The Truth About Woman Part 24

Almost nothing. We are really as ignorant of the character, moral, mental and physical of "the fallen woman," as if she belonged to an extinct species. We know her only to pity her or to despise her, which is, in result, to know nothing that is true about her. To deal with the problem needs women and men of the finest character and the widest sympathy. There are some of them at work now, but these, for the most part, are engaged in the almost impossible task of rescue work, which does not bring, I think, a real understanding of the facts in their wider social aspect.

Women are, however, realising that they cannot continue to shirk this part of their civic duties. These "painted tragedies" of our streets have got to be recognised and dealt with; and this not so much for the sake of the prost.i.tute, but for all women's safety and the health of the race. The time is not far distant when the mothers of the community, the sheltered wives of respectable homes, must come to understand that their own position of moral safety is maintained at the expense of a traffic whose very name they will not mention. For the prost.i.tute, though unable to avenge herself, has had a mighty ally in Nature, who has taken her case in hand and has avenged it on the women and their children, who have received the benefits of our legal marriage system. M. Brieux deals with this question in _Les Avaries_: it is a tragedy that should be read by all women.

For this reason, if for no other, the existence of prost.i.tution has to be faced by women. Apathy and ignorance will no longer be accepted as excuse, in the light of the sins against the race slowly piled up through the centuries by vice and disease. But what will be the result of women's action in this matter? What will they do? What changes in the law will they demand? The importance of these questions forces itself upon all those who realise at all the difficulties of the problem. What we see and hear does not, I think, give great hopes.

Every woman who dares to speak on this great burked subject seems to have "a remedy" ready to her hand. What one hears most frequently are unconsidered denunciations of "the men who are responsible." For example, I heard one woman of education state publicly that _there was no problem of prost.i.tution!_ I mention this because it seems to me a very grave danger, an instance of the feminine over-haste in reform, which, while casting out one devil, but prepares the way for seven other devils worse than the first. Women seem to expect to solve problems that have vexed civilisation since the beginnings of society.

This att.i.tude is a little irritating. Every attempt hitherto to grapple with prost.i.tution has been a failure. Women have to remember that it has existed as an inst.i.tution in nearly all historic times and among nearly all races of men. It is as old as monogamic marriage, and maybe the result of that form of the s.e.xual relationship, and not, as some have held, a survival of primitive s.e.xual licence. The action of women in this question must be based on an educated opinion, which is cognisant with the past history of prost.i.tution, recognises the facts of its action to-day in all civilised countries, and understands the complexity of the problem from the man's side as well as the woman's.

Nothing less than this is necessary if any fruitful change is to be effected, when women shall come to have a voice to direct the action the State should a.s.sume towards this matter. The one measure which has recently been brought forward and pa.s.sed, largely aided by women, especially the militant Suffragists--I refer to the White Slave Traffic Bill--is just the most useless, ill-devised and really preposterous law with which this tremendous problem could be mocked.

As Bernard Shaw has recently said--

"The act is the final triumph of the vice it pretends to repress. There is one remedy and one alone, for the White Slave Traffic. Make it impossible, by the enactment of a Minimum Wage law and by the proper provision of the unemployed, for any woman to be forced to choose between prost.i.tution and penury, and the White Slaver will have no more power over the daughters of labourers, artisans and clerks than he (or under the New Act she) will have over the wives of Bishops."

Now all this is true, but is not all the truth. Remove the economic pressure and no woman will be driven, or be likely to be trapped, into entering the oldest profession in the world; but this does not say that she _will not enter it_. The establishment of a minimum wage will a.s.suredly lighten the evil, but it will not end prost.i.tution. The economic factor is by no means the only factor. It is quite true that poverty drives many women into the profession--that this should be so is one of the social crimes that must, and will, be remedied.

The real problem lies deeper than this. Want is not the incentive to the traffic of s.e.x in the case of the dancer or chorus girl in regular employment, of the forewoman in a factory or shop who earns steady wages, or among numerous women belonging to much higher social positions. These women choose prost.i.tution, they are not driven into it. It is necessary to insist upon this. The belief in the efficacy of economic reform amounts almost to a disease--a kind of unquestioning fanatical faith. Again and again I have been met by the a.s.surance, made by men who should know better, as well as by women, that no woman would sell herself if economic causes were removed. Such opinion proves a very plain ignorance of the history and facts of prost.i.tution. It is only a little more scientific than the view of the woman moral crusader, who believes that the "social evil" can easily be remedied by self-control on the part of men. One of the worst vices common to women at present is spiritual pride. One wonders if these short-cut reformers have ever been acquainted with a single member of this cla.s.s they hope to repress by legal enactments or other measures, such as early marriage, better wages for women, moral education, the censorship of amus.e.m.e.nts, and so forth. It is not so simple. You see, what is needed is an understanding of the conditions, not from the reformer's standard of thought, but from that of the prost.i.tute, which is a very different matter. How can any one hope to reform a cla.s.s whose real lives, thoughts, and desires are unknown to them?

My effort to reach bed-rock facts had led me to seek first-hand information from these women, many of whom I have come to know intimately, and to like. I have learnt a great deal, much more than from all my close study of the problem as it is presented in books.

Problems are never so simple in the working out as they appear in theories. Moral doctrines fall to pieces; even statistics and the estimates of expert investigators are apt to become curiously unreal in the light of a very little practical knowledge. I have learnt that there is no one type of prost.i.tute, no one cause of the evil, no one remedy that will cure it.

And here, before I go further, I must in fairness state that I have been compelled to give up the view held by me, in common with most women, that men and their uncontrolled pa.s.sions are chiefly responsible for this hideous traffic. It is so comfortable to place the sins of society on men's pa.s.sions. But as an unbia.s.sed inquirer I have learnt that seduction as a cause of prost.i.tution requires very careful examination. We women have got to remember that if many of our fallen sisters have been seduced by men, at least an equal number of men have received their s.e.xual initiation at the hands of our s.e.x.

This seduction of men by women is often the starting-point of a young man's a.s.sociation with courtesans. It is time to a.s.sert that, if women suffer through men's pa.s.sion, men suffer no less from women's greed. I am inclined to accept the estimate of Lippert (_Prost.i.tution in Hamburg_) that the princ.i.p.al motives to prost.i.tution are "idleness, frivolity, and, above all, the love of finery." This last is, as I believe, a far more frequent and stronger factor in determining towards prost.i.tution than actual want, and one, moreover, that is very deeply rooted in the feminine character. I do not wish to be cynical, but facts have forced on me the belief that the majority of prost.i.tutes are simply doing for money what they originally did _of their own will_ for excitement and the gain of some small personal gift.

There are, of course, many types among these uncla.s.sed women, as many as there are in any other cla.s.s, probably even more. Yet, in one respect, I have found them curiously alike. Just as the members of any other trade have a special att.i.tude towards their work, so prost.i.tutes have, I think, a particular way of viewing their trade in s.e.x. It is a mistake of sentiment to believe they have any real dislike to this traffic. Such distaste is felt by the unsuccessful and by others in periods of unprofitable business, but not, I think, otherwise. To me it has seemed in talking with them--as I have done very freely--that they regard the s.e.xual embraces of their partners exactly in the light that I regard the process of the actual writing down of my books--as something, in itself unimportant and tiresome, but necessary to the end to be gained. This was first made clear to me in a conversation with a member of the higher _demi-monde_, a woman of education and considerable character. "After all," she said, "it is really a very small thing to do, and gives one very little trouble, and men are almost always generous."

This remarkable statement seems to me representative of the att.i.tude of most prost.i.tutes. They are much better paid, if at all successful, than they ever could be as workers. The sale of their s.e.x opens up to them the same opportunities of gain that gambling on the stock-exchange or betting on the racecourse, for instance, opens up to men. It also offers the same joy of excitement, undoubtedly a very important factor. There are a considerable number of women who are drawn to and kept in the profession, not through necessity, but through neurosis.

There is no doubt that prost.i.tution is very profitable to the clever trader. I was informed by one woman, for instance, that a certain country, whose name I had perhaps better withhold, "Is a Paradise for women." Quite a considerable fortune, either in money or jewels, may be reaped in a few months and sometimes in a few weeks. But the woman must keep her head; cleverness is more important even than beauty. I learnt that it was considered foolish to remain with the same partner for more than two nights, the oftener a change was made the greater the chance of gain. The richest presents are given as a rule by young boys or old men: some of these boys are as young as fifteen years.

Now the really extraordinary thing to me was that my informant had plainly no idea of my moral sensibility being shocked at these statements. Of course, if I had shown the least surprise or condemnation, she would at once have agreed with me--but I didn't. I was trying to see things as she saw them, and my interest caused her really to speak to me as she felt. I am certain of this, as was proved to me in a subsequent conversation, in which I was told the history of a girl friend, who had got into difficulties and been helped by my informant. (These women are almost always kind and generous to one another. I know of one case in which a woman who had been trapped into a bogus marriage and then deserted, afterwards helped with money the girl and b.a.s.t.a.r.d child, also left by the man who had deceived her.) The story was ended with this extraordinary remark, "_It was all my friend's own fault, she was not particular who she went with; she would go with any man just because she took a fancy to him. I often told her how foolish she was, but she always said she could not help it._"

It was then that I realised the immensity of the gulf which separated my outlook from that of this successful courtesan. To her _to be not particular_ was to give oneself without a due return in money: to me----! Well, I needed all my control at that moment not to let her see what I felt. I have never been conscious of so deep a pity for any woman before, or felt so fierce an anger against social conditions that made this degradation of love possible. For, mark you, I know this woman well, have known her for years, and I can, and do, testify that in many directions apart from her trade, her virtue, her refinement and her character are equal, even if not superior, to my own. This is the greatest lesson I have learnt. The degradation of prost.i.tution rests not with these women, but on us, the sheltered, happy women who have been content to ignore or despise them. Do you come to know these women (and this is very difficult) you are just as able to like them and in many ways to respect them, as you are to like and to respect any "straight" woman. You may hate their trade, you cannot justly hate them.

I would like here to bring forward as a chief cause of prost.i.tution a factor which, though mentioned by many investigators,[327] has not, I think, been sufficiently recognised. To me it has been brought very forcibly home by my personal investigations. I mean s.e.xual frigidity.

This is surely the clearest explanation of the moral insensibility of the prost.i.tute. I have not enough knowledge to say whether this is a natural condition, or whether it is acquired. I am certain, however, that it is present in those courtesans whom I have known. These women have never experienced pa.s.sion. I believe that the traffic of love's supreme rite means less to them than it would do to me to shake hands with a man I disliked.

Now, if I am right, this fact will explain a great deal. I believe, moreover, that here a way opens out whereby in the future prost.i.tution may be remedied. This is no fanciful statement, but a practical belief in pa.s.sion as a power containing all forces. To any one who shares the faith I have been developing in this book, what I mean will be evident. If we consider how large a factor physical s.e.x is in the life of woman, it becomes clear that any atrophy of these instincts must be in the highest degree hurtful. Moral insensibility is almost always combined with economic dependence. If all mating was founded, as it ought to be, on love, and all children born from lovers, there would follow as an inevitable result a truer insistence on reality in the relationships of the s.e.xes. With a strengthening of pa.s.sion in the mothers of the race, s.e.x will return to its right and powerful purpose; love of all types, from the merest physical to the highest soul attraction, will be brought back to its true biological end--the service of the future.

I know, of course, as I have said already, that, just as there are many different forms of prost.i.tution, there are many and varied types of prost.i.tutes, and that, therefore, it is foolishness to hold fast in a one-sided manner to a single theory. There are undoubtedly voluptuous women among prost.i.tutes. These I have not considered. For one thing I have not met them. I have preferred to speak of the women I have known personally. In the light of what I have learnt from them, I have come to believe that only in comparatively few cases does s.e.xual desire lead any woman to adopt a career of prost.i.tution, and in still fewer cases does pa.s.sion persist. The insistence so often made on this factor as a cause of prost.i.tution is due, in part, to ignorance as to the real feelings of these women, and also, in part, to its moral plausibility. We are so afraid of normal pa.s.sion that we readily a.s.sume abnormal pa.s.sion to be the cause of the evil. But far truer causes on the women's side are love of luxury and dislike of work. I think the estimates given by men on this subject have to be accepted with great caution. It must be remembered that it is the business of these women to excite pa.s.sion, and, to do this, they must have learnt to simulate pa.s.sion; and men, as every woman who is not ignorant or a fool knows, are easy to deceive. It may also be added that to the woman of strong s.e.xuality the career of prost.i.tution is suited. It is possible that in the future and under wiser conditions such women only will choose this profession.

For the same reason I have pa.s.sed very lightly over the economic factor as a cause of prost.i.tution. I believe that this will be changed. I do not under-estimate the undoubted importance of the driving pressure of want. But, as I have tried to make clear, it does not take us to the root of the problem. Poverty can only be regarded as probably the strongest out of many accessory causes. The socialists and economic apostles have to face this: no possible raising of women's wages can abolish prost.i.tution.[328]

We must hold firmly to the fact that characterlessness, which is incapable of overcoming opposition and takes the path that is easiest, is the result of the individual's inherited disposition, with the addition of his, or her, own experience; and of these it is the former that, as a rule, determines to prost.i.tution. Every kind of moral and intellectual looseness and dullness can, for the most part, be traced to this cause. At all events it is the strongest among many. Not alone for the prost.i.tute's sake must this subject be seriously approached, but for society's sake as well. As things stand with us at present, moral sensitiveness has a poor chance of being cultivated, and those who realise that this is the case are still very few. Women have yet to learn the responsibilities of love, not only in regard to their duties of child-bearing and child-rearing, but in its personal bearing on their own s.e.xual needs and the needs of men. I believe that the degradation of our legitimate love-relationships is the ultimate cause of prost.i.tution, to which all other causes are subsidiary.

If we look now at the position for a moment from the other side--the man's side--a very difficult question awaits us. It is a question that women must answer. What is the real need of the prost.i.tute on the part of men? This demand is present everywhere under civilisation; what are its causes? and how far are these likely to be changed? Now it is easy to bring forward answers, such as the lateness of marriage, difficulty of divorce, and all those social and economic causes which may be grouped together and cla.s.sed as "lack of opportunity of legitimate love." Without question these causes are important, but, like the economic factor which drives women into prost.i.tution, they are not fundamental; they are also remediable. They do not, however, explain the fact, which all know, that the prost.i.tute is sought out by numberless men who have ample opportunity of unpriced love with other women. Here we have a preference for the prost.i.tute, not the acceptance of her as a subst.i.tute taken of necessity. It is, of course, easy to say that such preference is due to the l.u.s.tful nature of the male. There was a time when I accepted this view--it is, without doubt, a pleasant and a flattering one for women. I have learnt the folly of such shallow condemnations of needs I had not troubled to understand. Possibly no woman can quite get to the truth here; but at least I have tried to see facts straight and without feminine prejudice.

This is what seems to me to be the explanation.

We have got to recognise that there are primitive instincts of tremendous power, which, held in check by our dull and laborious, yet s.e.xually-exciting, civilisation, break out at times in many individuals like a veritable monomania. In earlier civilisations this fact was frankly recognised, and such instincts were prevented from working mischief by the provision of means wherein they might expend themselves. Hence the widespread custom of festivals with the accompanying orgy; but these channels have been closed to us with a result that is often disastrous. No woman can have failed to feel astonishment at the attractive force the prost.i.tute may, and often does, exercise on cultured men of really fine character. There is some deeper cause here than mere s.e.xual necessity. But if we accept, as we must, the existence of these imperatively driving, though usually restrained impulses, it will be readily seen that prost.i.tution provides a channel in which this surplus of wild energy may be expended. It lightens the burden of the customary restraints. There are many men, I believe, who find it a relief just to talk with a prost.i.tute--a woman with whom they have no need to be on guard. The prost.i.tute fulfils that need that may arise in even the most civilised man for something primitive and strong: a need, as has been said by a male writer, better than I can express it, "for woman in herself, not woman with the thousand and one tricks and whimsies of wives, mothers and daughters."

This is a truth that it seems to me it is very necessary for all women to realise. It is in our foolishness and want of knowledge that we cast our contempt upon men. Women flinch from the facts of life. These women who, regarded by us as "the supreme types of vice," are yet, from this point of view, "the most efficient guardians of our virtue."

Must we not then rather see if there is no cause in ourselves for blame?

It has been held for generations that woman must practise principles of virtue to counteract man's example. This has led to an entirely false standard. A solving compromise has been found in the ideal of purity in one set of women and pa.s.sion in another. And this state of things has continued indefinitely until it has become to some extent true. Numberless women have withered in this unprofitable service to chast.i.ty. The s.e.xual coldness of the modern woman, which sociologists continually refer to, exists mainly in consequence of this constant system of repression. Female virtue has been over-cultivated, the flower has grown to an enormous size, but it has lost its scent. A hypocritical and a lying system has been set up professing disbelief in that which it knows is necessary to the needs of the individual woman and to the larger needs of the race. Physical love is only inglorious when it is regarded ingloriously. Why this horror of pa.s.sion? The tragedy of woman it seems is this, that with such power of love as she has in her there should be so little opportunity for its use--so much for its waste. Those of us who believe in pa.s.sion as the supreme factor in race-building, must know that this view of its shamefulness is weakening the race.

I, therefore, hold firmly as my belief that the hateful traffic in love will flourish just as long, and in proportion, as we regard pa.s.sion outside of prost.i.tution with shame. Each one of us women is responsible. Do we not know that there is not this difference between our s.e.xual needs and those of men? Let us tear down the old pretence.

Do not instincts arise in us, too, that demand expression, free from all coercion of convention? And if we stifle them are we really the better--the more moral s.e.x? I doubt this, as I have come to doubt so many of the lies that have been accepted as the truth about women.

The true hope of the future lies in the undivided recognition of responsibility in love, which alone can make freedom possible. Freedom for all women--the women of the home and the women of the streets. The prost.i.tute woman must be freed from all oppression. We, her sisters, can demand no less than this. If we are to remain sheltered, she must be sheltered too. She must be freed from the oppression of absurd laws, from the terrible oppression of the police and from all economic and social oppression. But to make this possible, these women, who for centuries have been blasted for our sins against love, must be re-admitted by women and men into the social life of our homes and the State. Then, and then alone, can we have any hope that the prost.i.tute will cease to be and the natural woman will take her place.

FOOTNOTES:

[326] I would refer my readers to the Chapters on "s.e.xual Morality"

and "Marriage" in Havelock Ellis's _Psychology of s.e.x_, Vol. VI. The only way to estimate aright the value of our present marriage system is to examine the history of that system in the past. I had hoped to have s.p.a.ce in which to do this, and it is with real regret I am compelled to omit the section I had written on this subject.

[327] Lombroso mentions the prevalence of s.e.xual frigidity among prost.i.tutes (_La Donna Delinquente_, p. 401). See also Havelock Ellis, _Psychology of s.e.x_, Vol. VI. pp. 268-272. This writer does not support the view of the s.e.xual frigidity of prost.i.tutes, but in this, I believe, he is influenced by statistics and outward facts, rather than personal knowledge gained from the women themselves.

[328] Women in marriage have been for so long protected by men from the necessity of doing work, that why should we expect the prost.i.tute to prefer uncongenial work?

CONTENTS OF CHAPTER XI

THE END OF THE INQUIRY

The future of Woman--Indications of progress--The re-birth of woman--Woman learning to believe in herself--The sin of sterility--The waste of womanhood--The change in woman's outlook--The quickening of the social conscience--A criticism of militancy--It does not correspond with the ideal for women--The new free relationship of the s.e.xes--The conditions which make this possible--The recognition of love as the spiritual force in life--The importance of woman's freedom to the vital advance of humanity--The end brings us back to the beginning--The supreme importance of Motherhood--Woman the guardian of the Race-life and the Race-soul--This the ground of her claim for freedom.

CHAPTER XI

THE END OF THE INQUIRY

"Among the higher activities and movements of our time, the struggle of our sisters to attain an equality of position with the strong, the dominant, the oppressive s.e.x, appears to me, from the purely human point of view, most beautiful and most interesting: indeed, I regard it as possible that the coming century will obtain its historical characterisations, not from any of the social and economical controversies of the world of men, but that this century will be known to subsequent history distinctively as that in which the solution of the 'woman's question' was obtained."--GEORGE HIRTH.

Looking back over the long inquiry which lies behind us, we have come by many and various paths to seek that standpoint from which we started--the Truth about Woman. We must now try to give a brief answer to a difficult question. What is the future of woman? Are we able to recognise in the present upward development of the s.e.x signs of real progress towards better conditions? Is it within the capacity of the female half of human-kind to acquire and keep that position of essential usefulness held by the females of all other species? Will women learn to develop their own nature and to express their own genius? Can their present characteristic weakness, vices, and failings be really overcome under different and freer conditions of domestic and social life? Are we of to-day justified in looking forward to the new woman of the future, with saner aspirations and wider aims, who lives the whole of her life; who will restore to humanity harmony between the s.e.xes, and transform the miseries of love back to its rightful joys? Can these things, indeed, be?

The answer is a confident and joyful "Yes!"

The re-birth of woman is no dream.

We have become accustomed to listen to the opinion voiced by men. We have heard that belief in women is a symptom of youth or of inexperience of the s.e.x, which a riper mind and wider knowledge will invariably tend to dissipate. So woman has come to regard herself as almost an indiscretion on the part of the Creator, necessary indeed to man, but something which he must try to hide and hush up. We have, in fact, put into practice Milton's ideal: "He, for G.o.d only, she, for G.o.d in him." Some such arguments from the lips of disillusioned men have been possible, perhaps, with some measure of reason. But the time has come for men to hold their peace.

Woman is learning to believe in herself.

Now, so far, the great result of the long years of repression has been the sterility of women's lives. Sterility is a deadly sin. To-day so many of our activities are sterile. The women of our richer cla.s.ses have been impotent by reason of their soft living; the women of our workers have had their vitality sweated out of them by their filthy labours; they could bear only dead things. Life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures of expression, whose n.o.bility will fertilise the mind and lead to the conception of new and glorious births. Women have been forced to use life wastefully. They have been spiritually sterile; consuming, not giving: getting little from life, giving back little to life.