Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of SexThomas, William Isaac
Science
Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex
Thomas, William Isaac
Sex; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women -- Social conditions
of their attention, to get interested in the right kind of problems.
Their attention has not been diverted from interests of a primary type
containing a maximum of the sensory, to interests of an analogous type
containing more elements of reflection, and involving problems and
processes of greater benefit to society.
The remedy for the irregularity, pettiness, ill-health, and
unserviceableness of modern woman seems to lie, therefore, along
educational lines. Not in a general and cultural education alone, but
in a special and occupational interest and practice for women, married
and unmarried. This should be preferably gainful, though not onerous
nor incessant. It should, in fact, be a play-interest, in the sense
that the interest of every artist and craftsman, who loves his work
and functions through it, is a play-interest. Normal life without
normal stimulation is not possible, and the stimulations answering
to the nature of the nervous organization seem best supplied by
interesting forms of work. This reinstates racially developed
stimulations better than anything except play; and interesting work
is, psychologically speaking, play.
Some kind of practical activity for women would also relieve the
strain on the matrimonial situation--a situation which at present
is abnormal and almost impossible. The demands for attention from
husbands on the part of wives are greater than is compatible with the
absorbing general activities of the latter, and women are not only
neglected by the husband in a manner which did not happen in the case
of the lover, but they are jealous of men in a more general sense than
men are jealous of women. In the absence of other interests they are
so dependent on the personal interest that they unconsciously put a
jealous construction, not only on personal behavior, but on the most
general and indifferent actions of the men with whom their lives are
bound up; and this process is so obscure in consciousness that it is
usually impossible to determine what the matter really is.
An examination, also, of so-called happy marriages shows very
generally that they do not, except for the common interest of
children, rest on the true comradeship of like minds, but represent an
equilibrium reached through an extension of the maternal interest of
the woman to the man, whereby she looks after his personal needs as
she does after those of the children--cherishing him, in fact, as
a child--or in an extension to woman on the part of the man of that
nurture and affection which is in his nature to give to pets and all
helpless (and preferably dumb) creatures.
Obviously a more solid basis of association is necessary than either
of these two instinctively based compromises; and the practice of an
occupational activity of her own choosing by woman, and a generous
attitude toward this on the part of man, would contribute to relieve
the strain and to make marriage more frequently successful.
THE MIND OF WOMAN AND THE LOWER RACES
I
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