Part 6 (1/2)
May I say a plain word or two about the shyness and self-consciousness in society which so torment young girls? The first thing I would say is that they will almost certainly pa.s.s away before long, and that therefore they need not be bothered about. Lots of the most effective and socially successful men and women in the world went through a painful period of shyness in early youth, and now only smile at the memory of those days.
In so far as that self-consciousness is produced by society of any sort, it is based upon the delusion that other people look at us and think about us a great deal more than they do. It is also due to a habit of minding what other people think and say a great deal more than the facts warrant. We are not so important as to attract much general notice, and other people are not so important that on account of their prejudices and conventions we should distress ourselves.
But in so far as discomfort in society is due to the presence there of members of the opposite s.e.x, there is something different to be said.
The whole contention of this book is that the attraction which exists between the s.e.xes is a right and wholesome thing, and that the way of wisdom is to accept the fact of it quite simply. When that is done it is found possible to let that mutual attraction issue in friends.h.i.+p and camaraderie of a kind that enriches and dignifies life.
Of course all this is much easier for girls who have been brought up with boys. They learn to be at home with the other s.e.x, not to be fussy and foolish, and not to trade upon their s.e.x. But that sort of relations.h.i.+p to men is also quite possible even for those who were not brought up with boys, and in the attaining to it girls find their real peace of mind.
I would also like to put down here some thoughts about beautiful girls.
A beautiful girl always makes me want to do two things. One is to thank G.o.d for making so lovely a thing, and the other is to say a prayer that she may have special help given her for her specially difficult lot.
For beauty is both a very great gift and a very hard thing to handle.
Some of you must know that you are beautiful, and you are sure to find the fact exciting, delightful, and yet embarra.s.sing. You have great powers--powers over other women and over children in part--and very great powers over men. You can, if you will, use that power to induce men to make fools of themselves. You can let yourselves slip into the habit of living on admiration and feeding on the pleasure it gives you. You can exploit your beauty to win through it things you do not really deserve. People will forgive much to a beautiful woman, and you can trade on that fact. You can get a great deal of your own way if you master the art of being charming as well as beautiful; and you can in that way use your beauty to your own undoing, and make it partly a curse to others. In fact you are certain to have to face many temptations which the majority of women escape. That is the hard part of your lot. All who understand know quite well that life cannot but be more complicated for you than for most, and you have a very great claim on their sympathy. But the way to avoid your dangers is not to pretend to yourself that you are not beautiful. Pretence never helps us. The way is to face the fact of your beauty, realize that you did not create it, and therefore need not be vain about it, and then go on to decide what use you are going to make of the power it gives you. It can be used for G.o.d--otherwise He would not have given it. It can be turned into influence of a very wonderful kind. If you can induce men to make fools of themselves, you can also draw out all that is best in them, and inspire them for fine living. In plain English, when a beautiful woman is also a good woman she is one of the greatest boons to mankind.
She can give great pleasure to others--but she can do more, she can stir the latent idealism in men and women in wonderful ways. She can move through the world as a source of gracious, kindly, and bracing influence. Of course, once again, the essential secret is to think of giving and not of getting, to get self into the background and live for love and service--to employ your great gift for the sake of the giver of it. I suspect that it must need a great deal of self-discipline-- perhaps more than a man can understand. I am sure it must need a great deal of prayer. But it has been done, and can be done again.
And that leads me naturally to the last thing I want to say in this chapter. I have already said in the chapter specially addressed to men that the great help for the difficult early days of life is to be found in religion. [Footnote: Cp. p. 80ff.] And of course that is equally true for girls.
Religion means having a great and worthy interest at the center of our lives, which gives meaning to the whole of them. Being religious means that the essential and eternal part of us is coming into life, and it almost necessarily follows then that the other parts of our personalities slip into their proper places. It means having an object for our affections more than worthy of all our deepest emotions, and more than able to fill our empty hearts. Religion in the early days of life is generally very emotional. I believe that that is perfectly right and natural, provided we also make efforts to be sincere and to love the truth. Because it is emotional, its value as an outlet for feeling is very great. It does not remain at its first emotional level.
Later on there comes an inevitable change when many think, quite wrongly, that they are losing their religion. But at the stage I am thinking of religion naturally and normally expresses itself in intense feeling. We are all hero wors.h.i.+ppers at that stage of life. Hero wors.h.i.+pping, however, is apt to get us into trouble, for our heroes fail us in time. The one perfect hero who never fails us is Christ. He alone never disappoints, and to love Him is to have all the n.o.bler chords in our beings set in motion. We are sure to despair of ever becoming worthy of Him. But no leader of men was ever so willing to take us as we are and make the best of us. To be near Him may mean being made to feel deeply ashamed. In His presence we are sure to feel small and mean. But that also is a good thing, and in spite of it He loves us. In other directions we seek with longing to find love, and often fail. With Him we may be quite sure of finding love. And He goes on loving to the end.
Being loved by Him does at last draw out the best in us. Inevitably we begin to want to be more worthy--to serve and love others for His sake--to know and love the truth--to find and wors.h.i.+p beauty. And that means having a life full of splendid and worthy interests.
Emotional muddles may in fact be the lot of most of us for a while. But if at the center of them all there is an honest love for Christ, they cannot overwhelm us; and in the long run we are sure to emerge into the life that has both peace and power in it.
CHAPTER IX
INVOLUNTARY CELIBACY
Modern England has for many generations been a place so unhealthy for the young that a vast problem has grown up in our midst which seriously disturbs the normal adjustment of s.e.x relations.h.i.+ps. It would seem to have been Nature's intention that there should be slightly more men than women in the world, for boy babies outnumber girl babies [Footnote: The actual figures are 1052 boy babies to 1000 girl babies.]
What it would mean if there were more adult men than women in the world it is hard to imagine. It would at once have enormous social consequences. No woman would remain a celibate except by her own choice. Men would have to behave themselves in order to win wives, and would cease to occupy the demoralizing position of being able to get wives whenever they want them. It would in fact mean a new world in many ways.
As things are, however, the unhealthy conditions of modern life produce a greater mortality among boy babies than among girl babies, and males come to be in a minority. This state of affairs has been greatly aggravated by the war, but it was serious even before 1914. It was then the case that the women outnumbered the men by about a million. The number must be nearer a million and a half to-day.
The result is that over a million women have to face the prospect of a life in which their most deeply implanted instincts--the instincts for wifehood and motherhood--cannot find their normal satisfaction, and the problem thus created is one of the most difficult in the whole of life.
It is, of course, nothing less than insulting nonsense to talk about these women as ”superfluous women.” Behind the very phrase there lurks the old delusion that women are only needed in the world as wives and mothers. As a matter of fact a great deal of the work that is most needed in our civilization--work in education, art, literature, nursing, social service, and other departments of life--is being done by these women.
But while that is true it is also true that the personal life of the unmarried woman presents acute problems of a most intricate kind.
Probably only a woman can truly understand those problems or justly estimate their urgency, but no man with any insight or sympathy can fail to know that the lot of the unmarried woman involves secret stresses, unsatisfied yearnings, and sometimes hours of dark depression. She may be unmarried because she has persistently refused to try to be satisfied with any second best. As a witty woman friend of mine once put it, she may be unmarried because ”the attainable was not desirable and the desirable was not attainable.” She may be unmarried because a very true lover of early days went on before, and she has never felt able to put anyone else in his place. Or she may have loved truly some man who loved another. Or nothing may ever have happened to awaken conscious love in her, in which case it is still possible that her nature may cry out at times for the satisfaction of its primary needs. And while all this is true, she is conventionally supposed never to show by any sign that she would have liked to be married. However much she may suffer it is held unseemly for her to show that she suffers, or to ask for sympathy. She is often, and I think quite indefensibly, denied by social convention the stimulus of any really intimate friends.h.i.+ps with men. She is made the subject of uncounted third-rate jokes. And if, as life goes on, she develops peculiarities of manner or asperities of temper--if she begins to lose vitality and grace, these things are noted with contempt by people who little imagine how much real heroism may lie concealed in the object of their scorn. I believe, however, that I speak for a very large number of men when I confess that nothing kindles in me quite the same flame of resentment at things as they are, as just this fact that so many gracious and kindly women, plainly made for motherhood and fitted for a fine part in life, should find themselves held in the clutches of this insistent problem.
It may well help all such to realize the fact stated above, namely, that the problem is no part of the eternal and designed order of things, but one of the results of our social misbehavior. In a very real sense the women who suffer in this matter suffer vicariously for the sins of all society. It is not they who are guilty, but all mankind. For all who mean resolutely to face the problem and to win through to victory, it is first of all essential that they should realize the fact that their acute depressions and their restlessness of mind have really a quite well-defined physical and psychological cause.
Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five these depressions often become very acute, so that the whole horizon of life is darkened.
Sensitive women often torment themselves by wondering what they have done that is wrong, for of course all depression is apt to take the form of a sense of wrongdoing. Further, at this period the religious sensibilities of many seem to suffer eclipse. They can no longer respond in feeling to any of the sublime religious truths. They find they cannot pray. Nothing seems to matter. The memory of earlier days when life seemed bright and religious faith was confident seems only to mock them. Many are beset by definite intellectual difficulties and so are tempted to a general cynicism. Envy of others will suggest itself, and though it be sternly repressed, it still adds to the general strain, while good advice from others will seem just the last straw which cannot be borne.