The Truth About Woman Part 3

A further truth of the utmost importance becomes manifest. Many differences between the relative position of the s.e.xes, which we are apt to suppose are inherent in the female or male, are not inherent, in light of these early and varying types. We see that the s.e.x-relationship and the character of the female and male a.s.sume different forms, changing as the conditions of life vary. Again and again when we come to examine the position of women in different periods of civilisation, we shall find that whenever the conditions of life have tended to withdraw them from the social activities of labour, restricting them, like these early s.e.x-victims, to the pa.s.sive exercise of their reproductive functions alone, that such parasitism has resulted invariably in the degeneration of woman, and through her pa.s.sing on such deterioration to her sons, there has followed, after a longer or shorter period, the degeneration of society. But these questions belong to the later part of our inquiry, and cannot be entered on here. Yet it were well to fix in our minds at once the dangers, without escape, that follow s.e.x-parasitism.

It may be thought that these cases of s.e.x-victims are exceptions, and that, therefore, it is unsafe to draw conclusions from them. The truth would rather seem to be that they are extreme examples of conditions that were common at one stage of life. There is no doubt that up to the level of the amphibians female superiority in size, and often in power of function, prevails.[28] If, for example, we look at insects generally, the males are smaller than the females, especially in the imago state. There are many species, belonging to different orders--as, for instance, certain moths and b.u.t.terflies--in which this superiority is very marked. The males are either not provided with any functional organs for eating, or have these imperfectly developed. It seems evident that their sole function is to fertilise the female. A familiar and interesting example is furnished by the common mosquitoes, among whom the female alone, with its harmful sting, is known to the unscientific world. The males, frail and weaponless little creatures, swarm with the females in the early summer, and then pa.s.s away, their work being done.

Dr. Howard, writing of the mosquito in America, says--

"It is a well-known fact that the adult male mosquito does not necessarily take nourishment, and that the adult female does not necessarily rely on the blood of warm-blooded animals. The mouth parts of the male are so different from those of the female that it is probable that, if it feeds at all, it obtains its food in quite a different manner from the female. They are often observed sipping at drops of water, and in one instance a fondness for mola.s.ses has been recorded."[29]

We find many examples of such structural modifications acquired for the purpose of adapting the s.e.xes to different modes of life. Darwin notes that the females of certain flies are blood-suckers, whilst the males, living on flowers, have mouths dest.i.tute of mandibles.[30] The females are carnivorous, the males herbivorous. It would be easy to bring forward many further examples among the invertebrates in which the differences between the s.e.xes indicates very clearly the persistence of female superiority. But for these I must refer the reader to the works of Darwin and other entomologists, and to the many interesting cases given by Professor Lester Ward. There are, it is true, exceptions, but these may be explained by the conditions under which the species live.

Even when we ascend the scale to back-boned animals, cases are not wanting in which the early superiority in size of the female remains unaltered. The smallest known vertebrate, _Heterandria formosa_, has females very considerably larger than the males.[31] Among fishes the males are commonly smaller than the females, who are also, as a rule, considerably more numerous.[32] This is a fact that fishermen are well aware of. I may mention, as an example, that on one occasion when my husband and I caught twenty-five trout in a mountain lake in Wales there were only two males among them. It is curious to find that any care of offspring that is evident among fishes is usually paternal.

This furnishes another instance of the truth so necessary to learn that the s.e.x-relationships may a.s.sume almost any form to suit the varying conditions of life.

There are some mammals among whom the s.e.xes do not differ appreciably in size and strength, and very little or not at all, in coloration and ornament. Such is the case with nearly all the great family of rodents. It is also the case with the Erinaceidae, or at least with its typical sub-family of hedgehogs.[33] Even among birds, where the s.e.x instincts have attained to their highest and most aesthetic expression, we find some large families--as, for example, the hawks--in which the female is usually the larger and finer bird.[34] Thus the adult male of the common sparrow-hawk is much smaller than the female, the length of the male being 13 ins., wing 7.7 ins., and that of the female 15.4 ins., wing 9 ins. The male peregrine, known to hawkers as the tiercel, is greatly inferior in size to his mate. The merlin, the osprey, the falcon, the spotted eagle, the golden eagle, the gos-hawk, the harrier, the buzzard, the eagle-owl, and other species of owls are further examples where the female bird is larger than the male. Among many of these families the female birds very closely resemble the males, and where differences in colour and ornament do occur, they are slight.

A further point of the greatest importance to us requires to be made.

Wherever amongst the birds the s.e.xes are alike the habits of their lives are also alike. The female as well as the male obtains food, the nest is built together, and the young are cared for by both parents.

These beautiful examples of s.e.x equality among the birds cannot be regarded as exceptions that have arisen by chance--a reversal of the usual rule of the s.e.xes; rather they show the persistence of the earlier relations between the female and the male carried to a finer development under conditions of life favourable to the female. I will not here say more upon this subject, as I shall have to refer to it in greater detail when we come to consider the s.e.xual and familial habits of birds. I will only add that in their delicacy and devotion to each other and to their offspring, birds in their unions have advanced to a much further stage than we have in our marriages. These a.s.sociations of our ancestral lovers claim our attentive study.

II.--_Two Examples--The Beehive and the Spider_

"At its base the love of animals does not differ from that of man."--DARWIN.

For vividness of argument I wish in a brief section of this chapter to make a digression from our main inquiry to bring forward two examples--extreme cases of the imperious action of the s.e.xual instincts--in which we see the s.e.xes driven to the performance of their functions under peculiar conditions. Both occur among the invertebrates. I have left the consideration of them until now because of the instructive light they throw upon what we are trying to prove in this first attack on the validity of the common estimate of the true position of the s.e.xes in Nature. Let us begin with the familiar case of the bees. As every one knows, these truly wonderful insects belong to a highly evolved and complex society, which may be said to represent a very perfected and extreme socialism. In this society the vast majority of the population--the workers--are sterile females, and of the drones, or males, only a very few at the most are ever functional. Reproduction is carried on by the queen-mother. The lesson to be drawn from the beehive is that such an organisation has evolved a quite extraordinary sacrifice of the individual members, notably in the submergence of the personal needs of s.e.x-function, to its wider racial end. It is from this line of thought that I wish to consider it. We have (1) the drones, the fussing males, useless except for their one duty of fertilisation, and this function only a few actively perform; thus, if they become at all numerous they are killed off by the workers, so that the hives may be rid of them; (2) the queen, an imprisoned mother, specialised for maternity, her sole work the laying of the eggs, and incapable of any other function; her brain and mind of the humblest order, she being unable even to feed and care for her offspring; (3) the great body of uns.e.xed workers, the busy sisters, whose duty is to rear the young and carry out all the social activities of the hive.

What a strange, perplexing life-history! What a sacrifice of the s.e.xes to each other and to the life-force.[35] It seems probable that these active workers have even succeeded in getting rid of s.e.xual needs. Yet the maternal instinct persists in them, and has survived the productive function; it may, indeed, be said to be enlarged and enn.o.bled, for their affection is not confined to their own offspring, but goes out to all the young of the a.s.sociation. In this community one care takes precedence of all others, the care and rearing of the young. This is the workers' constant occupation; this is the great duty to which their lives are sacrificed. With them maternal love has expanded into social affection. The strength of this sentiment is abundantly proved. The queen-bee, the feeble mother, has the greatest possible care lavished upon her, and is publicly mourned when she dies. If through any ill-chance she happens to perish before the performance of her maternal duties, and then cannot be replaced, the sterile workers evince the most terrible grief, and in some cases themselves die. It would almost seem that they value motherhood more for being themselves deprived of it.

Now, how does this history from the bee-hive apply to us? Here you have before you, old as the world itself, one of the most urgent problems that has to be faced in our difficult modern society. I have little doubt that something which is at least a.n.a.logous to the sterilisation of the female bees is present among ourselves. The complexity of our social conditions, resulting in the great disproportion between the number of the s.e.xes, has tended to set aside a great number of women from the normal expression of their s.e.x functions. Among these women a cla.s.s appears to be arising who are turning away voluntarily from love and motherhood. Many of them are undoubtedly women of fine character. These "Intellectuals" suggest that women shall keep themselves free from the duties of maternity and devote their energies thus conserved, to their own emanc.i.p.ation and for work in the world which needs them so badly. But the biological objection to any such proposition is not far to seek. No one who thinks straight can countenance a plan which thus leaves maternity to the less intellectual woman--to a docile, domestic type, the parallel of the stupid parasitic queen-bee. Mind counts in the valuation of offspring as well as physical qualities. The splitting of one s.e.x into two contrasted varieties, which we see in its completed development in the bee-hive, cannot be an ideal that can even be worth while for us.

It means an end to all further progress.

There is another group of women who wish to bear children, but who seem to be anxious to reduce the father to the position of the drone-bee. He is to have no part in the child after its birth. The duty of caring for it and bringing it up is to be undertaken by the mother, aided, when necessary, by the State. This is a terrible injustice against the father and the child. It seems to me to be the great and insuperable difficulty against any scheme of State Endowment of Motherhood. I cannot enter into this question now, and will only state my belief that a child belongs by natural right to both its parents. The primitive form of the matriarchal family, which we shall study later, is realised in its most exaggerated form by the bees and ants. In human societies we find only imitations of this system. And here, again, there is a lesson necessary for us to remember. Any ideal that takes the father from the child, and the child from its father, giving it only to the mother, is a step backward and not forward.

And in case any woman is inclined still to admire the position of the female worker-bees, so free in labour, being liberated from s.e.xual activity, it were well to consider the sacrifice at which such freedom is gained. These workers have highly-developed brains, but most of them die young. Nor must we forget that each one carries her poisoned sting--no new or strange weapon, but a transformation of a part of her very organ of maternity--the ovipositor, or egg-placer, with which the queen-mother lays each egg in its appointed place.[36]

Do "the Intellectuals" understand what they really want? Those women who are raising the cry increasingly for individual liberty, without considering the results which may follow from such a one-sided growth both to themselves and to the race--let them pause to remember the price paid by the sterile worker-bee. Is it unfair to suggest that any such shirking for the gains of personal freedom of their woman's right and need of love and child-bearing may lead in the psychical sphere to a result similar to the transformation of the s.e.x-organ of the bee; and that, giving up the power of life, they will be left the possessor of the stinging weapon of death! Some such considerations may help women to decide whether it is better to be a mother or a sterile worker.

The second example I want to consider is that of the common spider, whose curious courtship customs are described by Darwin.[37] Here we find the relatively gigantic female seizing and devouring the tiny male fertiliser, as he seeks to perform the only duty for which he exists. This is a case of female superiority carried to a savage conclusion. The male in these courtships often has to risk his life many times, and it seems only to be by an accident that he ever escapes alive from the embraces of his infuriated partner. I will give an example, taken from the _mantes_, or praying insect, where, though the difference in size between the s.e.xes is much less than among many spiders, the ferocity of the female is extraordinary. This case is quoted by Professor Lester Ward,[38] who gives it on the authority of Dr. L.O. Howard, one of the best-known entomologists--

"A few days since I brought a male or _Mantes carolina_ to a friend who had been keeping a solitary female as a pet. Placing them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavoured to escape.

In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She bit off his left front tarsus and consumed the tibia and femur. Next she gnawed out his left eye. At this the male seemed to realise his proximity to one of the opposite s.e.x, and began vain endeavours to mate. The female next ate up his right front leg, and then entirely decapitated him, devouring his head and gnawing into his thorax. Not until she had eaten all his thorax, except about three millimetres did she stop to rest. All this while the male had continued in his vain attempt to obtain entrance at the valvula, and he now succeeded, and she voluntarily spread the parts open, and union took place. She remained quiet for four hours, and the remnant of the male gave occasional signs of life, by a movement of one of his remaining tarsi for three hours. The next morning she had entirely rid herself of her spouse, and nothing but his wings remained."

You will think, perhaps, that this extreme case of female ferocity has little bearing upon our s.e.xual pa.s.sions. But consider. I have not quoted it, as is done by Professor Ward, to prove the existence of the superiority of the female in Nature. No, rather I want to suggest a lesson that may be wrested by us from these first courtships in the life histories of the s.e.xes. I spoke at the beginning of this biological section of my book of the warnings that surely would come as we traced the evolution of our love-pa.s.sions from those of our pre-human ancestors. We are too apt to ignore the tremendous force that the s.e.x-impulse has gathered from its incalculably long history.

As animals exhibit in their love-matings the a.n.a.logies of the human virtue, it is not surprising to find the occurrence of parallel vices.

Let us look for a moment at this in the light of the fierce love-contest of the female spider.

Of this habit there are various explanations; the prevalent one regards the spider as an anomalous exception; the ferocity and superiority of size in the female not easily to be explained. This is, I think, not so. Is it not rather a picture, with the details crudely emphasised, of the action of Life-Force of which the s.e.xes are both the helpless victims? Whether we look backward to the beginning, where the exhausted male-cell seeks the female in incipient s.e.xual union, or onwards through the long stages of s.e.x-evolution to our own love-pa.s.sions, this is surely true.

Let me try to make this clearer by an example. It would seem but a small step from the female spider, so ruthlessly eating up her lover, to the type of woman celebrated by Mr. Bernard Shaw's immortal Ann. I recall a woman friend saying to me once, "We may not like it, and, of course, we refuse to own to it, but there is something of Ann in every woman." I need not recall to you Ann's pursuit of her victim, Tanner, nor his futile efforts to escape. Here, as so often he has done, Mr.

Shaw has presented us in comedy with a philosophy of life. You believe, perhaps, the fiction, still brought forward by many who ought to know better, that in love woman is pa.s.sive and waits for man to woo her. I think no woman in her heart believes this. She knows, by instinct, that Nature has unmistakably made her the predominant partner in all that relates to the perpetuation of the race; she knows this in spite of all fictions set up by men. Have they done this, as Mr. Shaw suggests, to protect themselves against a too humiliating aggressiveness of the woman in following the driving of the Life-Force? This pretence of male superiority in the s.e.xual relation is so shallow that it is strange how it can have imposed on any one.

I wish to state here quite definitely what I hold to be true; the condition of female superiority with which s.e.xuality began has in this connection persisted. In every case the relation between woman and man is the same--she is the pursuer, he the pursued and disposed of.

Nothing can or should alter this. The male from the very beginning has been of use from Nature's point of view by a.s.sisting the female to carry on life. It is the fierce hunger of the male, increasing in strength through the long course of time, which places him in woman's power. Man is the slave of woman, often when least he thinks so, and still woman uses her power, even like the spider, not infrequently, for his undoing.

Here, indeed, is a warning causing us to think. The touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin is nowhere more manifest than in s.e.x; that absorption of the male by the female to which life owes its continuation, its ecstasy, and its pain. It has seemed to me it is here in the primitive relations of the s.e.xes that we may find the clue to many of those wrongs which women have suffered at the hands of men.

Man, acting instinctively, has rebelled, not so much, I think, against woman as against this driving hunger within himself, which forces him helpless into her power. Like the fish that cannot resist the fly of the fisherman, even when experience has taught him to fear the hidden barb, he struggles and fights for his life to escape as he realises too late the net into which his hunger has brought him.

But we may learn more than this; another truth of even deeper importance to us. It is because of this superiority of the female in the s.e.xual relationship that women must be granted their claim for emanc.i.p.ation. Here is the reason stronger than all others. Nature has placed in women's hands so tremendous a power that the dangers are too great for such power to be left to the direction of untrained and unemanc.i.p.ated women. Above all it is necessary that each woman understands her own s.e.xual nature, and also that of her lover, that she may realise in full knowledge the tremendous force of s.e.xual-hunger which drives him to her, equalled, as I believe, by the desire within herself, which claims him to fulfil through her Nature's great central purpose of continuing the race. To women has been granted the guardianship of the Life-Force. It is time that each woman asks herself how she is fulfilling this trust.

It is the possession of this power in the s.e.xual sphere which lends real importance to even the feeblest attempts of women to prepare themselves to meet the duties in the new paths that are being opened to them. Women have now entered into labour. They are claiming freedom to develop themselves by active partic.i.p.ation in that struggle with life and its conditions whereby men have gained their development.

From thousands of women to-day the cry is rising, "Give us free opportunity, and the training that will fit us for freedom." Not, as so many have mistakenly thought, that women may compete with men in a senseless struggle for mastery, but in order first to learn, and afterwards to perform, that work in society which they can do better than men. What such work is it must be women's purpose to find out.

But before this is possible to be decided all fields of activity must be open for them to enter. And this women must claim, not for themselves chiefly; but because they are the bearers of race-life, and also to save men from any further misuse of their power. Then working together as lovers and comrades, women and men may come to understand and direct those deep-rooted forces of s.e.x, which have for so long driven them helpless to the wastage of life and love.

I would ask all those who deny this modern claim of women to consider in all seriousness the two cases I have brought forward--that of the bee-hives, and even more the destruction by the female spider of her male lover. That they have their parallel in our society to-day is a fact that few will deny. I have tried to show the real danger that lurks in every form of s.e.x-parasitism. It would lead us too far from our purpose to comment in further detail on the suggestions offered by these curious examples of s.e.x-martyrs among our earliest ancestral lovers. Those whose eyes are not blinded will not fail to see.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] So deep-rooted has been this opinion of female inferiority that it has formed the basis of many theories of s.e.x. Thus Richarz holds that "the male s.e.x represents a higher grade of development in the embryo." Hough thinks males are born when the female system is at its best, females in periods of growth, reparation, or disease. Tiedman and others regard females as an arrested male, while Velpau, on the other hand, believes them to be degenerated from primitive males. See Geddes and Thomson, _Evolution of s.e.x_, p. 39.

[17] The theory of Lester Ward, to which I have already referred, supports this view.

[18] I have left out of my inquiry any reference to plants, though all that has been said of the _protozoa_ in the last chapter is equally true of the _protophyta_, the basis of plant life. Among plants there are many beautiful and instructive examples of the relative position of the female and the male plant. A well-known case is that of the hemp-plant, where the s.e.xes are indistinguishable up to the period of fertility, but when the male plants have shed their pollen, and thus fulfilled their duty of fertilising the female plants, they cease to grow, turn yellow and sere, and if at all crowded wither and die. Many other examples might be cited, but the question is too wide to enter on here. See Lester Ward, _op. cit._, pp. 318-322.

[19] _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, article on "s.e.x," by Prof. Geddes; also _Evolution of s.e.x_, pp. 20, 21. Prof. Lester Ward, _Pure Sociology_, Part II, Chap. XIV, gives an ingenuous and complete view of the early superiority of the female, to which he gives the name of the Gynaecocentric theory, as opposed to the usual Androcentric theory, based on the superiority of the male. While fully appreciating the suggestiveness and value of this theory, and also acknowledging very gratefully the help I have derived from it, it must be stated that some of the facts brought forward in its support by the distinguished American cannot be accepted. Nor am I able, as will appear later, to accept the conclusion he arrives at of the pa.s.sive character of the female. See also a popular article by Prof. Ward, "Our Better Halves", _The Forum_, Vol. VI., Nov. 1888, pp. 266-275.

[20] Van Beneden, _Animal Parasites and Messmates_, p. 55.

[21] Milne Edwards, _Lecons sur la physiologie et l'anatomie comparee de l'homme et des animaux_, Vol. IX. p. 267.

[22] In addition to the works already mentioned, see Darwin, _Descent of Man_, Vol. I. p. 329; Haeckel, _Evolution of Man_, and _A Manual of the Anatomy of the Invertebrated Animals_, by T. Huxley, pp. 261-262.

[23] _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, Vol. I. p. 345.

[24] Thomson, J.A., _Heredity_, p. 39.

[25] Article by Ryder, _Science_, Vol. I., May 31, 1895, p. 603.

[26] Schreiner, Olive, _Woman and Labour_, pp. 77-78.

[27] These examples of female parasitism have been taken from _Evolution of s.e.x_, p. 17; see also pp. 19-22. The authors bring them forward with many other examples to prove the main thesis of their book--that the character of the female is anabolic, that of the male katabolic. In establishing this theory they do not appear to give sufficient importance to the fact that this degeneration of the female is only found where the conditions of life are parasitic.

[28] _Evolution of s.e.x_, p. 21; _Pure Sociology_, pp. 316-317.

[29] "Notes on the Mosquitoes of the United States," by L.O. Howard, _Bulletin_ No. 25, New Series, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Entomology, 1900, p. 12. Quoted by Lester Ward, _Pure Sociology_, p. 317.

[30] _Descent of Man_, p. 208.

[31] _Science_, Vol. XV., Jan. 1902, p. 30.

[32] Fulton, Naturalist to the Scottish Fishery Board. Cited in _Evolution of s.e.x_, p. 22; see also pp. 25, 272, 295.