The detailed characterology of women must wait for a detailed treatment, but even this work has not totally neglected the differences that exist amongst women; I shall hope to be acquitted of false generalisations if it be remembered that what I have been saying relates to the female element, and is true in the same proportion that women possess that element. However, as it is quite certain that a particular type of woman will be brought forward in opposition to my conclusions, it is necessary to consider carefully that type and its contrasting type.
To all the bad and defamatory things that I have said about women, the conception of woman as a mother will certainly be opposed. But those who adduce this argument will admit the justice of a simultaneous consideration of the type that is at the opposite pole from motherhood, as only in this way is it possible to define clearly in what motherhood consists and to delimit it from other types.
The type standing at the pole opposite to motherhood is the prostitute. The contrast is not any more inevitable than the contrast between man and woman, and certain limits and restrictions will have to be made. But allowing for these, women will now be treated as falling into two types, sometimes having in them more of the one type, sometimes more of the other.
This dichotomy may be misunderstood if I do not distinguish it from a contrast that is popularly made. It is often said that a woman should be both mother and mistress. I do not see the sense or the utility of the distinction involved in the phrase. Is no more meant by "mistress" than the condition which of necessity must precede motherhood? If that is so, then no lasting characterological property is involved. For the word "mistress" tells us nothing about a woman except that she is in a certain relation to a man. It has nothing to do with her real being ; it is something imposed on her from without. The conception of being loved tells us nothing about the nature of the person who is loved. The condition of being loved, whether as mother or mistress, is a merely accidental, external designation of the
