CHAPTER III. The New Liberty of Action

THE NEW LIBERTY OF ACTION

Important forces are, however, at work in the contrary direction. If the growing prevalence of herd morality will tend to place a new emphasis on the importance of uniformity, uniformity in the moral sphere is likely to prove more difficult of attainment.

Two factors in particular will militate against it. These are the growth of economic independence among women, and the practice of birth control. Let us consider these factors separately.

I. The basis of the institution of marriage is economic. Theological factors have of course played their part. The early Christian fathers, expecting the immediate end of the world, saw no reason to take steps to ensure the continuance of the race. The Christian hostility to the pleasures of the senses was, therefore, allowed to rage unchecked, and sexual intercourse was denounced as both wicked and unnecessary. As time passed, however, it was found that the world showed no signs of coming to an end, an inconsiderateness which led to the necessity for a change of attitude. The Church met the situation with a complete volte face. It had previously stigmatized the sexual passions as so wicked that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them: it now pronounced them to be so sacred that no Christian should be permitted to indulge them without the sanction of the Church. The sanction of the Church was given in marriage, a device whereby the Fathers sought to control and to regulate the workings of a passion they were unable to ignore. Since then the Church has claimed both the ability and the right to sanctify sex, and has looked with disfavour upon marriages consummated by the State as an infringement of her monopoly.

But the fact that marriage has been instituted by God and cornered by the Church is not sufficient to account for its existence before the Christian epoch or its stability since. These rest upon an economic foundation.

Throughout the recorded history of civilization the only recognized way for a woman to make her living has been through her body. Her body being her one saleable asset, she could employ it in either of two ways. She could sell the use of it to one man for an indefinite period, or she could lease it to a number of men for short and strictly regulated periods. The first method is known as marriage; the second as prostitution. The existence of these two, and of only these two, ways of gaining an economic livelihood has led to the formation of two unofficial women’s Trade Unions, the Trade Union of wives and the Trade Union of prostitutes. The strength of these unions is directly proportional to their monopoly of the economic field, and far exceeds that of any recognized Union in the more strictly industrial sphere.

It is immediately obvious that any woman who was prepared to give for love or for nothing what other women were only prepared to give for maintenance was a blackleg of the most subversive type, and the whole force of organized female opinion has, therefore, been devoted to making her position impossible. The force of female opinion so directed is known as morality, and the bitterness with which the free lover, that is to say, the woman who loves outside the marriage tie or the prostitute’s preserves, is denounced as immoral, is due to woman’s unconscious recognition of the fact that she is cutting at the basis of the economic livelihood of her sex.

It is of course true that the two women’s Unions are to some extent competitive, and that the existence of the prostitute threatens the security of the wife while it guarantees the chastity of the young girl. For this reason there is and always will be hostility between the Unions. The wife’s first commandment is the Deity’s “Thou shalt have none other woman but me”, and she is accordingly accustomed to regard the prostitute with horror, whereas she does not object to the existence of other wives, since this does not, at least in theory, threaten her own. For this reason, too, the method of earning a living adopted by the wife is generally preferred to that adopted by the prostitute, and is esteemed the more honourable by public opinion. So true is this that in most women the belief in the honourableness of wifehood has become second nature, the really nice woman feeling instinctively that the only decent way for her to live is on the earnings of some man. But while this feeling provokes hostility to members of the other Union, it is a hostility which cannot compare in bitterness with the scorn and hatred felt for the free lover. The reason for this is obvious. The number of women a man can have for money is limited by the extent of his income; the number of women he can have for nothing is limited only by the extent of his ability to find them. For this reason it is felt instinctively that the free lover is a greater menace to society than the prostitute. The prostitute, indeed, is and always has been recognized as a social necessity. She guarantees the chastity of nice women by providing a necessary solace for men up to the comparatively late age at which modern economic conditions allow them to marry. Thus in Tsarist Russia the brothel was a State-recognized institution. The new brothel was formally opened by the police officer, and was hallowed by a religious ceremony in the course of which the premises were blessed by a Russian Orthodox priest.

Report of Labour Delegation, 1925.

Sexual morality in men springs from the same economic source, but is more limited in scope and less fiercely embraced. This is a natural deduction from what has just been said. If the livelihood of women is bound up with the strict observance of the marriage tie, the maintenance of the moral restrictions upon which marriage as an institution depends is their special concern. In a purely promiscuous community the livelihood of women would be intolerably insecure. Hence women are the natural guardians of morality, knowing that it guarantees their bread and butter. It is not too much to say that morality as a going concern is kept up by women. Men on the whole, despite their strong property sense, are not interested in moral questions. They have not the woman’s delight in nosing out scandals, and, except when they are whipped up into a state of moral horror by their women folk, are much too prone to live and let live. The attitude of deliberate uncharitableness towards erring sisters which the sex affects does not come naturally to men, and left to themselves, they would condone offences which their outraged spouses insist on punishing with social ostracism.

It is on the whole true to say that the moral sense, so far as sex is concerned, only begins to function in men after marriage and, except in the case of one’s own daughter whose saleable value in the marriage market is thought to be diminished by inchastity, it centres upon the wife. Since the wife is in origin a piece of property purchased by the husband for his own enjoyment, to her must be extended the jealous guardianship which presides over property in general. The wife is the most valuable of a man’s indoor possessions; in return for the use of her body he has agreed to maintain her in such dignity and leisure as he can afford. This obligation to maintain the wife is a permanent one persisting even after the enjoyment of her person has ceased. Thus when a wife divorces or lives apart from her husband, he is usually required to maintain her, so long as she remains chaste. So soon, however, as she bestows the enjoyment of her person upon another, the obligation to maintenance ceases, presumably on the ground that the new consumer should be saddled with the obligation of keeping up what he enjoys. In nothing is the property basis of marriage more clearly discernible than in the ‘dum casta’ clause of the English divorce law.

It is upon the same economic basis that the husband’s objection to infidelity chiefly rests. If another man is permitted to enjoy for nothing what he himself has purchased at a heavy outlay, the husband naturally feels aggrieved. He is also rendered ridiculous. It is for this reason that the cuckold is always presented in literature as a comic figure; he is in the position of a man who is unconsciously having his pocket picked. The husband’s predilection for fidelity in the wife is thus as strong as the wife’s demand for fidelity in the husband――at times it is even stronger――and springs from the same economic source. So long as the wife is in essence a piece of property, it is naturally felt that only the man who has paid for her should have the use of her; so long as a woman can only obtain her living by selling herself to a man, she not unnaturally demands that others should not be allowed to undercut her.

We have spoken of this situation as if it existed in the present; but it is already in many respects an affair of the past. The history of the last fifty years has recorded the growing and continuous influx of women into wage-earning employment which bears no relationship to sex. Women cure the sick, plead in the law courts, teach in the schools, do manual labour in garden, field, factory, and workshop, and serve increasingly as clerks, typists and shop assistants. Three were recently found among the five hundred applicants for the post of public executioner in Hungary.

Men have not unnaturally resented this change. The dependence of women has on the whole suited them, and they do not like to see those whose economic helplessness has made them a natural prey to male predatoriness rendered capable of standing on their own feet. Having deliberately deprived women of the skill, the training, the knowledge, and the qualifications necessary to make their way in the world, men have then proceeded to justify themselves by proving the moral and intellectual inferiority of women from the fact that she is ignorant, unskilled and uneducated. When it is remembered that the same causes that have left woman no alternative but concubinage (married or unmarried) or starvation, have compelled her, as often as not, to perform the duties of an unpaid housekeeper, it is not difficult to see how much man was the gainer by the transaction. But, unfortunately for him, he has been unable to stem the rising tide of feminism. It has long ceased to be true that a woman’s only means of earning her living is by exploiting her sex-attraction, and all the evidence points to the fact that the number of women in wage-earning employment will be augmented in the future. This estimate leaves out of account the probability of the endowment of motherhood, which will place all mothers, whether married or unmarried, in the category of independent wage-earners.

The effect of this economic change upon the situation I have briefly sketched, and upon the moral sentiments to which it gives rise is likely to be twofold.

In the first place the unmarried woman will tend increasingly to form temporary, irregular unions. This result will follow:

(1) Because her knowledge that she can earn her living in other ways will not force her to demand from the man a pledge of life-long maintenance as the price of her love.

(2) Because knowing that she is not dependent upon a man for her livelihood, she will no longer have the incentive to pander to the man’s demand for virginity in his prospective wife by remaining chaste until marriage.

(3) Because a man’s abandonment of the connection which she has formed with him, a process commonly known as desertion, will not as heretofore leave her stranded without means of support.

(4) Because men will be less chary of forming temporary, sexual relationships with women, when they know that they are not expected to keep them.

In the second place the married woman will tend to mitigate her hostility to irregular unions formed by unmarried women when she realizes:

(1) That her husband’s mistress, not being dependent upon him for support, will constitute a less formidable threat to her livelihood.

(2) That the possible transference of her husband’s affections and consequent withdrawal of financial support will not leave her necessarily incapable of finding other employment.

(3) That, as the clear-cut line of demarcation between married and unmarried unions becomes obscured by the increase in the number of the latter, it will no longer be either possible or necessary to put the unmarried mistress as completely beyond the pale of decent society as has been customary in the past.

From the above considerations it will be seen that the growing economic independence of women is likely, unless counteracted by other forces, to lead to a relaxation of the marriage tie, to an increase in irregular unions, and to a growing tendency to dispense with marriage altogether.

But, some critics will object, what about the children? Hitherto, I have left the children outside the scope of the argument, and it is high time to bring them in. This leads me to a consideration of the second of the two factors which I cited at the beginning of the chapter, the practice of birth-control.

II. That the practice of birth-control is likely to increase there can, I think, be no reasonable doubt. I am aware that there is considerable opposition to birth-control at the moment, and the various arguments are brought forward to discourage people from employing its methods. These arguments are not held on rational grounds, but are dictated by prejudices based on certain religious or political opinions which those who put them forward profess. It is said, for example, that birth-control is displeasing to the Almighty, who invented sexual intercourse for the reproduction not of pleasure but of children; and it is thought, though not said, that it is injurious to the State because it will diminish the supply of cannon-fodder and cheap labour.

As regards the Almighty, whether he would agree with the views put forward by those who speak in his name is not known. Until, therefore, we can obtain a direct expression of his opinion on the matter, it is more prudent to assume that his attitude is non-committal, than to supply the place of knowledge by converting our conjectures into dogmas. As regards the supply of cannon-fodder, this is supposed to be important for consumption in future wars. Since, however, those who oppose birth-control on the ground that it will diminish the number of recruits, also hold that wars are inevitable owing to the pressure of expanding populations, it would seem that populations which cease to expand have no need to maintain large armies to protect them from the results of expansion.

The position of those who oppose birth-control being based on political and religious feelings of an emotional character is not, however, refutable by argument, or assailable by reason. Our business is not to reply to arguments which have no rational basis, but to estimate what influence they are likely to have in the future.

There is, I think, little doubt that this influence will be a diminishing one. Much of the opposition to birth-control is little more than an expression of the generalized feeling of hostility which people experience in regard to anything that is new. Whether it be a new morality, a new sonata form, a new way of wearing the hair, a new kind of corset (or none at all), or a new saviour of mankind with which he is presented, man’s natural and instinctive reaction is one of antagonism. The antagonism is provoked not by any intrinsic demerit in the thing that arouses it――indeed in fifty or a hundred years time it is embraced with acclamation as the last word in orthodoxy or good form――but simply by its newness. The suggestion that any way of life, of thought or of conduct can be better than that which they have hitherto followed wounds people’s self-respect, and some time must elapse before they can overlook the offence.

This kind of objection applies in a marked degree to birth-control which challenges people’s most intimate habits, and seems likely to effect a revolution in their conduct. It will, however, diminish as the idea of birth-control becomes familiar. The reaction of the normal Englishman to that which is new usually passes through three phases. He says first “It is absurd”, second “It is contrary to Scripture”, and third “Of course! I knew it all the time”. It will be seen that the opposition to birth-control has already passed into the second phase.

There is a further reason for the probable weakening of the anti-birth-control movement. The organized opposition to birth-control comes very largely from members of the upper and middle classes. These on an average have very much smaller families than the lower classes in whose interests they profess to oppose birth-control, and to whom they denounce it. The inevitable inference from this fact cannot continue indefinitely to remain undrawn, and, as soon as it is drawn, the lower classes will be able to gauge the sincerity of those who exhort them to choose between continence or children, while being themselves remarkable for neither.

Finally the knowledge of the use of contraceptives is bound in course of time to percolate through every social stratum. The advantages of birth-control to the individual are so obvious that few will refuse to avail themselves of the knowledge which the State, in the persons of the medical officers in charge of infant welfare centres, at present withholds; while the disadvantages to the community of a system under which the lower strata proliferate unchecked, while the upper and middle classes barely keep up their numbers, and the exceptional man who has the talent and energy to climb from one stratum into another finds it necessary to sterilize himself in the process, will, in the shape of a rapidly deteriorating population, force themselves upon the notice of even the most pious.

Birth-control has come to stay; it has also knocked the bottom out of what is called sexual morality.

If the views put forward in the previous chapters be correct, if morality is the interest of the stronger, and if, where the stronger is the herd of average individuals, it expresses itself in disapproval of conduct from which the average, for whatever reason, shrink, then the driving force of morality is to be looked for not in any innate sanction but in the power which the herd possess of rendering intolerable the lives of those who flout its prejudices. But in order that the herd may be able to exercise this power, it must be in a position to detect the objects of its censure. This has been possible in the past owing to the unfortunate propensity of sexual irregularity to result in offspring. It is not easy to disguise the existence of a child, and, even if the desperate course of overlaying or otherwise extinguishing it be adopted, the disposal of the corpse presents grave difficulties. Such a course is also open to the objection of doing grave violence to the humaner parental instincts. But birth-control precludes the necessity for children, and by so doing makes it possible to “sin” without being found out.

It is not to be expected that people will refuse to avail themselves of the liberty thereby conferred. Whether we are to infer that people are by nature sinful, or simply that a sin which has been manufactured by herd morality is not really a sin, is a question that does not immediately concern us. What does concern us is the impetus which this ability to avoid detection is likely to give to irregular intercourse. Birth-control combined with economic independence has brought a new freedom to women. Economic independence enables them to have children without going either to the altar or into the workhouse. The practice of birth-control makes it unnecessary even to have the children.

One further result of birth-control may be noticed before we pass on. This is the probable abolition of the double standard of morality for men and women after marriage. That adultery in a wife has always been considered to be more serious than adultery in the husband the state of the law bears witness. Adultery in a wife is a sufficient cause for divorce, in a husband it must be coupled with cruelty or desertion. This disparity of treatment has always caused grave offence to feminist organizations. Yet the reason for the difference is not far to seek. It arises from the economic dependence of the wife upon the husband. As the result of this dependence any children which the wife may acquire in the course of her adventures become a charge upon the husband, who is thus required to pay for the fruits of his own shame and another’s enjoyment. It is true that he is, or ought to be, similarly responsible for the upkeep of the offspring which may result from his own adultery, but in this case he has at least had his pleasure and sinned his sin, and cannot in justice complain if his substance is consumed by its fruits. Where, however, adultery on the part of the wife does not carry with it a risk of children to be maintained by the husband, it becomes an offence neither more nor less serious than adultery on the part of the husband, and the double standard ceases accordingly to operate.

In July, 1923, the law was amended and adultery in the husband became a sufficient ground of divorce.

As a result of the above-mentioned considerations we may expect that the practice of birth-control will profoundly modify our sexual habits. It will enable the pleasures of sex to be tasted without its penalties, and it will remove the most formidable deterrent to irregular intercourse.

It is this consideration which lies at the root of the opposition to birth-control. Deep down in most of us there lurks something of the old Puritanical attitude, which insists that pleasure cannot or should not be had without paying for it. This at least is true of pleasures we do not share. And it is this sentiment which is outraged by the immunity from the consequences of sexual pleasure which birth-control confers. The Puritans objected to bear baiting not so much because of the pain which it gave to the bear, as because of the pleasure which it gave to the spectators. In the same way the great mass of decent middle class citizens object to birth-control not because of the evil which it does to the race, but because of the pleasure which it gives to those who practice it. The Puritans are up in arms; the dowagers, the aunts, the old maids, the parsons, the town councillors, the clerks, the members of Vigilance Committees and Purity Leagues, all those who are themselves too old to enjoy sex, too unattractive to obtain what they would wish to enjoy, or too respectable to prefer enjoyment to respectability――in a word, the makers of public opinion――are outraged in their deepest feelings by the prospect of shameless, harmless and unlimited pleasure which birth-control offers to the young. And if they can stop it it will be stopped.

Hence concurrently with the increased freedom which economic independence and birth-control will give to young people, and to young women in particular, there is likely to be a growth in restrictive and purely inhibitory morality on the part of the middle-aged.

We are in, then, for a wave of Puritanism on the one hand combined with the possibility of a new liberty of action on the other. What will be the outcome?