Part 5 (2/2)
Society often seems to expect of a woman that she should be submissive, patient, and merely gentle. And of course nature has ordained that many women should be strong, stimulating, and militant in spirit. Of a really great woman it was said to me the other day that she is really more like a flame than a ”cow”. But the ”cow” idea holds the field in many places. Well! happy those who have a sense of humor and can laugh when society is very foolish.
I dare not enter farther on a discussion of what it means for a girl to accept herself ”as a woman”. In that matter men seem always to flounder into folly. Even women are not yet agreed about it. Perhaps it is one of the things that is only gradually being discovered at this particular stage of human experience. I am indeed sure that we do not yet know all that women are meant to be and are capable of doing for the world. And that being so I can see that the difficulties which lie about the path of life for women to-day are peculiarly trying. It may be a real privilege to be a woman during this particular period of discovery and experiment. But it cannot but be also rather a strain.
The one thing that I can with certainty say is that a woman is called to be like Christ--like Him in His meekness which was the outcome of perfect selflessness and self-mastery--in His gentleness which was the product of sensitive love--but like Him also in His strength, His boldness, His resolute refusal to bend before evil, His positive activities in the name of love.
One particular feature in a woman's impulse towards independence I cannot pa.s.s by without a special word. The very suggestion annoys some women that they are not complete in themselves without any relation to the other s.e.x. Being without any conscious desire for the companions.h.i.+p of man, and without any definite s.e.x consciousness, they resent the idea that woman is not complete in herself. To those who insist that the s.e.xes vitally need each other such women would reply that they are altogether exaggerating and over-emphasizing the s.e.x element in life.
Well, about the fact that man is not complete without woman I have no doubt whatever. And I have no reluctance whatever about admitting it.
Perhaps that fact gives me no right to dogmatize about the other s.e.x, but a considerable experience has left me in no doubt about the matter.
I do not mean for a moment that a great and useful career is not possible to women quite apart from marriage. I do not forget that many women have great powers of intellect in the exercise of which they are living in a world apart from s.e.x difference. But I believe it to be a serious mistake for either man or woman to imagine that they have no clamant s.e.x instinct hidden within the depths of their personalities.
And if the instinct is there it can only be folly to try to obscure the fact. It has to be reckoned with if life is to succeed. In many women it only awakens after early youth is past. The exceptions in whom it never awakens must be very few indeed. If the attempt has been made to ignore it the subsequent troubles are apt to be only the more intense.
In this matter we are confronted with an unalterable decree of nature.
To rebel against it is only to be broken in the long run. In various and great ways the instinct may be turned to splendid uses other than the usual ones of marriage and motherhood. But the instinct is there, and if wisdom means understanding ourselves and handling ourselves bravely, then it _must_ be reckoned with. To quarrel with the nature of things is mere folly.
Another special feature of the period in a girl's life I am thinking of is a tendency to intense and pa.s.sionate affections for other women--a tendency to idealize some other woman till she seems the center of life and adorable beyond words. A very real danger lurks here, and yet I would like to speak with great care about the matter, because a true friends.h.i.+p is always one of the finest and most enriching things in life, while a _grande pa.s.sion_ for another member of one's own s.e.x is a different thing with an undesirable element in it.
In girls about thirteen or thereabouts _grandes pa.s.sions_ for other girls or for school-mistresses are very common, and so far from being harmful they may serve a very useful purpose. They generally pa.s.s away pretty quickly, and unless the older woman has been unwise they leave no bad effects behind them.
But among older girls they are a very different thing and often lead to serious trouble and unhappiness. What has happened in such cases is that an instinct which is designed to produce love for one of the opposite s.e.x has been perverted to add an element of pa.s.sion to what should have been merely a healthy friends.h.i.+p for another woman. And the result is an unhealthy type of relations.h.i.+p. It is unhealthy because, to begin with, in this way girls let themselves go and allow their emotions to run away with them; and that just at a time when it is most important that they should have themselves in firm control. And further, when members of the same s.e.x employ lovers' language, and indulge in the imitation of lovers' endearments, there is something sickly about the whole business which healthy instinct condemns. I do not mean, of course, that when girls link arms or even embrace each other in moments of excitement there is anything mistaken. To some people such expressions of emotion are as natural as breathing. But _grandes pa.s.sions_ lead to much more than that sort of thing, and so become a serious evil.
It is in connection with this problem that psychologists have brought into use the rather ugly word ”h.o.m.os.e.xuality”, though it means nothing more dreadful than this tendency to put a member of one's own s.e.x into the place that should be occupied by a member of the other s.e.x. But I find a certain amount of talk going on which a.s.sumes that some people are of the h.o.m.os.e.xual type, and that it is natural and right for them to express themselves in this way. As a matter of fact h.o.m.os.e.xuality _is always a s.e.xual perversion_ and is fraught with great danger of nervous disorder. Dr. Crichton Miller says in _The New Psychology and the Teacher_: ”From the point of view of psychological development h.o.m.os.e.xuality in the adult is a regression.... Clinical experience confirms the view that in the long run the man or the woman of the intermediate type is bound to pay the price of regression in one way or another” (p. 120).
Of course the essential defect of these pa.s.sionate attachments between two women is that they can never fully satisfy. They cannot give a woman children, and they leave the mother heart in her starved. For this reason it is a primary obligation on each of the two to resolve that so soon as a man enters the life of the other she will at all costs make room for him, The cost of this may be very great, but love that is at all worthy of the name will not another from a path that might lead to marriage has misunderstood the very meaning of love.
Women have repeatedly told me that the pa.s.sionate relations.h.i.+ps I am speaking of lead to grave unhappiness. They almost never last, and the one who breaks away may cause acute suffering to the other; while an attempt to continue them after the life has gone out of them results in a very poor and pitiful relations.h.i.+p. And yet all this leaves still open the question of how they are to be dealt with in actual life. One thing worth saying is--Be warned in time, and do not let them grow.
When they threaten they can be turned into true friends.h.i.+ps by girls who understand, and true friends.h.i.+p is always a bracing and strengthening thing. But I would not for a moment suggest that a ”G.
P.” should be ruthlessly broken. That would often be a cruel thing to do which might cause great and even permanent damage to a sensitive nature. But if both who are involved in the matter will face the truth about it, they may succeed in pa.s.sing on into a natural and healthy friends.h.i.+p which may be invaluable to both and a gain to society. If it be asked wherein lies the essential difference between a G. P. and a friends.h.i.+p I think answer has been given in the words: ”Friends.h.i.+p is an other-regarding emotion and proves itself to be an uplifting force, while a G. P. is self-regarding, and consequently generally is socially exclusive and therefore harmful.” A G. P. generally involves a desire to have somebody else all to yourself. That is the sign of the unnatural s.e.x element in it. But a friends.h.i.+p leads to happy co- operation between two people in the work and recreation of the world.
One of the tests of universal application in this realm of life lies in the fact that real love always wants to give, and that the att.i.tude of wanting greedily to get is not true love. Many and many an unhappy girl who frets and torments herself because she does not get all she wants from some other woman would find the world and life transformed if she would but wake up to the fact that in her bit of the world there are other people who need the love she might give them. She would thus find a n.o.ble outlet for her emotions, become a boon to other people, and in the process discover her own happiness--possibly to her own surprise.
I know very well what is likely to happen to some girls who read these words and who are involved in a pa.s.sionately affectionate attachment. I can almost hear one such saying, ”Of course I see that these things ought to be said, and that some girls are very silly about their friends.h.i.+ps, and it only makes me the more thankful that in my case everything is so natural, and right, and good.”
We are all like that! We are extraordinarily slow to recognize in our own lives the evils and dangers which we can see so clearly in the lives of others. And so I would like to make a direct appeal to all girls, and to all men too, who are involved in these relations.h.i.+ps. Do face the facts openly! Do look ahead! Do ask yourselves what you are going to do about these affairs as time goes on! You must know they cannot last in their present form. You would be right if you even said that they to last. You may drift along, always postponing any definite action, and just enjoying the present while it lasts. But that is exactly the way in which calamity is allowed to enter people's lives.
And you and she, or you and he, might forthwith face the unalterable facts I have been referring to, and take all danger by the throat and throttle it. You might do that _now_. That is to say, you and your dear friend might agree that you will at once get the pa.s.sionate element out of your relations.h.i.+p, and forego the pleasure you have in that respect. You might begin now to learn true friends.h.i.+p, and get rid of what is really a sickly thing. It might hurt--it probably would at first. But none of us human beings need be the mere creatures of our feelings. Our true and lasting happiness always depends upon refusing any such slavery. If you do achieve a wholesome and true friends.h.i.+p it may enrich your whole future life. If you let things go on as they are you will have a very unpleasant memory to humiliate you.
I feel sure that certain general counsels apply with special force to this part of life, and in particular the one which bids us all live busy and positive lives. Brooding is not a wholesome occupation for anybody at any time, but, on the other hand, through hours of active effort emotion finds an outlet and our natures are restored to peace.
Introspection is to many people an actual luxury, but like other luxuries it enervates. Reveling in their own emotions is a favorite hobby with quite a lot of people, but for all that it is a very bad one. There really should be no time for it. Our emotions are all needed as driving forces for the times of action. In particular the cultivation of a sense of beauty in art is one of the normal outlets for emotion, and even for s.e.x emotion. Some happy people can themselves make music, and so express themselves. Most of us find that common kindness suggests that we should restrict our efforts in that direction to times when we are alone. But if we cannot play we can at least learn the art of good listening. And if we are not musical at all we can perhaps appreciate true painting, or great poetry, or fine literature.
It all helps.
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