Book: Woman and Womanhood

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Whilst this sort of thing passes for thinking, it is a task that has
little promise in it to demand a return to the study of human nature,
and insist that only by obeying it can we command it, as Bacon said of
Nature at large. Meanwhile the madness proceeds apace; nursery-schools,
wretched parody of the nursery, are advocated at length in even Fabian
tracts, and the writer who suggests that an elder sister may be
receiving the highest kind of education in staying at home and helping
her mother, would sound almost to himself like an echo from the dead
past did he not know that neither a Plato nor a million tons of moderns
can walk through human nature or any other fact as if it were not
there.

Whatever be our duty to the girl of the working-classes, no man can deny
the importance of performing it aright. She will become the wife of the
working-man. From her thus flows most of the birth-rate. If our
education of her is wrong, it is a very great wrong for millions of
individuals and for the whole of society. But let us look at the case of
her more fortunate sister.

The girl of the more fortunate classes is certain to be well cared for
in the matter of air and food and light and exercise. We have already
seen how this matter of exercise requires to be qualified and determined
as for motherhood--that is, unless we desire most suicidally to educate
all the most promising stocks of the nation out of existence. But now
what do we owe to her in the matter of providing the right kind of
intellectual, moral, spiritual, psychical environment? It is a pity to
flounder with so many adjectives, but nearly all the available ones are
forsworn and fail to express my meaning. Let us, however, speak of the
spiritual environment, seeking to free that word from all its lamentable
associations of superstition and cant, and to associate it rather with a
humanized kind of religion that deals with humanity as made by, living
upon, and destined for, this earth, whatever unseen worlds there may or
may not be to conquer.

It is our business, then, to provide the spiritual environment in which
the maternal instinct is favoured and seen to be supremely honourable.
If in the "best" girls' schools ideas of marriage and babies are
ridiculed, the sooner these schools be rubbed down again into the soil,
the better. There is no need to substitute one form of cant for
another, but it is possible--possible even though the head-mistress
should be a spinster, for whom physical motherhood has not been and
never will be--to incorporate in the very spirit of the school, as part
of its public opinion, no less potent though its power be not
consciously felt, the ideals of real and complete womanhood, which mean
nothing less than the consecration of the individual to the future, and
the belief that such consecration serves not only the future but also
the highest satisfaction of her best self.

If it were our present task to define and specify the details of a
school in which girls should be educated for womanhood, for motherhood,
and the future, it would not be difficult, I think, to show how the
services of painting and sculpture, of poetry and prose, should be
enlisted. A word or two of outline may be permitted.

There is, for instance, a noble Madonna of Botticelli which is supremely
great, not because of the skill of the painter's hand, nor yet the
delicacy of his eye, but because of the spirit which they express.
Botticelli speaks across the centuries, and is none other than an
earlier voice uttering the words of Coleridge, teaching that a mother is
the holiest thing alive. The master may or may not have perceived that
the Madonna was a symbol; that what he believed of one holy mother was
worth believing just in so far as it serves to make all motherhood holy
and all men servants thereof. The painter can scarcely have looked at
his model and appreciated her fitness for his purpose without realizing
that he was concerned with depicting a truth not local and unique, but
universal and commonplace. Whether or not the painter saw this, we have
no excuse for not seeing it. Copies of such a painting as this should be
found in every girls' school throughout the world.

Girls learn drawing and painting at school, and these are amongst the
numerous subjects on which the present writer is entitled to no
technical or critical opinion. But he sometimes supposes that a painting
is not necessarily the worse because it represents a noble thing, and
that it may even be a worthier human occupation to portray the visage of
a living man or woman than the play of light upon a dead wall or a dead
partridge. It might even be argued by the wholly inexpert that if the
business of art is with beauty, the art is higher, other things being
equal, in proportion as the beauty it portrays is of a higher order.
Thus in the painting of women, the ignorant commentator sometimes asks
himself in what supreme sense it was worth while for an artist to expend
his powers upon the portrait of some society fool who could pay him
twelve hundred pounds therefor; or in what supreme sense a painter can
be called an artist who prefers such a task, and the flesh-pots, to the
portrayal of womanhood at its highest. There are attributes of womanhood
which directly serve human life, present and to come--attributes of
vitality and faithfulness, attributes of body and bosom, of mind and of
feeling, which it is within the power of the great artist to portray;
and it is in worthily portraying the greatest things, and in this
alone, that he transcends the status of the decorator.

It is worth while also to refer here to sculpture; something can be
taught by its means. The Venus of Milo is not only a great work of art;
it is also a representation of the physiological ideal. Its model was a
woman eminently capable of motherhood. The corset is beyond question
undesirable from every point of view, and it may be of service by means
of such a statue as this to teach the girl's eye what are the right
proportions of the body. She is constantly being faced with gross and
preposterous perversions of the female figure as they are to be seen in
the fashion plates of every feminine journal. It is as well that she
should have opportunities of occasionally seeing something better.

A note upon the corset may not be out of place here. We know that its
use is of no small antiquity. We have lately come to learn that
civilization stepped across to Europe from Asia, using Crete as a
stepping-stone; and in frescoes found in the palace of Minos, at
Knossos, by Dr. Arthur Evans, we find that the corset was employed to
distort the female figure nearly four thousand years ago, as it is
to-day. There must be some clue deep in human nature to the persistence
of a custom which is in itself so absurd. Those who have studied the
work of such writers as Westermarck, and who cannot but agree that on
the whole he is right in the contention that each sex desires to
accentuate the features of its sex, will be prepared to accept Dr.
Havelock Ellis's interpretation of the corset. By constricting the
waist it accentuates the salience of the bosom and hips. This may simply
be an expression of the desire to emphasize sex, but it may with still
more insight be looked upon, as the latter writer has suggested, as the
insertion of a claim to capacity for motherhood. This claim is of course
unconscious, but Nature does not always make us aware of the purposes
which she exercises through us. Now, though the corset serves to draw
attention to certain factors of motherhood, in point of fact it is
injurious to that end, and is on that highest of all grounds to be
condemned. I return to the point that possibly the direct and formal
condemnation of the corset may be in some cases less effective than the
method, which must have some value for every girl, of placing before her
eyes representations of the female figure, showing beauty and capacity
for motherhood as completely fused because they are indeed one.
Constrain the girl to admit that that is as beautiful as can be, and
then ask her what she thinks the corset applied to such a figure could
possibly accomplish.

Surely the same principle applies to what the girl reads. Some of us
become more and more convinced that youth, being naturally more
intelligent than maturity, prefers and requires more subtlety in its
teaching. In addressing a meeting of men, say upon politics, a speaker's
first business is to be crude. He has no chance whatever unless he is
direct, unqualified, allowing nothing at all for any kind of
intelligence or self-constructive faculty in the minds of his hearers.
Let any one recall the catchwords, styled watchwords, of politics
during the last ten or twenty years, and he will see how men are to be
convinced.

But it is all very well to treat men as fools, provided that you do not
say so--the case is different with young people, and certainly not less
with girls than with boys. Mr. Kipling, in one of those earlier moments
of insight that sometimes almost persuade us to pardon the brutality
which year by year becomes more than ever the dominant note of his
teaching, once told us of the discomfiture of a member of Parliament, or
person of that kind, who went to a boys' school to lecture about
Patriotism, and who unfurled a Union Jack amid the dead silence of the
disgusted boys. He forgot that, for once, he was speaking to an
intelligent audience, which demands something a little less crude than
the kind of thing which wins elections and makes and unmakes governments
and policies.

There is certainly a lesson here for those who are entrusted with the
supreme responsibility, so immeasurably more political than politics, of
forming the girl's mind for her future destiny. Suggestion is one of the
most powerful things in the world, but we must not forget that inverted
form of it which has been called contra-suggestion. We all know how the
first shoots of religion are destroyed on all sides in young minds by
contra-suggestion. Crude, ill-timed, unsympathetic, excessive, religious
teaching and religious exercises achieve, as scarcely anything else
could, exactly the opposite of that which they seek to attain. Thus it
is not here proposed that we should take any course at home or at
school which should have the result of making motherhood as nauseous to
the girl's mind through contra-suggestion, as it easily could be made if
we did not set to work upon judicious lines.

If we are in any measure to gain, by means of books, our end of forming
right ideals in the girl's mind, I am certain that we must not expect to
accomplish much with the help of any but very great writers. We may very
well doubt the substantial value for the purpose of anything written for
the purpose. Such books may be of value for the teacher; they may
possibly be of value in disposing of curiosity that has become
overweening or even morbid, but their value as preachments I much
question. The kind of writing upon which the young girl's mind will be
nourished in years to come is best represented by the lecture on
"Queens' Gardens" in Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies," though in that
magnificent and immortal piece of literature there is nowhere any direct
allusion to motherhood as the natural ideal for girlhood. Yet if only
one girl in a hundred who read that lecture can be persuaded, in the
beautiful phrase to be found there, that she was "born to be love
visible," how excellent is the work that we shall have accomplished! A
chapter might well be devoted entirely to the teaching of Wordsworth
regarding womanhood. We need scarcely remind ourselves that this great
poet owed an immeasurable debt to his sister, and in lesser, though very
substantial, degree to his wife and daughters. He has left an abundance
of poetry which testifies directly and indirectly to these influences.
This poetry is not only utterly lovely as poetry; at once sane and
passionate, steadying and thrilling, but it is also not to be surpassed,
I cannot but believe, as a means for rightly forming the ideals of
girlhood. Every year sees an inundation of new collections of poetry.
The anthologist might do worse than collect from Wordsworth a small, but
precious and quintessential volume under some such title as "Wordsworth
and Womanhood." One would do it oneself but that literary people of a
certain school regard it as an impertinence that any one who believes in
knowledge should intrude into their sphere. Wordsworth, it is true, said
that "poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the
impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science." But
most literary people are so busy writing that they have no time to read,
and they forget these sayings of the immortal dead. Yet that is just a
saying which directly bears upon the present contention. We must be very
careful lest we insult and outrage girlhood with our physiology, not
that physiology is either insolent or outrageous, but that girlhood is
girlhood. It is the "breath and finer spirit" of our knowledge of sex
and parenthood that we must seek to impart to her. Poetry is its
vehicle, and the time will come when we shall consciously use it for
that great purpose.

But we cannot expect the adolescent girl to be content even with Ruskin
and Wordsworth. She must, of course, have fiction, and under this
heading there is more or less accessible to her every possibility in the
gamut of morality, from the teaching of such a book as "Richard
Feverel" down to the excrement and sewage that defile the railway
book-stalls to-day under the guise of "bold, reverent, and fearless
handling of the great sex problems." The present writer is one of those
old-fashioned enough to believe that it matters a great deal what young
people read. We are all hygienists nowadays, and very particular as to
what enters our children's mouths. But what is the value of these
precautions if we relax our care as to what enters their minds?

It is my misfortune to be scarcely acquainted at all with fiction, and I
can presume to offer no detailed guidance in this matter. The name of
Mr. Eden Phillpotts must certainly be mentioned as foremost among those
living writers who care for these things. In the Eugenics Education
Society it was at one time hoped to see the formation of a branch of
fiction in the library which might form the nucleus of a catalogue, well
worth disseminating if only it could be compiled, of fiction worthy the
consumption of girlhood. Perhaps it would hardly be necessary for the
present writer to protest that the didactic, the unnaturally good, the
well-meaning, the entirely amateur types of fiction, including those
which ignore the facts of human nature, and, above all, those which
decry instead of seeking to deify the natural, would find no place in
this catalogue. It is possible, though I much doubt it, that there may
be many books unknown to me of the order and quality of "Richard
Feverel." At any rate, that represents in its perfection--save, perhaps,
for the unnecessary tragedy of its close, which the illustrious author
himself in conversation did not find it quite possible to defend--the
type of novel whose teaching the Eugenist and the Maternalist must
recommend for the nourishment of youth of both sexes.

As has been already hinted, discourses on how to wash a baby are less in
place here; and in the following chapter the argument will be set forth
in detail that the sequence of the common schemes for the education of
girlhood and womanhood is, in one essential respect, logically and
practically erroneous.




XIII

CHOOSING THE FATHERS OF THE FUTURE


We live in a social chaos of which the evolution into anything like a
cosmos is scarcely more than incipient. In such a case the reformer has
to do the best he may; in the only possible sense in which that phrase
can be defended, he has to take the world as he finds it. Heartless
heads will of course be found to comment upon the logical error of his
ways, to which his only reply is that, while they stand and comment,
what can be done he now will do.

In this whole matter of the care and culture of motherhood--which is,
verily, the prime condition, too often forgotten, of the care and
culture of childhood--we have to do what we can, when and as we can. We
live in a society where mankind, held individually responsible for all
other acts whatsoever, is held entirely irresponsible for the act of
parenthood which, being more momentous than any other, ought to be held
more responsible than any other. Marriage, the precedent condition of
most parenthood, is thus regarded as the concern of the individuals and
the present. Individuals and the present therefore decide what marriages
shall occur; but by some obscure fatality which no one had thought of,
the future appears upon the scene: and when it is actually present, or
rather not only present but visible, the responsibility for it is
recognized. We have not yet gone so far as to see that a girl may be a
good mother, in the highest sense, in her choice of a mate. But as
things are, it is agreed that we are to act like blind automata, as
improvident and irresponsible as the lower fishes, until the actual
birth of the future. The philosophic truth that the future is nascent in
the present--a truth so genuinely philosophic that it is also
practical--is still hidden from us, and thus we are faced, in town and
country alike, with ignorant motherhood, set to the most difficult,
responsible, and expert of tasks--the right nurture of babyhood;
babyhood, a ridiculous subject for grown men, yet somehow the condition
of them and all their doings.

In this state of affairs, those who began the modern campaign against
infant mortality, or rather that small section of them who were not to
be beguiled by secondaries, such as poverty, alcoholism, and the like,
set to work to remedy maternal ignorance. Having been engaged in this
campaign for many years, one is not likely to decry it now, nor is there
any occasion to do so. The movement for the instruction of motherhood
and for the instruction even of girls in the duties of actual
motherhood, is now not only started but making real progress, and will
assuredly prosper.

But here our business is to think a little in front of action done and
doing, and we shall very soon discover that there is more for public
opinion yet to learn, while we may be very certain that this last lesson
will be less easily learnt than the former was, for it is based upon
evidence much less obvious. I have long maintained that the movement
against infant mortality must precede in logic and in practice movements
for the physical training of boys and girls, for the medical inspection
and treatment of school children, and so forth. Relatively to these I
have always asserted that the right care of babies has the immense
superiority that it means beginning at the beginning, but I have always
denied that it means beginning at the absolute beginning, if such a
phrase be permitted.

Given the world as it is, the conditions of marriage as they are, the
economic position of woman, the power of prudery, and the conventional
supposition that babies occur by providential dispensation, we must act
as if we really made the assumption that human parenthood, until the
moment of birth, is as irresponsible as any sequence of events in the
atmosphere or the world of electrons. But we who are thinking in front
for humanity must make no such assumption. We must look forward to and
hasten the time when we can act upon the _true_ assumption, which is
that the more the knowledge the greater the responsibility, and more
especially that our knowledge of heredity, so far from abolishing human
responsibility--as the enemies of knowledge declare--immeasurably
extends and deepens it. In the present volume we are proceeding upon the
true assumption, and therefore in the study of womanhood we must now
proceed, in defiance of conventional assumptions, to study the
responsibility and duties of motherhood _as they exist for maidenhood_.
To this end, it will be necessary that we remind ourselves of certain
great biological facts which are of immense significance for mankind,
and are doubtless indeed more important in their bearing upon ourselves
than upon any other living species.

The first of these is the fact of heredity; the second the fact that
hereditary endowment, whether for good or for evil, or, as is the rule,
both for good and for evil, goes vastly further than any one has until
lately realized, in determining individual destiny. These are amongst
the first principles of Eugenics or race culture, and as they have been
discussed at length elsewhere, one may here take them for granted.
Scarcely less important is the fact that the conditions of mating in the
sub-human world--conditions which beyond dispute make for the
continuance, the vigour, the efficiency, and therefore the happiness of
the species--are largely modified amongst ourselves in consequence of
certain human facts which have no sub-human parallel. The parallels and
the divergences between the two cases are both alike of the utmost
significance, and cannot be too carefully studied. It will here be
possible, of course, merely to look at them as briefly as is compatible
with the making of a right approach to the subject now before us, which
is the girl's choice of a husband.

But in right priority to the question of choice, we may for convenience
discuss first the marriage age. The choice at one age may not be the
choice at another, and in any case the question of the marriage age is
so important for the individual woman, and so immensely effective in
determining the composition of any society, that we cannot study it too
carefully.




XIV

THE MARRIAGE AGE FOR GIRLS


Let us clearly understand, in the first place, that in this chapter we
discuss principles and averages, and that, supposing our conclusions be
accepted as true, they cannot for a moment be quoted as decisive in
their bearing upon special cases. The impartial reader will not suppose
that such folly is contemplated, but those who discuss and advocate new
views very soon learn that many readers are not impartial, and that for
one cause or another they do not fail of misrepresentation. This is not
a case, then, of "science laying down the law," and ordering this
individual to marry at this age, and that not to marry at another; and
yet though this rigorous individual application of our principles is
absurd, they are none the less worth formulating, if it be possible.

The question before us is very far from simple: it is not in the nature
of human problems to be simple, the individual and society being so
immeasurably complex. We have to consider far more points than occur on
first inspection. We have to ascertain when the average woman becomes
fit for marriage. But we must remember that we are dealing with marriage
under the conditions imposed by law and public opinion. Therefore, fit
for mating and fit for marriage are not synonymous, and to ascertain the
age of physiological fitness for mating, though an important
contribution to our problem, is not the solution of it. We have further
to consider how the taste and inclination of the individual vary in the
course of her development. We have to ask ourselves at what age in
general she is likely to make that choice which her maturity and middle
age will ratify rather than for ever regret. We have to consider the
relations of different ages to motherhood, both as regards the quality
of the children born, and as regards their probable number under natural
conditions. These are questions which certainly affect the individual's
happiness profoundly, and yet that is the least of their significance.
Again, we have to observe how the constitution of society varies as
regards the age of its members, according as marriage be early or late.
In the former case more generations are alive at the same time, and in
the latter case fewer. The increasing age at marriage would have more
conspicuous results in this respect if it were not for the great
increase in longevity; so that, though the generations are becoming more
spread out, we may have as many representatives of different generations
alive at the same time as there used to be; but of course there is the
great difference that society is older as a whole. This is a fact which
in itself must affect the doings and the prospects of civilization. An
assemblage of people in the twenties will not behave in the same way as
those in the forties. The probable effect must be towards conservatism,
and increasing rigidity. It is a question to be asked by the historian
of civilization how far these considerations bear upon the history of
past empires.

Another and most notable result of the modified relation between the
generations which ensues from increasing the age at marriage, is that
the parents, under the newer conditions, must necessarily be, on the
average, psychologically further from their children. The man who first
becomes a father at twenty-five, shall we say, may well expect still to
have something of the boy in him at thirty, especially as children keep
us young. He is thus a companion for his child and his child for him.
The same is true of women. It is good that a woman who still has
something of girlhood in her should become a mother. When the marriage
age is much delayed, people of both sexes tend to grow old more quickly
than if they had children to keep them young, and then when the children
come the psychological disparity is greater than it ought to be--greater
than is best either for parents or children.

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