The Woman Socialist/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
SEX (continued)
Mr. Edward Carpenter in his book, “Love’s Coming of Age,” has touched upon the sad position of many a woman to–day in words of terrible pathos. He says: “The periods of man’s ascendancy have generally been periods of so much sadness and degradation of woman. He, all through, more and more calmly assuming that it must be her province to live and work for him; shutting her more and more into the seclusion of her boudoir and the harem; confining her body, her mind; playing always upon her sex–nature, accentuating that, as though, indeed, she were nought else but sex; yet furious if her feelings were not always obedient to his desire; arrogating to himself a masculine licence, yet revenging the least unfaithfulness on her part by casting her out into the scorned life of the prostitutes; … while she, more and more, has accepted as inevitable the situation, and moved, sad-eyed, to her patient and uncomplaining work, to the narrow sphere and petty details of household labour and life, of patience and self-effacement, of tenderness and love, little noticed and less understood; or has twisted herself into a ridiculous mime of fashion and frivolity, if so she might find some use for her empty head and some favour with her lord . . . her brain dwarfed and her outlook upon life marred by falsity and ignorance."
This is the average wife of to-day. In a Socialist State, let it be repeated, no woman will be economically dependent upon any one man, father, brother, or husband. Her living will be assured to her by the community. Marriage will not make her the more dependent. If she should have children she will be salaried, or otherwise supported, according to the number and the healthiness of her offspring. If no children are born to her she will be at liberty to occupy herself with some other profitable work; not necessarily household labour, certainly not household labour all the time; for that will be reduced to a minimum. But she will engage in such useful work as her special tastes will direct.
A free woman, she will thus be able to give her love freely. And in the sense that no mercenary motive will influence towards matrimony, and no unhallowed sex-impulse will be the drawing power between the man and the woman, but mutual admiration and esteem and pure affection, there will be free love, love as free as the air, and as pure; as radiant as the sunshine and as warm; as beautiful as Nature and as holy.
It is more than probable that the ordinary Church marriage service will be abolished. But it ought to be abolished. It is a degradation of marriage to regard it and speak of it as a kind of safety-valve for those who cannot keep themselves in the holy condition of celibacy. By its wording it actually sanctions lustfulness and animalism of the worst description, if it be practised within the sacred bonds of marriage. That a man may not be punished in the next world for his incontinence, his wife shall suffer in this, is its sinister gospel! No inquiry is made by the officiating clergyman as to the general fitness of the pair to mate; nor of their motive in desiring to unite. A decrepit old man just tottering into his grave and a blooming girl of nineteen have the Church's blessing on their union if will only appear before the altar.
Under Socialism the marriage service will probably be a simple declaration on the part of the contracting parties before the Civil representatives of the State. It will be held binding except with the consent of the community to its dissolution. There will be no special command of obedience from one to the other. A sacred charge to love one another, to be mutually helpful, trustful, and forbearing, to bring up their children with discretion and to have the State in high regard will constitute the communal blessing upon its unions between men and women. Free as the wind, the Socialist wife will be bound only by her natural love for husband and children. But such limitation, small at the worst, will be nothing but a joy, for it will spring out of respect and esteem, the surest foundations for a lasting love.
Recognising the sanctity of their unions in marriage, Socialists will, nevertheless, seek to remove some of the ridiculous anomalies of our present divorce laws. Divorce will, in all probability, be much less frequently asked for under a reorganised society; but it will be made more easy of accomplishment. For if, after marriage, it is discovered that two people are absolutely incompatible in temperament, having acquired an unconquerable aversion for one another; if one or the other is found to be faithless, sexually impotent, imbecile or immoral—to the injury and detriment of either—the sufferer shall have complete dissolution of the contract with leave to enter into another marriage. And this shall apply equally to men and women. Women shall not have to prove two charges and men only one. Separation laws shall be done away with altogether. Legal separation without permission to re-marry is a danger to morality, for all men and women were not made for celibacy. No stigma shall be permitted to rest upon the blameless children of divorced parents as now. The children will belong more to the State than to the parents, and a righteous State will not visit the sins or the misfortunes of the parents upon the children.
One very necessary thing which Socialism can be relied upon to do is, to establish one moral code for men and women alike. Society then shall give no more quarter for an offence against morality to men than to women. At the present time the weight of atonement and the greater share of suffering for an immoral act committed necessarily by two people are put upon the woman. As though the poor woman were not already sufficiently unfairly treated by Nature, society must needs add to her cup of suffering, whilst she smilingly pardons the man. If a greater weight of responsibility ought to be borne by one of the offenders it ought to be by the man; for, nine times out of ten, the fault of the woman has been but a too tender loving, whilst his was a criminal selfishness. The daily horror of the forsaken and injured woman, alone with her disgrace and her punishment, makes one realise how sadly unfair and unrighteous are the laws of our times. Were the writer in power she would make the man, and not the woman, responsible for every concealment of birth and pre-natal murder. Perhaps then there would be fewer unwelcome children born to unwilling mothers, worn and weary with too much child-bearing, or too trustful of men whose love has ceased with the gratification of their lusts. An equal standard of purity for men and women; an equal condemnation, or an equal charity, will do much to lessen immorality and self-indulgence.
If the word "comrade" means anything at all, it will mean more, vastly more, when it is used by a man to his wife and when she can speak it to him. Perfect equality alone means perfect happiness and contentment. The latter does not necessarily include the former. There are many content to-day who are not happy. The saddest feature of woman's enslavement is that she grows contented so; but not happy. The most frivolous doll-woman, the indulged wife of a doting husband who gives her everything she asks for, all that she could desire, but denies her, herself, must feel at times a terrible sense of loss, of wanting something, of missing something; of something short in her life, something she ought to have. An anonymous and touchingly sad poem reveals the heart-ache and echoes the heart-cries of ten thousand women, who sit still at the feet of Fate even whilst their spirits rebel.
To escape from the work, the play,
The talking every day;
To escape from all I have done,
And all that remains to do!
To escape—yes, even from you,
My only love, and be
Alone and free.
Between gray moor and gray sky,
Where the winds and the plovers cry,
And no man is at hand;
And feel the free wind blow
On my rain-wet face and know
I am free—not yours, but my own—
Free and alone!
And the home of your heart, my dear,
They hurt, being always here.
I want to stand upright,
And to cool my eyes in the air,
And to see how my back can bear
Burdens—to try, to know,
To learn, to grow!
I am yours, part of you, your wife!
And I have no other life.
I cannot think, cannot do;
I cannot breathe, cannot see;
There is ‘us,’ but there is not me:—
And worst, at your kiss I grow
Contented so.”
(From Appendix to “Woman Free.”)