the facts stated in the foregoing chapters are familiar and undeniable, the argument seems clear; yet the mind reacts violently from the conclusions it is forced to admit, and tries to find relief in the commonplace conditions of every-day life. from this looming phantom of the over-sexed female of genus homo we fly back in satisfaction to familiar acquaintances and relatives,—to mrs. john smith and miss imogene jones, to mothers and sisters and daughters and sweethearts and wives. we feel that such a dreadful state of things cannot be true, or we should surely have noticed it. we may even perform that acrobatic feat so easy to most minds,—admit that the statement may be theoretically true, but practically false!
two simple laws of brain action are responsible for the difficulty of convincing the human race of any large general truths concerning itself. one is common to all brains, to all nerve sensations indeed, and is cheerfully admitted to have nothing to do with the sexuo-economic relation. it is this simple fact, in popular phrase,—that what we are used to we do not notice. this rests on the law of adaptation, the steady, ceaseless pressure that tends to fit the organism to the environment. a nerve touched 77for the first time with a certain impression feels this first impression far more than the hundredth or thousandth, though the thousandth be far more violent than the first. if an impression be constant and regular, we become utterly insensitive to it, and only respond under some special condition, as the ticking of a clock, the noise of running water or waves on the beach, even the clatter of railroad trains, grows imperceptible to those who hear it constantly. it is perfectly possible for an individual to become accustomed to the most disadvantageous conditions, and fail to notice them.
it is equally possible for a race, a nation, a class, to become accustomed to most disadvantageous conditions, and fail to notice them. take, as an individual instance, the wearing of corsets by women. put a corset, even a loose one, on a vigorous man or woman who never wore one, and there is intense discomfort, and a vivid consciousness thereof. the healthy muscles of the trunk resent the pressure, the action of the whole body is checked in the middle, the stomach is choked, the process of digestion interfered with; and the victim says, “how can you bear such a thing?”
but the person habitually wearing a corset does not feel these evils. they exist, assuredly, the facts are there, the body is not deceived; 78but the nerves have become accustomed to these disagreeable sensations, and no longer respond to them. the person “does not feel it.” in fact, the wearer becomes so used to the sensations that, when they are removed,—with the corset,—there is a distinct sense of loss and discomfort. the heavy folds of the cravat, stock, and neckcloth of earlier men’s fashions, the heavy horse-hair peruke, the stiff high collar of to-day, the kind of shoes we wear,—these are perfectly familiar instances of the force of habit in the individual.
this is equally true of racial habits. that a king should rule because he was born, passed unquestioned for thousands of years. that the eldest son should inherit the titles and estates was a similar phenomenon as little questioned. that a debtor should be imprisoned, and so entirely prevented from paying his debts, was common law. so glaring an evil as chattel slavery was an unchallenged social institution from earliest history to our own day among the most civilized nations of the earth. christ himself let it pass unnoticed. the hideous injustice of christianity to the jew attracted no attention through many centuries. that the serf went with the soil, and was owned by the lord thereof, was one of the foundations of society in the middle ages.
79social conditions, like individual conditions, become familiar by use, and cease to be observed. this is the reason why it is so much easier to criticise the customs of other persons or other nations than our own. it is also the reason why we so naturally deny and resent the charges of the critic. it is not necessarily because of any injustice on the one side or dishonesty on the other, but because of a simple and useful law of nature. the englishman coming to america is much struck by america’s political corruption; and, in the earnest desire to serve his brother, he tells us all about it. that which he has at home he does not observe, because he is used to it. the american in england finds also something to object to, and omits to balance his criticism by memories of home.
when a condition exists among us which began in those unrecorded ages back of tradition even, which obtains in varying degree among every people on earth, and which begins to act upon the individual at birth, it would be a miracle past all belief if people should notice it. the sexuo-economic relation is such a condition. it began in primeval savagery. it exists in all nations. each boy and girl is born into it, trained into it, and has to live in it. the world’s progress in 80matters like these is attained by a slow and painful process, but one which works to good ends.
in the course of social evolution there are developed individuals so constituted as not to fit existing conditions, but to be organically adapted to more advanced conditions. these advanced individuals respond in sharp and painful consciousness to existing conditions, and cry out against them according to their lights. the history of religion, of political and social reform, is full of familiar instances of this. the heretic, the reformer, the agitator, these feel what their compeers do not, see what they do not, and, naturally, say what they do not. the mass of the people are invariably displeased by the outcry of these uneasy spirits. in simple primitive periods they were promptly put to death. progress was slow and difficult in those days. but this severe process of elimination developed the kind of progressive person known as a martyr; and this remarkable sociological law was manifested: that the strength of a current of social force is increased by the sacrifice of individuals who are willing to die in the effort to promote it. “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” this is so commonly known to-day, though not formulated, 81that power hesitates to persecute, lest it intensify the undesirable heresy. a policy of “free speech” is found to let pass most of the uneasy pushes and spurts of these stirring forces, and lead to more orderly action. our great anti-slavery agitation, the heroic efforts of the “women’s rights” supporters, are fresh and recent proofs of these plain facts: that the mass of the people do not notice existing conditions, and that they are not pleased with those who do. this is one strong reason why the sexuo-economic relation passes unobserved among us, and why any statement of it will be so offensive to many.
the other law of brain action which tends to prevent our perception of general truth is this: it is easier to personalize than to generalize. this is due primarily to the laws of mental development, but it is greatly added to by the very relation under discussion. as a common law of mental action, the power to observe and retain an individual impression marks a lower degree of development than the power to classify and collate impressions and make generalizations therefrom. there are savages who can say “hot fire,” “hot stone,” “hot water,” but cannot say “heat,” cannot think it. similarly, they can say “good man,” “good knife,” “good meat”; but they 82cannot say “goodness,” they cannot think it. they have observed specific instances, but are unable to collate them, to generalize therefrom. so, in our common life, individual instances of injustice or cruelty are observed long before the popular mind is able to see that it is a condition which causes these things, and that the condition must be altered before the effects can be removed. a bad priest, a bad king, a bad master, were long observed and pointedly objected to before it began to be held that the condition of monarchy or the condition of slavery must needs bear fruit, and that, if we did not like the fruit, we might better change the tree. any slaveholder would admit that there were instances of cruelty, laziness, pride, among masters, and of deceit, laziness, dishonesty, among slaves. what the slaveholder did not see was that, given the relation of chattel slavery, it inevitably tended to produce these evils, and did produce them, in spite of all the efforts of the individual to the contrary. to see the individual instance is easy. to see the general cause is harder, requires a further brain development. we, as a race, have long since reached the degree of general intelligence which ought to enable us to judge more largely and wisely of social questions; but 83here the deteriorating effect of the sexuo-economic relation is shown.
the sex relation is intensely personal. all the functions and relations ensuing are intensely personal. the spirit of “me and my wife, my son john and his wife, us four, and no more,” is the natural spirit of this phase of life. by confining half the world to this one set of functions, we have confined it absolutely to the personal. and man that is born of woman is reared by her in this same atmosphere of concentrated personality, and afterward spends a large part of his life in it. this condition tends to magnify the personal and minimize the general in our minds, with results that are familiar to us all. the difficulty of enforcing sanitary laws, where personal convenience must be sacrificed to general safety, the size of the personal grievance as against the general, the need of “having it brought home to us,” which hinders every step of public advancement, and our eager response when it is “brought home to us,”—these are truisms. so far as a comparison can be made, women are in this sense more personal than men, more personally sensitive, less willing to “stand in line” and “take turns,” less able to see why a general restriction is just when it touches them or their 84children. this is natural enough, inevitable enough, and only mentioned here as partially explaining why people do not see the general facts as to our over-sexed condition. yet they are patent everywhere, not only patent, but painful. being used to them, we do not notice them, or, forced to notice them, we attribute the pain we feel to the evil behavior of some individual, and never think of it as being the result of a condition common to us all.
if we have among us such a condition as has been stated,—a state of morbid and excessive sex-development,—it must, of course, show itself in daily life in a thousand ways. the non-observer, not having seen any such manifestation, concludes that there is none, and so denies the alleged condition,—says it sounds all right, but he does not see any proof of it! having clearly in mind that, if such proof exists, such commensurate evil in common life as would naturally result from an abnormal sex-distinction, these evils must be so common and habitual as to pass unobserved; and, farther, that, when forced upon our notice, we only see them as matters of personal behavior,—let us, in spite of these hindrances, see if the visible results among us are not such as must follow such a cause, and let us seek them merely in the phenomena of every-day life as 85we know it, not in the deeper sexual or social results.
a concrete instance, familiar as the day, and unbelievable in its ill effects, is the attitude of the mother toward her children in regard to the sex-relation. with very few exceptions, the mother gives her daughter no warning or prevision of what life holds for her, and so lets innocence and ignorance go on perpetuating sickness and sin and pain through ceaseless generations. a normal motherhood wisely and effectively guards its young from evil. an abnormal motherhood, over-anxious and under-wise, hovers the child to its harm, and turns it out defenceless to the worst of evils. this is known to millions and millions personally. only very lately have we thought to consider it generally. and not yet do we see that it is not the fault of the individual mother, but of her economic status. because of our abnormal sex-development, the whole field has become something of an offence,—a thing to be hidden and ignored, passed over without remark or explanation. hence this amazing paradox of mothers ashamed of motherhood, unable to explain it, and—measure this well—lying to their children about the primal truths of life,—mothers lying to their own children about motherhood!
86the pressure under which this is done is an economic one. the girl must marry: else how live? the prospective husband prefers the girl to know nothing. he is the market, the demand. she is the supply. and with the best intentions the mother serves her child’s economic advantage by preparing her for the market. this is an excellent instance. it is common. it is most evil. it is plainly traceable to our sexuo-economic relation.
another instance of so grossly unjust, so palpable, so general an evil that it has occasionally aroused some protest even from our dull consciousness is this: the enforced attitude of the woman toward marriage. to the young girl, as has been previously stated, marriage is the one road to fortune, to life. she is born highly specialized as a female: she is carefully educated and trained to realize in all ways her sex-limitations and her sex-advantages. what she has to gain even as a child is largely gained by feminine tricks and charms. her reading, both in history and fiction, treats of the same position for women; and romance and poetry give it absolute predominance. pictorial art, music, the drama, society, everything, tells her that she is she, and that all depends on whom she marries. where young boys plan for what they will 87achieve and attain, young girls plan for whom they will achieve and attain. little ellie and her swan’s nest among the reeds is a familiar illustration. it is the lover on the red roan steed she planned for. it is lancelot riding through the sheaves that called the lady from her loom at shalott: “he” is the coming world.
with such a prospect as this before her; with an organization specially developed to this end; with an education adding every weight of precept and example, of wisdom and virtue, to the natural instincts; with a social environment the whole machinery of which is planned to give the girl a chance to see and to be seen, to provide her with “opportunities”; and with all the pressure of personal advantage and self-interest added to the sex-instinct,—what one would logically expect is a society full of desperate and eager husband-hunters, regarded with popular approval.
not at all! marriage is the woman’s proper sphere, her divinely ordered place, her natural end. it is what she is born for, what she is trained for, what she is exhibited for. it is, moreover, her means of honorable livelihood and advancement. but—she must not even look as if she wanted it! she must not turn her hand over to get it. she must sit passive 88as the seasons go by, and her “chances” lessen with each year. think of the strain on a highly sensitive nervous organism to have so much hang on one thing, to see the possibility of attaining it grow less and less yearly, and to be forbidden to take any step toward securing it! this she must bear with dignity and grace to the end.
to what end? to the end that, if she does not succeed in being chosen, she becomes a thing of mild popular contempt, a human being with no further place in life save as an attachée, a dependant upon more fortunate relatives, an old maid. the open derision and scorn with which unmarried women used to be treated is lessening each year in proportion to their advance in economic independence. but it is not very long since the popular proverb, “old maids lead apes in hell,” was in common use; since unwelcome lovers urged their suit with the awful argument that they might be the last askers; since the hapless lady in the wood prayed for a husband, and, when the owl answered, “who? who?” cried, “anybody, good lord!” there is still a pleasant ditty afloat as to the “three old maids of lynn,” who did not marry when they could, and could not when they would.
the cruel and absurd injustice of blaming 89the girl for not getting what she is allowed no effort to obtain seems unaccountable; but it becomes clear when viewed in connection with the sexuo-economic relation. although marriage is a means of livelihood, it is not honest employment where one can offer one’s labor without shame, but a relation where the support is given outright, and enforced by law in return for the functional service of the woman, the “duties of wife and mother.” therefore no honorable woman can ask for it. it is not only that the natural feminine instinct is to retire, as that of the male is to advance, but that, because marriage means support, a woman must not ask a man to support her. it is economic beggary as well as a false attitude from a sex point of view.
observe the ingenious cruelty of the arrangement. it is just as humanly natural for a woman as for a man to want wealth. but, when her wealth is made to come through the same channels as her love, she is forbidden to ask for it by her own sex-nature and by business honor. hence the millions of mismade marriages with “anybody, good lord!” hence the million broken hearts which must let all life pass, unable to make any attempt to stop it. hence the many “maiden aunts,” elderly sisters and daughters, unattached 90women everywhere, who are a burden on their male relatives and society at large. this is changing for the better, to be sure, but changing only through the advance of economic independence for women. a “bachelor maid” is a very different thing from “an old maid.”
this, then, is the reason for the andromeda position of the possibly-to-be-married young woman, and for the ridicule and reproach meted out to her. since women are viewed wholly as creatures of sex even by one another, and since everything is done to add to their young powers of sex-attraction; since they are marriageable solely on this ground, unless, indeed, “a fortune” has been added to their charms,—failure to marry is held a clear proof of failure to attract, a lack of sex-value. and, since they have no other value, save in a low order of domestic service, they are quite naturally despised. what else is the creature good for, failing in the functions for which it was created? the scorn of male and female alike falls on this sexless thing: she is a human failure.
it is not strange, therefore, though just as pitiful,—this long chapter of patient, voiceless, dreary misery in the lives of women; and it is not strange, either, to see the marked and steady change in opinion that follows the 91development of other faculties in woman besides those of sex. now that she is a person as well as a female, filling economic relation to society, she is welcomed and accepted as a human creature, and need not marry the wrong man for her bread and butter. so sharp is the reaction from this unlovely yoke that there is a limited field of life to-day wherein women choose not to marry, preferring what they call “their independence,”—a new-born, hard-won, dear-bought independence. that any living woman should prefer it to home and husband, to love and motherhood, throws a fierce light on what women must have suffered for lack of freedom before.
this tendency need not be feared, however. it is merely a reaction, and a most natural one. it will pass as naturally, as more and more women become independent, when marriage is not the price of liberty. the fear exhibited that women generally, once fully independent, will not marry, is proof of how well it has been known that only dependence forced them to marriage as it was. there will be needed neither bribe nor punishment to force women to true marriage with independence.
along this line it is most interesting to mark the constant struggle between natural instinct and natural law, and social habit and 92social law, through all our upward course. beginning with the natural functions and instincts of sex, holding her great position as selector of the best among competing males, woman’s beautiful work is to improve the race by right marriage. the feeling by which this is accomplished, growing finer as we become more civilized, developes into that wide, deep, true, and lasting love which is the highest good to individual human beings. following its current, we have always reverenced and admired “true love”; and our romances, from the earliest times, abound in praise of the princess who marries the page or prisoner, venerating the selective power in woman, choosing “the right man” for his own sake. directly against this runs the counter-current, resulting in the marriage of convenience, a thing which the true inner heart of the world has always hated. young lochinvar is not an eternal hero for nothing. the personified type of a great social truth is sure of a long life. the poor young hero, handsome, brave, good, but beset with difficulties, stands ever against the wealth and power of the bad man. the woman is pulled hither and thither between them, and the poor hero wins in the end. that he is heaped with honor and riches, after all, merely signifies our recognition 93that he is the higher good. this is better than a sun-myth. it is a race-myth, and true as truth.
so we have it among us in life to-day, endlessly elaborated and weakened by profuse detail, as is the nature of that life, but there yet. the girl who marries the rich old man or the titled profligate is condemned by the popular voice; and the girl who marries the poor young man, and helps him live his best, is still approved by the same great arbiter. and yet why should we blame the woman for pursuing her vocation? since marriage is her only way to get money, why should she not try to get money in that way? why cast the weight of all self-interest on the “practical” plane so solidly against the sex-interest of the individual and of the race? the mercenary marriage is a perfectly natural consequence of the economic dependence of women.
on the other hand, note the effect of this dependence upon men. as the excessive sex-distinction and economic dependence of women increase, so do the risk and difficulty of marriage increase, so is marriage deferred and avoided, to the direct injury of both sexes and society at large. in simpler relations, in the country, wherever women have a personal value in economic relation as well 94as a feminine value in sex-relation, an early marriage is an advantage. the young farmer gets a profitable servant when he marries. the young business man gets nothing of the kind,—a pretty girl, a charming girl, ready for “wifehood and motherhood”—so far as her health holds out,—but having no economic value whatever. she is merely a consumer, and he must wait till he can “afford to marry.” these are instances frequent everywhere, and familiar to us all, of the palpable effects in common life of our sexuo-economic relation.
if there is one unmixed evil in human life, it is that known to us in all ages, and popularly called “the social evil,” consisting of promiscuous and temporary sex-relations. the inherent wrong in these relations is sociological before it is legal or moral. the recognition by the moral sense of a given thing as wrong requires that it be wrong, to begin with. a thing is not wrong merely because it is called so. the wrongness of this form of sex-relation in an advanced social state rests solidly on natural laws. in the evolution of better and better means of reproducing the species, a longer period of infancy was developed. this longer period of infancy required longer care, and it was accordingly developed that the best care during this time was given by 95both parents. this induced a more permanent mating. and the more permanent mating, bound together by the common interests and duties, developed higher psychic attributes in the parents by use, in the children by heredity. that is why society is right in demanding of its constituent individuals the virtue of chastity, the sanctity of marriage. society is perfectly right, because social evolution is as natural a process as individual evolution; and the permanent parent is proven an advantageous social factor. but social evolution, deep, unconscious, slow, is one thing; and self-conscious, loud-voiced society is another.
the deepest forces of nature have tended to evolve pure, lasting, monogamous marriage in the human race. but our peculiar arrangement of feeding one sex by the other has tended to produce a very different thing, and has produced it. in no other animal species is the female economically dependent on the male. in no other animal species is the sex-relation for sale. a coincidence. where, on the one hand, every condition of life tends to develope sex in women, to crush out the power and the desire for economic production and exchange, and to develope also the age-long habit of seeking all earthly good at a man’s hands and of making but one return; where, on the other 96hand, man inherits the excess in sex-energy, and is never blamed for exercising it, and where he developes also the age-long habit of taking what he wants from women, for whose helpless acquiescence he makes an economic return,—what should naturally follow? precisely what has followed. we live in a world of law, and humanity is no exception to it. we have produced a certain percentage of females with inordinate sex-tendencies and inordinate greed for material gain. we have produced a certain percentage of males with inordinate sex-tendencies and a cheerful willingness to pay for their gratification. and, as the percentage of such men is greater than the percentage of such women, we have worked out most evil methods of supplying the demand. but always in the healthy social heart we have known that it was wrong, a racial wrong, productive of all evil. being a man’s world, it was quite inevitable that he should blame woman for their mutual misdoing. there is reason in it, too. bad as he is, he is only seeking gratification natural in kind, though abnormal in degree. she is not only in some cases doing this, but in most cases showing the falseness of the deed by doing it for hire,—physical falsehood,—a sin against nature.
97it is a true instinct that revolts against obtaining bread by use of the sex-functions. why, then, are we so content to do this in marriage? legally and religiously, we say that it is right; but in its reactionary effect on the parties concerned and on society at large it is wrong. the physical and psychical effects are evil, though modified by our belief that it is right. the physical and psychical effects of prostitution were still evil when the young girls of babylon earned their dowries thereby in the temple of bela, and thought it right. what we think and feel alters the moral quality of an act in our consciousness as we do it, but does not alter its subsequent effect. we justify and approve the economic dependence of women upon the sex-relation in marriage. we condemn it unsparingly out of marriage. we follow it with our blame and scorn up to the very doors of marriage,—the mercenary bride,—but think no harm of the mercenary wife, filching her husband’s pockets in the night. love sanctifies it, we say: love must go with it.
love never yet went with self-interest. the deepest antagonism lies between them: they are diametrically opposed forces. in the beautiful progress of evolution we find constant opposition between the instincts and processes 98of self-preservation and the instinct and processes of race-preservation. from those early forms where birth brought death, as in the flowering aloe, the ephemeral may-fly, up to the highest glory of self-effacing love; these two forces work in opposition. we have tied them together. we have made the woman, the mother,—the very source of sacrifice through love,—get gain through love,—a hideous paradox. no wonder that our daily lives are full of the flagrant evils produced by this unnatural state. no wonder that men turn with loathing from the kind of women they have made.
