Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 34

[380]

From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries Ovid was, in reality, the most popular and influential cla.s.sic poet. His works played a large part in moulding Renaissance literature, not least in England, where Marlowe translated his Amores, and Shakespeare, during the early years of his literary activity, was greatly indebted to him (see, e.g., Sidney Lee, "Ovid and Shakespeare's Sonnets," Quarterly Review, Ap., 1909).

[381]

This has already been discussed in Chapter II.

[382]

By the age of twenty-five, as G. Hirth remarks (Wege zur Heimat, p. 541), an energetic and s.e.xually disposed man in a large city has, for the most part, already had relations with some twenty-five women, perhaps even as many as fifty, while a well-bred and cultivated woman at that age is still only beginning to realize the slowly summating excitations of s.e.x.

[383]

In his study of "Conjugal Aversion" (Journal Nervous and Mental Disease, Sept., 1892) Smith Baker points out the value of adequate s.e.xual knowledge before marriage in lessening the risks of such aversion.

[384]

"It may be said to the honor of men," Adler truly remarks (op. cit., p. 182), "that it is perhaps not often their conscious brutality that is at fault in this matter, but merely lack of skill and lack of understanding. The husband who is not specially endowed by nature and experience for psychic intercourse with women, is not likely, through his earlier intercourse with Venus vulgivaga, to bring into marriage any useful knowledge, psychic or physical."

[385]

"The first night," writes a correspondent concerning his marriage, "she found the act very painful and was frightened and surprised at the size of my p.e.n.i.s, and at my suddenly getting on her. We had talked very openly about s.e.x things before marriage, and it never occurred to me that she was ignorant of the details of the act. I imagined it would disgust her to talk about these things; but I now see I should have explained things to her. Before marrying I had come to the conclusion that the respect owed to one's wife was incompatible with any talk that might seem indecent, and also I had made a resolve not to subject her to what I thought then were dirty tricks, even to be naked and to have her naked. In fact, I was the victim of mock modesty; it was an artificial reaction from the life I had been living before marriage. Now it seems to me to be natural, if you love a woman, to do whatever occurs to you and to her. If I had not felt it wrong to encourage such acts between us, there might have been established a s.e.xual sympathy which would have bound me more closely to her."

[386]

Montaigne, Essais, Bk. iii, Ch. V. It is a significant fact that, even in the matter of information, women, notwithstanding much ignorance and inexperience, are often better equipped for marriage than men. As Furbringer remarks (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 212), although the wife is usually more chaste at marriage than the husband, yet "she is generally the better informed partner in matters pertaining to the married state, in spite of occasional astonishing confessions."

[387]

"She never loses her self-respect nor my respect for her," a man writes in a letter, "simply because we are desperately in love with one another, and everything we do-some of which the lowest prost.i.tute might refuse to do-seems but one attempt after another to translate our pa.s.sion into action. I never realized before, not that to the pure all things are pure, indeed, but that to the lover nothing is indecent. Yes, I have always felt it, to love her is a liberal education." It is obviously only the existence of such an att.i.tude as this that can enable a pure woman to be pa.s.sionate.

[388]

"To be really understood," as Rafford Pyke well says, "to say what she likes, to utter her innermost thoughts in her own way, to cast aside the traditional conventions that gall her and repress her, to have someone near her with whom she can be quite frank, and yet to know that not a syllable of what she says will be misinterpreted or mistaken, but rather felt just as she feels it all-how wonderfully sweet is this to every woman, and how few men are there who can give it to her!"

[389]

In more recent times it has been discussed in relation to the frequency of spontaneous nocturnal emissions. See "The Phenomena of s.e.xual Periodicity," Sect. II, in volume i of these Studies, and cf. Mr. Perry-Coste's remarks on "The Annual Rhythm," in Appendix B of the same volume.

[390]

See "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women," vol. iii of these Studies.

[391]

Zen.o.bia's practice is referred to by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ed. Bury, vol. i, p. 302. The Queen of Aragon's decision is recorded by the Montpellier jurist, Nicolas Bohier (Boerius) in his Decisiones, etc., ed. of 1579, p. 563; it is referred to by Montaigne, Essais, Bk. iii, Ch. V.

[392]

Haller, Elementa Physiologiae, 1778, vol. vii, p. 57.

[393]

Hammond, s.e.xual Impotence, p. 129.

[394]

Furbringer, Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 221.

[395]

Forel, Die s.e.xuelle Frage, p. 80.

[396]

Guyot, Breviaire de l'Amour Experimental, p. 144.

[397]

Erb, Ziemssen's Handbuch, Bd. xi, ii, p. 148. Guttceit also considered that the very wide variations found are congenital and natural. It may be added that some believe that there are racial variations. Thus it has been stated that the genital force of the Englishman is low, and that of the Frenchman (especially Provencal, Languedocian, and Gascon) high, while Lowenfeld believes that the Germanic race excels the French in apt.i.tude to repeat the s.e.x act frequently. It is probable that little weight attaches to these opinions, and that the chief differences are individual rather than racial.

[398]

Ribbing, L'Hygiene s.e.xualle, p. 75. Kisch, in his s.e.xual Life of Woman, expresses the same opinion.

[399]

Mohammed, who often displayed a consideration for women very rare in the founders of religions, is an exception. His prescription of once a week represented the right of the wife, quite independently of the number of wives a man might possess.

[400]

How fragile the claim of "conjugal rights" is, may be sufficiently proved by the fact that it is now considered by many that the very term "conjugal rights" arose merely by a mistake for "conjugal rites." Before 1733, when legal proceedings were in Latin, the term used was obsequies, and "rights," instead of "rites," seems to have been merely a typesetter's error (see Notes and Queries, May 16, 1891; May 6, 1899). This explanation, it should be added, only applies to the consecrated term, for there can be no doubt that the underlying idea has an existence quite independent of the term.

[401]

"In most marriages that are not happy," it is said in Rafford Pyke's thoughtful paper on "Husbands and Wives" (Cosmopolitan, 1902), "it is the wife rather than the husband who is oftenest disappointed."

[402]

See "a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual Impulse," in vol. iii of these Studies.

[403]

It is well recognized by erotic writers, however, that women may sometimes take a comparatively active part. Thus Vatsyayana says that sometimes the woman may take the man's position, and with flowers in her hair and smiles mixed with sighs and bent head, caressing him and pressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him, say: "You have been my conqueror; it is my turn to make you cry for mercy."

[404]

Thus among the Swahili it is on the third day after marriage that the bridegroom is allowed, by custom, to complete defloration, according to Zache, Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, II-III, p. 84.

[405]

De l'Amour, vol. ii, p. 57.

[406]

Robert Michels, "Brautstandsmoral," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang I, Heft 12.

[407]

I may refer once more to the facts brought together in volume iii of these Studies, "The a.n.a.lysis of the s.e.xual Impulse."

[408]

This has been pointed out, for instance, by Rutgers, "s.e.xuelle Differenzierung," Die Neue Generation, Dec., 1908.

[409]

Thus, among the Eskimo, who practice temporary wife-exchange, Rasmussen states that "a man generally discovers that his own wife is, in spite of all, the best."

[410]

"I have always held with the late Professor Layc.o.c.k," remarks Clouston (Hygiene of Mind, p. 214), "who was a very subtle student of human nature, that a married couple need not be always together to be happy, and that in fact reasonable absences and partings tend towards ultimate and closer union." That the prolongation of pa.s.sion is only compatible with absence scarcely needs pointing out; as Mary Wollstonecraft long since said (Rights of Woman, original ed., p. 61), it is only in absence or in misfortune that pa.s.sion is durable. It may be added, however, that in her love-letters to Imlay she wrote: "I have ever declared that two people who mean to live together ought not to be long separated."

[411]

"Viewed broadly," says Arnold L. Gesell, in his interesting study of "Jealousy" (American Journal of Psychology, Oct., 1906), "jealousy seems such a necessary psychological accompaniment to biological behavior, amidst compet.i.tive struggle, that one is tempted to consider it genetically among the oldest of the emotions, synonymous almost with the will to live, and to make it scarcely less fundamental than fear or anger. In fact, jealousy readily pa.s.ses into anger, and is itself a brand of fear.... In sociability and mutual aid we see the other side of the shield; but jealousy, however anti-social it may be, retains a function in zoological economy: viz., to conserve the individual as against the group. It is Nature's great corrective for the purely social emotions."

[412]

Many ill.u.s.trations are brought together in Gesell's study of "Jealousy."

[413]