How will love fare at the hands of the new woman? The old forms of love will naturally be as unbearable to her as the steel corsets of a forgotten generation. Yet the problem is not so very pressing, for the truly new woman is still an almost insignificant factor, numerically speaking, in every community. Even in the professions and trades of a distinctly masculine character which woman has recently invaded, we meet constantly the mock-modern person, who under a veneer of modernity, still harbors all the superstitions, and exhibits all the mannerisms of the "old fashioned" woman.
Being old-fashioned in love, as in every other activity of life, presents a great temptation to the lazy, the unintelligent, the neurotic.
It is an excuse for all sorts of unethical forms of conduct, for failure or inactivity, and yet carries[Pg 276] with itself a deceptive air of mock refinement and distinction.
The woman who boasts of being old fashioned can misbehave and retain for years her husband's or her environment's confidence in her purity. Being old fashioned, she is assumed by all to be a little "simple" and "silly" at times, but unlikely to ever cross certain boundaries. At the same time, she can pass cruel judgments on all the trangressors who have not been as shrewd or lucky as she.
As a basis for a discussion of the extent to which love will affect the modern woman and modern woman affect love, I shall select the picture drawn by George Bernard Shaw in McCall's Magazine for October 1920 of the woman of the new generation.
"What Women Had to Do Recently," Shaw writes, "was not to repudiate their femininity but to assert its social value, not to ape masculinity but to demonstrate its insufficiency. This was the point of my play Candida in which it is made quite plain that the husband's masculine career would go to pieces without the wife's feminine activity.
[Pg 277]
"As refinement was supposed to be proper to women and roughness proper to men fifty years ago, the great increase in companionship between men and women during that period was bound either to refine the men or roughen the women. It has done both. The feminine refinement which was only silliness disguised by affection has gone; and women are hardier and healthier, and the stock sizes of their clothes are larger in consequence. The masculine vigor that was only boorishness, slovenliness and neglect of person and clothes has fled before feminine criticism.
"But the Generalisation That Women are Refined and Men Rough by Nature is a superficial one, holding good only when, as often happens, the man's occupation is rougher than the woman's. The natural woman cannot afford to be as fastidious as the natural man; if she shirked all the unpleasantness that he escapes, the race would perish. As a matter of fact, there are coarse women and coarse men, refined women and refined men; and there is no reason to suppose that the proportions differ in the two sexes.
"There is, However, a Rebellion against Nature in the matter of the very unequal share of the burden of reproduction which falls to men and women in civilized communities. I say civilized communities advisedly, because the extremely artificial life of the modern lady has the effect of mak[Pg 278]ing her natural functions pathological. Whether the rebellion has been going on ever since ladies were invented I do not know, because history is silent on the subject, as it is on so many specifically feminine subjects. But I can testify that among women brought up amid the feminist movement of the second half of the nineteenth century there was a revolt against maternity which went deeper than that revolt against excessive maternity which has led to birth control. These more thoroughgoing rebels objected to the whole process, from the occasional event itself to the more permanent conditions it imposes. It is easy to dismiss this as monstrous and silly, but the modern conception of creative evolution forbids us to dismiss any development as impossible if it becomes the subject of an aspiration.
"There is no limit to the truth of the old saying that where there is a will there is a way, and though for the moment a refusal to accept the existing conditions of reproduction would mean race suicide, the rebels against nature may be the pioneers of evolutionary changes which may finally dispose of the less pleasant incidents of nutrition, and make reproduction a process external to the parents in its[Pg 279] more burdensome phases, as it now is in many existent species."
The Entrance of Woman into Commercial Life has trained her no longer to expect something for nothing (exchangeable) and to realize that a bargain, to be satisfactory, an agreement, to be lasting, must be based on mutual advantages to both parties.
Love, with the old fashioned, began with a struggle of wits between the sexes, the man trying to conquer without granting any advantages to the defeated, woman trying to wear out her opponent and make him yield more and more advantages before she finally "paid up."
On one side, fear of financial burdens, at the other end, fear of desertion and pregnancy, suspicion and cruelty.
The sex struggle with its disgusting features of hypocrisy, pretence, duplicity, misrepresentation, denial of biological facts, etc., has yielded to an agreement, much as the robber system of past ages has been replaced by commercial transactions which leave no hatred and no desire for vengeance in their wake.
Was It a Sacrifice? The old-fashioned woman, wife or mistress, assuming the position of the con[Pg 280]quered and defeated, claimed infinite privileges as an offset to what she has "given up," "sacrificed," "yielded." She humiliated her conqueror by pretending that his body or his caresses were not the equal of hers, and that she only submitted to his desire, without much pleasure, compelled by his "low instincts."
The modern woman, conversant with the facts of sex, and no longer having to create an artificial value for her body based on disregard of biological facts, since her activities, mental and physical, now command a definite price on the market place, seeks a partner with whom she will exchange caresses leading, as she recognises without silly shame, to mutual gratification.
The Pursuit. The old-fashioned woman, who always assumed the passive role in life and who, supposedly indifferent to the pleasures of the flesh, ran away, actually or figuratively, from the brutal pursuer, played a preposterous dual part in the pre-love skirmishes. Who has never encountered the woman who wears in a public place some dress which reveals a great deal of her bust, and yet who pretends to be offended if some man stares at what she has exposed in order to attract his stare?
The modern woman whose worth is determined,[Pg 281] not by the male's eroticism in her presence, but by her accomplishments, can afford to be frank, honest, if not, at times, aggressive, in the love search.
The Passing of Respectable Prostitution. The old-fashioned woman, having created the artificial value of womanhood as such, indulged in a mild, genteel form of prostitution, which, having no consequences likely to impose a burden on the community, (pregnancy, childbirth) never was criticised very severely. She sold her company for meals, theatre tickets, comfortable transportation, flowers, trinkets. Now and then, developing a streak of fairness and honesty, she would grant the man she exploited small privileges of a superficial kind. But the real old-fashioned girl was of the absolutely sordid type, who could allow a more or less repellent suitor to spend considerable sums to amuse her but would express genuine indignation at the thought that the man could be as sordid as she was, and expect some caresses in return.
The modern woman, made independent financially by her non-sexual activities, can remove from her love all taint of even mild commercialism, returning favors in kind, or accepting presents, no longer as a bribe, but as a token of affection on the part of a man she loves.
[Pg 282]
The Abettor of Ethical Sins. The old fashioned wife was in many more cases than superficial thinking would cause us to imagine, a more dangerous corrupter of public and private morality than the prostitute.
Numerically the wife predominates. The prostitute constitutes a very small minority of the population of large cities and does not thrive in small town, villages or farming communities.
Louis Berman, who is generally very indifferent to psychology, makes a very valuable remark in his book on glands: "Consider," he writes, "the unimportance of a collective purpose to the woman whose career is the mate and then the mate's career."
Which means that the woman who takes up wifehood as a profession has no social morality. Her husband is her oyster and the world must in turn be her husband's oyster. She knows only one thing: that she must support her mate in anything he does so long as his............