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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 *** |