There is, however, much more to be learnt in these matters than the mere elementary facts of s.e.xual intercourse. The art of love certainly includes such primary facts of s.e.xual hygiene, but it involves also the whole erotic discipline of marriage, and that is why its significance is so great, for the welfare and happiness of the individual, for the stability of s.e.xual unions, and indirectly for the race, since the art of love is ultimately the art of attaining the right conditions for procreation.
"It seems extremely probable," wrote Professor E. D. Cope,[376] "that if this subject could be properly understood, and become, in the details of its practical conduct, a part of a written social science, the monogamic marriage might attain a far more general success than is often found in actual life." There can be no doubt whatever that this is the case. In the great majority of marriages success depends exclusively upon the knowledge of the art of love possessed by the two persons who enter into it. A life-long monogamic union may, indeed, persist in the absence of the slightest inborn or acquired art of love, out of religious resignation or sheer stupidity. But that att.i.tude is now becoming less common. As we have seen in the previous chapter, divorces are becoming more frequent and more easily obtainable in every civilized country. This is a tendency of civilization; it is the result of a demand that marriage should be a real relationship, and that when it ceases to be real as a relationship it should also cease as a form. That is an inevitable tendency, involved in our growing democratization, for the democracy seems to care more for realities than for forms, however venerable. We cannot fight against it; and we should be wrong to fight against it even if we could.
Yet while we are bound to aid the tendency to divorce, and to insist that a valid marriage needs the wills of two persons to maintain it, it is difficult for anyone to argue that divorce is in itself desirable. It is always a confession of failure. Two persons, who, if they have been moved in the slightest degree by the normal and regular impulse of s.e.xual selection, at the outset regarded each other as lovable, have, on one side or the other or on both, proved not lovable. There has been a failure in the fundamental art of love. If we are to counterbalance facility of divorce our only sound course is to increase the stability of marriage, and that is only possible by cultivating the art of love, the primal foundation of marriage.
It is by no means unnecessary to emphasize this point. There are still many persons who have failed to realize it. There are even people who seem to imagine that it is unimportant whether or not pleasure is present in the s.e.xual act. "I do not believe mutual pleasure in the s.e.xual act has any particular bearing on the happiness of life," once remarked Dr. Howard A. Kelly.[377] Such a statement means-if indeed it means anything-that the marriage tie has no "particular bearing" on human happiness; it means that the way must be freely opened to adultery and divorce. Even the most perverse ascetic of the Middle Ages scarcely ventured to make a statement so flagrantly opposed to the experiences of humanity, and the fact that a distinguished gynecologist of the twentieth century can make it, with almost the air of stating a truism, is ample justification for the emphasis which it has nowadays become necessary to place on the art of love. "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis," was indeed an ancient Pagan dictum. But it is not in harmony with modern ideas. It was not even altogether in harmony with Christianity. For our modern morality, as Ellen Key well says, the unity of love and marriage is a fundamental principle.[378]
The neglect of the art of love has not been a universal phenomenon; it is more especially characteristic of Christendom. The spirit of ancient Rome undoubtedly predisposed Europe to such a neglect, for with their rough cultivation of the military virtues and their inapt.i.tude for the finer aspects of civilization the Romans were willing to regard love as a permissible indulgence, but they were not, as a people, prepared to cultivate it as an art. Their poets do not, in this matter, represent the moral feeling of their best people. It is indeed a highly significant fact that Ovid, the most distinguished Latin poet who concerned himself much with the art of love, a.s.sociated that art not so much with morality as with immorality. As he viewed it, the art of love was less the art of retaining a woman in her home than the art of winning her away from it; it was the adulterer"s art rather than the husband"s art. Such a conception would be impossible out of Europe, but it proved very favorable to the growth of the Christian att.i.tude towards the art of love.
Love as an art, as well as a pa.s.sion, seems to have received considerable study in antiquity, though the results of that study have perished. Cadmus Milesius, says Suidas, wrote fourteen great volumes on the pa.s.sion of love, but they are not now to be found. Rohde (Das Griechische Roman, p. 55) has a brief section on the Greek philosophic writers on love. Bloch (Beitrage zur Psychopathia s.e.xualis, Teil I, p. 191) enumerates the ancient women writers who dealt with the art of love. Montaigne (Essais, liv. ii, Ch. V) gives a list of ancient cla.s.sical lost books on love. Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, Bell"s edition, vol. iii, p. 2) also gives a list of lost books on love. Burton himself dealt at length with the manifold signs of love and its grievous symptoms. Boissier de Sauvages, early in the eighteenth century, published a Latin thesis, De Amore, discussing love somewhat in the same spirit as Burton, as a psychic disease to be treated and cured.
The breath of Christian asceticism had pa.s.sed over love; it was no longer, as in cla.s.sic days, an art to be cultivated, but only a malady to be cured. The true inheritor of the cla.s.sic spirit in this, as in many other matters, was not the Christian world, but the world of Islam. The Perfumed Garden of the Sheik Nefzaoui was probably written in the city of Tunis early in the sixteenth century by an author who belonged to the south of Tunis. Its opening invocation clearly indicates that it departs widely from the conception of love as a disease: "Praise be to G.o.d who has placed man"s greatest pleasures in the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest enjoyments to woman." The Arabic book, El Ktab, or "The Secret Laws of Love," is a modern work, by Omer Haleby Abu Othman, who was born in Algiers of a Moorish mother and a Turkish father.
For Christianity the permission to yield to the s.e.xual impulse at all was merely a concession to human weakness, an indulgence only possible when it was carefully hedged and guarded on every side. Almost from the first the Christians began to cultivate the art of virginity, and they could not so dislocate their point of view as to approve of the art of love. All their pa.s.sionate adoration in the sphere of s.e.x went out towards chast.i.ty. Possessed by such ideals, they could only tolerate human love at all by giving to one special form of it a religious sacramental character, and even that sacramental halo imparted to love a quasi-ascetic character which precluded the idea of regarding love as an art.[379] Love gained a religious element but it lost a moral element, since, outside Christianity, the art of love is part of the foundation of s.e.xual morality, wherever such morality in any degree exists. In Christendom love in marriage was left to shift for itself as best it might; the art of love was a dubious art which was held to indicate a certain commerce with immorality and even indeed to be itself immoral. That feeling was doubtless strengthened by the fact that Ovid was the most conspicuous master in literature of the art of love. His literary reputation-far greater than it now seems to us[380]-gave distinction to his position as the author of the chief extant text-book of the art of love. With Humanism and the Renaissance and the consequent realization that Christianity had overlooked one side of life, Ovid"s Ars Amatoria was placed on a pedestal it had not occupied before or since. It represented a step forward in civilization; it revealed love not as a mere animal instinct or a mere pledged duty, but as a complex, humane, and refined relationship which demanded cultivation; "arte regendus amor." Boccaccio made a wise teacher put Ovid"s Ars Amatoria into the hands of the young. In an age still oppressed by the mediaeval spirit, it was a much needed text-book, but it possessed the fatal defect, as a text-book, of presenting the erotic claims of the individual as divorced from the claims of good social order. It never succeeded in establishing itself as a generally accepted manual of love, and in the eyes of many it served to stamp the subject it dealt with as one that lies outside the limits of good morals.
When, however, we take a wider survey, and inquire into the discipline for life that is imparted to the young in many parts of the world, we shall frequently find that the art of love, understood in varying ways, is an essential part of that discipline. Summary, though generally adequate, as are the educational methods of primitive peoples, they not seldom include a training in those arts which render a woman agreeable to a man and a man agreeable to a woman in the relationship of marriage, and it is often more or less dimly realized that courtship is not a mere preliminary to marriage, but a biologically essential part of the marriage relationship throughout.
s.e.xual initiation is carried out very thoroughly in Azimba land, Central Africa. H. Crawford Angus, the first European to visit the Azimba people, lived among them for a year, and has described the Chensamwali, or initiation ceremony, of girls. "At the first sign of menstruation in a young girl, she is taught the mysteries of womanhood, and is shown the different positions for s.e.xual intercourse. The v.a.g.i.n.a is handled freely, and if not previously enlarged (which may have taken place at the harvest festival when a boy and girl are allowed to "keep house" during the day-time by themselves, and when quasi-intercourse takes place) it is now enlarged by means of a horn or corn-cob, which is inserted and secured in place by bands of bark cloth. When all signs [of menstruation] have pa.s.sed, a public announcement of a dance is given to the women in the village. At this dance no men are allowed to be present, and it was only with a great deal of trouble that I managed to witness it. The girl to be "danced" is led back from the bush to her mother"s hut where she is kept in solitude to the morning of the dance. On that morning she is placed on the ground in a sitting position, while the dancers form a ring around her. Several songs are then sung with reference to the genital organs. The girl is then stripped and made to go through the mimic performance of s.e.xual intercourse, and if the movements are not enacted properly, as is often the case when the girl is timid and bashful, one of the older women will take her place and show her how she is to perform. Many songs about the relation between men and women are sung, and the girl is instructed as to all her duties when she becomes a wife. She is also instructed that during the time of her menstruation she is unclean, and that during her monthly period she must close her v.u.l.v.a with a pad of fibre used for the purpose. The object of the dance is to inculcate to the girl the knowledge of married life. The girl is taught to be faithful to her husband and to try to bear children, and she is also taught the various arts and methods of making herself seductive and pleasing to her husband, and of thus retaining him in her power." (H. Crawford Angus, "The Chensamwali," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1898, Heft 6, p. 479).
In Abyssinia, as well as on the Zanzibar coast, according to Stecker (quoted by Ploss-Bartels, Das Weib, Section 119) young girls are educated in b.u.t.tock movements which increase their charm in coitus. These movements, of a rotatory character, are called Duk-Duk. To be ignorant of Duk-Duk is a great disgrace to a girl. Among the Swahili women of Zanzibar, indeed, a complete artistic system of hip-movements is cultivated, to be displayed in coitus. It prevails more especially on the coast, and a Swahili woman is not counted a "lady" (bibi) unless she is acquainted with this art. From sixty to eighty young women practice this b.u.t.tock dance together for some eight hours a day, laying aside all clothing, and singing the while. The public are not admitted. The dance, which is a kind of imitation of coitus, has been described by Zache ("Sitten und Gebrauche der Suaheli," Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1899, Heft 2-3, p. 72). The more accomplished dancers excite general admiration. During the latter part of this initiation various feats are imposed, to test the girl"s skill and self-control. For instance, she must dance up to a fire and remove from the midst of the fire a vessel full of water to the brim, without spilling it. At the end of three months the training is over, and the girl goes home in festival attire. She is now eligible for marriage. Similar customs are said to prevail in the Dutch East Indies and elsewhere.
The Hebrews had erotic dances, which were doubtless related to the art of love in marriage, and among the Greeks, and their disciples the Romans, the conception of love as an art which needs training, skill, and cultivation, was still extant. That conception was crushed by Christianity which, although it sanctified the inst.i.tution of matrimony, degraded that s.e.xual love which is normally the content of marriage.
In 1176 the question was brought before a Court of Love by a baron and lady of Champagne, whether love is compatible with marriage. "No," said the baron, "I admire and respect the sweet intimacy of married couples, but I cannot call it love. Love desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. Now husbands and wives boldly avow their relationship; they possess each other without contradiction and without reserve. It cannot then be love that they experience." And after mature deliberation the ladies of the Court of Love adopted the baron"s conclusions (E. de la Bedolliere, Histoire des Murs des Francais, vol. iii, p. 334). There was undoubtedly an element of truth in the baron"s arguments. Yet it may well be doubted whether in any non-Christian country it would ever have been possible to obtain acceptance for the doctrine that love and marriage are incompatible. This doctrine was, however, as Ribot points out in his Logique des Sentiments, inevitable, when, as among the medieval n.o.bility, marriage was merely a political or domestic treaty and could not, therefore, be a method of moral elevation.
"Why is it," asked Retif de la Bretonne, towards the end of the eighteenth century, "that girls who have no morals are more seductive and more loveable than honest women? It is because, like the Greek courtesans to whom grace and voluptuousness were taught, they have studied the art of pleasing. Among the foolish detractors of my Contemporaines, not one guessed the philosophic aim of nearly everyone of these tales, which is to suggest to honest women the ways of making themselves loved. I should like to see the inst.i.tution of initiations, such as those of the ancients.... To-day the happiness of the human species is abandoned to chance; all the experience of women is individual, like that of animals; it is lost with those women who, being naturally amiable, might have taught others to become so. Prost.i.tutes alone make a superficial study of it, and the lessons they receive are, for the most part, as harmful as those of respectable Greek and Roman matrons were holy and honorable, only tending to wantonness, to the exhaustion alike of the purse and of the physical faculties, while the aim of the ancient matrons was the union of husband and wife and their mutual attachment through pleasure. The Christian religion annihilated the Mysteries as infamous, but we may regard that annihilation as one of the wrongs done by Christianity to humanity, as the work of men with little enlightenment and bitter zeal, dangerous puritans who were the natural enemies of marriage" (Retif de la Bretonne, Monsieur Nicolas, reprint of 1883, vol. x, pp. 160-3). It may be added that Duhren (Dr. Iwan Bloch) regards Retif as "a master in the Ars Amandi," and discusses him from this point of view in his Retif de la Bretonne (pp. 362-371).
Whether or not Christianity is to be held responsible, it cannot be doubted that throughout Christendom there has been a lamentable failure to recognize the supreme importance, not only erotically but morally, of the art of love. Even in the great revival of s.e.xual enlightenment now taking place around us there is rarely even the faintest recognition that in s.e.xual enlightenment the one thing essentially necessary is a knowledge of the art of love. For the most part, s.e.xual instruction as at present understood, is purely negative, a mere string of thou-shalt-nots. If that failure were due to the conscious and deliberate recognition that while the art of love must be based on physiological and psychological knowledge, it is far too subtle, too complex, too personal, to be formulated in lectures and manuals, it would be reasonable and sound. But it seems to rest entirely on ignorance, indifference, or worse.
Love-making is indeed, like other arts, an art that is partly natural-"an art that nature makes"-and therefore it is a natural subject for learning and exercising in play. Children left to themselves tend, both playfully and seriously, to practice love, alike on the physical and the psychic sides.[381] But this play is on its physical side sternly repressed by their elders, when discovered, and on its psychic side laughed at. Among the well-bred cla.s.ses it is usually starved out at an early age.
After p.u.b.erty, if not before, there is another form in which the art of love is largely experimented and practised, especially in England and America, the form of flirtation. In its elementary manifestations flirting is entirely natural and normal; we may trace it even in animals; it is simply the beginning of courtship, at the early stage when courtship may yet, if desired, be broken off. Under modern civilized conditions, however, flirtation is often more than this. These conditions make marriage difficult; they make love and its engagements too serious a matter to be entered on lightly; they make actual s.e.xual intercourse dangerous as well as disreputable. Flirtation adapts itself to these conditions. Instead of being merely the preliminary stage of normal courtship, it is developed into a form of s.e.xual gratification as complete as due observation of the conditions already mentioned will allow. In Germany, and especially in France where it is held in great abhorrence, this is the only form of flirtation known; it is regarded as an exportation from the United States and is denominated "flirtage." Its practical outcome is held to be the "demi-vierge," who knows and has experienced the joys of s.e.x while yet retaining her hymen intact.
This degenerate form of flirtation, cultivated not as a part of courtship, but for its own sake, has been well described by Forel (Die s.e.xuelle Frage, pp. 97-101). He defines it as including "all those expressions of the s.e.xual instinct of one individual towards another individual which excite the other"s s.e.xual instinct, coitus being always excepted." In the beginning it may be merely a provocative look or a simple apparently unintentional touch or contact; and by slight gradations it may pa.s.s on to caresses, kisses, embraces, and even extend to pressure or friction of the s.e.xual parts, sometimes leading to o.r.g.a.s.m. Thus, Forel mentions, a sensuous woman by the pressure of her garments in dancing can produce e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n in her partner. Most usually the process is that voluptuous contact and revery which, in English slang, is called "spooning." From first to last there need not be any explicit explanations, proposals, or declarations on either side, and neither party is committed to any relationship with the other beyond the period devoted to flirtage. In one form, however, flirtage consists entirely in the excitement of a conversation devoted to erotic and indecorous topics. Either the man or the woman may take the active part in flirtage, but in a woman more refinement and skill is required to play the active part without repelling the man or injuring her reputation. Indeed, much the same is true of men also, for women, while they often like flirting, usually prefer its more refined forms. There are infinite forms of flirtage, and while as a preliminary part of courtship, it has its normal place and justification, Forel concludes that "as an end in itself, and never pa.s.sing beyond itself, it is a phenomenon of degeneration."
From the French point of view, flirtage and flirtation generally have been discussed by Madame Bentzon ("Family Life in America," Forum, March, 1896) who, however, fails to realize the natural basis of flirtation in courtship. She regards it as a sin against the law "Thou shalt not play with love," for it ought to have the excuse of an irresistible pa.s.sion, but she thinks it is comparatively inoffensive in America (though still a deteriorating influence on the women) on account of the temperament, education, and habits of the people. It must, however, be remembered that play has a proper relationship to all vital activities, and that a reasonable criticism of flirtation is concerned rather with its normal limitations than with its right to exist (see the observations on the natural basis of coquetry and the ends it subserves in "The Evolution of Modesty" in volume i of these Studies).
While flirtation in its natural form-though not in the perverted form of "flirtage"-has sound justification, alike as a method of testing a lover and of acquiring some small part of the art of love, it remains an altogether inadequate preparation for love. This is sufficiently shown by the frequent inapt.i.tude for the art of love, and even for the mere physical act of love, so frequently manifested both by men and women in the very countries where flirtation most flourishes.
This ignorance, not merely of the art of love but even of the physical facts of s.e.xual love, is marked not only in women, especially women of the middle cla.s.s, but also in men, for the civilized man, as Fritsch long ago remarked, often knows less of the facts of the s.e.xual life than a milkmaid. It shows itself differently, however, in the two s.e.xes.
Among women s.e.xual ignorance ranges from complete innocence of the fact that it involves any intimate bodily relationship at all to misapprehensions of the most various kind; some think that the relationship consists in lying side by side, many that intercourse takes place at the navel, not a few that the act occupies the whole night. It has been necessary in a previous chapter to discuss the general evils of s.e.xual ignorance; it is here necessary to refer to its more special evils as regards the relationship of marriage. Girls are educated with the vague idea that they will marry,-quite correctly, for the majority of them do marry,-but the idea that they must be educated for the career that will naturally fall to their lot is an idea which as yet has never seemed to occur to the teachers of girls. Their heads are crammed to stupidity with the knowledge of facts which it is no one"s concern to know, but the supremely important training for life they are totally unable to teach. Women are trained for nearly every avocation under the sun; for the supreme avocation of wifehood and motherhood they are never trained at all!
It may be said, and with truth, that the present incompetent training of girls is likely to continue so long as the mothers of girls are content to demand nothing better. It may also be said, with even greater truth, that there is much that concerns the knowledge of s.e.xual relationships which the mother herself may most properly impart to her daughter. It may further be a.s.serted, most unanswerably, that the art of love, with which we are here more especially concerned, can only be learnt by actual experience, an experience which our social traditions make it difficult for a virtuous girl to acquire with credit. Without here attempting to apportion the share of blame which falls to each cause, it remains unfortunate that a woman should so often enter marriage with the worst possible equipment of prejudices and misapprehensions, even when she believes, as often happens, that she knows all about it. Even with the best equipment, a woman, under present conditions, enters marriage at a disadvantage. She awakes to the full realization of love more slowly than a man, and, on the average, at a later age, so that her experiences of the life of s.e.x before marriage have usually been of a much more restricted kind than her husband"s.[382] So that even with the best preparation, it often happens that it is not until several years after marriage that a woman clearly realizes her own s.e.xual needs and adequately estimates her husband"s ability to satisfy those needs. We cannot over-estimate the personal and social importance of a complete preparation for marriage, and the greater the difficulties placed in the way of divorce the more weight necessarily attaches to that preparation.[383]
Everyone is probably acquainted with many cases of the extreme ignorance of women on entering marriage. The following case concerning a woman of twenty-seven, who had been asked in marriage, is somewhat extreme, but not very exceptional. "She did not feel sure of her affection and she asked a woman cousin concerning the meaning of love. This cousin lent her Ellis Ethelmer"s pamphlet, The Human Flower. She learnt from this that men desired the body of a woman, and this so appalled her that she was quite ill for several days. The next time her lover attempted a caress she told him that it was "l.u.s.t." Since then she has read George Moore"s Sister Teresa, and the knowledge that "women can be as bad as men" has made her sad." The "Histories" contained in the Appendices to previous volumes of these Studies reveal numerous instances of the deplorable ignorance of young girls concerning the most central facts of the s.e.xual life. It is not surprising, under such circ.u.mstances, that marriage leads to disillusionment or repulsion.
It is commonly said that the duty of initiating the wife into the privileges and obligations of marriage properly belongs to the husband. Apart, however, altogether from the fact that it is unjust to a woman to compel her to bind herself in marriage before she has fully realized what marriage means, it must also be said that there are many things necessary for women to know that it is unreasonable to expect a husband to explain. This is, for instance, notably the case as regards the more fatiguing and exhausting effects of coitus on a man as compared with a woman. The inexperienced bride cannot know beforehand that the frequently repeated o.r.g.a.s.ms which render her vigorous and radiant exert a depressing effect on her husband, and his masculine pride induces him to attempt to conceal that fact. The bride, in her innocence, is unconscious that her pleasure is bought at her husband"s expense, and that what is not excess to her, may be a serious excess to him. The woman who knows (notably, for instance, a widow who remarries) is careful to guard her husband"s health in this respect, by restraining her own ardor, for she realizes that a man is not willing to admit that he is incapable of satisfying his wife"s desires. (G. Hirth has also pointed out how important it is that women should know before marriage the natural limits of masculine potency, Wege zur Liebe, p. 571.)
The ignorance of women of all that concerns the art of love, and their total lack of preparation for the natural facts of the s.e.xual life, would perhaps be of less evil augury for marriage if it were always compensated by the knowledge, skill, and considerateness of the husband. But that is by no means always the case. Within the ordinary range we find, at all events in England, the large group of men whose knowledge of women before marriage has been mainly confined to prost.i.tutes, and the important and not inconsiderable group of men who have had no intimate intercourse with women, their s.e.xual experiences having been confined to masturbation or other auto-erotic manifestations, and to flirtation. Certainly the man of sensitive and intelligent temperament, whatever his training or lack of training, may succeed with patience and consideration in overcoming all the difficulties placed in the way of love by the mixture of ignorances and prejudices which so often in woman takes the place of an education for the erotic part of her life. But it cannot be said that either of these two groups of men has been well equipped for the task. The training and experience which a man receives from a prost.i.tute, even under fairly favorable conditions, scarcely form the right preparation for approaching a woman of his own cla.s.s who has no intimate erotic experiences.[384] The frequent result is that he is liable to waver between two opposite courses of action, both of them mistaken. On the one hand, he may treat his bride as a prost.i.tute, or as a novice to be speedily moulded into the s.e.xual shape he is most accustomed to, thus running the risk either of perverting or of disgusting her. On the other hand, realizing that the purity and dignity of his bride place her in an altogether different cla.s.s from the women he has previously known, he may go to the opposite extreme of treating her with an exaggerated respect, and so fail either to arouse or to gratify her erotic needs. It is difficult to say which of these two courses of action is the more unfortunate; the result of both, however, is frequently found to be that a nominal marriage never becomes a real marriage.[385]
Yet there can be no doubt whatever that the other group of men, the men who enter marriage without any erotic experiences, run even greater risks. These are often the best of men, both as regards personal character and mental power. It is indeed astonishing to find how ignorant, both practically and theoretically, very able and highly educated men may be concerning s.e.xual matters.
"Complete abstinence during youth," says Freud (s.e.xual-Probleme, March, 1908), "is not the best preparation for marriage in a young man. Women divine this and prefer those of their wooers who have already proved themselves to be men with other women." Ellen Key, referring to the demand sometimes made by women for purity in men (Ueber Liebe und Ehe, p. 96), asks whether women realize the effect of their admiration of the experienced and confident man who knows women, on the shy and hesitating youth, "who perhaps has been struggling hard for his erotic purity, in the hope that a woman"s happy smile will be the reward of his conquest, and who is condemned to see how that woman looks down on him with lofty compa.s.sion and gazes with admiration at the leopard"s spots." When the lover, in Laura Marholm"s Was war es? says to the heroine, "I have never yet touched a woman," the girl "turns from him with horror, and it seemed to her that a cold shudder went through her, a chilling deception." The same feeling is manifested in an exaggerated form in the pa.s.sion often experienced by vigorous girls of eighteen to twenty-four for old roues. (This has been discussed by Forel, Die s.e.xuelle Frage, pp. 217 et seq.)
Other factors may enter in a woman"s preference for the man who has conquered other women. Even the most religious and moral young woman, Valera remarks (Dona Luz, p. 205), likes to marry a man who has loved many women; it gives a greater value to his choice of her; it also offers her an opportunity of converting him to higher ideals. No doubt when the inexperienced man meets in marriage the equally inexperienced woman they often succeed in adapting themselves to each other and a permanent modus vivendi is const.i.tuted. But it is by no means so always. If the wife is taught by instinct or experience she is apt to resent the awkwardness and helplessness of her husband in the art of love. Even if she is ignorant she may be permanently alienated and become chronically frigid, through the brutal inconsiderateness of her ignorant husband in carrying out what he conceives to be his marital duties. (It has already been necessary to touch on this point in discussing "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii of these Studies.) Sometimes, indeed, serious physical injury has been inflicted on the bride owing to this ignorance of the husband.
"I take it that most men have had pre-matrimonial s.e.x-relationships," a correspondent writes. "But I have known one man at least who, up till the age of twenty, had not even a rudimentary idea of s.e.x matters. At twenty-nine, a few months before marriage, he came to ask me how coitus was performed, and displayed an ignorance that I could not believe to exist in the mind of an otherwise intelligent man. He had evidently no instinct to guide him, as the brutes have, and his reason was unable to supply the necessary knowledge. It is very curious that man should lose this instinctive knowledge. I have known another man almost equally ignorant. He also came to me for advice in marital duties. Both of these men m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, and they were normally pa.s.sionate." Such cases are not so very rare. Usually, however, a certain amount of information has been acquired from some for the most part unsatisfactory source, and the ignorance is only partial, though not on that account less dangerous.
Balzac has compared the average husband to an orang-utan trying to play the violin. "Love, as we instinctively feel, is the most melodious of harmonies. Woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its quivering strings, study the pose of it, its timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering. How many orangs-men, I mean, marry without knowing what a woman is!... Nearly all men marry in the most profound ignorance of women and of love" (Balzac, Physiologie du Mariage, Meditation VII).
Neugebauer (Monatsschrift fur Geburtshulfe, 1889, Bk. ix, pp. 221 et seq.) has collected over one hundred and fifty cases of injury to women in coitus inflicted by the p.e.n.i.s. The causes were brutality, drunkenness of one or both parties, unusual position in coitus, disproportion of the organs, pathological conditions of the woman"s organs (Cf. R. W. Taylor, Practical Treatise on s.e.xual Disorders, Ch. x.x.xV). Blumreich also discusses the injuries produced by violent coitus (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. ii, pp. 770-779). C. M. Green (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 13 Ap., 1893) records two cases of rupture of v.a.g.i.n.a by s.e.xual intercourse in newly-married ladies, without evidence of any great violence. Mylott (British Medical Journal, Sept. 16, 1899) records a similar case occurring on the wedding night. The amount of force sometimes exerted in coitus is evidenced by the cases, occurring from time to time, in which intercourse takes place by the urethra.
Eulenburg finds (s.e.xuale Neuropathie, p. 69) that vaginismus, a condition of spasmodic contraction of the v.u.l.v.a and exaggerated sensibility on the attempt to effect coitus, is due to forcible and unskilful attempts at the first coitus. Adler (Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, p. 160) also believes that the scarred remains of the hymen, together with painful memories of a violent first coitus, are the most frequent cause of vaginismus.
The occasional cases, however, of physical injury or of pathological condition produced by violent coitus at the beginning of marriage const.i.tute but a very small portion of the evidence which witnesses to the evil results of the prevalent ignorance regarding the art of love. As regards Germany, Furbringer writes (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 215): "I am perfectly satisfied that the number of young married women who have a lasting painful recollection of their first s.e.xual intercourse exceeds by far the number of those who venture to consult a doctor." As regards England, the following experience is instructive: A lady asked six married women in succession, privately, on the same day concerning their bridal experiences. To all, s.e.xual intercourse had come as a shock; two had been absolutely ignorant about s.e.xual matters; the others had thought they knew what coitus was, but were none the less shocked. These women were of the middle cla.s.s, perhaps above the average in intelligence; one was a doctor.
Breuer and Freud, in their Studien uber Hysterie (p. 216), pointed out that the bridal night is practically often a rape, and that it sometimes leads to hysteria, which is not cured until satisfying s.e.xual relationships are established. Even when there is no violence, Kisch (s.e.xual Life of Woman, Part II) regards awkward and inexperienced coitus, leading to incomplete excitement of the wife, as the chief cause of dyspareunia, or absence of s.e.xual gratification, although gross disproportion in the size of the male and female organs, or disease in either party, may lead to the same result. Dyspareunia, Kisch adds, is astonishingly frequent, though sometimes women complain of it without justification in order to arouse sympathy for themselves as sacrifices on the altar of marriage; the constant sign is absence of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n on the woman"s part. Kisch also observes that wedding night deflorations are often really rapes. One young bride, known to him, was so ignorant of the physical side of love, and so overwhelmed by her husband"s first attempt at intercourse, that she fled from the house in the night, and nothing would ever persuade her to return to her husband. (It is worth noting that by Canon law, under such circ.u.mstances, the Church might hold the marriage invalid. See Thomas Slater"s Moral Theology, vol. ii, p. 318, and a case in point, both quoted by Rev. C. J. Shebbeare, "Marriage Law in the Church of England," Nineteenth Century, Aug., 1909, p. 263.) Kisch considers, also, that wedding tours are a mistake; since the fatigue, the excitement, the long journeys, sight-seeing, false modesty, bad hotel arrangements, often combine to affect the bride unfavorably and produce the germs of serious illness. This is undoubtedly the case.
The extreme psychic importance of the manner in which the act of defloration is accomplished is strongly emphasized by Adler. He regards it as a frequent cause of permanent s.e.xual anaesthesia. "This first moment in which the man"s individuality attains its full rights often decides the whole of life. The unskilled, over-excited husband can then implant the seed of feminine insensibility, and by continued awkwardness and coa.r.s.eness develop it into permanent anaesthesia. The man who takes possession of his rights with reckless brutal masculine force merely causes his wife anxiety and pain, and with every repet.i.tion of the act increases her repulsion.... A large proportion of cold-natured women represent a sacrifice by men, due either to unconscious awkwardness, or, occasionally, to conscious brutality towards the tender plant which should have been cherished with peculiar art and love, but has been robbed of the splendor of its development. All her life long, a wistful and trembling woman will preserve the recollection of a brutal wedding night, and, often enough, it remains a perpetual source of inhibition every time that the husband seeks anew to gratify his desires without adapting himself to his wife"s desires for love" (O. Adler, Die Mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes, pp. 159 et seq., 181 et seq.). "I have seen an honest woman shudder with horror at her husband"s approach," wrote Diderot long ago in his essay "Sur les Femmes"; "I have seen her plunge in the bath and feel herself never sufficiently washed from the stain of duty." The same may still be said of a vast army of women, victims of a pernicious system of morality which has taught them false ideas of "conjugal duty" and has failed to teach their husbands the art of love.
Women, when their fine natural instincts have not been hopelessly perverted by the pruderies and prejudices which are so diligently instilled into them, understand the art of love more readily than men. Even when little more than children they can often completely take the cue that is given to them. Much more than is the case with men, at all events under civilized conditions, the art of love is with them an art that Nature makes. They always know more of love, as Montaigne long since said, than men can teach them, for it is a discipline that is born in their blood.[386]
The extensive inquiries of Sanford Bell (loc. cit.) show that the emotions of s.e.x-love may appear as early as the third year. It must also be remembered that, both physically and psychically, girls are more precocious, more mature, than boys (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 34 et seq., 200, etc.). Thus, by the time she has reached the age of p.u.b.erty a girl has had time to become an accomplished mistress of the minor arts of love. That the age of p.u.b.erty is for girls the age of love seems to be widely recognized by the popular mind. Thus in a popular song of Bresse a girl sings:-
"J"ai calcule mon age, J"ai quatorze a quinze ans.
Ne suis-je pas dans l"age D"y avoir un amant?"
This matter of the s.e.xual precocity of girls has an important bearing on the question of the "age of consent," or the age at which it should be legal for a girl to consent to s.e.xual intercourse. Until within the last twenty-five years there has been a tendency to set a very low age (even as low as ten) as the age above which a man commits no offence in having s.e.xual intercourse with a girl. In recent years there has been a tendency to run to the opposite and equally unfortunate extreme of raising it to a very late age. In England, by the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, the age of consent was raised to sixteen (this clause of the bill being carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 108). This seems to be the reasonable age at which the limit should be set and its extreme high limit in temperate climates. It is the age recognized by the Italian Criminal Code, and in many other parts of the civilized world. Gladstone, however, was in favor of raising it to eighteen, and Howard, in discussing this question as regards the United States (Matrimonial Inst.i.tutions, vol. iii, pp. 195-203), thinks it ought everywhere to be raised to twenty-one, so coinciding with the age of legal majority at which a woman can enter into business or political relations. There has been, during recent years, a wide limit of variation in the legislation of the different American States on this point, the differences of the two limits being as much as eight years, and in some important States the act of intercourse with a girl under eighteen is declared to be "rape," and punishable with imprisonment for life.
Such enactments as these, however, it must be recognized, are arbitrary, artificial, and unnatural. They do not rest on a sound biological basis, and cannot be enforced by the common sense of the community. There is no proper a.n.a.logy between the age of legal majority which is fixed, approximately, with reference to the ability to comprehend abstract matters of intelligence, and the age of s.e.xual maturity which occurs much earlier, both physically and psychically, and is determined in women by a very precise biological event: the completion of p.u.b.erty in the onset of menstruation. Among peoples living under natural conditions in all parts of the world it is recognized that a girl becomes s.e.xually a woman at p.u.b.erty; at that epoch she receives her initiation into adult life and becomes a wife and a mother. To declare that the act of intercourse with a woman who, by the natural instinct of mankind generally, is regarded as old enough for all the duties of womanhood, is a criminal act of rape, punishable by imprisonment for life, can only be considered an abuse of language, and, what is worse, an abuse of law, even if we leave all psychological and moral considerations out of the question, for it deprives the conception of rape of all that renders it naturally and properly revolting.
The sound view in this question is clearly the view that it is the girl"s p.u.b.erty which const.i.tutes the criterion of the man"s criminality in s.e.xually approaching her. In the temperate regions of Europe and North America the average age of the appearance of menstruation, the critical moment in the establishment of complete p.u.b.erty, is fifteen (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, Ch. XI; the facts are set forth at length in Kisch"s s.e.xual Life of Woman, 1909). Therefore it is reasonable that the act of an adult man in having s.e.xual connection with a girl under sixteen, with or without her consent, should properly be a criminal act, severely punishable. In those lands where the average age of p.u.b.erty is higher or lower, the age of consent should be raised or lowered accordingly. (Bruno Meyer, arguing against any attempt to raise the age of consent above sixteen, considers that the proper age of consent is generally fourteen, for, as he rightly insists, the line of division is between the ripe and the unripe personality, and while the latter should be strictly preserved from the sphere of s.e.xuality, only voluntary, not compulsory, influence should be brought to bear on the former. s.e.xual-Probleme, Ap., 1909.)
If we take into our view the wider considerations of psychology, morality, and law, we shall find ample justification for this point of view. We have to remember that a girl, during all the years of ordinary school life, is always more advanced, both physically and psychically, than a boy of the same age, and we have to recognize that this precocity covers her s.e.xual development; for even though it is true, on the average, that active s.e.xual desire is not usually aroused in women until a somewhat later age, there is also truth in the observation of Mr. Thomas Hardy (New Review, June, 1894): "It has never struck me that the spider is invariably male and the fly invariably female." Even, therefore, when s.e.xual intercourse takes place between a girl and a youth somewhat older than herself, she is likely to be the more mature, the more self-possessed, and the more responsible of the two, and often the one who has taken the more active part in initiating the act. (This point has been discussed in "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii of these Studies.) It must also be remembered that when a girl has once reached the age of p.u.b.erty, and put on all the manner and habits as well as the physical development of a woman, it is no longer possible for a man always to estimate her age. It is easy to see that a girl has not yet reached the age of p.u.b.erty; it is impossible to tell whether a mature woman is under or over eighteen; it is therefore, to say the least, unjust to make her male partner"s fate for life depend on the recognition of a distinction which has no basis in nature. Such considerations are, indeed, so obvious that there is no chance of carrying out thoroughly in practice the doctrine that a man should be imprisoned for life for having intercourse with a girl who is over the age of sixteen. It is better, from the legal point of view, to cast the net less widely and to be quite sure that it is adapted to catch the real and conscious offender, who may be punished without offending the common sense of the community. (Cf. Bloch, The s.e.xual Life of Our Time, Ch. XXIV; he considers that the "age of consent" should begin with the completion of the sixteenth year.)
It may be necessary to add that the establishment of the "age of consent" on this basis by no means implies that intercourse with girls but little over sixteen should be encouraged, or even socially and morally tolerated. Here, however, we are not in the sphere of law. It is the natural tendency of the well-born and well-nurtured girl under civilized conditions to hold herself in reserve, and the pressure whereby that tendency is maintained and furthered must be supplied by the whole of her environment, primarily by the intelligent reflection of the girl herself when she has reached the age of adolescence. To foster in a young woman who has long pa.s.sed the epoch of p.u.b.erty the notion that she has no responsibility in the guardianship of her own body and soul is out of harmony with modern feeling, as well as unfavorable to the training of women for the world. The States which have been induced to adopt the high limit of the age of consent have, indeed, thereby made an abject confession of their inability to maintain a decent moral level by more legitimate means; they may profitably serve as a warning rather than as an example.
The knowledge of women cannot, however, replace, the ignorance of men, but, on the contrary, merely serves to reveal it. For in the art of love the man must necessarily take the initiative. It is he who must first unseal the mystery of the intimacies and audacities which the woman"s heart may hold. The risk of meeting with even the shadow of contempt or disgust is too serious to allow a woman, even a wife, to reveal the secrets of love to a man who has not shown himself to be an initiate.[387] Numberless are the jovial and contented husbands who have never suspected, and will never know, that their wives carry about with them, sometimes with silent resentment, the ache of mysterious tabus. The feeling that there are delicious privacies and privileges which she has never been asked to take, or forced to accept, often erotically divorces a wife from a husband who never realizes what he has missed.[388] The case of such husbands is all the harder because, for the most part, all that they have done is the result of the morality that has been preached to them. They have been taught from boyhood to be strenuous and manly and clean-minded, to seek by all means to put out of their minds the thought of women or the longing for sensuous indulgence. They have been told on all sides that only in marriage is it right or even safe to approach women. They have acquired the notion that s.e.xual indulgence and all that appertains to it is something low and degrading, at the worst a mere natural necessity, at the best a duty to be accomplished in a direct, honorable and straight-forward manner. No one seems to have told them that love is an art, and that to gain real possession of a woman"s soul and body is a task that requires the whole of a man"s best skill and insight. It may well be that when a man learns his lesson too late he is inclined to turn ferociously on the society that by its conspiracy of pseudo-morality has done its best to ruin his life, and that of his wife. In some of these cases husband or wife or both are finally attracted to a third person, and a divorce enables them to start afresh with better experience under happier auspices. But as things are at present that is a sad and serious process, for many impossible. They are happier, as Milton pointed out, whose trials of love before marriage "have been so many divorces to teach them experience."
The general ignorance concerning the art of love may be gauged by the fact that perhaps the question in this matter most frequently asked is the crude question how often s.e.xual intercourse should take place. That is a question, indeed, which has occupied the founders of religion, the law-givers, and the philosophers of mankind, from the earliest times.[389] Zoroaster said it should be once in every nine days. The laws of Manes allowed intercourse during fourteen days of the month, but a famous ancient Hindu physician, Susruta, prescribed it six times a month, except during the heat of summer when it should be once a month, while other Hindu authorities say three or four times a month. Solon"s requirement of the citizen that intercourse should take place three times a month fairly agrees with Zoroaster"s. Mohammed, in the Koran, decrees intercourse once a week. The Jewish Talmud is more discriminating, and distinguishes between different cla.s.ses of people; on the vigorous and healthy young man, not compelled to work hard, once a day is imposed, on the ordinary working man twice a week, on learned men once a week. Luther considered twice a week the proper frequency of intercourse.
It will be observed that, as we might expect, these estimates tend to allow a greater interval in the earlier ages when erotic stimulation was probably less and erotic erethism probably rare, and to involve an increased frequency as we approach modern civilization. It will also be observed that variation occurs within fairly narrow limits. This is probably due to the fact that these law-givers were in all cases men. Women law-givers would certainly have shown a much greater tendency to variation, since the variations of the s.e.xual impulse are greater in women.[390] Thus Zen.o.bia required the approach of her husband once a month, provided that impregnation had not taken place the previous month, while another queen went very far to the other extreme, for we are told that the Queen of Aragon, after mature deliberation, ordained six times a day as the proper rule in a legitimate marriage.[391]
It may be remarked, in pa.s.sing, that the estimates of the proper frequency of s.e.xual intercourse may always be taken to a.s.sume that there is a cessation during the menstrual period. This is especially the case as regards early periods of culture when intercourse at this time is usually regarded as either dangerous or sinful, or both. (This point has been discussed in the "Phenomena of Periodicity" in volume i of these Studies.) Under civilized conditions the inhibition is due to aesthetic reasons, the wife, even if she desires intercourse, feeling a repugnance to be approached at a time when she regards herself as "disgusting," and the husband easily sharing this att.i.tude. It may, however, be pointed out that the aesthetic objection is very largely the result of the superst.i.tious horror of water which is still widely felt at this time, and would, to some extent, disappear if a more scrupulous cleanliness were observed. It remains a good general rule to abstain from s.e.xual intercourse during the menstrual period, but in some cases there may be adequate reason for breaking it. This is so when desire is specially strong at this time, or when intercourse is physically difficult at other times but easier during the relaxation of the parts caused by menstruation. It must be remembered also that the time when the menstrual flow is beginning to cease is probably, more than any other period of the month, the biologically proper time for s.e.xual intercourse, since not only is intercourse easiest then, and also most gratifying to the female, but it affords the most favorable opportunity for securing fertilization.
Schurig long since brought together evidence (Parthenologia, pp. 302 et seq.) showing that coitus is most easy during menstruation. Some of the Catholic theologians (like Sanchez, and later, Liguori), going against the popular opinion, have distinctly permitted intercourse during menstruation, though many earlier theologians regarded it as a mortal sin. From the medical side, Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer, Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 249) advocates coitus not only at the end of menstruation, but even during the latter part of the period, as being the time when women most usually need it, the marked disagreeableness of temper often shown by women at this time, he says, being connected with the suppression, demanded by custom, of a natural desire. "It is almost always during menstruation that the first clouds appear on the matrimonial horizon."
In modern times the physiologists and physicians who have expressed any opinion on this subject have usually come very near to Luther"s dictum. Haller said that intercourse should not be much more frequent than twice a week.[392] Acton said once a week, and so also Hammond, even for healthy men between the ages of twenty-five and forty.[393] Furbringer only slightly exceeds this estimate by advocating from fifty to one hundred single acts in the year.[394] Forel advises two or three times a week for a man in the prime of manhood, but he adds that for some healthy and vigorous men once a month appears to be excess.[395] Mantegazza, in his Hygiene of Love, also states that, for a man between twenty and thirty, two or three times a week represents the proper amount of intercourse, and between the ages of thirty and forty-five, twice a week. Guyot recommends every three days.[396]