| Motherhood and Prostitution. |
|
 |  |  |
Motherhood and Prostitution 1
The chief objection that will be urged against my views is that they cannot
possibly be valid for all women. For some, or even for the majority, they will
be accepted as true, but for the rest -
It was not my original intention to deal with the different kinds of women.
Women may be regarded from many different points of view, and, of course, care
must be taken not to press too hardly what is true for one extreme type. If
the word character be accepted in its common, empirical signification, then
there are differences in women's characters. All the properties of the male
character find remarkable analogies in the female sex (an interesting case
will be dealt with later on in this chapter); but in the male the character is
always deeply rooted in the sphere of the intelligible, from which there has
come about the lamentable confusion between the doctrine of the soul and
characterology. The characterological differences amongst women are not rooted
so deeply that they can develop into individuality; and probably there is no
female quality that in the course of the life of a woman cannot be modified,
repressed, or annihilated by the will of a man.
How far such differences in character may exist in cases that have the same
degree of masculinity or of femininity I have not yet been at the pains to
inquire. I have refrained deliberately from this task, because in my desire to
prepare the way for a true orientation of all the difficult problems connected
with my subject I have been anxious not to raise side issues or to burden the
argument with collateral details.
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 conclusion, 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 the other. . .
.
That motherhood and prostitution are at extreme poles appears probable simply
from the fact that motherly women bear far more children, whilst the frivolous
have few children, and prostitutes are practically sterile. It must be
remembered, of course, that it is not only prostitutes who belong to the
prostitute type; very many so-called respectable girls and married women
belong to it. Accurate analysis of the type will show that it reaches far
beyond the mere women of the streets. The street-walker differs from the
respectable coquette and the celebrated hetaira only through her incapacity
for differentiation, her complete want of memory, and her habit of living from
moment to moment. If there were but one man and one woman on the earth, the
prostitute type would reveal itself in the relations of the woman to the man.
. . .
Prostitution is not a result of social conditions, but of some cause deep in
the nature of women; prostitutes who have been "reclaimed" frequently, even if
provided for, return to their old way of life. . . . I may note finally, that
prostitution is not a modern growth; it has been known from the earliest
times, and even was a part of some ancient religions, as, for instance, among
the Phoenicians.
Prostitution cannot be considered as a state into which men have seduced
women. Where there is no inclination for a certain course, the course will not
be adopted. Prostitution is foreign to the male element, although the lives of
men are often more laborious and unpleasant than those of women, and male
prostitutes are always advanced sexually intermediate forms. The disposition
for and inclination to prostitution is as organic in a woman as is the
capacity for motherhood.
Of course, I do not mean to suggest that, when any woman becomes a prostitute,
it is because of an irresistible, inborn craving. Probably most women have
both possibilities in them, the mother and the prostitute. What is to happen
in cases of doubt depends on the man who is able to make the woman a mother,
not merely by the physical act but by a single look at her. Schopenhauer said
that a man's existence dates from the moment when his father and mother fell
in love. That is not true. The birth of a human being, ideally considered,
dates from the moment when the mother first saw or heard the voice of the
father of her child. . . .
If a man has an influence on a woman so great that her children of whom he is
not the father resemble him, he must be the absolute sexual complement of the
woman in question. If such cases are very rare, it is only because there is
not much chance of the absolute sexual complements meeting. . . .
It is a rare chance if a woman meets a man so completely her sexual complement
that his mere presence makes him the father of her children. And so it is
conceivable in the case of many mothers and prostitutes that their fates have
been reversed by accident. On the other hand, there must be many cases in
which the woman remains true to the maternal type without meeting the
necessary man, and also cases where a woman, even although she meets the man,
may be driven none the less into the prostitute type by her natural instincts.
We have not to face the general occurrence of women as one or other of two
distinct inborn types, the maternal type and the prostitute. The reality is
found between the two. There are certainly no women absolutely devoid of the
prostitute instinct to covet being sexually excited by any stranger. And there
are equally certainly no women absolutely devoid of all maternal instincts,
although I confess that I have found more cases approaching the absolute
prostitute than the absolute mother.
The essence of motherhood consists, as the most superficial investigation will
reveal, in that the getting of the child is the chief object of life, whereas
in the prostitute sexual relations in themselves are the end. The
investigation of the subject must be pursued by considering the relation of
each type to the child and to sexual congress.
Consider the relation to the child first. The absolute prostitute thinks only
of the man; the absolute mother thinks only of the child. The best test case
is the relation to the daughter. It is only when there is no jealousy about
her youth or greater beauty, no grudging about the admiration she wins, but an
identification of herself with her daughter so complete that she is as pleased
about her child's admirers as if they were her own, that a woman has a claim
to the title of perfect mother.
The absolute mother (if such existed), who thinks only about the child, would
become a mother by any man. It will be found that women who were devoted to
dolls when they were children, and were kind and attentive to children in
their own childhood, are least particular about their husbands, and are most
ready to accept the first good match who takes any notice of them and who
satisfies their parents and relatives. When such a maiden has become a mother,
it matters not by whom, she ceases to pay any attention to any other men. The
absolute prostitute, on the other hand, even when she is still a child,
dislikes children; later on, she may pretend to care for them as a means of
attracting men through the idea of mother and child. She is the woman whose
desire is to please all men; and since there is no such thing as an ideally
perfect type of mother, there are traces of this desire to please in every
woman, as every man of the world will admit.
Here we can trace at least a formal resemblance between the two types. Both
are careless as to the individuality of their sexual complement. The one
accepts any possible man who can make her a mother, and once that has been
achieved asks nothing more; on this ground only is she to be described as
monogamous. The other is ready to yield herself to any man who stimulates her
erotic desires; that is her only object. From this description of the two
extreme types we may hope to gain some knowledge of the nature of actual
women.
|
|
|
|