tone of occidental intercourse is a stimulant rather than a
companion for a man. Too commonly she is an unwholesome stimulant
turning a man from wisdom to appearance, from beauty to beautiful
pleasures, from form to colour, from persistent aims to belief and
stirring triumphs. Arrayed in what she calls distinctly "dress,"
scented, adorned, displayed, she achieves by artifice a sexual
differentiation profounder than that of any other vertebrated
animal. She outshines the peacock's excess above his mate, one must
probe among the domestic secrets of the insects and crustacea to
find her living parallel. And it is a question by no means easy and
yet of the utmost importance, to determine how far the wide and
widening differences between the human sexes is inherent and
inevitable, and how far it is an accident of social development that
may be converted and reduced under a different social regimen. Are
we going to recognise and accentuate this difference and to arrange
our Utopian organisation to play upon it, are we to have two primary
classes of human being, harmonising indeed and reacting, but
following essentially different lives, or are we going to minimise
this difference in every possible way?
The former alternative leads either to a romantic organisation of
society in which men will live and fight and die for wonderful,
beautiful, exaggerated creatures, or it leads to the hareem. It
would probably lead through one phase to the other. Women would be
enigmas and mysteries and maternal dignitaries that one would
approach in a state of emotional excitement and seclude piously when
serious work was in hand. A girl would blossom from the totally
negligible to the mystically desirable at adolescence, and boys
would be removed from their mother's educational influence at as
early an age as possible. Whenever men and women met together, the
men would be in a state of inflamed competition towards one another,
and the women likewise, and the intercourse of ideas would be in
suspense. Under the latter alternative the sexual relation would be
subordinated to friendship and companionship; boys and girls would
be co-educated--very largely under maternal direction, and women,
disarmed of their distinctive barbaric adornments, the feathers,
beads, lace, and trimmings that enhance their clamorous claim to a
directly personal attention would mingle, according to their
quality, in the counsels and intellectual development of men. Such
women would be fit to educate boys even up to adolescence. It is
obvious that a marriage law embodying a decision between these two
sets of ideas would be very different according to the alternative
adopted. In the former case a man would be expected to earn and
maintain in an adequate manner the dear delight that had favoured
him. He would tell her beautiful lies about her wonderful moral
effect upon him, and keep her sedulously from all responsibility and
knowledge. And, since there is an undeniably greater imaginative
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account