + +Woman Suffrage + + +31. + + +The Crowning Victory + + +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. + + +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 +them 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. + + +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. + + +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 hat 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. + + + + +32. + + +The Woman Voter + + +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. + + +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 bear 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. + + +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. + + + + +33. + + +A Glance Into the Future + + +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. + + +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 a 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 apolitical 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. + + +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 thymol 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. + + +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. + + + + +34. + + +The Suffragette + + +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. + + +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 an philosophical absurdities. + + + + +35. + + +A Mythical Dare-Devil + + +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 +dbauch, a monster of promiscuity; prodigiously unfaithful to his +wife, and even to his friends' wives; fathomlessly libidinous and +superbly happy. + + +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 paralexia 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 in come accurately, she has a sure means of +holding him to his oaths. + + +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 be is +of scaling the battlements of hell. He likes to think of himself doing +it, just as be 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. + + +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; be 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 astate, 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 noses +now-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. + + +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. + + + + +36. + + +The Origin of a Delusion + + +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: + + +1.The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either +by open lying or sinister hints. + + +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 bad the courage. + + +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. + + +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 be 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!" + + +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 comer, 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + + + +37. + + +Women as Martyrs + + +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. + + +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 bard 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +38. + + +Pathological Effects + + +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 nota man. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +39. + + +Women as Christians + + +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 modem +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +40. + + +Piety as a Social Habit + + +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. + + +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. + + +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; be 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. + + +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. + + + + +41. + + +The Ethics of Women + + +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 modem 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. Aman, 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. + + + + +The New Age + + +V. + + +42. + + +The Transvaluation of Values + + +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. + + +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 how 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. + + +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 goodman 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 orby 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. + + + + +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. + + + + +43. + + +The Lady of Joy + + +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 be 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. + + +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 dispose 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. + + +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 some what 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. + + + + +44. + + +The Future of Marriage + + +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. + + +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. + + + +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 engage 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. + + +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 aman 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. + + + +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 anew 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. + + + + +45. + + +Effects of the War + + +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 anew 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +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. + + +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 inconsequence his life was wholly free from scandals +and his mind was never distracted from his work. + + + + +46. + + +The Eternal Romance + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +47. + + +Apologia in Conclusion + + +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. + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of In Defense of Women + diff --git a/old/old/ndwmn10.zip b/old/old/ndwmn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fec57cc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/ndwmn10.zip diff --git a/old/old/ndwmn11.txt b/old/old/ndwmn11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..45397be --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/ndwmn11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4789 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext of In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken +#1 in our series by Mencken + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Etext prepared by +Joseph Gallanar +Gallanar@microserve.net + + + + + +In Defense of Women +by H. L. Mencken + + + + +Contents + +Introduction +I The Feminine Mind +II The War between The Sexes +III Marriage +IV Woman Suffrage +V The New Age + + + + +Introduction + + +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. + + + +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. + + +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 actuary 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. + + +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 todiscuss 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. + + +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 1 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 If all 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. + + +H. L. Mencken + + + + +The Feminine Mind + + + + + + + +The Maternal Instinct + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +2. + + +Women's Intelligence + + +That is 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! + + +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 aman 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 +down right 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. + + +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. + + + + +3. + + +The Masculine Bag of Tricks + + + +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 intakes 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. + + +There is, indeed, fair ground for arguing that, if men of that kidney +were genuinely intelligent, they would never succeed at their gross +an 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +4. + + +Why Women Fail + + +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 toit 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 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. + + +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. + + + + + +5. + + +The Thing Called Intuition + + +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. + + +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 go 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. + + +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. + + + + + + + + +The War Between the Sexes + + +II + + + + +6. How Marriages are Arranged + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 [caroche] 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. + + +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 marriages 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 me reapproach 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. + + + + +7. + + +The Feminine Attitude + + +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 tenter 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. + + +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. + + + + +8. + + +The Male Beauty + + +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. + + +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, buta 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. + + + + +9. + + +Men as Aesthetes + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 doit now and then; he may even preen himself +upon is on 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. + + + + +10. + +The Process of Delusion + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +11. + + +Biological Considerations + + +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 per ora 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 +Cte Rtie 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. + + +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 derricked 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 aman 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +12. + + +Honour + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +13. + + +Women and the Emotions + + +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. + + +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 aright 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. + + + + +14. + + +Pseudo-Anaesthesia + + +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. + + +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'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. + + + + +15. + + +Mythical Anthropophagi + + +The man-hating woman, like the cold woman, is largely imaginary. +One often encounters references to her in literature, but who has +ever met hex 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. + + +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 aman 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. + + + + +16. + + +A Conspiracy of Silence + + + +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. + + + + +Marriage + + +III + + +17. + + +Fundamental Motives + + +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. + + +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 an dwell-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. + + +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. + + +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 employs 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. + + + + +18. + + +The Process of Courtship + + +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: + + +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 +THAT SHE MIGHT ENDURE HIS CARESSES. + + +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. + + +Dr. Gamble, of course, is speaking of the lower fauna in the time of +Noah. A literal application of her theory toman 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." + + +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. Anormal 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. + + + + + + +19. + + +The Actual Husband + + +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. + + +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 navetete 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. + + +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. + + + + +20. + + +The Unattainable Ideal + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +21. + + +The Effect on the Race + + +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 Barcato 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +22. + + +Compulsory Marriage + + +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. + + + + +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 menas 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. + + +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. + + + + +23. + + +Extra-Legal Devices + + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +24. + + +Intermezzo on Monogamy + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +25. + + +Late Marriages + + + + +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 muchas 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." + + +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. + + +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 aman 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 aman'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. + + + + +26. + + +Disparate Unions + + +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. + + +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. + + +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 to 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. + + +Here we unearth another factor: the fascination of what is strange, +the charm of the unlike, hliogabalisme. 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 he 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. + + + + +27. + + +The Charm of Mystery + + +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 toit. + + +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 ora +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. + + +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. + + + + +28. + + +Woman as Wife + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +29. + + +Marriage and the Law + + +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. + + +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 an 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +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, Kche und Kinder, is +going the same way. + + + + +30. + + +The Emancipated Housewife + + +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 +be had always been privy. But instead of being complimented, as a +man might have been if told that his wife had married him because +be 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. + + +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. + + + + +IV + + +Woman Suffrage + + +31. + + +The Crowning Victory + + +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. + + +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 +them 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. + + +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. + + +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 hat 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. + + + + +32. + + +The Woman Voter + + +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. + + +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 bear 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. + + +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. + + + + +33. + + +A Glance Into the Future + + +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. + + +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 a 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 apolitical 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. + + +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 thymol 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. + + +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. + + + + +34. + + +The Suffragette + + +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. + + +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 an philosophical absurdities. + + + + +35. + + +A Mythical Dare-Devil + + +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. + + +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 paralexia 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 in come accurately, she has a sure means of +holding him to his oaths. + + +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. + + +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 astate, 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 noses +now-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. + + +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. + + + + +36. + + +The Origin of a Delusion + + +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: + + +1.The idiotic vanity of men, leading to their eternal boasting, either +by open lying or sinister hints. + + +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 bad the courage. + + +3. The ditto of certain suffragettes as to ditto. + + +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!" + + +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 comer, 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + + + +37. + + +Women as Martyrs + + +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. + + +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 bard 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. + + +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. + + + + + + +38. + + +Pathological Effects + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +39. + + +Women as Christians + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +40. + + +Piety as a Social Habit + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +41. + + +The Ethics of Women + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. Aman, 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. + + + + +The New Age + + +V. + + +42. + + +The Transvaluation of Values + + +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. + + +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 how 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. + + +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 goodman 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. + + + + +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. + + + + +43. + + +The Lady of Joy + + +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 be 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. + + +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 dispose 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. + + +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 some what 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. + + + + +44. + + +The Future of Marriage + + +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. + + +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. + + + +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 engage 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. + + +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 aman 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. + + + +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 anew 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. + + + + +45. + + +Effects of the War + + +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 anew 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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +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. + + +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 inconsequence his life was wholly free from scandals +and his mind was never distracted from his work. + + + + +46. + + +The Eternal Romance + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + +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. + + + + +47. + + +Apologia in Conclusion + + +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. + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext In Defense of Women, by Mencken + diff --git a/old/old/ndwmn11.zip b/old/old/ndwmn11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..db60c80 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/old/ndwmn11.zip |