But we have to push our investigation of the matter further. In reality, the question as to whether the s.e.xual impulse is or is not stronger in one s.e.x than in the other is a somewhat crude one. To put the question in that form is to reveal ignorance of the real facts of the matter. And in that form, moreover, no really definite and satisfactory answer can be given.
It is necessary to put the matter on different ground. Instead of taking more or less insolvable questions as to the strength of the s.e.xual impulse in the two s.e.xes, it is more profitable to consider its differences. What are the special characters of the s.e.xual impulse in women?
There is certainly one purely natural s.e.xual difference of a fundamental character, which lies at the basis of whatever truth may be in the a.s.sertion that women are not susceptible of s.e.xual emotion. As may he seen when considering the phenomena of modesty, the part played by the female in courtship throughout nature is usually different from that played by the male, and is, in some respects, a more difficult and complex part. Except when the male fails to play his part properly, she is usually comparatively pa.s.sive; in the proper playing of her part she has to appear to shun the male, to flee from his approaches-even actually to repel them.[169]
Courtship resembles very closely, indeed, a drama or game; and the aggressiveness of the male, the coyness of the female, are alike unconsciously a.s.sumed in order to bring about in the most effectual manner the ultimate union of the s.e.xes. The seeming reluctance of the female is not intended to inhibit s.e.xual activity either in the male or in herself, but to increase it in both. The pa.s.sivity of the female, therefore, is not a real, but only an apparent, pa.s.sivity, and this holds true of our own species as much as of the lower animals. "Women are like delicately adjusted alembics," said a seventeenth-century author. "No fire can be seen outside, but if you look underneath the alembic, if you place your hand on the hearts of women, in both places you will find a great furnace."[170] Or, as Marro has finely put it, the pa.s.sivity of women in love is the pa.s.sivity of the magnet, which in its apparent immobility is drawing the iron toward it. An intense energy lies behind such pa.s.sivity, an absorbed preoccupation in the end to be attained.
Tarde, when exercising magistrate"s functions, once had to inquire into a case in which a young man was accused of murder. In questioning a girl of 18, a shepherdess, who appeared before him as a witness, she told him that on the morning following the crime she had seen the footmarks of the accused up to a certain point. He asked how she recognized them, and she replied, ingenuously but with a.s.surance, that she could recognize the footprints of every young man in the neighborhood, even in a plowed field.[171] No better ill.u.s.tration could be given of the real significance of the s.e.xual pa.s.sivity of women, even at its most negative point.
"The women I have known," a correspondent writes, "do not express their sensations and feelings as much as I do. Nor have I found women usually anxious to practise "luxuries." They seldom care to practice f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o; I have only known one woman who offered to do f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o because she liked it. Nor do they generally care to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e a man; that is, they do not care greatly to enjoy the contemplation of the other person"s excitement. (To me, to see the woman excited means almost more than my own pleasure.) They usually resist cunnilinctus, although they enjoy it. They do not seem to care to touch or look at a man"s parts so much as he does at theirs. And they seem to dislike the tongue-kiss unless they feel very s.e.xual or really love a man." My correspondent admits that his relationships have been numerous and facile, while his erotic demands tend also to deviate from the normal path. Under such circ.u.mstances, which not uncommonly occur, the woman"s pa.s.sions fail to be deeply stirred, and she retains her normal att.i.tude of relative pa.s.sivity.
It is owing to the fact that the s.e.xual pa.s.sivity of women is only an apparent, and not a real, pa.s.sivity that women are apt to suffer, as men are, from prolonged s.e.xual abstinence. This, indeed, has been denied, but can scarcely be said to admit of doubt. The only question is as to the relative amount of such suffering, necessarily a very difficult question. As far back as the fourteenth century Johannes de Sancto Amando stated that women are more injured than men by s.e.xual abstinence. In modern times Maudsley considers that women "suffer more than men do from the entire deprivation of s.e.xual intercourse" ("Relations between Body and Mind," Lancet, May 28, 1870). By some it has been held that this cause may produce actual disease. Thus, Tilt, an eminent gynecologist of the middle of the nineteenth century, in discussing this question, wrote: "When we consider how much of the lifetime of woman is occupied by the various phases of the generative process, and how terrible is often the conflict within her between the impulse of pa.s.sion and the dictates of duty, it may be well understood how such a conflict reacts on the organs of the s.e.xual economy in the unimpregnated female, and princ.i.p.ally on the ovaria, causing an o.r.g.a.s.m, which, if often repeated, may possibly be productive of subacute ovaritis." (Tilt, On Uterine and Ovarian Inflammation, 1862, pp. 309-310.) Long before Tilt, Haller, it seems, had said that women are especially liable to suffer from privation of s.e.xual intercourse to which they have been accustomed, and referred to chlorosis, hysteria, nymphomania, and simple mania curable by intercourse. Hegar considers that in women an injurious result follows the nonsatisfaction of the s.e.xual impulse and of the "ideal feelings," and that symptoms thus arise (pallor, loss of flesh, cardialgia, malaise, sleeplessness, disturbances of menstruation) which are diagnosed as "chlorosis." (Hegar, Zusammenhang der Geschlechtskrankheiten mit nervosen Leiden, 1885, p. 45.) Freud, as well as Gattel, has found that states of anxiety (Angstzustande) are caused by s.e.xual abstinence. Lowenfeld, on careful examination of his own cases, is able to confirm this connection in both s.e.xes. He has specially noticed it in young women who marry elderly husbands. Lowenfeld believes, however, that, on the whole, healthy unmarried women bear s.e.xual abstinence better than men. If, however, they are of at all neuropathic disposition, ungratified s.e.xual emotions may easily lead to various morbid conditions, especially of a hysteroneurasthenic character. (Lowenfeld, s.e.xualleben und Nervenleiden, second edition, 1899, pp. 44, 47, 54-60.) b.a.l.l.s-Headley considers that unsatisfied s.e.xual desires in women may lead to the following conditions: general atrophy, anemia, neuralgia and hysteria, irregular menstruation, leucorrhea, atrophy of s.e.xual organs. He also refers to the frequency of myoma of the uterus among those who have not become pregnant or who have long ceased to bear children. (b.a.l.l.s-Headley, art. "Etiology of Diseases of Female Genital Organs," Allb.u.t.t and Playfair, System of Gynaecology, 1896, p. 141.) It cannot, however, be said that he brings forward substantial evidence in favor of these beliefs. It may be added that in America, during recent years, leading gynecologists have recorded a number of cases in which widows on remarriage have shown marked improvement in uterine and pelvic conditions.
The question as to whether men or women suffer most from s.e.xual abstinence, as well as the question whether definite morbid conditions are produced by such abstinence, remains, however, an obscure and debated problem. The available data do not enable us to answer it decisively. It is one of those subtle and complex questions which can only be investigated properly by a gynecologist who is also a psychologist. Incidentally, however, we have met and shall have occasion to meet with evidence bearing on this question. It is sufficient to say here, briefly, that it is impossible to believe, even if no evidence were forthcoming, that the exercise or non-exercise of so vastly important a function can make no difference to the organism generally. So far as the evidence goes, it may be said to indicate that the results of the abeyance of the s.e.xual functions in healthy women in whom the s.e.xual emotions have never been definitely aroused tend to be diffused and unconscious, as the s.e.xual impulse itself often is, but that, in women in whom the s.e.xual emotions have been definitely aroused and gratified, the results of s.e.xual abstinence tend to be acute and conscious.
These acute results are at the present day very often due to premature e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n by nervous or neurasthenic husbands, the rapidity with which detumescence is reached in the husband allowing insufficient time for tumescence in the wife, who consequently fails to reach the o.r.g.a.s.m. This has of late been frequently pointed out. Thus Kafemann (s.e.xual-Probleme, March, 1910, p. 194 et seq.) emphasizes the prevalence of s.e.xual incompetence in men. Ferenczi, of Budapest (Zentralblatt fur Psychoa.n.a.lyse, 1910, ht. 1 and 2, p. 75), believes that the combination of neurasthenic husbands with resultantly nervous wives is extraordinarily common; even putting aside the neurasthenic, he considers it may be said that the whole male s.e.x in relation to women suffer from precocious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. He adds that it is often difficult to say whether the lack of harmony may not be due to r.e.t.a.r.ded o.r.g.a.s.m in the woman. He regards the influence of masturbation in early life as tending to quicken o.r.g.a.s.m in man, while when practised by the other s.e.x it tends to slow o.r.g.a.s.m, and thus increases the disharmony. He holds, however, that the chief cause lies in the education of women with its emphasis on s.e.xual repression; this works too well and the result is that when the external impediments to the s.e.xual impulse are removed the impulse has become incapable of normal action. Porosz (British Medical Journal, April 1, 1911) has brought forward cases of serious nervous trouble in women which have been dispersed when the s.e.xual weakness and premature e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of the husband have been cured.
The true nature of the pa.s.sivity of the female is revealed by the ease with which it is thrown off, more especially when the male refuses to accept his cue. Or, if we prefer to accept the a.n.a.logy of a game, we may say that in the play of courtship the first move belongs to the male, but that, if he fails to play, it is then the female"s turn to play.
Among many birds the males at mating time fall into a state of s.e.xual frenzy, but not the females. "I cannot call to mind a single case," states an authority on birds (H. E. Howard, Zoologist, 1902, p. 146), "where I have seen anything approaching frenzy in the female of any species while mating."
Another great authority on birds, a very patient and skillful observer, Mr. Edmund Selous, remarks, however, in describing the courting habits of the ruffs and reeves (Machetes pugnax) that, notwithstanding the pa.s.sivity of the females beforehand, their movements during and after coitus show that they derive at least as much pleasure as the males. (E. Selous, "Selection in Birds," Zoologist, Feb. and May, 1907.)
The same observer, after speaking of the great beauty of the male eider duck, continues: "These glorified males-there were a dozen of these, perhaps, to some six or seven females-swam closely about the latter, but more in attendance upon them than as actively pursuing them, for the females seemed themselves almost as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers in wooing them. The male bird first dipped down his head till his beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a constrained and tense manner,-the curious rigid action so frequent in the nuptial antics of birds,-at the same time uttering his strange haunting note. The air became filled with it; every moment one or other of the birds-sometimes several together-with upturned bill would softly laugh or exclaim, and while the males did this, the females, turning excitedly, and with little eager demonstrations from one to another of them, kept lowering and extending forward the head and neck in the direction of each in turn.... I noticed that a female would often approach a male bird with her head and neck laid flat along the water as though in a very "coming on" disposition, and that the male bird declined her advances. This, taken in conjunction with the actions of the female when courted by the male, appears to me to raise a doubt as to the universal application of the law that throughout nature the male, in courtship, is eager, and the female coy. Here, to all appearances, courtship was proceeding, and the birds had not yet mated. The female eider ducks, however,-at any rate, some of them,-appeared to be anything but coy." (Bird Watching, pp. 144-146.)
Among moor-hens and great-crested grebes sometimes what Selous terms "functional hermaphroditism" occurs and the females play the part of the male toward their male companions, and then repeat the s.e.xual act with a reversion to the normal order, the whole to the satisfaction of both parties. (E. Selous, Zoologist, 1902, p. 196.)
It is not only among birds that the female sometimes takes the active part, but also among mammals. Among white rats, for instance, the males are exceptionally eager. Steinach, who has made many valuable experiments on these animals (Archiv fur die Gesammte Physiologie, Bd. lvi, 1894, p. 319), tells us that, when a female white rat is introduced into the cage of a male, he at once leaves off eating, or whatever else he may be doing, becomes indifferent to noises or any other source of distraction, and devotes himself entirely to her. If, however, he is introduced into her cage the new environment renders him nervous and suspicious, and then it is she who takes the active part, trying to attract him in every way. The impetuosity during heat of female animals of various species, when at length admitted to the male, is indeed well known to all who are familiar with animals.
I have referred to the frequency with which, in the human species,-and very markedly in early adolescence, when the s.e.xual impulse is in a high degree unconscious and unrestrainedly instinctive,-similar manifestations may often be noted. We have to recognize that they are not necessarily abnormal and still less pathological. They merely represent the unseasonable apparition of a tendency which in due subordination is implied in the phases of courtship throughout the animal world. Among some peoples and in some stages of culture, tending to withdraw the men from women and the thought of women, this phase of courtship and this att.i.tude a.s.sume a prominence which is absolutely normal. The literature of the Middle Ages presents a state of society in which men were devoted to war and to warlike sports, while the women took the more active part in love-making. The medieval poets represent women as actively encouraging backward lovers, and as delighting to offer to great heroes the chast.i.ty they had preserved, sometimes entering their bed-chambers at night. Schultz (Das Hofische Leben, Bd. i, pp. 594-598) considers that these representations are not exaggerated. Cf. Krabbes, Die Frau im Altfranzosischen Karls-Epos, 1884, p. 20 et seq.; and M. A. Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, 1902, pp. 152-163.
Among savages and barbarous races in various parts of the world it is the recognized custom, reversing the more usual method, for the girl to take the initiative in courtship. This is especially so in New Guinea. Here the girls almost invariably take the initiative, and in consequence hold a very independent position. Women are always regarded as the seducers: "Women steal men." A youth who proposed to a girl would be making himself ridiculous, would be called a woman, and be laughed at by the girls. The usual method by which a girl proposes is to send a present to the youth by a third party, following this up by repeated gifts of food; the young man sometimes waits a month or two, receiving presents all the time, in order to a.s.sure himself of the girl"s constancy before decisively accepting her advances. (A. C. Haddon, Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits, vol. v, ch. viii; id., "Western Tribes of Torres Straits," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, vol. xix, February, 1890, pp. 314, 356, 394, 395, 411, 413; id., Head Hunters, pp. 158-164; R. E. Guise, "Tribes of the Wanigela River," Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute, new series, vol. i, February-May, 1899, p. 209.) Westermarck gives instances of races among whom the women take the initiative in courtship. (History of Marriage, p. 158; so also Finck, Primitive Love and Love-stories, 1899, p. 109 et seq.; and as regards Celtic women, see Rhys and Brynmor Jones, The Welsh People.)
There is another characteristic of great significance by which the s.e.xual impulse in women differs from that in men: the widely unlike character of the physical mechanism involved in the process of coitus. Considering how obvious this difference is, it is strange that its fundamental importance should so often be underrated. In man the process of tumescence and detumescence is simple. In women it is complex. In man we have the more or less spontaneously erectile p.e.n.i.s, which needs but very simple conditions to secure the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n which brings relief. In women we have in the c.l.i.toris a corresponding apparatus on a small scale, but behind this has developed a much more extensive mechanism, which also demands satisfaction, and requires for that satisfaction the presence of various conditions that are almost antagonistic. Naturally the more complex mechanism is the more easily disturbed. It is the difference, roughly speaking, between a lock and a key. This a.n.a.logy is far from indicating all the difficulties involved. We have to imagine a lock that not only requires a key to fit it, but should only be entered at the right moment, and, under the best conditions, may only become adjusted to the key by considerable use. The fact that the man takes the more active part in coitus has increased these difficulties; the woman is too often taught to believe that the whole function is low and impure, only to be submitted to at her husband"s will and for his sake, and the man has no proper knowledge of the mechanism involved and the best way of dealing with it. The grossest brutality thus may be, and not infrequently is, exercised in all innocence by an ignorant husband who simply believes that he is performing his "marital duties." For a woman to exercise this physical brutality on a man is with difficulty possible; a man"s pleasurable excitement is usually the necessary condition of the woman"s s.e.xual gratification. But the reverse is not the case, and, if the man is sufficiently ignorant or sufficiently coa.r.s.e-grained to be satisfied with the woman"s submission, he may easily become to her, in all innocence, a cause of torture.
To the man coitus must be in some slight degree pleasurable or it cannot take place at all. To the woman the same act which, under some circ.u.mstances, in the desire it arouses and the satisfaction it imparts, will cause the whole universe to shrivel into nothingness, under other circ.u.mstances will be a source of anguish, physical and mental. This is so to some extent even in the presence of the right and fit man. There can be no doubt whatever that the mucus which is so profusely poured out over the external s.e.xual organs in woman during the excitement of s.e.xual desire has for its end the lubrication of the parts and the facilitation of the pa.s.sage of the intromittent organ. The most casual inspection of the cold, contracted, dry v.u.l.v.a in its usual aspect and the same when distended, hot, and moist suffices to show which condition is and which is not that ready for intercourse, and until the proper condition is reached it is certain that coitus should not be attempted.
The varying sensitiveness of the female parts again offers difficulties. s.e.xual relations in women are, at the onset, almost inevitably painful; and to some extent the same experience may be repeated at every act of coitus. Ordinary tactile sensibility in the female genitourinary region is notably obtuse, but at the beginning of the s.e.xual act there is normally a hyperesthesia which may be painful or pleasurable as excitement culminates, pa.s.sing into a seeming anesthesia, which even craves for rough contact; so that in s.e.xual excitement a woman normally displays in quick succession that same quality of sensibility to superficial pressure and insensibility to deep pressure which the hysterical woman exhibits simultaneously.
Thus we see that a highly important practical result follows from the greater complexity of the s.e.xual apparatus in women and the greater difficulty with which it is aroused. In coitus the o.r.g.a.s.m tends to occur more slowly in women than in men. It may easily happen that the whole process of detumescence is completed in the man before it has begun in his partner, who is left either cold or unsatisfied. This is one of the respects in which women remain nearer than men to the primitive stage of humanity.
In the Hippocratic treatise, Of Generation, it is stated that, while woman has less pleasure in coitus than man, her pleasure lasts longer. (uvres d"Hippocrate, edition Littre, vol. vii, p. 477.)
Beaunis considers that the slower development of the o.r.g.a.s.m in women is the only essential difference in the s.e.xual process in men and women. (Beaunis, Les Sensations Internes, 1889, p. 151.) This characteristic of the s.e.xual impulse in women, though recognized for so long a period, is still far too often ignored or unknown. There is even a superst.i.tion that injurious results may follow if the male o.r.g.a.s.m is not effected as rapidly as possible. That this is not so is shown by the experiences of the Oneida community in America, who in their system of s.e.xual relationship carried prolonged intercourse without e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n to an extreme degree. There can be no doubt whatever that very prolonged intercourse gives the maximum amount of pleasure and relief to the woman. Not only is this the very decided opinion of women who have experienced it, but it is also indicated by the well-recognized fact that a woman who repeats the s.e.xual act several times in succession often experiences more intense o.r.g.a.s.m and pleasure with each repet.i.tion.
This point is much better understood in the East than in the West. The prolongation of the man"s excitement, in order to give the woman time for o.r.g.a.s.m, is, remarks Sir Richard Burton (Arabian Nights, vol. v, p. 76), much studied by Moslems, as also by Hindoos, who, on this account, during the o.r.g.a.s.m seek to avoid overtension of muscles and to preoccupy the brain. During coitus they will drink sherbet, chew betel-nut, and even smoke. Europeans devote no care to this matter, and Hindoo women, who require about twenty minutes to complete the act, contemptuously call them "village c.o.c.ks." I have received confirmation of Burton"s statements on this point from medical correspondents in India.
While the European desires to perform as many acts of coitus in one night as possible, Breitenstein remarks, the Malay, as still more the Javanese, wishes, not to repeat the act many times, but to prolong it. His aim is to remain in the v.a.g.i.n.a for about a quarter of an hour. Unlike the European, also, he boasts of the pleasure he has given his partner far more than of his own pleasure. (Breitenstein, 21 Jahre in India, theil i, "Borneo," p. 228.)
Jager (Entdeckung der Seele, second edition, vol. i, 1884, p. 203), as quoted by Moll, explains the preference of some women for castrated men as due, not merely to the absence of risk of impregnation, but to the prolonged erections that take place in the castrated. Aly-Belfadel remarks (Archivio di Psichiatria, 1903, p. 117) that he knows women who prefer old men in coitus simply because of their delay in e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n which allows more time to the women to become excited.
A Russian correspondent living in Italy informs me that a Neapolitan girl of 17, who had only recently ceased to be a virgin, explained to him that she preferred coitus in ore v.u.l.v.ae to real intercourse because the latter was over before she had time to obtain the o.r.g.a.s.m (or, as she put it, "the big bird has fled from the cage and I am left in the lurch"), while in the other way she was able to experience the o.r.g.a.s.m twice before her partner reached the climax. "This reminds me," my correspondent continues, "that a Milanese cocotte once told me that she much liked intercourse with Jews because, on account of the circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s being less sensitive to contact, they e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e more slowly then Christians. "With Christians," she said, "it constantly happens that I am left unsatisfied because they e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e before me, while in coitus with Jews I sometimes e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e twice before the o.r.g.a.s.m occurs in my partner, or, rather, I hold back the second o.r.g.a.s.m until he is ready." This is confirmed," my correspondent continues, "by what I was told by a Russian Jew, a student at the Zurich Polytechnic, who had a Russian comrade living with a mistress, also a Russian student, or pseudostudent. One day the Jew, going early to see his friend, was told to enter by a woman"s voice and found his friend"s mistress alone and in her chemise beside the bed. He was about to retire, but the young woman bade him stay and in a few minutes he was in bed with her. She told him that her lover had just gone away and that she never had s.e.xual relief with him because he always e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed too soon. That morning he had left her so excited and so unrelieved that she was just about to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e-which she rarely did because it gave her headache-when she heard the Jew"s voice, and, knowing that Jews are slower in coitus than Christians, she had suddenly resolved to give herself to him."
I am informed that the s.e.xual power of negroes and slower e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n (see Appendix A) are the cause of the favor with which they are viewed by some white women of strong s.e.xual pa.s.sions in America, and by many prost.i.tutes. At one time there was a special house in New York City to which white women resorted for these "buck lovers"; the women came heavily veiled and would inspect the p.e.n.i.ses of the men before making their selection.
It is thus a result of the complexity of the s.e.xual mechanism in women that the whole att.i.tude of a woman toward the s.e.xual relationship is liable to be affected disastrously by the husband"s lack of skill or consideration in initiating her into this intimate mystery. Normally the stage of apparent repulsion and pa.s.sivity, often a.s.sociated with great sensitiveness, physical and moral, pa.s.ses into one of active partic.i.p.ation and aid in the consummation of the s.e.xual act. But if, from whatever cause, there is partial arrest on the woman"s side of this evolution in the process of courtship, if her submission is merely a mental and deliberate act of will, and not an instinctive and impulsive partic.i.p.ation, there is a necessary failure of s.e.xual relief and gratification. When we find that a woman displays a certain degree of indifference in s.e.xual relationships, and a failure of complete gratification, we have to recognize that the fault may possibly lie, not in her, but in the defective skill of a lover who has not known how to play successfully the complex and subtle game of courtship. s.e.xual coldness due to the shock and suffering of the wedding-night is a phenomenon that is far too frequent.[172] Hence it is that many women may never experience s.e.xual gratification and relief, through no defect on their part, but through the failure of the husband to understand the lover"s part. We make a false a.n.a.logy when we compare the courtship of animals exclusively with our own courtships before marriage. Courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of s.e.xual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for s.e.xual intercourse. The play of courtship cannot, therefore, be considered to be definitely brought to an end by the ceremony of marriage; it may more properly be regarded as the natural preliminary to every act of coitus.
Tumescence is not merely a more or less essential condition for proper s.e.xual intercourse. It is probably of more fundamental significance as one of the favoring conditions of impregnation. This has, indeed, been long recognized. Van Swieten, when consulted by the childless Maria Theresa, gave the opinion "Ego vero censeo, v.u.l.v.am Sacratissimae Majestatis ante coitum diutius esse t.i.tillandam," and thereafter she had many children. "I think it very nearly certain," Matthews Duncan wrote (Goulstonian Lectures on Sterility in Woman, 1884, p. 96), "that desire and pleasure in due or moderate degree are very important aids to, or predisposing causes of, fecundity," as bringing into action the complicated processes of fecundation. Hirst (Text-book of Obstetrics, 1899, p. 67) mentions the case of a childless married woman who for six years had had no o.r.g.a.s.m during intercourse; then it occurred at the same time as coitus, and pregnancy resulted.
Kisch is very decidedly of the same opinion, and considers that the popular belief on this point is fully justified. It is a fact, he states, that an unfaithful wife is more likely to conceive with her lover than with her husband, and he concludes that, whatever the precise mechanism may be, "s.e.xual excitement on the woman"s part is a necessary link in the chain of conditions producing impregnation." (E. H. Kisch, Die Sterilitat des Weibes, 1886, p. 99.) Kisch believes (p. 103) that in the majority of women s.e.xual pleasure only appears gradually, after the first cohabitation, and then develops progressively, and that the first conception usually coincides with its complete awakening. In 556 cases of his own the most frequent epoch of first impregnation was found to be between ten and fifteen months after marriage.
The removal of s.e.xual frigidity thus becomes a matter of some importance. This removal may in some cases be effected by treatment through the husband, but that course is not always practicable. Dr. Douglas Bryan, of Leicester, informs me that in several cases he has succeeded in removing s.e.xual coldness and physical aversion in the wife by hypnotic suggestion. The suggestions given to the patient are "that all her womanly natural feelings would be quickly and satisfactorily developed during coitus; that she would experience no feeling of disgust and nausea, would have no fear of the o.r.g.a.s.m not developing; that there would be no involuntary resistance on her part." The fact that such suggestions can be permanently effective tends to show how superficial the s.e.xual "anesthesia" of women usually is.
Not only, therefore, is the apparatus of s.e.xual excitement in women more complex than in men, but-in part, possibly as a result of this greater complexity-it much more frequently requires to be actively aroused. In men tumescence tends to occur almost spontaneously, or under the simple influence of acc.u.mulated s.e.m.e.n. In women, also, especially in those who live a natural and healthy life, s.e.xual excitement also tends to occur spontaneously, but by no means so frequently as in men. The comparative rarity of s.e.xual dreams in women who have not had s.e.xual relationships alone serves to indicate this s.e.xual difference. In a very large number of women the s.e.xual impulse remains latent until aroused by a lover"s caresses. The youth spontaneously becomes a man; but the maiden-as it has been said-"must be kissed into a woman."
One result of this characteristic is that, more especially when love is unduly delayed beyond the first youth, this complex apparatus has difficulty in responding to the unfamiliar demands of s.e.xual excitement. Moreover, delayed normal s.e.xual relations, when the s.e.xual impulse is not absolutely latent, tend to induce all degrees of perverted or abnormal s.e.xual gratification, and the physical mechanism when trained to respond in other ways often fails to respond normally when, at last, the normal conditions of response are presented. In all these ways pa.s.sivity and even aversion may be produced in the conjugal relationship. The fact that it is almost normally the function of the male to arouse the female, and that the greater complexity of the s.e.xual mechanism in women leads to more frequent disturbance of that mechanism, produces a simulation of organic s.e.xual coldness which has deceived many.
An instructive study of cases in which the s.e.xual impulse has been thus perverted has been presented by Smith Baker ("The Neuropsychical Element in Conjugal Aversion," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. xvii, September, 1892). Raymond and Janet, who believes that s.e.xual coldness is extremely frequent in marriage, and that it plays an important part in the causation of physical and moral troubles, find that it is most often due to masturbation. (Les Obsessions, vol. ii, p. 307.) Adler, after discussing the complexity of the feminine s.e.xual mechanism, and the difficulty which women find in obtaining s.e.xual gratification in normal coitus, concludes that "masturbation is a frequent, perhaps the most frequent, cause of defective s.e.xual sensibility in women." (Op. cit., p. 119.) He remarks that in women masturbation usually has less resemblance to normal coitus than in men and involves very frequently the special excitation of parts which are not the chief focus of excitement in coitus, so that coitus fails to supply the excitation which has become habitual (pp. 113-116). In the discussion of "Auto-erotism" in the first volume of these Studies, I had already referred to the divorce between the physical and the ideal sides of love which may, especially in women, be induced by masturbation.
Another cause of inhibited s.e.xual feeling has been brought forward. A married lady with normal s.e.xual impulse states (s.e.xual-Probleme, April, 1912, p. 290) that she cannot experience o.r.g.a.s.m and s.e.xual satisfaction when the intercourse is not for conception. This is a psychic inhibition independent of any disturbance due to the process of prevention. She knows other women who are similarly affected. Such an inhibition must be regarded as artificial and abnormal, since the final result of s.e.xual intercourse, under natural and normal conditions, forms no essential const.i.tuent of the psychic process of intercourse.
As a result of the fact that in women the s.e.xual emotions tend not to develop great intensity until submitted to powerful stimulation, we find that the maximum climax of s.e.xual emotion tends to fall somewhat later in a woman"s life than in a man"s. Among animals generally there appears to be frequently traceable a tendency for the s.e.xual activities of the male to develop at a somewhat earlier age than those of the female. In the human, species we may certainly trace the same tendency. As the great physiologist, Burdach, pointed out, throughout nature, with the accomplishment of the s.e.xual act the part of the male in the work of generation comes to an end; but that act represents only the beginning of a woman"s generative activity.
A youth of 20 may often display a pa.s.sionate ardor in love which is very seldom indeed found in women who are under 25. It is rare for a woman, even though her s.e.xual emotions may awaken at p.u.b.erty or earlier, to experience the great pa.s.sion of her life until after the age of 25 has been pa.s.sed. In confirmation of this statement, which is supported by daily observation, it may be pointed out that nearly all the most pa.s.sionate love-letters of women, as well as their most pa.s.sionate devotions, have come from women who had pa.s.sed, sometimes long pa.s.sed, their first youth. When Heloise wrote to Abelard the first of the letters which have come down to us she was at least 32. Mademoiselle Aisse"s relation with the Chevalier began when she was 32, and when she died, six years later, the pa.s.sion of each was at its height. Mary Wollstonecraft was 34 when her love-letters to Imlay began, and her child was born in the following year. Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se was 43 when she began to write her letters to M. de Guibert. In some cases the s.e.xual impulse may not even appear until after the period of the menopause has been pa.s.sed.[173]
In Roman times Ovid remarked (Ars Amatoria, lib. ii) that a woman fails to understand the art of love until she has reached the age of 35. "A girl of 18," said Stendhal (De l"Amour, ch. viii), "has not the power to crystallize her emotions; she forms desires that are too limited by her lack of experience in the things of life, to be able to love with such pa.s.sion as a woman of 28." "s.e.xual needs," said Restif de la Bretonne (Monsieur Nicolas, vol. xi, p. 221), "often only appears in young women when they are between 26 and 27 years of age; at least, that is what I have observed."
Erb states that it is about the middle of the twenties that women begin to suffer physically, morally, and intellectually from their s.e.xual needs. Nystrom (Das Geschlechtsleben, p. 163) considers that it is about the age of 30 that a woman first begins to feel conscious of s.e.x needs. In a case of Adler"s (op. cit., p. 141), s.e.xual feelings first appeared after the birth of the third child, at the age of 30. Forel (Die s.e.xuelle Frage, 1906, p. 219) considers that s.e.xual desire in woman is often strongest between the ages of 30 and 40. Leith Napier (Menopause, p. 94) remarks that from 28 to 30 is often an important age in woman who have retained their virginity, erotism then appearing with the full maturity of the nervous system. Yellowlees (art. "Masturbation," Dictionary of Psychological Medicine), again, states that at about the age of 33 some women experience great s.e.xual irritability, often resulting in masturbation. Audiffrent (Archives d"Anthropologie Criminelle, Jan. 15, 1902, p. 3) considers that it is toward the age of 30 that a woman reaches her full moral and physical development, and that at this period her emotional and idealizing impulses reach a degree of intensity which is sometimes irresistible. It has already been mentioned that Matthews Duncan"s careful inquiries showed that it is between the ages of 30 and 34 that the largest proportion of women experience s.e.xual desire and s.e.xual pleasure. It may be remarked, also, that while the typical English novelists, who have generally sought to avoid touching the deeper and more complex aspects of pa.s.sion, often choose very youthful heroines, French novelists, who have frequently had a predilection for the problems of pa.s.sion, often choose heroines who are approaching the age of 30.
Hirschfeld (Von Wesen der Liebe, p. 26) was consulted by a lady who, being without any s.e.xual desires or feelings, married an inverted man in order to live with him a life of simple comradeship. Within six months, however, she fell violently in love with her husband, with the full manifestation of s.e.xual feelings and accompanying emotions of jealousy. Under all the circ.u.mstances, however, she would not enter into s.e.xual relationship with her husband, and the torture she endured became so acute that she desired to be castrated. In this connection, also, I may mention a case, which has been communicated to me from Glasgow, of a girl-strong and healthy and menstruating regularly since the age of 17-who was seduced at the age of 20 without any s.e.xual desire on her part, giving birth to a child nine months later. Subsequently she became a prost.i.tute for three years, and during this period had not the slightest s.e.xual desire or any pleasure in s.e.xual connection. Thereafter she met a poor lad with whom she has full s.e.xual desire and s.e.xual pleasure, the result being that she refuses to go with any other man, and consequently is almost without food for several days every week.
The late appearance of the great climax of s.e.xual emotion in women is indicated by a tendency to nervous and psychic disturbances between the ages of 25 and about 33, which has been independently noted by various alienists (though it may be noted that 25 to 30 is not an unusual age for first attacks of insanity in men also). Thus, Krafft-Ebing states that adult unmarried women between the ages of 25 and 30 often show nervous symptoms and peculiarities. (Krafft-Ebing, "Ueber Neurosen und Psychosen durch s.e.xuelle Abstinenz," Jahrbucher fur Psychiatrie, Bd. viii, ht. 1-4, 1888.) Pitres and Regis find also (Comptes-rendus XIIe Congres International de Medecine, Moscow, 1897, vol. iv, p. 45) that obsessions, which are commoner in women than in men and are commonly connected in their causation with strong moral emotion, occur in women chiefly between the ages of 26 and 30, though in men much earlier. The average age at which in England women inebriates begin drinking in excess is 26. (British Medical Journal, Sept. 2, 1911, p. 518.)
A case recorded by Serieux is instructive as regards the development of the s.e.xual impulse, although it comes within the sphere of mental disorder. A woman of 32 with bad heredity had in childhood had weak health and become shy, silent, and fond of solitude, teased by her companions and finding consolation in hard work. Though very emotional, she never, even in the vaguest form, experienced any of those feelings and aspirations which reveal the presence of the s.e.xual impulse. She had no love of dancing and was indifferent to any embraces she might chance to receive from young men. She never m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed or showed inverted feelings. At the age of 23 she married. She still, however, experienced no s.e.xual feelings; twice only she felt a faint sensation of pleasure. A child was born, but her home was unhappy on account of her husband"s drunken habits. He died and she worked hard for her own living and the support of her mother. Then at the age of 31 a new phase occurs in her life: she falls in love with the master of her workshop. It was at first a purely psychic affection, without any mixture of physical elements; it was enough to see him, and she trembled when she touched anything that belonged to him. She was constantly thinking about him; she loved him for his eyes, which seemed to her those of her own child, and especially for his intelligence. Gradually, however, the lower nervous centers began to take part in these emotions; one day in pa.s.sing her the master chanced to touch her shoulder; this contact was sufficient to produce s.e.xual turgescence. She began to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e daily, thinking of her master, and for the first time in her life she desired coitus. She evoked the image of her master so constantly and vividly that at last hallucinations of sight, touch, and hearing appeared, and it seemed to her that he was present. These hallucinations were only with difficulty dissipated. (P. Serieux, Les Anomalies de L"Instinct s.e.xuel, 1888, p. 50.) This case presents in an insane form a phenomenon which is certainly by no means uncommon and is very significant. Up to the age of 31 we should certainly have been forced to conclude that this woman was s.e.xually anesthetic to an almost absolute degree. In reality, we see this was by no means the case. Weak health, hard work, and a brutal husband had prolonged the latency of the s.e.xual emotions; but they were there, ready to explode with even insane intensity (this being due to the unsound heredity) in the presence of a man who appealed to these emotions.
In connection with the late evolution of the s.e.xual emotions in women reference may be made to what is usually termed "old maid"s insanity," a condition not met with in men. In these cases, which are not, indeed, common, single women who have led severely strict and virtuous lives, devoting themselves to religious or intellectual work, and carefully repressing the animal side of their natures, at last, just before the climacteric, experience an awakening of the erotic impulse; they fall in love with some unfortunate man, often a clergyman, persecute him with their attentions, and frequently suffer from the delusion that he reciprocates their affections.
When once duly aroused, there cannot usually be any doubt concerning the strength of the s.e.xual impulse in normal and healthy women. There would, however, appear to be a distinct difference between the s.e.xes at this point also. Before s.e.xual union the male tends to be more ardent; after s.e.xual union it is the female who tends to be more ardent. The s.e.xual energy of women, under these circ.u.mstances, would seem to be the greater on account of the long period during which it has been dormant.
Sinibaldus in the seventeenth century, in his Geneanthropeia, argued that, though women are cold at first, and aroused with more difficulty and greater slowness than men, the flame of pa.s.sion spreads in them the more afterward, just as iron is by nature cold, but when heated gives a great degree of heat. Similarly Mandeville said of women that "their pa.s.sions are not so easily raised nor so suddenly fixed upon any particular object; but when this pa.s.sion is once rooted in women it is much stronger and more durable than in men, and rather increases than diminishes by enjoying the person of the beloved." (A Modest Defence of Public Stews, 1724, p. 34.) Burdach considered that women only acquire the full enjoyment of their general strength after marriage and pregnancy, while it is before marriage that men have most vigor. Schopenhauer also said that a man"s love decreases with enjoyment, and a woman"s increases. And Ellen Key has remarked (Love and Marriage) that "where there is no mixture of Southern blood it is a long time, sometimes indeed not till years after marriage, that the senses of the Northern women awake to consciousness."
Even among animals this tendency seems to be manifested. Edmund Selous (Bird Watching, p. 112) remarks, concerning sea-gulls: "Always, or almost always, one of the birds-and this I take to be the female-is more eager, has a more soliciting manner and tender begging look than the other. It is she who, as a rule, draws the male bird on. She looks fondly up at him, and, raising her bill to his, as though beseeching a kiss, just touches with it, in raising, the feathers of the throat-an action light, but full of endearment. And in every way she shows herself the most desirous, and, in fact, so worries and pesters the poor male gull that often, to avoid her importunities, he flies away. This may seem odd, but I have seen other instances of it. No doubt, in actual courting, before the s.e.xes are paired, the male bird is usually the most eager, but after marriage the female often becomes the wooer. Of this I have seen some marked instances." Selous mentions especially the plover, kestrel hawk, and rook.
In a.s.sociation with the fact that women tend to show an increase of s.e.xual ardor after s.e.xual relationships have been set up may be noted the probably related fact that s.e.xual intercourse is undoubtedly less injurious to women than to men. Other things being equal, that is to say, the threshold of excess is pa.s.sed very much sooner by the man than by the woman. This was long ago pointed out by Montaigne. The ancient saying, "Omne animal post coitum triste," is of limited application at the best, but certainly has little reference to women.[174] Alacrity, rather than languor, as Robin has truly observed,[175] marks a woman after coitus, or, as a medical friend of my own has said, a woman then goes about the house singing.[176] It is, indeed, only after intercourse with a woman for whom, in reality, he feels contempt that a man experiences that revulsion of feeling described by Shakespeare (sonnet cxxix). Such a pa.s.sage should not be quoted, as it sometimes has been quoted, as the representation of a normal phenomenon. But, with equal gratification on both sides, it remains true that, while after a single coitus the man may experience a not unpleasant la.s.situde and readiness for sleep, this is rarely the case with his partner, for whom a single coitus is often but a pleasant stimulus, the climax of satisfaction not being reached until a second or subsequent act of intercourse. "Excess in venery," which, rightly or wrongly, is set down as the cause of so many evils in men, seldom, indeed, appears in connection with women, although in every act of venery the woman has taken part.[177]
That women bear s.e.xual excesses better than men was noted by Cabanis and other early writers. Alienists frequently refer to the fact that women are less liable to be affected by insanity following such excesses. (See, e.g., Maudsley, "Relations between Body and Mind," Lancet, May 28, 1870; and G. Savage, art. "Marriage and Insanity" in Dictionary of Psychological Medicine.) Trousseau remarked on the fact that women are not exhausted by repeated acts of coitus within a short period, notwithstanding that the nervous excitement in their case is as great, if not greater, and he considered that this showed that the loss of s.e.m.e.n is a cause of exhaustion in men. Lowenfeld (s.e.xualleben und Nervenleiden, pp. 74, 153) states that there cannot be question that the nervous system in women is less influenced by the after-effects of coitus than in men. Not only, he remarks, are prost.i.tutes very little liable to suffer from nervous overstimulation, and neurasthenia and hysteria when occurring in them be easily traceable to other causes, but "healthy women who are not given to prost.i.tution, when they indulge in very frequent s.e.xual intercourse, provided it is practised normally, do not experience the slightest injurious effect. I have seen many young married couples where the husband had been reduced to a pitiable condition of nervous prostration and general discomfort by the zeal with which he had exercised his marital duties, while the wife had been benefited and was in the uninterrupted enjoyment of the best health." This experience is by no means uncommon.
A correspondent writes: "It is quite true that the threshold of excess is less easily reached by women than by men. I have found that women can reach the o.r.g.a.s.m much more frequently than men. Take an ordinary case. I spend two hours with --. I have the o.r.g.a.s.m 3 times, with difficulty; she has it 6 or 8, or even 10 or 12, times. Women can also experience it a second or third time in succession, with no interval between. Sometimes the mere fact of realizing that the man is having the o.r.g.a.s.m causes the woman to have it also, though it is true that a woman usually requires as many minutes to develop the o.r.g.a.s.m as a man does seconds." I may also refer to the case recorded in another part of this volume in which a wife had the o.r.g.a.s.m 26 times to her husband"s twice.