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MODERN WOMAN

HER INTENTIONS

FLORENCE FARR
III

LONDON
FRANK PALMER

12-14 RED LION COURT

Another fire has come into the harp,

Fire from beyond the world, and wakens it:

It has begun to cry out to the eagles !

W. B. Yeats,
Second version oj '** Shadowy Waters."

629367

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Mr, Galsworthy's toy dog — Jewish religion — Em-
i ology page 2

THE VOTE

Latent period before explosion — Refusal of the vote
has given impetus to revolutionary enthusiasm —
Thin end of the wedge — Ingenuity of women —
A working woman and the hospital official's
chivalry — Thirty-two million workers, half-million
independent means, two million of idle spinsters
in England and Wales — Our wants . . .15

women's incomes

Lucrative professions for women — Opera singing —
Theatrical, Literature, Medical, Expert, and
average incomes — Other work — Independent in-
comes— Marriage for money — Courtesans, prosti-
tutes, and riff-raff — Economic independence is a
way of ennobling sex relations — Marriage often
settles down into business partnership — The work-
ing man's wife — Eugenic advantages of economic
independence — Racial and social ideals are opposed
to each other at present 25

III

THE VARIATIONS OF LOVE

The difficulty of a lasting attachment — Enthusiasm
of youth — English girls apt to mistake interest for
love — The virtuous wife — The flow and ebb of the
tide of love — Permanent relations often founded
on mutual contempt — Jealousy of relations — Mr.
Harold Gorst's Philosophy of Love — The marriage

Contents

tie must persist because it suits one half of the
population — Six million bachelors and seven
million spinsters in England and Wales — The
ostracism of the unfaithful is more often the cause
of disease becoming serious than infidelity — The
emotional degradation of a loveless marriage page 33

THE SORDID DIVORCE

Marriage laws to be reformed — Binding marriage in
the Catholic Church — Bond of parenthood — The
bond between the unattractive people — Heiresses
— The childless — The extraordinarily attractive —
Sordidness of English divorce — Restitution of con-
jugal rights — Suggested reform — Agreement in
wishing for divorce should be the first cause for it
— Questions of fortune or wealth to be fought out
on economic grounds — Boredom the chief reason
that people part, but too insulting to be mentioned
in public — French dot — Sale of beauty — Sale of
helpmate — Fixed allowance for " bed " and fixed
allowance for " board " — The birth of child should
automatically make a bond as in remote country
places — The Saturday orgy and prudence —
Drugging and prudence — The police court and the
wife's housekeeping money — A romance of the
mining world . . . . . . . 41

THE GREEN HOUSES OF JAPAN

Edmond de Goncourt's account of courtesans in Tokio
— Urgent danger of delay in reform — Fear of the
spread of contagious disease — A trades union for
prostitutes — The good of Public Health in this
matter the good of future generations — Clean bill
of health gives special susceptibility — Les A vane's
— Anti-social rage — The various moral standards
of women — Dangers of promiscuity not so great
as the dangers of a cut finger or chapped lip —
The sale of virginity — Intoxication leads to
promiscuity, but it is not natural to the average
woman — The ardour of a fresh lover her greatest
temptation — Is charm of value as a racial factor?
The attitude of marrying women . . -53

Contents

BEAUTY AND MOTHERHOOD

The terror of motherhood — Women will specialize —
Lovers of men and lovers of children — A woman
has an instinct for the right father for her child ;
but often chooses a bad lifelong companion for
herself — Useless old ethical codes — Practical sug-
gestion for race betterment — Sterilization of the
unfit — Education in the laws of sexual health —
— Motherly women with no chance of children —
Unmotherly women attractive to men and very
good helpmates — Surgical aid for the tuberculosis
child-producer — Prejudices — Intellectual edu-
cation ....... page 63

VII

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

Life Consciousness — The Man, the Insect, the Tree
are representatives of Intellect, Instinct, and
Torpid Consciousness — Henri Bergson and William
James — The interplay of the three kinds of con-
sciousness— Motherhood and the vegetative con-
sciousness— Choosing the mate and the instinctive
consciousness — The Matriarchal civilization — The
surprises instinct prepares for intellect in dreams
and inventions ...... 70

VIII

THE IMAGINATIVE WOMAN

Physical love, reproduction — Emotional love, a
satisfaction or enjoyment — Scientific curiosity
about love — Philosophic and sympathetic under-
standing of all sorts of love — Imaginative love
makes the consciousness elemental — The glory
and danger of imagination — Vicarious imagina-
tion in reading — The middle-aged suppress imagina-
tion in the young — Saintly beauty — Philosophy,
Criticism, Sensuousness, and commonplace life —
Madness, Folly, Drink, Drugging — The imagina-
tive man is womanly in these respects — Wein-
inger's Sex and Character — Forel, Bloch — Mr.
Austen Chamberlain ...... 78

Contents

EXPERIMENTS

Solitude and family — The home — The gay societies
of the past — Solemn experiments in love— Civiliza-
tion a protection from, or concealment of, the
animal necessities — Eating in public — Privacy —
When truth is goodness — Useful conventions —
Saint Teresa and her men friends — Lead the way
if you want to make an experiment ; if you want
to follow anyone, it is a sign you should follow the
herd page 84

THE SAVAGE, THE BARBARIAN, THE CIVILIZED

The Spaniard, the Russian, the Parisian — Intellect,
art, morals, religion, and women — Conspicuousness
— The fight against the patriarchal goat — The
passing love — The necessity of many friends — The
real play of the life to come . . . . 91

PREFACE

There is a great difficulty in writing of the
women of the first ten years of the twentieth
century. This is to be the Woman's Century.
In it she is to awake from her long sleep and
come into her kingdom ; but when I look
about me I find myself surrounded by the
most terribly contradictory facts. We know
there is to be a revaluation of all values — we
know that old rubbish is to be burnt up, that
the social world is to be melted down and re-
moulded " nearer to the heart's desire " ; but
at the same time we have to recognize that in
spite of the enthusiasm of the alchemists and
the transmuters of base metal into gold, the
main body of society is as yet hardly aware
of the fire that is to burn it.

In writing of this change I have to explain
to one set of women, who will think me out-
rageously advanced, my opinions of another

Preface

set of women, who will think me absurdly
conventional.

I think I had better own up at once that
as an artist I am prejudiced against the ex-
hibition of the necessities of nature. I am
like Mr. Galsworthy's little toy terrier, who
disliked the strong odours of real life. Yet at
the same time I have a passion for the dis-
cussion of life ; the salt of wit makes me enjoy
the strongest flavours. So I present myself
and my limitations to my readers, hoping that
my fervid faith in the delight of the com-
munion of thoughts, emotions, and sympa-
thies will make up for my lack of conviction
in some other directions.

Before we proceed any further I think I
ought to point out that the degradation of
women in the past originated in the region of
the country round Mount Ararat. The lower-
ing of their status occurred when the white
races adopted the Assyrian Semite's Scrip-
tures. The Christian religion brought us that
curse cowering behind its gospel of glad
tidings ; and it is most remarkable to trace
the way in which the Jews' religion crept into

Preface

Europe under the cloak of Christianity. In
heaven, the Gospel says, there is love, but
neither marriage or giving in marriage. Are
we to wait for heaven or the millennium before
the present * tern of marrying and selling in
marriage shall be abolished ? Everyone who
has read a modern encyclopaedia is familiar
with the fact that the first chapters of Genesis
are made up of two different narratives. One,
called the Priestly narrative, from the begin-
ning to the first part of the fourth verse of the
second chapter of Genesis, and continued in
the first five verses of the fifth chapter. There
is nothing derogatory to women in this narra-
tive. The unpleasant details about Adam
and Eve a 3 in the Prophetic narrative, which
is given from the second part of the fourth
verse of the second chapter to the twenty-
sixth verse of the fourth chapter. The Jews
have taken advantage of the confusion of
these two contradictory stories to fix the blame
of all social evils on Eve, just as the Hesiod,
influenced by Eastern legend, fixed it on
Pandora. These myths come from the same
region, a region in which women were kept

Preface

entirely for the amusement and service of
men, and were humbled by every kind of
insult that the Semite mind could invent.
Women have a very long score to settle with
the Jews and the Mahommedans. Even
Hindoo women were comparatively respected
and free until the Mahommedans brought
their ideas into Hindostan. And I am told
that in nearly every city of ill-fame in the
world the profits arising from the procuring
of girls are collected by the Chosen Nation.
The Semites founded their opinion of women
on fabulous legends and false science. They
assert that man gives the spirit and woman
the matter to the child. Embryology has
now taught us that the parents make exactly
equal contributions of chromatin, or the active
element, to the original cell from which a child
develops. It has taught us that, originally,
cells are capable of self-reproduction ; that
sex is not always a vital necessity, but often
a device for securing variety. It has taught
us by experiment that boys come from their
mother's right side, and girls from her left
side, and in a healthy mother the rhythm of sex

Preface

is regular. The symbolism of the Fall might
indeed apply to the history of the cell which
at first contains its own force of reproduction,
but in the case of a female ovum deliberately
parts with some of its original power in order
that it may be replaced by the vital power of
a male. The male cell also rends itself apart,
and becomes quite unfit for reproductive pur-
poses until it can find another cell with which
to join. In the simple facts which have been
observed through microscopes there is no
place for the overweening pride of the Semite
race in the virtue of maleness ; and I can
only hope that it was ignorance and not malice
that led the Jews and the Arabs to spread
false doctrine* on the subject of sex. It is un-
fortunate that the first patriarchs, from whom
they proudly count their descent, had much
in common with the primitive goat worship-
pers, who were responsible for the one-sided
arrangements for sexual contentment common
in harems and the other patriarchal institu-
tions I have mentioned.

In the great mediaeval revival, the real age

of chivalry and troubadours, the knights

Preface

carried their ladies' colours to victory in vain.
The old lies are in our blood — we still believe
in Eve and her shame. White men have
fought in the past, and it remains for white
women to fight now, and at last rid their sex
all over the world of the ignominy of this
false doctrine.

THE VOTE

Modern Woman
Her Intentions

THE VOTE

It is my conviction that all great changes
come from a force that after many years of
silence blazes with emot| nal, passionate en-
thusiasm. That long period of torpid latent
life, once it is liberated from prison, gives
driving power. Without silence and darkness
no new creature can be brought forth. With-
out resistance no great desire can be felt. It is
i the same with the woman's movement.

When the vote was refused, the first artillery
for the woman's army was forged. That little
request for the vote might have been granted
three years ago without making any more dif-
ference than the borough council vote here,
or the parliamentary vote in New Zealand,
Australia, Norway, Finland, and so forth,
has made already. That little request, that
might have pa sed almost unnoticed had it

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

been granted, has raised up a powerful body
of feeling on both sides, that will end in
one of the greatest social revolutions of the
time.

Whether women are militant or anti-militant,
whether they ask for the vote in order to fight
the working man or to join hands with him,
whether they content themselves with words
of approval and donations, or whether they
lose their tempers in denunciation of the un-
feminine behaviour of certain brave enthusiasts
— yet all the women of many opinions are
alike rousing themselves from their former
deadly attitude of quiescent acceptance.

The most violent anti-suffragette is obliged
to try to understand the questions of social
reform in order to protest against them. The
most downtrodden wife is hearing rumours
that even now there are laws which might
protect her from domestic tyranny. The
county ladies who never read anything but
The Queen, The Spectator, or Punch, protest
against the struggle, but admit that it is time
that women of property had a vote now that
their butlers and coachmen have obtained
that privilege. The " too old at thirty "
brigade is carrying the campaign into the ball-
room and skating-rink. All this is familiar to
everyone that moves in English society to-
day, and one word of terror used by men who
oppose the vote is heard on all sides. They

The Vote

say the vote is " the thin end of the wedge,"
and I reply gladly from my side — not only as
a suffragist, but as an onlooker at the loves
and hatreds of the sexes — I reply that the
) wedge is being driven every day. Every day
of delay in giving women the vote gives them
a power far more deadly, a hope more dan-
gerous, an accomplishment far more vital.
It gives them the power of standing up for
themselves, freed from the belief in the pro-
tection of men. It gives them hope in each
other. It teaches them to speak for themselves,
and discover the force of their eloquence and
the ingenuity of their resources. It is im-
possible to go to a meeting of the militant
party without feeling amazement at the
dexterity of all concerned. With wit, with
banter, with beauty, with dignity, awkward
questions are answered, coarse, jokes. 'are frus-
trated, and swift as light the laugh is turned
against the interrupter.

The odd contrast between the scenes we
personally witness and the same scenes serve'd
up for breakfast by the daily press, is having
some effect in breaking up the touching faith
of our foremothers in the accuracy of news-
paper reports. Women are awake to public
affairs for the first time since the matriarchal
period. They are weighing the evidence of
the press, they are considering political facts.
They are said to be losing the chivalrous
b 17

- - ■*

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

adoration of men. But in contrast to the
politeness of men to well-dressed, good-looking
women, I would call attention to the attitude
of a respectable hospital official towards a
poor woman who, in November, 1909, brought
her little boy as an out-patient.

She arrived very early in order to be able
to go to her work with as little delay as possi-
ble, and secured a seat before the men, who
came in later. When the attendant entered,
she was made to go back to the last seat of
all and wait for her son to take his turn until
all the elder males had been interviewed.
" Men come first, your place is at the back,"
was all the answer she got to her protests.
So much for chivalry when a woman is poor
and worn with labour. It is pathetic to see
the working woman, apologetic for her poverty,
apologetic, for her womanhood, apologetic for
her ill-health or^any temporary need of help.
AriH T say that the working woman's heroic
patience has been attained by centuries of
ill-usage and lack of chivalry. Most women
would not understand the idea of chivalry
if it were explained to them, so little does
it come within their range of experience.
We have no conception of the size of the mass
we are dealing with. In England and Wales
there are about 17 million females. Of these
females, 13 million are past childhood, roughly
speaking 6 million of these are unmarried,

\ ■

_ _

The Vote

7 million are married or widows. About
9 million married and unmarried women are
unoccupied, or have retired from business ;
about 4 million are engaged in occupations,
and trying to make their own living. Of the
16 million males, about 2 million are unoccu-
pied or retired, io million are occupied, and
the rest are children. Now we find from the
last census that about 7 million women are
in charge of a family, and 3 million of these
are occupied in business ; 6 million women
are unmarried, about 1 million of these are
occupied in business, and nearly \ million
have independent means. Making allowance
for the very young, we have about 2§ million
grown women in a dependent position without
a husband or an occupation in England and
Wales alone.

If one spends an afternoon studying the
census returns, one sees in all occupations the
well-paid businesses are for men, and the ill-
paid for women. In general and local govern-
ment, defence of the country, and professional
occupations, 326 thousand women only have
subordinate posts, but there are nearly 2
million in domestic service. Textile manufac-
tures, 663 thousand; dress, 710 thousand; food
and lodging, 300 thousand, but in commerce
and finance only 60 thousand.

Men can no longer support their daughters,
and daughters cannot command good positions

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

in lucrative professions. There are only
7 million families, and at least 4 million
grown-up women, unmarried and superfluous
as mothers. The working man tells these
women to "go home and do the washing."
" Well," a virgin replies, " one million of us
are working at laundry and other work, under
half a million of us are amusing ourselves on
independent incomes, and the rest of us have
to while away life somehow without money or
occupation, so we are making a revolution."

The struggle for the vote is putting heart
into the superfluous woman, and it is putting
the hope of reorganizing the market value of
women's labour into her heart. We not only
want work, but we want good wages. If we
have children we want to be sure they will be
cared for and fed. If we keep house we want
our wages. The 12 million females that have
no independent income cry out to the \ million
that has an independent income, in their
almost hopeless struggle to win fair wages.
It is interesting to think that out of the total
population of about 32! million in England
and Wales, a very little over f million are
living on independent incomes, and we find
that there are less than 100,000 heirs, and
more than 400,000 heiresses in this country.
The rest, that is 32 million, have to work or
starve so as to save enough for their old age.
Each person that lives at ease is surrounded

The Vote

by sixty-five people that have to struggle.
Each woman that has a husband knows that
a widow or spinster stands portionless beside
her. Figures are abstractions, but behind
these figures are facts and problems that are
driving us before them with such resistless
cruelty that at last we are determined to cry
halt and make a fight — vote or no vote !

WOMEN'S INCOMES

women's incomes

Let us say that certain prime donne can earn
£25,000 a year for a few years, that the most
successful London actress may receive a salary
of £5000 a year, that a successful novelist may
get a few thousands a year by her books, that
a. lady doctor or dressmaker may make £1000
a year, and you have admitted all that can
be said in favour of the present means women
have of making a large income on the same
lines as men. I suppose the average successful
singer is delighted with £1000 a year, the
average successful actress with £10 a week or
£500 a year, the average novelist with £300
a year, and the average lady doctor with the
same. In an institution which gives £1000 a
year to its male principal, we find the lady
superintendent receiving £200 a year, and
the male secretary £350. Women find it hard
to get any professional income out of the
Government offices, the Church, or the law
courts. In the Post Office and in all educational
work the disparities between the salaries of
men and women is well known. And I think

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

we may take it for granted that the average
business income of an everyday sort of woman,
working hard, is less than £100 a year. The
income of a charwoman in London, we know,
is 2s. 6d. a day, or a possible 15s. a week —
that is, 3d. an hour, exactly half a man's
minimum wage.

These are a few well-known facts. The
reason is that women are said to have " other
means " of earning a livelihood. First among
these comes the comfortable possibility of in-
heriting money from relations. Many great
heiresses and little heiresses are to be found
among the conservative forces of the land,
for these women have nothing to gain and
everything to lose by changing the present
state of things. They and the insurance
offices alike prosper on the present foundations
of English family life.

Next comes the probably miserable alterna-
tive of marrying a rich husband. It is a very
curious thing that it is harder for a rich man
to be naturally attractive to women than it is
for the camel to pass through the needle's
eye, and the consequence is that women gener-
ally have a more or less unhappy domestic
life when they definitely marry for a livelihood.

Then we have the adventuress, who succeeds
in making a handsome income by the un-
scrupulous use of her intelligence and charm.
After that come the various types of women

Women's Incomes

who hire themselves or are hired out for the
relief of excitable gentlemen. And lastly the
crowd of desolate diseased refuse who pick up a
living any way they can, in ways too horrible to
think of, by the practice of vulgar indecency.

All these incomes which are earned by
women, either by their tenderness and charm
or by their bestiality, are, together with the
family inheritances, the real reasons why
women as a sex are not made economically
independent on the same lines as men. The
father of a family longs to save his daughters
from the temptations of poverty, and if they
do what he bids them he insures his life in
their favour. The husband prefers to keep
his wife dancing to the tune he pays for, so
he makes her allowance dependent on his own
mood of the moment. The infatuated boy
considers he is seeing life when he spends his
money recklessly on an adventuress. All
these women can undersell other women in
the labour market, because they have incomes
which make them independent of what they
may earn there. They are, in a kind of way,
what the strike organizers would call " black-
legs " : they make life more difficult for the
women who must work to live or starve.

Again, the magic of love is destroyed by
the thought of money. And love is very apt
to evaporate when such thoughts flame up in
the mind.

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

The hope I see for the ennobling of sex
relations is that women should, by some means
never yet thought of, become independent of
the caprice of individual man.

The average middle-class Englishman, I
believe, looks upon his married life as a kind
of business partnership, in which he pays
money in order that he may not be worried
about the care of his clothes or his food or his
affectional needs. These things once settled
and put under the care of a sensible woman,
he can devote his thoughts to business, to
betting, to cards, to golf, or any other amuse-
ment he may select to ensure that he may not
become a " dull man." The average working
man, of course, not only marries a housekeeper,
a cook, a maid-of-all-work, but the mother
and nurse of his continuous flow of offspring,
and the butt of his temper when the world
has used him ill. - s:

If any hope of eventual economic freedom
isto come for the whole sex, I stand aghast to
think of all the antagonistic interests that
will have to be reconciled. It will be worse
than the Budget. The wives will have to
stand out for fixed allowances. The mothers
will have to make their bargain either with
their husbands or the State, whichever wants
their children most. The housekeepers will
have to take their wages like the other servants.

The women of the adventuress class are a

Women's Incomes

hopeless problem. They are worth a hundred
a week at one moment, and nothing at all
a few weeks later perhaps. Their trade is so
dangerous. But we can cheer ourselves up
with the statistics which tell us they are in
England and Wales numbered by thousands
only, whereas we are dealing at present with
the problem of seventeen millions of women.

We have, then, four classes of women — the
heiresses, the portionless wives, the courtesans,
and the prostitutes — who stand in the way
of the economic independence of women
because they appear to be better off under
the present state of disorganization. The
labour market for women is of course per-
meated by their influence. The rich women
who work for nothing, the wives who " get
round ' their husbands, the courtesans who
command the " flesh market," the prostitutes,
who are ignored by the rest of their sex, but
revenge themselves on the ignorant by spread-
ing disease and sorrow among the happy and
healthy.

The record of the overwhelming advantages
of the economic independence of women can
hardly be compressed into the compass of
this chapter. It would make love marriages
possible. It is almost certain that a love
marriage on the woman's side is one of the
most important elements for good in the pro-
duction of a fine race. If a girl were free to

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

choose according to her inclination, there is
practically no doubt that she would choose
the right father for her child, however badly
she might choose a lifelong companion for
herself.

This is, of course, true about both the sexes
to a certain extent, although average men
are much less dainty about these matters than
the average woman. If we could remove the
economic considerations from parenthood it
would help towards the invigoration of the
race.

The sad part of this question is that accord-
ing to all the great racial ideals women ought
to be economically independent, but, accord-
ing to all little social ideals, it seems inevitable
that her independence will be resisted to the
last.

Ill

THE VARIATIONS OF LOVE

Ill

THE VARIATIONS OF LOVE

We cannot trust ourselves to make a real
love-knot unless money or custom forces us
to " bear and forbear." There is always the
lurking fear that we shall not be able to keep
faith unless we swear upon the Book. This is,
of course, not true of young lovers. Every
first love is born free of tradition ; indeed,
not only is first love innocent and valiant, but
it sweeps aside all the wise laws it has been
taught, and burns away experience in its
own light. The revelation is so extraordinary,
so unlike anything told by the poets, so ab-
sorbing, that it is impossible to believe that
the feeling can die out. Sometimes one feels
a great pity for the lovers in England, because
young English girls are very apt to mistake
a feeling of gratified vanity and the emotion
of a new sensation for love of some special
man who happens to make love to them at
the propitious moment. Many faithful women
go through life enduring the love of a man
whom they care for very moderately, who,
on his side, congratulates himself on having
c 33

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

found a virtuous wife. It is lucky for these
people that probably the wife, in her limited
circle of acquaintances, will never meet the
man who ought to have been her mate.

I have often talked to the apparently con-
tented mother of a family, when some little
word reveals to me that it is possible to be
the mother of a man's children merely by
putting up with his caresses while one thinks
about some other subject. Is it any wonder
that the race becomes more and more anaemic
and bored with existence as generation follows
generation ?

Other wives have loved their husbands with
passion, and perhaps for two years their devo-
tion has steadily increased, but the husband
meanwhile has known many ecstasies and
wearinesses. His love is like the waves, which
follow each other as periods of dullness follow
moments of rapture. Hers has been like the
tide, increasing in devotion and tenderness ;
but the tide turns at last, and the dancing of
the waves can do very little to stay its ebbing.
I think men are justified who say that women
either love too much for their taste or not
at all.

Some women say they could love their
husbands better if they did not see so much
of the unromantic side of their lives. The
holes in a man's socks are not the most en-
dearing remembrances in the world.

The Variations of Love

The onty permanent relations are founded on
mutual contempt. Brothers and sisters have
no illusions about each other, and if they feel
any affection at all it is a steadfast one. Alas !
the close knowledge of weaknesses very seldom
permits the affection to show through the
contempt. Married lovers have to pass from
the state of love, which is so apt to be a state
of delusion, to the state of clear-sighted affec-
tion. The ordeal is one which very few survive.

Another tragedy of love is jealousy. A man
or woman is very often jealous of the part-
ner's brothers and sisters, or other relations.
Those who love wish to be all in all to each
other, those who quarrel dislike to have others
taking sides in their quarrels. This funda-
mental jealousy of relations is ever apt to
break into a flame, besides jealousy of the
more usual kind.

Mr. Harold Gorst has written a book on
The Philosophy of Love, in which he points
out that it is unwise of a bridegroom to take
instant possession of his bride. He maintains
that the usual programme, in which a wife
shows all her modesty and a husband all his
love on the wedding-night, is an absurd waste
of the honeymoon, which ought to be spent in
a gradual approach to the supreme surrender.
Again, wives are too apt to give up the charm-
ing resistances which are necessary to the
satisfaction of a man's emotional nature.

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

Mr. Gorst cannot imagine that a husband
would tire of his wife if she kept her right over
her own body with a firm hand, and required
wooing every time she yielded to the wedding
of her husband. So much for the man of the
world's point of view.

The marriage tie is a way of keeping people
together while they undergo the various dis-
illusions and jealousies that are inevitable,
unless one of them is prepared to give way
in everything. Is there any better way ? In
most cases, no.

The marriage tie will always exist, because
it is the natural impulse of the majority of
young people to wish to love each other alone,
and to remain with each other for ever. The
honeymoon having elapsed, they very likely
find they are about to become parents, and
they spend the intervening months in making
happy preparations. Then the baby is born,
and has to be brought up until it is old enough
to go to school. If there are three children,
they have to be looked after for about fourteen
years. The wife is now thirty-four, and the
husband thirty-eight. The children are placed
in various schools away from home. Is there
any alternative to the rather boring life that
has to be lived out until death parts the
parents ? None. They are not rich enough
to travel and amuse themselves, so the wife
goes on housekeeping and calling on neigh-

The Variations of Love

bours, and changing her servants, and the
husband goes to the City, plays golf, and reads
trashy novels. The marriage tie must always
persist while these people exist.

But what are the six million bachelors and
the seven million spinsters to do ? Some of
them are very young ; thousands of them do
not wish to marry, their sexual nature is
hardly developed more than a child's ; others
are invalids, openly or secretly ; and a good
number are leading illegally arranged lives
because the present marriage laws do not
suit their constitutions. Among the grown-
up population about half the number are
married, and the other half unmarried. Many
of these marriages are unhappy, and it is to
be presumed that at least six million of each
sex do not wish to marry enough to overcome
the terrors of saying what they want for ever,
and getting it.

Now, having regard to the natural variations
of love, I must suggest that the stigma might
be removed from those who are not capable
of lifelong fidelity. There seems good proof
that a few millions of men and women are
bringing misery upon the rest because they
are treated as unworthy of social considera-
tion. Medical men are saying that the disease
which is undermining the health of the nation
is dangerous only because it is shameful. It
could be easily cured in its early stages if it

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

could be treated openly and without ruining
the reputation of those whom it attacks.
Even when health is retained, reputations
are lost and careers are ruined in order to prop
up the tottering institution of marriage by
making it the only refuge for the respectable.
But until it is acknowledged that it is not
respectable to live together when the tempera-
ments are incompatible, there will be no real
virtue in the married state. Never to want
the same thing at the same time is a more
far-reaching cause of emotional degradation
than one violent outbreak of temper under
extreme provocation. It is more degrading
to the finer feelings than a temporary aliena-
tion of marital love. One would imagine that
the men who refuse to alter the divorce laws
really do believe in the sacrament of the
marriage ceremony, instead of in the sacra-
ment of the true love, which abides when
there is a real compatibility of temperament.

IV
THE SORDID DIVORCE

THE SORDID DIVORCE

I mentioned in passing that marriage was an
institution that should not be ended, but
should be mended. In the first place, let us
inquire whether the marriage ceremony is
a sacrament, whether parenthood is a sacra-
ment, and why marriage should be binding.
The Catholic Church refuses divorce altogether
on the ground that the blessing of the Church
makes the contract binding till death. Parents
with children are generally prepared to endure
each other for the sake of their family. While
women are economically dependent it would
be pure folly for them to advocate marriage
for a short term. Very few women sncceed in
retaining their attraction for men for any con-
siderable length of time. Ten years of attrac-
tiveness is not to be thought of in the majority
of cases. While a man holds the purse-strings
he can always find someone to marry. A
woman can offer nothing but her power of
enchantment, and most of them have to rely
on the universal enchantment of innocence
which can only be offered once.

But conditions are very variable even now.

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

Women hold the purse-strings when they are
heiresses. They are as free as men when they
are childless. Ninon de l'Enclos was irre-
sistible until she was eighty, apparently be-
cause she was amusing as well as fascinating.
Under such circumstances as these it is some-
times wise to seek divorce. In England this
cannot be done without outraging every feeling
of dignity and delicacy.

Unless one of the married pair is faithless,
impotent, cruel, or rich enough to leave the
neighbourhood, the other cannot get a divorce.
This involves discussing the secrets of the
alcove with solicitors, and a final exposure of
your domestic concerns in the law courts, for
the press and the public to take or leave as
they are more or less painful to you and amus-
ing to them.

A very frequent method of obtaining a
divorce now is for a wife, who would not
touch her husband with a besom if she could
help it, to sue publicly for restitution of con-
jugal rights. To a woman of any delicacy
such a demand would be degrading, even if it
were made in private. To be obliged to make
it publicly as a matter of form is, to say the
least, unpleasant to such a woman. The next
proceeding is taken when a certain time has
elapsed and the husband has not noticed the
wife who has to pretend to be pining for his
forced caresses.

The Sordid Divorce

I confess it is hard to realize the state of a
woman who actually can desire the society
of a man who is weary of her. I have not
imagination for that, I am afraid. The law
was made by men, and men are said to know
women better than they know each other ;
also, we have all heard of the charms of a cap-
tured or unwilling bride, so perhaps it is an
instance in which men have done for women
what they would wish to have done for them-
selves.

Whatever the reason is, the law is there,
and when the husband has been faithless and
refused his wife's embraces, he has done suffi-
cient to justify the court in calling him guilty
of desertion and adultery, and a decree nisi is
pronounced. Then, if no evidence of collusion
is forthcoming, and the court can make believe
that one of the parties at least does not want
to be divorced, the decree is made absolute in
six months. Can anyone realize that the
present divorce law is in such a hopelessly
stupid state ? There seems no possibility of
using common sense in a law court. To get
a divorce you must not agree together that
it is a desirable step. To get a divorce the
innocent person must speak in public of sub-
jects no innocent person would care to mention
in private. To get a divorce from a woman
you respect at all, you must refuse to live
with her, and must openly commit adultery,

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

at the same time making no arrangement
with her as to how she is to get rid of you.
The old complaint of the inequality of the
divorce laws for the sexes is perhaps of im-
portance, but to me it seems a small thing in
comparison to the general sordidness of the
whole proceeding.

Surely the one cause of causes for a divorce
is that both the parties want it. Some simple
form of procedure, such as separation on the
first application, to be followed by divorce in
six months if the parties had not made up
their differences in the meantime, should be
devised.

The difficulties would arise in cases in which
the parties were not agreed, and I am afraid
in those instances the question of money
would nearly always be discovered to be the
root of the trouble. Ladies would be found
to be unaccountably attached to their hus-
band's cheque-books ; and gentlemen unable
to separate themselves from a share in their
wives' dividends. But when the question of
fortune or wealth enters into the marriage
bargain, why not let it be fought out on that
ground ?

Divorce is always brought about because
of the weariness and boredom one human
being causes another. Cruelty, adultery,
temporary desertion, every kind of outrage
can be borne if excitement and interest

The Sordid Divorce

counterbalance suffering. But the devotion
of the whipped dog would soon be exhausted
if the dog could find something in the world
which interested him more than his master.
Curiosity once fully satisfied, tenderness
balances on the edge of the precipice of bore-
dom, and may topple over at any moment.

Of course the insult of being considered a
bore would be harder to bear in most instances
than the accusation of wickedness, so on the
whole it would seem advisable to keep to the
good old formula of " incompatibility of
temper," and fight out the money questions
on their own merits.

Now the merits of the money question in
marriage have never been properly arranged.
In France the wife has her own dot, as a
matter of course ; but the French have so
carefully adjusted their population to their
pockets that we can only bow in silent ad-
miration of their unparalleled foresight.

In England a girl very often marries with-
out any fortune of her own, on the understand-
ing either that she is beautiful and that the
husband is prepared to endow her with all
his worldly goods, or that she is so useful that
she will really save him a good deal of money.
If she is very beautiful, her relations can gener-
ally get a settlement made on her ; if she is
only useful, she is lucky if she can induce her
husband to insure his life in her favour. The

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

merely useful wife has very little hold on
ready money. One week she may get a good
sum of money, another week nothing, for her
household expenses. If she is clever and
managing, she will probably gain her husband's
confidence, and if he is honest and has a regular
income they may be very comfortable to-
gether ; but under other conditions the affairs
of the household go from bad to worse, and
the wife is only a very inefficient servant, who
may get her keep, but who will certainly not
get her wages.

I can only suggest that the position of wife
and mother ought to legally entitle a woman
to a fixed proportion of her husband's income,
and the position of housekeeper to a further
proportion. If, as is often the case in upper
and middle-class modern marriage, the husband
and wife do not live in the connubial state,
the legal allowance as v/ife and mother would
not be made, but the allowance as hostess
and housekeeper could be enforced as long
as they remained under the same roof. In
the case of the poorer classes, where the wife
does the whole work of keeping up the home
and increasing the family, the proportion
should be very much greater, so great, indeed,
as to make both partners think twice before
recklessly bringing children into the world.
Among this class I think that the birth of a
child might legalise the union of the parents.

The Sordid Divorce

This appears to be an old custom in many
parts of the world.

The working man is the greatest enemy of
women's equal value, I am afraid. Among
the mining population, where his wages are
high enough to make him independent, the
woman he has married holds a very low
position — very much what middle-class women
held early in the nineteenth century. The
working man of prudence and forethought is
of course limiting his family with as much
care as the rest of the world. But the others,
who drive away drab intelligence by a Satur-
day orgy, forget prudence, and the result is
that their wives are always in the pangs of
chirdbirth or miscarriage. The usual self-
sacrifice of women comes dangerously near
suicide in this matter. To save her husband
from a few moments of self-control she goes
through months of drugging, loses her beauty,
undermines her health in the endeavour to
exercise prudence and to avoid bringing
children into the world for whom she has no
hope of making provision.

A romance of the mining world, in Sep-
tember, 1909, is instructive reading. One
Friday night, at 10 o'clock, the husband came
home with two former lodgers, two old friends,
and one stranger. They brought plenty of
beer with them. The wife was upstairs in bed,
but she called over the banisters to them to

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

make themselves at home, and returned to
her sleep. Later on, when the men were nearly
all dead drunk, one of the former lodgers
heard screams upstairs. He found the stranger
undressed and making an assault on the wife
of his host. The lodger flung him downstairs,
and to his horror found that he had killed him.
He was terrified, and he and the woman left
the house, calling to the others to fetch a
doctor at once. Whatever the woman and he
said to each other it was tragic, for she hurried
to a pond and drowned herself, while he went
to his sister's house and waited arrest. The
husband was severely reprimanded for his
" negligence." A woman counts for very
little in the mining districts, she takes the
German position of a kind of upper servant,
in whose emotions, if she has any, none take
any interest. In the manufacturing districts
the working man's wife is generally a bread-
winner herself, and she only needs a little
enterprise to make her position much more
favourable than it is at present.

Nearly all the police court cases turn on
the question of the wife's housekeeping allow-
ance. It is an endless source of dispute, and
if it could be regulated, irrespective of caprice,
most of the miseries of married poverty would
cease. The poor are simple, and in this truth
about them we see the truth about ourselves.
We all want a regular income, and very few

The Sordid Divorce

of us gain from being dependent on the affec-
tion of our family. Divorce, then, is sordid
with regard to sentiment and with regard to
money, and in these ways is greatly in need
of change.

d 49

V
THE GREEN HOUSES OF JAPAN

THE GREEN HOUSES OF JAPAN

This chapter deals with the subject of prosti-
tution from the point of view of public health,
so that the nervous reader had better skip it.
Edmond de Goncourt has written some
charming chapters in his book about Outa-
maro, the Japanese artist, on the courtesans
who live within the walls of Yoshiwara. He
describes the quarter as containing fifty green
houses within the walls and a hundred with-
out the walls. They were established by -the
Emperor of Japan in the eighth century for
the use of foreign princes, ambassadors, and
wealthy merchants. The present walls were
built in the seventeenth century. The girls,
from all parts, are brought up like princesses,
and taught writing, the arts, music, and the
archaic language spoken by the court in the
seventh and eighth centuries, which is now
the language of the poets. The formalities of
the suitors are three visits of ceremony, each
with its ritual of good manners. A green
house contains twenty first-class beauties and
sixty second-class beauties. They sing, play,

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

and write verses. These are a few transla-
tions which give some idea of their feelings : —

"It is only when both of us are looking
at it that the moon is beautiful ; when I am
alone it makes me feel too sad."

" This evening who will share the sweet-
ness of life, this floating body in the passing
world ? "

"Oh, that the moonlight might shine
brightly in the waters of this life [the cour-
tesan's], but the autumn moon on the other
side of the clouds makes me long for it"
[wifehood].

"Although I am nothing here, the moon
lights up my heart with a ray of consolation."

"How often do I part from one whose
shadow I shall never see again under the
moon of dawn ! "

These little moon-women are not the only
members of the sisterhood in Tokio. There
are the geishas who dance and sing, and there
are the old and abandoned ; but the horrible
sordidness of the red blinds and the draggled
torn lace curtains one sees in the streets
Charles Booth has coloured red in his maps
of London, is absent.

This question is not a mere matter of senti-
ment, it is one in urgent need of immediate
attention. The pitiless contempt of married
women for prostitution is bringing a terrible
punishment, which is ruining the physique of
nearly every civilized race. It is now certain

The Green Houses of Japan

that the diseases called contagious can be
cured with the greatest certainty if they are
taken in hand in the earliest stages, but if
they are neglected they bring in their train
every scourge that the flesh is capable of en-
during. It cannot be repeated too often that
if women do not wish to contract diseases
themselves in the intercourse of ordinary life,
they must bring themselves to protect those
who in the intercourse of passional life are
ignorantly or malignantly spreading the dis-
eases. There might be a trade union for
women on the streets. In the cause of public
health, which is, in this matter, the cause of
future generations, family cannot separate
itself from family, innocent from guilty, moral
from immoral. We can no longer say : Let
those who practise promiscuity suffer for their
incontinence, let them encounter the dangers
they choose to face, " let their sin find them
out." We know now that from this particular
scourge of contagious disease the pure suffer
far more severely than the impure ; and the
races who have never known the disease are
the first to die when, by accident, they finally
come in contact with it.

So the clean, healthy youth from some re-
mote country place is in greater danger than
the sophisticated townsman. And mothers
do not realize the dangers they and their
young children run every day when, in their

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

ignorance of danger, they entrust their house-
holds to the care of women servants who may
be carrying contagion without even know-
ing it.

The contempt that is shown towards pros-
titutes makes it impossible for them to insist
upon proper sanitation in the quarters where
they congregate. They are hunted from street
to street, and, as they get poorer and poorer,
their condition becomes more and more of
a danger to the rest of the town.

I cannot make any suggestions as to the
methods that should be used to make the
danger less terribly imminent than it is at
present, but I do suggest that the women who
are uppermost should face the fact that they
themselves are in danger because the lower
prostitutes have no civil rights, no trade
union, no means of redressing the wrongs they
surfer from.

M. Brieux has written a play called Les
A varies, dealing with this important subject
in all its aspects. One incident is that of a
young girl on the streets who is infected by
a man. She is furious and in despair, but
before she goes into hospital she, in her turn,
revenges herself on as many men as she can,
for the wrong done to her by one.

Can we wonder that a woman who is treated
as street walkers are treated should feel this
wild anti-social rage against the society that

The Green Houses of Japan

has first made use of her and then treated her
as an outcast ?

It is becoming more and more difficult to
say anything definite about the moral stand-
ards of women. Thirty years ago the chorus-
girl drank champagne and " went to the bad,"
now she drinks milk and marries a peer. Girls
with beauty are finding out that prudence
pays exceedingly well. On the other hand, we
have girls with brains deliberately resolving
that they will not marry. They refuse to run
the risk of living with a man whose love has
become a mere habit. They boldly say that
they do not care enough for love to perform
its rites, unless they are animated with the
ardour of love. Passion served up with cold
sauce as in the Shaw-Barker school of sex
revolts them. Enthusiastic love is the only
excuse in their eyes for going through the
rather ungraceful gestures of love.

Bloch has asked the question if we can ever
do away with the menace to public health
which promiscuity entails ? He seems to
think from the evidence of history and psy-
chiatry that men certainly, and women pro-
bably, are not naturally unitarian in their
affections ; therefore the sooner we seriously
wrestle with the realities and leave off hoping
for the " something to change nature," the
better. Above all, it is most important for
women to realize at once that the most inno-

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

cent contact with the unmentioned diseases —
the contact, say, of a cut finger or a chapped
lip — is enough to endanger the health, unless
it is attended to at once.

As for the aspect of the prostitution ques-
tion entailed in taking money, the sale of
virginity and so forth, it comes under the
general consideration whether it is right for
any woman to become the property of a man
in exchange for money. A woman who loves
does naturally become the property of the
man she loves for the time being. The wiser
she is, the less she will let him know it. The
money bargain I cannot help regarding as a
device invented by unattractive men whom
no woman would voluntarily look at. Again,
as to women whose love affairs are numerous,
I do not think they would care to practise
promiscuity unless they were intoxicated.
On the other hand, I think most women are
capable of several love affairs. I said before
that their love ebbed and flowed with the
sweep of a tide, while men's love glittered and
dulled like the shaken silver of the waves ; still,
there are more tides than one in many women's
experience. We cannot read the autobio-
graphies of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries without observing that.

That love becomes very stale in time is a
regrettable fact. Many women distract their
thoughts with work or amusements. But

The Green Houses of Japan

the greatest amusement of all is flirtation. It
is an amusement peculiarly fitted to the
English. In the Latin countries flirtation is
admittedly not only an amusement, but a
vital part of women's lives. It cannot be
denied that, after a time, a childless wife, or
a wife who is not absorbed in her children,
begins to feel like a withered rose tree, and
a flirtation comes to her like springtime after
winter. I do not think it is often her sensual
nature, but her emotional nature, that makes
a woman unfaithful to a husband of whom
she has really been passionately fond. Un-
fortunately there is a charm about the first
steps of a love affair, in the half-admissions
and the uncertainties, which it is almost im-
possible to feel after a year of married life.
The truth is that to feel a charm we must be
in a state of emotional exultation which is
above the average exultations of daily life.
The great question for the race is what this
feeling of charm means, and whether it is of
value to the race, and to be encouraged ? Or
even then whether the destruction of our
present fixed social arrangements is too great
a sacrifice to make for the vital improvement
of mankind? In the meantime, until this
question of changing charm versus habitual
love can be settled, and the value of emotion
as a factor in race improvement be proved by
careful inquiry into the experiences of the

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

parents of conspicuous children, I reiterate
what I have said. Marrying women owe it
to themselves and to their children to do all
they can to make the conditions of prostitutes
sanitary. Above all, they should remember
the green houses of Japan, and recognize that
if women are degraded it is generally because
they have been treated with contempt, and
not because they are essentially any more
contemptible than the rest of us.

VI
BEAUTY AND MOTHERHOOD

BEAUTY AND MOTHERHOOD

" Americanism " is the word sometimes used
by scientific men to imply the terror of mother-
hood that is coming upon women. The old
days when Nelson said the two most beautiful
things in the world were a ship in full sail
and a woman with child, are passed. Pain
and the loss of beauty mean something
hauntingly horrible — something of a night-
mare to the modern highly strung, nervous
woman. In America the question is becoming
one of national importance : as a matter of
fact some women are beginning to refuse
motherhood, both there and in other parts
of the world. I do not see anj^thing alarming
in this. To me it means that women will
specialize in the future. When the unnatural
economic reasons for marriage have been re-
moved, the natural desires of women will be
able to assert themselves. For centuries they
have lied and schemed and flattered men in
order to wheedle a living out of them, and it
will take some time for the weaker sex to
learn that it may really tell the truth ; to

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

learn, indeed, that it is necessary for the good
of the race that it should tell the truth. When
this is done it will be perceived that women
are divided into two distinct classes — those
that love men better than children, and those
that love children better than men. This is
natural enough. In ordinary life we can see
some people prefer to associate with their
inferiors, and some with their superiors. At
present the comparatively free life led by men
make them far better company, and therefore
superior as a sex to women. They do not talk
as well as clever women, but their views are
wide, and as a rule they know something
of the general facts of life. They are merrier,
too, and I have often thought, " It is not so
much that men must work and women must
weep, but that men may laugh and women
must look shocked."

But, as I was saying, some people prefer to
look up, and others prefer to look down on
their companions. Some people, to put it
more pleasantry, like to care for and watch
over others, while others want to be cared for.
So it comes about that some women do not
really love children. They may feel such a
passion for a man that they long to be the
mother of his child, but that is a state of un-
usual exultation, which in cold blood is re-
pented later. On the other hand, the born
mothers — the women who really long for chil-

Beauty and Motherhood

dren, to whom it is a terrible deprivation to
live without children — are undoubtedly the
people who may best be entrusted with the
future of the race.

I do not think that we shall ever get man-
kind to carry out the eugenic ideal of careful
breeding, but I do think we might come to a
time when the natural instinct of a woman
for the fit father of her child will be a very
important factor in the arrangements made
for the existence and benefit of future genera-
tions.

We have such a lumber of useless old ethical
codes to get rid of, and such innumerable
practical suggestions for race betterment, that
we hardly know where to begin. In the
Eugenic Review for October, 1909, there is an
excellent paper by Mr. Havelock Ellis, which
explains a newly discovered and harmless
operation which can be performed without
making the slightest difference to an indi-
vidual's happiness. This operation would
prevent him or her from ever becoming a
parent. It is hoped that it may some day
be used in cases where the heredity is hope-
lessly bad. It would save a great deal of
public expense in cases where the dangerous
person would otherwise have to be kept under
constant supervision. The great benefit of
the discovery is that it has none of the un-
fortunate effects which often follow from the

E 65

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

practice of more Eastern methods of sterilizing
the unfit. Contact with radium has also been
found to lead to temporary sterility. But
although stamping out the worst class of disease
and imbecility in one generation would be a
tremendous benefit, it is not the only remedy
proposed. The encouragement and training
of fit men and women — I mean the education
in the laws of sexual health — would do a great
deal to save the next generations from many
ills that are brought upon it by the sheer
ignorance of its parents. Here, again, we have
to fight the silly conspiracy of silence which
leaves schoolboys and schoolgirls to struggle
through the early temptations of life without
a word of warning from responsible people
who have studied the subject of sex.

There is no doubt that the world at present
is full of motherly women who have no chance
of becoming mothers, and of unmotherly
women who have children that they do not
want, or more children than they want. It
would be a great advance if these arrangements
could be readjusted by some slight change of
public opinion, guided by the obvious facts
of heredity. For instance, it is a fact that
some women are very fit to be mothers, and
are unattractive as wives. For others, attrac-
tive to men as they often are, it is a sin to be-
come mothers. A tuberculous woman is apt
to have a much larger family than a nor-

Beauty and Motherhood

mally healthy woman, and that tendency
ought to be modified by surgical aid. Even
these few suggestions acted upon would help
to make the world less full of pain and sorrow.

But we are full of prejudices against these
improvements. The old marriage laws, the
old ideas of right and wrong remain ; religious
prejudice lasts far longer than religion ; and
the world moves on, and everyone hears of
improvements that might be made quite easily.
But nothing is done because of a public opinion
which everyone supposes to exist, but is really
a bugbear invented by the Press on the
strength of a few letters from the sort of people
who write letters of protest to the public
libraries. A hundred letters impress an editor,
because he forgets the millions of people who
do not write letters, but pay all the same.

One of the most serious facts which is
alleged with regard to the " Americanism "
I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter,
is that the nervous sensitiveness from which
the women of the United States suffer is
caused by their education being too purely
intellectual. Now this is probably true. I
remember one of the cleverest men I have
ever met, the late Professor York Powell,
Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford,
who was an encyclopaedia of information,
and could assimilate the contents of a book
in a phenomenally short time, told me that

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

he meant to paint up the words " Damn
Intellect " over his mantelpiece at Christ
Church. Intellect has been said to be the
result of man's struggle with material facts,
very useful as far as material facts go, but
absurdly misleading when applied to the all-
important side of our natures which comes
under the consideration of the psychologist.
The stuffing of one's head with a lot of un-
digested knowledge for purposes of examina-
tion is not only useless in after life, but really
damaging to the vital apparatus. I was
myself educated in the colleges of Miss Doro-
thea Beale and Miss Buss, and I know it took
me quite six years to get out of the shell my
education had hardened around me. I don't
suppose I should ever have spread my own
wings if the beak of my destiny had not been
stronger than my overwhelming education,
so that it succeeded in hammering through
that shell at last.

In the next chapter I hope to show in more
detail how women might be educated to
deliberately cultivate their instincts, and use
them in conjunction with the practical in-
tellect to increase the power of intuitively
understanding the consciousness of groups
and crowds of people. Above all, how they
may learn by definitely guiding the vegetative
consciousness to increase the health and
beauty of their children.

VII
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

VII

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY

Intellect, then, is only a part of the life-
consciousness. Henri Bergson and William
James have both agreed that the other parts
deserve our respect, and demand the attention
of all practical people. They are Instinctive
Consciousness and Torpid Consciousness. Berg-
son, so well known on the Continent, gives in
L' Evolution Crealrice a brilliant outline of the
relations of the intellectual, instinctive, and
torpid states. Briefly, he pictures vital con-
sciousness as the centre from which the three
diverge in different radiations. The intellect
which covers an enormous field and can
grapple successfully with the superficial ap-
pearances we call facts, finds its present cul-
mination in mankind. The instinct which
dawns in the consciousness as vision, and
deals only with one or two things, but knows
therrr perfectly through and through to their
deepest causes, finds its culmination in in-
sects, especially in the elaborate societies of
ants and bees. The torpid state which, with-
out external motion, like deep sleep, is most

The New Psychology

creatively powerful, most enduring, and most
in touch with the first beginnings of organic
life, finds its culmination in the vegetable
kingdom. The psychologists' idea, then, for
the practical future of our race is that it
should turn its attention to the cultivation of
these two modes of consciousness which have
hitherto been lamentably neglected in all
schemes of education.

Bergson says that there are many questions
the intellect can ask but can never answer,
which the instinct could answer, but, un-
prompted by the intellect, would never ask.

The practical turn psychology has taken
lately has a very deep significance for women.
For the adolescent girl and the woman with
child are the very types of the power of mys-
terious torpid consciousness which is so little
understood by the most learned men. The
ancients have believed that a mother's im-
pressions stamp themselves on the child and
determine its type. I mean, for instance,
that a woman surrounded by Burne- Jones's
pictures would be likely to have children re-
sembling that type. The whole matter is one
of the deepest interest, and one guiding prin-
ciple stands out from all our uncertainties on
the subject, which is, that a woman with child
should not use up her vitality in other direc-
tions, that she should for the time being live
the life of a fruit tree, and nourish herself,

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

and sun herself without care and without in-
tellectual distractions.

It is said that in deep sleep the creations of
our imagination are conceived; and that the
state of impending motherhood should be
one of rest, and the quiet enjoyment of beauty
and peace if it is to have a good result.

I am not saying all women should be mothers,
nor am I saying that mothers should not have
intellectual pleasures, but I do agree that
they should not have intellectual tasks, and
above all that they should be protected from
worry, anxiety, and irritation. If the care of
mothers became a national question, I believe
the saving in the care of lunatics and unem-
ployables and criminals would be incalculable.

The torpid consciousness is one which women
who are to be mothers should respect. I
believe it is a state cultivated to a high degree
by the Eastern mystics, who have given us
glimpses of the psychic powers to which it
can give birth. It is intimately connected
with a control over the emotional storms which
affect most people and govern their conduct.
The Eastern sage does not starve his emotional
nature, but learns to direct it, while he is in
a state of apparent torpor. So I believe the
wise mother might, if she gave Serself the
opportunity, direct the future character of
her child in the best sense of the word.

At present the torpid consciousness is

The New Psychology

hardly understood at all, but the instinctive
consciousness has been studied, although it is
talked of with a contempt it is far from deserv-
ing. I admit that to some extent instinct is
the enemy of civilization, but at the same
time civilization is the enemy of instinct.

The old matriarchal village community
seems to be the ideal state of an instinctive race
of people. I do not say it is possible now, but it
certainly seems a good way of conducting affairs
on a dignified basis without the family unit.

Temperance with an occasional orgy is a
prescription ordered for a patient by a modern
doctor, and that exactly describes the life of
the old matriarchal village. In the first place,
it was situated near the equator, and everyone
could do without clothes. The village children
grew up together under the care of the elder
men and women, with no curiosity about the
unseen. They worked in the fields and per-
haps hunted a little, but they all lived like
brothers and sisters. They had a central grove
of sacred trees in their village, with a dancing
ground ; the huts were round the grove, and
then the belt of cultivated land was called the
" guardian serpent." Beyond that was the
jungle, with paths leading to other villages.
In the spring the Saturnalia was celebrated,
and the j^oung men left their homes and
visited the other villages, scattered in the
neighbourhood beyond the jungle-paths, to

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

celebrate the festival with song, wine, and
dance. The orgy lasted a few weeks, during
the blossom time, when there was no work
required at home. It ended in a good deal of
love-making, after which the young men re-
turned to their homes sobered, and ready to
work in their own villages for another year.
Nine months later, when the weather made it
well to remain indoors, the children were born,
and were called the children of the sacred
grove or the tree, and no one talked of fathers.
The men of the tribe cheerfully undertook
the education of the children, and maintained
them on communal principles. It sounds
almost as socially elaborate as a hive, and the
whole business appears to have been carried
out on purely instinctual lines. Perhaps I
ought to add that all can read for them-
selves about these matriarchal customs in a
book called The Ruling Races of Prehistoric
Times, by J. F. Hewitt, and in Tiele's Outline
of the History of Ancient Religions, also in
Risley's Tribes and Castes of Bengal. The life
was perhaps too austerely virtuous for the ma-
jority of mankind, but it had its advantages.

Instinct is an animal faculty cultivated by
an outdoor life, which we to a great extent
have swamped in our all-pervading intellects.
It is a power of the consciousness which appears
to act without effort, and to increase its power
as we decrease our mental struggles. Very

The New Psychology

often when after fussing over a lost object or
forgotten name we cease to trouble ourselves,
and employ our clamorous minds in some other
direction, the consciousness of the name or
place appears like the sky from which the
clouds have cleared away. It is in the inter-
play between intellect and instinct that the
practical value of the new school of psychology
will be found. Our instincts need to be stimu-
lated by the curiosity of our intellects. We
have an extraordinary and inexhaustible power
of inventing surprises for our intellect, both
in our dreams and in inventive states of
meditation. Some people call these things
manifestations of the subconsciousness. I
prefer to think of them as manifestations of
the long-neglected powers of the instinct. We
know that many insects who have never met
their parents in their lives, yet carry out their
destinies as if they had received the most
careful personal instruction. The truth about
instinct appears to be that it is a race-con-
sciousness— a kind of wireless telegraphy
which can be set in motion between sympa-
thetic centres without passing through the
mental machinery at all. It almost seems
as if our brains, our nervous plexuses, and
our glands * each had a manifest conscious-

* As to the study of the functions of the glands, many
interesting discoveries have been mentioned in the medical
journals during the last few years.

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

ness of their own, and it is not until we
can set in motion an interplay of the three
that we shall gain all we can, either from the
intellect, the instinct, or the torpid creative
consciousness.

When women come in for their share of
control in affairs, there is no doubt we shall
make further use of these more feminine aspects
of vital consciousness.

VIII
THE IMAGINATIVE WOMAN

VIII

THE IMAGINATIVE WOMAN

Now women can look at love from a great
many points of view. If it were not so, Byron
would hardly have been justified when he said :

" Love is from men's lives a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."

Women can look upon love as a physical
act which enables them to become mothers.
They can look upon it as a sanctification
or a means of enjoyment. They can look
upon it as a subject of scientific curiosity,
in which mood they logically compare facts
and come to sage conclusions. They can
consider their own temperaments and pecu-
liarities, and take into account their per-
sonal bias and characters, philosophically. Or
they can use their imaginations to alter all
the conditions which life has imposed upon
them, to transcend all the limitations of in-
carnation, and, having passed beyond philo-
sophy, science, emotion, and experience, bathe
in the love between the fixed stars and comets
rushing from the spaces beyond. They can

The Imaginative Woman

take dim legends and embroider them with
rich details. In a word, the imaginative
woman from her childhood has known dreams
of such rare beauty that nothing life shows her
is good enough. She passes from disappoint-
ment to disappointment. She never finds in
one place or one person the wonder that de-
scription had made her see in her mind's eye.

Thousands of less imaginative women long
for the impossible. They are fed on romantic
stories and live in the more or less common-
place imagination of the novelists or play-
wrights they patronize. Thousands of tired
men have this same love of vicarious sensa-
tion— anything that lifts them out of the drab
of their surroundings into a merry or senti-
mental atmosphere is a relief.

Life seems hopeless to the middle-aged.
Most of them once thought they could put
it right in a week if they had a free hand.
They try, they fail, they marry and spend the
evening of their lives trying to destroy the
illusions of their children as quickly as possible,
so that they also may "settle down" to hard
facts. To excuse himself a thinker will say, " I
know the dangers of cultivating the imagina-
tion ; I know that unless it is nipped in the
bud this wild flower of the mind will twine its
tendrils round me, cover me with its shadows,
intoxicate me~with its fragrance, and destroy
reason and physical health." In answer, I

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

admit there are dangers, but on the other
hand if the possibly evil weed is cultivated by
wise gardeners, it may show itself at last as the
most splendid flower of the soul. The cultivator
of flowers that sterilizes the bud and diverts
the life-force into creations of elaborate beauty
has found the physical side of the religious
mystery called the Coronation of the Virgin.
The imaginative power that has reached this
point transmutes human nature, whether philo-
sophic, scientific, sensual, or physical, and it is
then that the soul may be said to have attained
the regenerate state which makes for the un-
natural beauty we call perfection of culture.

The imaginative woman may reach the degree
of joyous saintly beauty, or she may stop short
at the next stage in which she is enough of a
philosopher to recognize the great variety of
temperaments to be met with among her
fellow-creatures, and to greet them all alike
with sympathy and interest. She may not
reach the philosophic or really sympathetic
stage, she may remain in a third stage, where
her mind can coldly classify her fellow-
creatures with critical discretion, and laugh
at them all cynically. Or she may not be
able to perceive clearly, but may be carried
away perpetually by her own feelings and
sensations, in the fourth degree of unawakened
ignorance. Lastly, she may abandon the four
regions of beautiful image making, sympathy,

The Imaginative Woman

perception, and sensation, and deliberately
devote herself with common-sense prudence
to the patient task of getting her daily bread
and reproducing her species until she dies of
it. On the other hand, she may go mad, she
may become silly, she may drown her disgust
with life in alcohol or drugs, or she may irri-
tate her feeble dream-power with novelettes.
These states of degenerate imaginations are
the worst curses of the woman's sphere as it is
at present understood. Good hard work,
rewarded by a decent income, varied by
motherhood and love, is the best cure for
these vapourings.

The men who have a good deal of woman-
hood in their natures suffer and enjoy through
their imaginations in the same way, and it is
interesting to observe that a really virile man
has no trace of imaginative power in his com-
position. He cares for nothing but tangible
reality. When men of imagination talk to
him he has not the smallest conception of
what they mean. I think it was Goethe who
said that he felt the universe in his arms when
he embraced a woman. What I am obliged
to call a virile man feels nothing of the kind,
he is merely amusing himself like Don Juan,
or any cat or dog. However, Don Juan is a
rarity.

It is very difficult to classify temperaments
without alluding to Weiningen's Sex and

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

Character. That book has been followed by
other classics on the subject by Forel and
Bloch, but I only want to remind my readers
that in Weiningen's book they will find, set
out at length, the ingenious theory that virile
men and feminine women are the rarest
creatures on earth, and that the great majority
of us are made up of various proportions of
the two sexes. He further suggests that happy
unions are those in which the proportions of
sex in the two lovers together make up one
virile man and one feminine woman. For
instance, a man who was one-eighth feminine
should marry a woman who was one-eighth
masculine.

I am told that Mr. Austen Chamberlain
repeatedly made the very careless statement
that " men are men, and women are women,"
in a speech delivered in 1909. He evidently
has not acquainted himself with the elementary
science of sex. Is it not time that the books
alluded to above should be made generally
accessible ? Then our younger statesmen, at
least, might come to the platform with some
less absurd refrain than that obsolete inaccu-
racy. Let me assure Mr. Chamberlain that
German science and research have proved
that the contrary statement would be rather
more exact.

IX
EXPERIMENTS

EXPERIMENTS

We are all speculating about the changes to
be brought about in this century from which
we women hope so much, and a great many
people are making practical experiments.
Myself, I am of that tranquil nature which
willingly follows the advice of Punch when he
says : " Never practise what you preach, to
do so is to hold up your opinions to obvious
ridicule."

I must confess to an altogether selfish con-
cern for my own comfort. I dislike the home
because it means that one has to live with
people who are privileged to behave without
politeness in each other's company. Most of
us share the feeling, I think, that we like to be
the worst-behaved person present. This can
only be achieved satisfactorily to all when one
lives by oneself. My own experiments have
mostly been in the attempt to modify the
solitary life with^an exactly pleasant propor-
tion of social life. I was brought up in a large
family until I was twenty-three, and I lived
the orthodox married life for four years, so

Experiments

that I have given home and the family as
much trial as seemed necessary.
t As a hermit with mitigating friends and
enemies, and the various societies I have helped
to run, my life has been unusually full of
varied interests. I have no regrets, because
my failures have been some of my most valu-
able experiences, and my moments of bitter-
ness have been the cause of my greatest con-
tentment.

At the same time, one is horribly afraid that
one might induce courage in some other per-
son whose heart is too tender to get through
trouble. One is rather apt to dread the grey
life of a patient woman without any kind of
artistic talent, who makes a muddle of her
affairs because she religiously practises in-
stead of preaching.

Some people say that example is better
than precept ; but in the case of social reform
and the need of a real change in public opinion,
my experience shows me that precept is no
good at all, if one is suspected of inventing it
to serve one's own purposes of self-indulgence.
I own I have indulged myself by leading a
solitary life as described above, therefore I do
not propose to try to destroy the home and
family life. Those who are suffering from the
home want to do away with it. With philo-
sophic calm I can suggest improvements and
ways of escape that would make it bearable,

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

but would not destroy it. As a matter of fact
the home is in a very poor way just at present.
Public-houses, clubs, restaurants, the servant
difficulty are all devastating it. Still, it does
not do to say we are glad, so I register the
fact with as long a face as I can pull, and trust
my readers will recognize the sad truth in the
same serious spirit.

But, to return to experiments, let us go
back a little in time, and we find that all gay
societies, such as that under Louis XIV and
XV of France, The Empire and the Second
Empire, practised every kind of experiment.
Yet one looks upon Rousseau, Mary Wolstone-
craft, Shelley, and Godwin as the real pioneers
of experiment, because they made a kind of
religion of their protests against convention.
Of late years it has become the fashion to
solemnly register a protest every time one
omits to register one's marriage.

It is partly my stupid objection to public
indecency that makes me object to the ad-
vertisement of marriage, legal or illegal. One
has to clean one's teeth, some people have to
marry, but for the life of me I cannot see the
use of talking about either of these necessities.
Surely the whole object of modern civilization
is to conceal the fact that we are animals. It
is true that we have begun to made a public
art of eating, but although we permit ourselves
to munch in public, we disguise the nature of

Experiments

our food, and we have sternly suppressed the
more ancient freedoms of the dinner-table.
We no longer think it polite to go about when
we suffer from catarrh, and it is seldom that
we encounter unpleasant expectorations, ex-
cept in the immediate haunts of admittedly
hooligan circles.

They say that nowadays it is possible to
talk of any subject as long as one does so with
sufficient delicacy and avoids the words of
the gutter and the club smoking-room. Still,
I admit that it is difficult to explain that just
as we feel that every other necessary function
of nature should be performed without attract-
ing attention to it, so I feel that I would rather
not be informed every time the bold experi-
menters in marriage see fit to take a partner.

When outspokenness is for the public good,
when a " hushed-up disease ' becomes dis-
astrous simply because it is " hushed up,"
then there is some meaning in making a gospel
and parade of the truth. But I really think
it is time we accepted the convention that
men and women seek each other's society in
order to exchange ideas.

Strangely enough it is often the case. A
woman has only to talk and listen well, and
she will find that the less she desires love the
more friendliness she will receive from men.
Saint Teresa of Spain was am excellent ex-
ample of this. I suppose she had more warmly

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

affectionate friendships with men, without a
shadow of scandal, than any other woman.
A perfectly frank woman will generally keep
men as her friends, they will not dare to be
her lovers unless she deliberately ceases to be
frank.

Unfortunately experimenters have to be
original in order to be successful. The people
for whom I am sorry are those who are led
into making experiments which are unnatural
to them by the hypnotic power of seductive
example.

Save us from our imitators is the cry of all
great poets ; and the only valuable advice one
can give is, if you must experiment be careful
that you lead the way and are not seduced
by the example of anyone else. If by nature
you must follow, it is a sign that you are a
gregarious animal, and had better remain
with the main body of the herd. The real
experimenters are quite ready for solitude,
and when they have found fair country and
good pasture the rest of the herd will come
over in a body with one accord. It is no use
perishing with cold on the way to the Pole,
unless you have the capacity to find it. Much
better stop at home by the fireside.

THE SAVAGE, THE BARBARIAN
THE CIVILIZED

THE SAVAGE, THE BARBARIAN, THE CIVILIZED

The stately Spaniard, graceful as a tree sway-
ing in its dance with the wind, savage and
noble.

The Nihilist Russian, watching in her lair,
instinctive and ready to kill. Her hatred of
government marking her as the free barbarian.

The Parisian, knowing the correct conven-
tion of a funeral or an adultery, civilized and
logical to her glove-tips.

Of the three women the two first are simple,
but civilization is complex, and it may mean
to be cultivated with regard to intellect like
the Jesuits, art like the Greeks, morals like
the Irish, or religion like the Arab.

In which way will the women of the future
develop ? Will she strive like the frequenters
of the salon of Madame de Rambouillet to
excel in intellect, or like Saint Teresa of
Spain as a religious mystic ? We have seen
both these types, and I have no doubt that
we shall see many shining examples of mor-
ality, but at the moment I cannot think of
any conspicuous woman of whom no one has
whispered scandal. For in these days if

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

people do not trip in one direction, it is said
it is because they prefer to trip in another ;
and soon it will be taken as a sign of evil life
that one should live in a desert on bread and
water. I mention in passing that our late
Queen is usually admitted to have been con-
spicuously moral. In the arts we have seen,
and hope to see again, great women novelists
and actresses. In history we have an array
of splendid uncivilized women immortalized
from all time — Medea, Electra, the Roman
empresses, Queen Maive of Connaught, the
Russian heroines. Whether they excelled
most as noble savages or as gloriously barbaric
haters of ordered life, I cannot stay to consider.
For I want the women who read this book
not to dwell upon the past, but to look forward
to the great century that is waiting for their
alchemy, to transmute its life by giving it a
more intent purpose. Are we going to be like
the very badly dressed lady of title, whom we
heard the other day imploring us to behave
ourselves like other people, just as we dressed
like other people, in order not to be conspicu-
ous ! Or are we really going to make some-
thing out of this brilliant opportunity given
us by the " refusal of the vote," and the quickly
spreading passion of enthusiasm which is
moving the women of all nations to make a
fight against the patriarchal faith of the goat-
worshippers.

The Savage and the Civilized

Mr. Gorst says that the object of life is
making (moral) love. I think the object of
our life is to make experiments, as gardeners
make experiments in floriculture. I quarrel
with absorption in the family because family
jealousy is a bar to that kind of social inter-
course which is the only education worth
having, and the only experience which can
lead to any result worth having. They say
in France, " Love is a play in which the acts
last five minutes, and the entr'actes for any
time you like." If it filled the whole of life it
would only mean that life would be as short
as that of the ephemeral winged, creatures of
the insect world. Family love cannot absorb
us if we wish to survive. We are complicated,
and our possibilities of social and political
intercourse are a subject of endless interest
and inquiry. Let us then start again on our
voyages of discovery, this time with a little
more purpose in our method and delight in
our hearts.

Women want the vote, it is true, but what
they want more, and what they are getting,
is strength to hammer through the prisons
which have kept them for many centuries
packed away conveniently for use on occasion.
They are all coming out into the daylight for
the first time within our memory, and now
the real movement of life begins.

We want to change public opinion about

Modern Woman : Her Intentions

divorce, contagious diseases, and forethought
with regard to breeding. We want married
women to recognize the various proportions
of sexuality in each sex, to make allowance
for the passionate, and to admit that we are
greatly indebted for our culture to individuals
who do not desire to be parents.

In conclusion, all I can say is, " Talk !
talk ! talk ! " We are more moved by one
conversation than by many eloquent dis-
courses. After all, what is so permanently
delightful as communion of ideas ? So once
again I say, "Go on talking until the savage,
the barbarian, and the civilized women have
found out all they can learn from each other.
Plenty of men will be glad to help them in their
discoveries."

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surface question, and she examines the roots of the problem,
that is the fundamental relation of women to society. We
recommend the book for its reasonableness and good temper."

The Leicester Pioneer,

THE LEGAL SUBJECTION OF MEN. An

Answer to the Suffragettes. By E. Belfort Bax
and Another. Wrapper, 6d. net. Quarter canvas,
gilt, is. net.

The Author in the Preface says : —

"The women's rights agitator has succeeded in inducing a
credulous public to believe that the female sex is groaning under
the weight of the tyranny of man. The facts show these indi-
viduals to be right in one point, namely, that sex-injustice and
sex-inequality exist ; for the facts show the said injustice and in-
equality to exist wholly and solely in favour of women as
against men."

"The 'oppressed' woman does not appear so very 'oppressed'
in these pages. All interested in the woman's suffrage movement
should make a point of studying this excellent book."

Dundee Advertiser.

SEXUAL ETHICS. By Professor August Forel,
m.d., ph.d., ll.d. With Introduction by Dr. C. W.
Saleeby, f.r.s. (Edin.). 2nd edition. Demy 8vo.
Stiff wrapper, is. net. Cloth gilt, 2s. net.

The present work consists of an analysis of sexual morals as
they exist to-day, together with a variety of constructive pro-
posals for the future. It is a book which must be read by every
social reformer who realises that the first step on the road to
progress is the reconstruction of human morals.

"The author discusses frankly, but scientifically, and without
pruriency, the rights and wrongs of matters sexual."

The Hnddersfield Worker.

FRANK PALMER, Publisher, 14 Red Lion Court,
Fleet Street, London. : : Catalogues Free.

University of Toronto
Library

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