Book: Woman and Womanhood

C >> C. W. Saleeby >> Woman and Womanhood




Indeed, I seem to see that one cannot adequately write a book on
Womanhood without including in it somewhere a statement of what manhood
is and ought to be. Surely one of our duties to girlhood is to teach it
the elemental truths of manhood. Such teaching must recognize the facts
which modern psychology perceives more clearly every day, and it must
combine that knowledge with the eternal truths of morality, which are so
intensely real and practical in the great issues of life, such as this.
The great fact which modern psychology has discovered is that intellect
is less important, and emotion more important than we used to suppose;
that knowledge, as we lately observed, is non-moral, and may be for good
or for evil; that cleverness is merely cleverness, and may serve God or
mammon; that it is the nature of the man or the woman which determines
the influence and the uses of education. A girl should know something of
what I have elsewhere called the transmutation of sex as it shows itself
in the higher as distinguished from the lower types of manhood: she
should know that it is good for a youth to spend his energy in visible
ways and in the light of day; there is the less likelihood that it is
being spent otherwise. She should prefer the man who is visibly active
and who keeps his mind and body moving; she should know, as the school
boy should know, that the capacity to smoke and drink really proves
nothing as regards manhood. Doubtless there is some courage required in
learning to smoke, and so much, but it is not much, is to the smoker's
credit; but for the rest, smoking and drinking are simply forms of
self-indulgence, and though they are doubtless very excusable and are
often practised by splendid men, they are of no virtue in themselves.
Further, they are open to the fundamental objection that they lessen the
measure of a man's self-mastery. Women should set a high standard in
such matters as these.

To take the case of smoking, very few smokers realize, in the first
place, how much money they expend. It is money which, if not spent,
would appreciably contribute to the cost of house-keeping in not a few
cases. Many a man who says he cannot afford to marry spends on tobacco
and alcohol a sum quite sufficient to turn the scale. It will be argued
that the smoking brings rest and peace, that it soothes, aids digestion,
and so forth. But the non-smoker is not in need of these assistances:
it is only the smoker who requires to smoke for these purposes. On this
point I have said, in the volume of personal hygiene which this present
work is meant to succeed, all that really requires to be said. It was
there pointed out that nicotine doubtless produces secondary products in
the blood which require a further dose of the nicotine as an antidote to
them. Thus there is initiated a vicious circle, the details of which
have been fully worked out in the case of opium, or rather, morphia. All
the good results which are obtained from smoking are essentially of the
nature of neutralizing the secondary effects of previous smoking. Here,
then, is the scientific argument for the girl's hand if she proposes to
deal with her lover on this point.

It may be added that the writer can now quote personal experience in
favour of his advice. He smoked incessantly for fourteen years--from
seventeen to thirty-one--his quantum being five ounces in all per
week--of the strongest Egyptian cigarettes and the strongest pipe
tobacco procurable. The practice did him no observable harm whatever.
When he wrote the paragraph on "How to control one's smoking," in the
book referred to, he was only wishing that he could control his own. At
last he got disgusted with himself and stopped altogether. Personally he
is neither better nor worse, but he is buying books in proportion to the
money formerly wasted on tobacco, and perhaps the change is worth while.
The girl who reads this book may tell her lover with confidence that it
is quite possible to stop smoking, and that after a little while the
craving wholly disappears. If he has been a really confirmed, systematic
smoker, he may have a very uncomfortable three weeks after he stops, but
soon after that the time will come when he can stay in a room where
others are smoking and not even desire to join them, which he could
never have done before. He will have the advantage that he is definitely
less likely to die of cancer of the mouth, more especially cancer of the
tongue. That is a point which will affect his wife as well as himself.
He will save a quite remarkable sum of money, and since object lessons
are very valuable, he may follow the suggestion to lay it out in the
form of books, as time goes on, though perhaps my reader can give him
better advice from the point of view of the future housekeeper.

Of course there is the point of view expressed in a poem of Mr.
Kipling's:

"A woman is only a woman,
But a good cigar is a smoke."

If a man takes that point of view he is not good enough for a woman, I
think; she may remember Dogberry, Take no note of him but let him go ...
and thank God she is rid of a ---- fool.

Certainly, I am not saying anything which will be grateful to all ears,
but while we are at it, and since this book is written in the interests
of women, I must say what I believe. I counsel the girl to stop her
lover's smoking; a thousandfold more strongly would I counsel her to
stop his drinking. In a former volume on eugenics, some of the effects
of parental drinking have been dealt with at length, and that subject
need not be returned to here. But also from the point of view of the
individual, a girl may be counselled to stop her lover's drinking. An
excellent eugenic motto for a girl, as my friend Canon Horsley pointed
out in discussing my paper on this subject read before the Society for
the Study of Inebriety in 1909, is "the lips that touch liquor shall
never touch mine."

There are always plenty of people to sneer at the teetotaler; people who
make money out of drink naturally do so; people who drink themselves
naturally do so; the unmarried girl may do so, thinking that the
teetotaler is a prig and not quite a man. _But there is one great class
of the community, the most important of all, which does not sneer at
teetotalers, and that is the wives._ They know better, nay, they know
best, and their verdict stands and will remain against that of all
others. I am now addressing the girl who may become a wife, and I tell
her most solemnly that from her point of view she cannot afford to laugh
at the teetotaler; and if she can stop her lover's drinking, whether he
drinks much or little, she will do well for him and herself. She should
know what the effect of alcohol is upon a man, and she should have
imagination enough to realize that his hot breath, coming unwelcome,
will not be more palatable in the future for its flavouring of whisky.
It may be admitted that in saying all this the interests of the future
are perhaps paramount in my mind. I am trying to do a service to the
principle, "Protect parenthood from alcohol," which I advocate as the
first and most urgent motto for the real temperance reformer. Yet the
question of parenthood may be entirely left out of consideration, and
even so the advice here given to the girl about to choose a
husband--alas, that only a small proportion of maidenhood can be in that
fortunate state, which is yet the right and natural one!--is warranted
and more than warranted. We may go so far as to declare that it is a
great duty, laid upon the young womanhood of civilization, to protect
itself and the future, and to serve its own contemporary manhood, by
taking up this attitude towards alcohol. Would that this great
missionary enterprise were now unanimously undertaken by these most
effective and cogent of missionaries, whose own happiness so largely
depends upon its success!

Of course it should not be necessary for any man to set forth, for the
instruction of girlhood, the qualities which it should value in men. All
who train and teach girlhood and form its ideals should devote
themselves scarcely less to this than to the inculcation of high ideals
for girlhood itself; yet it is not done. We do not yet recognize the
supreme importance of the marriage choice for the present and for the
future.

Fortunately, if Nature alone gets a fair chance, she teaches the girl
that a man should "play the game," and should not be afraid of "having a
go," that of the two classes into which, as one used to tell a little
girl, people are divided--those who "stick to it," and those who do
not--the former are the worthy for her. But Nature is specially
handicapped by stupid convention, not least in Anglo-Saxon countries, as
regards a woman's estimation of _tenderness_ in a man. The parental
instinct with its correlate emotion of tenderness, is the highest of
existing things, and though it is less characteristic of men than of
women, it is none the less supreme when men exhibit it. In days to come,
when women can choose, as they should be able to choose to-day, they may
well be counselled to use as a touchstone of their suitor's quality that
line of Wordsworth, "Wisdom doth live with children round her knees." A
man who thinks that "rot" _is_ rot, or soon will be.

But in the minds of men and women there is a half implicit assumption
that tenderness is incompatible with manliness. "Let not women's
weapons, water-drops, stain my man's cheeks," says Lear. But it is quite
possible for a man to be manly and yet tender, and to the highest type
of women it is the combination of strength and tenderness in a man that
appeals beyond aught else.

It has always seemed to the present writer that the followers of Christ
have done him far less than justice in insisting upon one aspect of his
character disproportionately with another. They speak of him as the
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild "; they tend to describe him as almost or
wholly effeminate; and the representations of him in art, with small,
feminine and conspicuously un-Jewish features, with long feminine hair
and the hands of a consumptive woman, join with sacred poetry in
furthering this impression. Nothing can be truer than that he was
tender, and that he had a passion for childhood and realized, as we may
dare to say, its divinity, as only the very few in any age have done.
But this "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," was also he whose blazing words
against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the supreme
exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a sublime
invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his highest. We
forget, perhaps, when we use such a phrase as "whited sepulchre," that
we are quoting the untamable fierceness, the courage, fatal and vital,
of the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," who was murdered not for loving
children, but for hating established wickedness. Why have Christians not
recognized that it is this perhaps unexampled combination of strength
and tenderness which makes their Founder worthy for all time to be
regarded as the Highest of Mankind?

One more counsel to the girl who can choose. It is contained in the
saying of Marcus Aurelius that the worth of a man may be measured by the
worth of the things to which he devotes his life.

We must now pass to consider the sociological fact that, under present
conditions, the sole use of this chapter for a very large proportion of
women can merely consist in suggesting to them that they are better
unmarried than married without love. It is not possible for them to
exercise the great function of choice which is theirs by natural right.
Evil and ominous of more evil are whatever facts deprive woman of this
her birthright.




CHAPTER XVII

THE CONDITIONS OF MARRIAGE


In my volume introductory to Eugenics I have dealt at length with
marriage from that point of view. Here our concern is with the
individual woman, and though neither in theory nor in practice can we
entirely dissociate the question of the future from that of the
individual's needs, it is necessary here to discuss the present
conditions of marriage in the civilized world, from the woman's point of
view. We have to ask ourselves how these conditions act in selecting
women from the ranks of the unmarried; whether the transition proceeds
from random chance, or whether there is a selection in certain definite
directions, and if so, what directions? We have to ask whether different
women would pass into the ranks of the married if the conditions of
marriage were other than they are; and we shall assuredly arrive at the
principle that whatever changes are necessary in the conditions of
marriage, so that the best women shall become the mothers of the future,
must be and will be effected.

One has elsewhere argued at length that monogamy is the marriage form
which has prevailed and will be maintained because of its superior
survival-value--in other words, because it best serves the interests of
the future. But what of the individual in a country where there are
thirteen hundred thousand adult women in excess of men, which is the
case of Great Britain? Plainly, there is need for very serious criticism
of such an institution in such circumstances. Let the reader briefly be
reminded, then, that, as I have previously argued, Nature makes no
arrangement for such a disproportion between the sexes. More boys than
girls are indeed born, but from our infantile mortality, which is
largely a male infanticide, onwards, morbid influences are at work which
result in the disproportion already named.

Two excellent reasons may be adduced why any disproportion in the
numbers of the sexes should be the opposite of that which now obtains.
The ideal condition, no doubt, is that of numerical equality. Failing
that, the evils of a male preponderance, though very real, are
comparatively small. For one thing, celibacy affects a woman more than a
man: men, on the whole, suffer less from being unmarried. It is a more
serious deprivation for the woman than for the man, in general, to be
debarred from parenthood. This is a proposition which we need not labour
here, for no reader will dispute its importance and its relevance.

No less important is the economic question. Specially consecrated as she
is to the future, woman as distinctive woman is necessarily handicapped
in relation to the present. She is at an economic disadvantage. One's
blood boils at the cruel effrontery of men who protest against women's
efforts to gain an honest living, but who have never a word or a deed
against prostitution or against the causes which produce the numerical
preponderance of women. But here again our proposition, though
unfamiliar, and indeed so far as I know never yet stated, needs no
labouring--that owing to the economic opportunities of the sexes, it is,
at any rate, on that ground, of no significance that men shall be in
excess in a community, but it is of very grave significance that women
shall be in excess. It is pitiable, and indeed revolting, in this
country where the excess of women is so marked, to hear from year to
year the comments of men upon the supposed degeneration of women, upon
their unnatural selfishness, their desire to invade spheres which do not
belong to them, and so forth and so forth _ad nauseam_; whilst these
commentators are themselves hand in hand with drink, with war and with
Mammon, destroying male children of all ages in disproportionate excess,
sending our manhood to be slain in war, and sending it also in the cause
of industry--that is to say, in the cause of gold--to our colonies, as
if the culture of the racial life were not the vital industry of any
people.

A third very important reason why a numerical preponderance of women is
more injurious to a country than a numerical preponderance of men is
that, though the duty and responsibility of selection for parenthood
devolves upon both sexes, it is normally discharged with greater
efficiency by women than by men; and a numerical preponderance of women
gravely interferes with their performance of this great function. It may
obviously be argued that such a preponderance leaves a greater choice
to the men. But I believe that men do not exercise their choice so well.
In a word, women are more fastidious; the racial instinct is weaker in
them, less rampant and less roving. In the exercise of this function
women are therefore, on the whole, naturally more capable, more
responsible, less liable to be turned aside by the demands of the
moment. In his "Pure Sociology," Professor Lester Ward has very clearly
and forcibly discussed the comparative behaviour of the two sexes in
this matter, and he shows how the great feminine sentiment, not confined
merely to the human species, is to choose the best. The principle is
also a factor in masculine action, but much less markedly so. What we
call, then, the greater fastidiousness of the female sex is a definite
sex character, and has a definite racial value, raising the standard of
fatherhood where it is allowed free play. But in a nation which contains
a great excess of women, under economic conditions which are greatly to
their disadvantage, the value of this natural fastidiousness is
practically lost. Such are the conditions in Great Britain at present
that practically any man, of however low a type, however diseased,
however unworthy for parenthood, may become a father, if he pleases.

The natural condition suitable to monogamy being a numerical equality of
the sexes, the suggestion may obviously be made that where there is a
great excess of women, monogamy should yield to polygamy; and indeed
where there is such excess monogamy is more apparent than real--an ideal
rather than a practice. Thus we have one or two modern authors who have
installed themselves in sociology by the royal road of romance--though
even to this branch of learning, as to mathematics, there is no short
cut whatsoever, even for those whose pens are naturally skilful--authors
who tell us that, given this numerical preponderance of women, some kind
of polygamous modification of the present marriage system should
certainly be adopted. To one aspect of this contention we shall later
return. Meanwhile, the answer is that, rather than abolish monogamy, we
should strive to alter the conditions which produce such an excess of
women. If such an aim were necessarily impracticable, we might well feel
inclined to vote for polygamy rather than the present state of things.
It is a very decent alternative to prostitution. But in point of fact
our aim of equalizing the numbers of the sexes, which I assert as a
canon of fundamental politics, is eminently practicable; and here we may
briefly outline, as very relevant to the problems of womanhood, the
methods by which that aim is to be realized for the good of both sexes
in the present and the future.

Nature gives us more than a fair start, almost as if she knew that the
wastage of male life is apt to be higher at all ages even under the best
conditions. She sends more male children into the world, as if to
secure, on the whole, an equality of the sexes in adult life. That ideal
is realizable, even allowing for a considerable excess of male deaths.
One of our duties, then, is to control that part of the male death-rate,
if any, which is controllable. To begin at the beginning, we find that
infant mortality claims our attention at once. For years past in the
campaign against infant mortality I have urged this as an apparently
somewhat remote, yet very real and important issue. Infant mortality
bears heaviest upon male babies. It is largely, as I have so often said,
a male infanticide, notably contrasting with the practice of deliberate
female infanticide which is known in so many times and places. In
lowering the infant mortality we shall reduce this disproportion of male
deaths, and shall make for the survival of a larger number of men. Bring
down the infant mortality to proper limits and we shall have in adult
life possible male partners for a large number of women who are now
without such because of the male infanticide of twenty and thirty years
ago.

It is characteristic of the fashion in which the surface gains our
attention while the substance evades it, that the question of the
disproportion of the sexes should have been brought to the public notice
in regard to a subject which, though not unimportant, is quite secondary
compared with those which we are now discussing. Only three or four
years ago people were startled and incredulous when one told them by the
pen or in lectures that there was a very great excess of women in these
islands. Nowadays everybody knows it. This is not because people have
suddenly come to realize the fundamental importance for the State of
such matters, but simply because the fact provides an argument regarding
Woman Suffrage. This immensely important fact of female preponderance,
with its gigantic consequences, which affect every aspect of the
national life, was totally ignored by the public until, forsooth, it
became an argument against Woman Suffrage; and then the foolish people
whose voices are allowed to be heard on these complicated matters, but
who would be laughed out of court if they expressed their opinions on
other subjects equally outside their competence, told us that woman's
suffrage would mean government by women, they being in the majority. For
all other consequences of this gigantic fact they have no concern; not
even the mental capacity to grasp that it must have consequences. But
this, which happens not to be a consequence of it, they are loud to
insist upon. At any rate, they have done this service until the public
at last is acquainted with the demographic fact; and one of the
suffragist leaders some time ago publicly expressed an old argument of
the present writer's that in point of fact this grave supposed
consequence of woman's suffrage need not be feared if only for the
reason that Woman Suffrage would certainly mean increased attention to
infant mortality, and therefore increased control of the morbid causes
which at present account for female preponderance.

It might indeed be added also that, in so far as Woman Suffrage operated
against war, it would contribute in another way to the correction of
this numerical disparity. Not the least of the many evils which have
flowed from the last hideous war in which Great Britain engaged--evils
which glass-eyed politicians have since been exploiting in the interests
of their own charlatanry--is the loss to scores of thousands of women in
this country of the complemental manhood which was destroyed by wounds
and more especially by disease in South Africa. The wickedness with
which that war was entered upon, and the criminal ignorance with which
it was mismanaged, and the elementary principles of hygiene defied, have
their consequences to-day in much of the unmated and handicapped
womanhood of Great Britain. It may be noted that polygamy as a
historical phenomenon has commonly and necessarily been associated with
militarism. Large destruction of manhood by war leads to a numerical
excess of women, and polygamy is a consequence. If the consequences in
our modern civilization are less decent than polygamy, which would
affront the beautiful minds that are unconcerned for Regent Street,
surely our duty is more strenuously than ever to combat the causes
which, as we see, are quite definitely traceable and controllable.

The increased attention paid to the conditions of child life is of
direct service to the nation, and to womanhood in especial, by tending
to interfere with the excessive and unnecessary mortality of boys. As we
have elsewhere observed, the male organism has less vitality than the
female organism. When both sexes at any age are subjected to the same
injurious influences, more males than females die. Thus all our work
with such a measure as the Children Act, keeping children out of
public-houses, and so forth, directly serves the womanhood of the not
distant future by preserving a certain amount of manhood to keep it
company. Accepting the truth of the dictum that it is not good for man
to be alone, we have to learn the still more general and profound truth
that it is not good for woman to be alone, and, as we now learn, the
modern movement for the care of childhood has this notable consequence,
which I have been pointing out for many years and now insist upon once
again, that it makes for the greater numerical equality of the sexes in
adult life, and therefore for the relief of the many evils near and
remote which flow from the numerical excess of women. Answering the
question, "Whither are we tending?" in Christmas, 1909, Mr. G. K.
Chesterton referred to our liability to "float feebly towards every
sociological fad or novelty until we believe in some plain, cold, crude
insanity, such as keeping children out of public-houses."[16]
Considering the authority, I think this is fairly good testimony toward
the wisdom of the achievement to which some of us devoted the greater
part of three strenuous years; and if the question is to be asked
"whither are we tending," part of the answer will be that by such
measures as this for the care of child life, which means in practice
especially for the keeping alive of boys, we are tending toward the
correction of one of the gravest, though least recognized, evils of the
present day.

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