Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 3

The s.e.xual education which it is the mother's duty and privilege to initiate during her child's early years cannot and ought not to be technical. It is not of the nature of formal instruction but is a private and intimate initiation. No doubt the mother must herself be taught.[24] But the education she needs is mainly an education in love and insight. The actual facts which she requires to use at this early stage are very simple. Her main task is to make clear the child's own intimate relations to herself and to show that all young things have a similar intimate relation to their mothers; in generalizing on this point the egg is the simplest and most fundamental type to explain the origin of the individual life, for the idea of the egg-in its widest sense as the seed-not only has its truth for the human creature but may be applied throughout the animal and vegetable world. In this explanation the child's physical relations.h.i.+p to his father is not necessarily at first involved; it may be left to a further stage or until the child's questions lead up to it.

Apart from his interest in his origin, the child is also interested in his s.e.xual, or as they seem to him exclusively, his excretory organs, and in those of other people, his sisters and parents. On these points, at this age, his mother may simply and naturally satisfy his simple and natural curiosity, calling things by precise names, whether the names used are common or uncommon being a matter in regard to which she may exercise her judgment and taste. In this manner the mother will, indirectly, be able to safeguard her child at the outset against the prudish and prurient notions alike which he will encounter later. She will also without unnatural stress be able to lead the child into a reverential att.i.tude towards his own organs and so exert an influence against any undesirable tampering with them. In talking with him about the origin of life and about his own body and functions, in however elementary a fas.h.i.+on, she will have initiated him both in s.e.xual knowledge and in s.e.xual hygiene.

The mother who establishes a relations.h.i.+p of confidence with her child during these first years will probably, if she possesses any measure of wisdom and tact, be able to preserve it even after the epoch of p.u.b.erty into the difficult years of adolescence. But as an educator in the narrower sense her functions will, in most cases, end at or before p.u.b.erty. A somewhat more technical and completely impersonal acquaintance with the essential facts of s.e.x then becomes desirable, and this would usually be supplied by the school.

The great though capricious educator, Basedow, to some extent a pupil of Rousseau, was an early pioneer in both the theory and the practice of giving school children instruction in the facts of the s.e.xual life, from the age of ten onwards. He insists much on this subject in his great treatise, the Elementarwerk (1770-1774). The questions of children are to be answered truthfully, he states, and they must be taught never to jest at anything so sacred and serious as the s.e.xual relations. They are to be shown pictures of childbirth, and the dangers of s.e.xual irregularities are to be clearly expounded to them at the outset. Boys are to be taken to hospitals to see the results of venereal disease. Basedow is aware that many parents and teachers will be shocked at his insistence on these things in his books and in his practical pedagogic work, but such people, he declares, ought to be shocked at the Bible (see, e.g., Pinloche, La Reforme de l'Education en Allemagne au dixhuitieme siecle: Basedow et le Philanthropinisme, pp. 125, 256, 260, 272). Basedow was too far ahead of his own time, and even of ours, to exert much influence in this matter, and he had few immediate imitators.

Somewhat later than Basedow, a distinguished English physician, Thomas Beddoes, worked on somewhat the same lines, seeking to promote s.e.xual knowledge by lectures and demonstrations. In his remarkable book, Hygeia, published in 1802 (vol. i, Essay IV) he sets forth the absurdity of the conventional requirement that "discretion and ignorance should lodge in the same bosom," and deals at length with the question of masturbation and the need of s.e.xual education. He insists on the great importance of lectures on natural history which, he had found, could be given with perfect propriety to a mixed audience. His experiences had shown that botany, the amphibia, the hen and her eggs, human anatomy, even disease and sometimes the sight of it, are salutary from this point of view. He thinks it is a happy thing for a child to gain his first knowledge of s.e.xual difference from anatomical subjects, the dignity of death being a n.o.ble prelude to the knowledge of s.e.x and depriving it forever of morbid prurience. It is scarcely necessary to remark that this method of teaching children the elements of s.e.xual anatomy in the post-mortem room has not found many advocates or followers; it is undesirable, for it fails to take into account the sensitiveness of children to such impressions, and it is unnecessary, for it is just as easy to teach the dignity of life as the dignity of death.

The duty of the school to impart education in matters of s.e.x to children has in recent years been vigorously and ably advocated by Maria Lischnewska (op. cit.), who speaks with thirty years' experience as a teacher and an intimate acquaintance with children and their home life. She argues that among the ma.s.s of the population to-day, while in the home-life there is every opportunity for coa.r.s.e familiarity with s.e.xual matters, there is no opportunity for a pure and enlightened introduction to them, parents being for the most part both morally and intellectually incapable of aiding their children here. That the school should a.s.sume the leading part in this task is, she believes, in accordance with the whole tendency of modern civilized life. She would have the instruction graduated in such a manner that during the fifth or sixth year of school life the pupil would receive instruction, with the aid of diagrams, concerning the s.e.xual organs and functions of the higher mammals, the bull and cow being selected by preference. The facts of gestation would of course be included. When this stage was reached it would be easy to pa.s.s on to the human species with the statement: "Just in the same way as the calf develops in the cow so the child develops in the mother's body."

It is difficult not to recognize the force of Maria Lischnewska's argument, and it seems highly probable that, as she a.s.serts, the instruction proposed lies in the course of our present path of progress. Such instruction would be formal, unemotional, and impersonal; it would be given not as specific instruction in matters of s.e.x, but simply as a part of natural history. It would supplement, so far as mere knowledge is concerned, the information the child had already received from its mother. But it would by no means supplant or replace the personal and intimate relations.h.i.+p of confidence between mother and child. That is always to be aimed at, and though it may not be possible among the ill-educated ma.s.ses of to-day, nothing else will adequately take its place.

There can be no doubt, however, that while in the future the school will most probably be regarded as the proper place in which to teach the elements of physiology-and not as at present a merely emasculated and effeminated physiology-the introduction of such reformed teaching is as yet impracticable in many communities. A coa.r.s.e and ill-bred community moves in a vicious circle. Its members are brought up to believe that s.e.x matters are filthy, and when they become adults they protest violently against their children being taught this filthy knowledge. The teacher's task is thus rendered at the best difficult, and under democratic conditions impossible. We cannot, therefore, hope for any immediate introduction of s.e.xual physiology into schools, even in the un.o.btrusive form in which alone it could properly be introduced, that is to say as a natural and inevitable part of general physiology.

This objection to animal physiology by no means applies, however, to botany. There can be little doubt that botany is of all the natural sciences that which best admits of this incidental instruction in the fundamental facts of s.e.x, when we are concerned with children below the age of p.u.b.erty. There are at least two reasons why this should be so. In the first place botany really presents the beginnings of s.e.x, in their most naked and essential forms; it makes clear the nature, origin, and significance of s.e.x. In the second place, in dealing with plants the facts of s.e.x can be stated to children of either s.e.x or any age quite plainly and nakedly without any reserve, for no one nowadays regards the botanical facts of s.e.x as in any way offensive. The expounder of s.e.x in plants also has on his side the advantage of being able to a.s.sert, without question, the entire beauty of the s.e.xual process. He is not confronted by the ignorance, bad education, and false a.s.sociations which have made it so difficult either to see or to show the beauty of s.e.x in animals. From the s.e.x-life of plants to the s.e.x-life of the lower animals there is, however, but a step which the teacher, according to his discretion, may take.

An early educational authority, Salzmann, in 1785 advocated the s.e.xual enlightenment of children by first teaching them botany, to be followed by zoology. In modern times the method of imparting s.e.x knowledge to children by means, in the first place, of botany, has been generally advocated, and from the most various quarters. Thus Marro (La p.u.b.erta, p. 300) recommends this plan. J. Hudrey-Menos ("La Question du s.e.xe dans l'Education," Revue Socialiste, June, 1895), gives the same advice. Rudolf Sommer, in a paper ent.i.tled "Madchenerziehung oder Menschenbildung?" (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang I, Heft 3) recommends that the first introduction of s.e.x knowledge to children should be made by talking to them on simple natural history subjects; "there are endless opportunities," he remarks, "over a fairy-tale, or a walk, or a fruit, or an egg, the sowing of seed or the nest-building of birds." Canon Lyttelton (Training of the Young in Laws of s.e.x, pp. 74 et seq.) advises a somewhat similar method, though laying chief stress on personal confidence between the child and his mother; "reference is made to the animal world just so far as the child's knowledge extends, so as to prevent the new facts from being viewed in isolation, but the main emphasis is laid on his feeling for his mother and the instinct which exists in nearly all children of reverence due to the maternal relation;" he adds that, however difficult the subject may seem, the essential facts of paternity must also be explained to boys and girls alike. Keyes, again (New York Medical Journal, Feb. 10, 1906), advocates teaching children from an early age the s.e.xual facts of plant life and also concerning insects and other lower animals, and so gradually leading up to human beings, the matter being thus robbed of its unwholesome mystery. Mrs. Ennis Richmond (Boyhood, p. 62) recommends that children should be sent to spend some of their time upon a farm, so that they may not only become acquainted with the general facts of the natural world, but also with the s.e.xual lives of animals, learning things which it is difficult to teach verbally. Karina Karin ("Wie erzieht man ein Kind zur wissenden Keuschheit?" Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang I, Heft 4), reproducing some of her talks with her nine-year old son, from the time that he first asked her where children came from, shows how she began with telling him about flowers, to pa.s.s on to fish and birds, and finally to the facts of human pregnancy, showing him pictures from an obstetrical manual of the child in its mother's body. It may be added that the advisability of beginning the s.e.x teaching of children with the facts of botany was repeatedly emphasized by various speakers at the special meeting of the German Congress for Combating Venereal Disease devoted to the subject of s.e.xual instruction (s.e.xualpadagogik, especially pp. 36, 47, 76).

The transition from botany to the elementary zoology of the lower animals, to human anatomy and physiology, and to the science of anthropology based on these, is simple and natural. It is not likely to be taken in detail until the age of p.u.b.erty. s.e.x enters into all these subjects and should not be artificially excluded from them in the education of either boys or girls. The text-books from which the s.e.xual system is entirely omitted ought no longer to be tolerated. The nature and secretion of the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, the meaning of the ovaries and of menstruation, as well as the significance of metabolism and the urinary excretion, should be clear in their main lines to all boys and girls who have reached the age of p.u.b.erty.

At p.u.b.erty there arises a new and powerful reason why boys and girls should receive definite instruction in matters of s.e.x. Before that age it is possible for the foolish parent to imagine that a child may be preserved in ignorant innocence.[25] At p.u.b.erty that belief is obviously no longer possible. The efflorescence of p.u.b.erty with the development of the s.e.xual organs, the appearance of hair in unfamiliar places, the general related organic changes, the spontaneous and perhaps alarming occurrence in boys of seminal emissions, and in girls of menstruation, the unaccustomed and sometimes acute recognition of s.e.xual desire accompanied by new sensations in the s.e.xual organs and leading perhaps to masturbation; all these arouse, as we cannot fail to realize, a new anxiety in the boy's or girl's mind, and a new curiosity, all the more acute in many cases because it is carefully concealed as too private, and even too shameful, to speak of to anyone. In boys, especially if of sensitive temperament, the suffering thus caused may be keen and prolonged.

A doctor of philosophy, prominent in his profession, wrote to Stanley Hall (Adolescence, vol. i, p. 452): "My entire youth, from six to eighteen, was made miserable from lack of knowledge that any one who knew anything of the nature of p.u.b.erty might have given; this long sense of defect, dread of operation, shame and worry, has left an indelible mark." There are certainly many men who could say the same. Lancaster ("Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary, July, 1897, pp. 123-5) speaks strongly regarding the evils of ignorance of s.e.xual hygiene, and the terrible fact that millions of youths are always in the hands of quacks who dupe them into the belief that they are on the road to an awful destiny merely because they have occasional emissions during sleep. "This is not a light matter," Lancaster declares. "It strikes at the very foundation of our inmost life. It deals with the reproductory part of our natures, and must have a deep hereditary influence. It is a natural result of the foolish false modesty shown regarding all s.e.x instruction. Every boy should be taught the simple physiological facts before his life is forever blighted by this cause." Lancaster has had in his hands one thousand letters, mostly written by young people, who were usually normal, and addressed to quacks who were duping them. From time to time the suicides of youths from this cause are reported, and in many mysterious suicides this has undoubtedly been the real cause. "Week after week," writes the British Medical Journal in an editorial ("Dangerous Quack Literature: The Moral of a Recent Suicide," Oct. 1, 1892), "we receive despairing letters from those victims of foul birds of prey who have obtained their first hold on those they rob, torture and often ruin, by advertis.e.m.e.nts inserted by newspapers of a respectable, nay, even of a valuable and respected, character." It is added that the wealthy proprietors of such newspapers, often enjoying a reputation for benevolence, even when the matter is brought before them, refuse to interfere as they would thereby lose a source of income, and a censors.h.i.+p of advertis.e.m.e.nts is proposed. This, however, is difficult, and would be quite unnecessary if youths received proper enlightenment from their natural guardians.

Masturbation, and the fear that by an occasional and perhaps outgrown practice of masturbation they have sometimes done themselves irreparable injury, is a common source of anxiety to boys. It has long been a question whether a boy should be warned against masturbation. At a meeting of the Section of Psychology of the British Medical a.s.sociation some years ago, four speakers, including the President (Dr. Blandford), were decidedly in favor of parents warning their children against masturbation, while three speakers were decidedly against that course, mainly on the ground that it was possible to pa.s.s through even a public school life without hearing of masturbation, and also that the warning against masturbation might encourage the practice. It is, however, becoming more and more clearly realized that ignorance, even if it can be maintained, is a perilous possession, while the teaching that consists, as it should, in a loving mother's counsel to the child from his earliest years to treat his s.e.xual parts with care and respect, can only lead to masturbation in the child who is already irresistibly impelled to it. Most of the s.e.x manuals for boys touch on masturbation, sometimes exaggerating its dangers; such exaggeration should be avoided, for it leads to far worse evils than those it attempts to prevent. It seems undesirable that any warnings about masturbation should form part of school instruction, unless under very special circ.u.mstances. The s.e.xual instruction imparted in the school on s.e.xual as on other subjects should be absolutely impersonal and objective.

At this point we approach one of the difficulties in the way of s.e.xual enlightenment: the ignorance or unwisdom of the would-be teachers. This difficulty at present exists both in the home and the school, while it destroys the value of many manuals written for the s.e.xual instruction of the young. The mother, who ought to be the child's confidant and guide in matters of s.e.xual education, and could naturally be so if left to her own healthy instincts, has usually been brought up in false traditions which it requires a high degree of intelligence and character to escape from; the school-teacher, even if only called upon to give instruction in natural history, is oppressed by the same traditions, and by false shame concerning the whole subject of s.e.x; the writer of manuals on s.e.x has often only freed himself from these bonds in order to advocate dogmatic, unscientific, and sometimes mischievous opinions which have been evolved in entire ignorance of the real facts. As Moll says (Das s.e.xualleben des Kindes, p. 276), necessary as s.e.xual enlightenment is, we cannot help feeling a little skeptical as to its results so long as those who ought to enlighten are themselves often in need of enlightenment. He refers also to the fact that even among competent authorities there is difference of opinion concerning important matters, as, for instance, whether masturbation is physiological at the first development of the s.e.xual impulse and how far s.e.xual abstinence is beneficial. But it is evident that the difficulties due to false tradition and ignorance will diminish as sound traditions and better knowledge become more widely diffused.

The girl at p.u.b.erty is usually less keenly and definitely conscious of her s.e.xual nature than the boy. But the risks she runs from s.e.xual ignorance, though for the most part different, are more subtle and less easy to repair. She is often extremely inquisitive concerning these matters; the thoughts of adolescent girls, and often their conversation among themselves, revolve much around s.e.xual and allied mysteries. Even in the matter of conscious s.e.xual impulse the girl is often not so widely different from her brother, nor so much less likely to escape the contamination of evil communications, so that the scruples of foolish and ignorant persons who dread to "sully her purity" by proper instruction are exceedingly misplaced.

Conversations dealing with the important mysteries of human nature, Obici and Marchesini were told by ladies who had formerly been pupils in Italian Normal Schools, are the order of the day in schools and colleges, and specially circle around procreation, the most difficult mystery of all. In England, even in the best and most modern colleges, in which games and physical exercise are much cultivated, I am told that "the majority of the girls are entirely ignorant of all s.e.xual matters, and understand nothing whatever about them. But they do wonder about them, and talk about them constantly" (see Appendix D, "The School Friends.h.i.+ps of Girls," in the second volume of these Studies). "The restricted life and fettered mind of girls," wrote a well-known physician some years ago (J. Milner Fothergill, Adolescence, 1880, pp. 20, 22) "leave them with less to actively occupy their thoughts than is the case with boys. They are studiously taught concealment, and a girl may be a perfect model of outward decorum and yet have a very filthy mind. The prudishness with which she is brought up leaves her no alternative but to view her pa.s.sions from the nasty side of human nature. All healthy thought on the subject is vigorously repressed. Everything is done to darken her mind and foul her imagination by throwing her back on her own thoughts and a literature with which she is ashamed to own acquaintance. It is opposed to a girl's best interests to prevent her from having fair and just conceptions about herself and her nature. Many a fair young girl is irredeemably ruined on the very threshold of life, herself and her family disgraced, from ignorance as much as from vice. When the moment of temptation comes she falls without any palpable resistance; she has no trained educated power of resistance within herself; her whole future hangs, not upon herself, but upon the perfection of the social safeguards by which she is hedged and surrounded." Under the free social order of America to-day much the same results are found. In an instructive article ("Why Girls Go Wrong," Ladies' Home Journal, Jan., 1907) B. B. Lindsey, who, as Judge of the Juvenile Court of Denver, is able to speak with authority, brings forward ample evidence on this head. Both girls and boys, he has found, sometimes possess ma.n.u.script books in which they had written down the crudest s.e.xual things. These children were often sweet-faced, pleasant, refined and intelligent, and they had respectable parents; but no one had ever spoken to them of s.e.x matters, except the worst of their school-fellows or some coa.r.s.e-minded and reckless adult. By careful inquiry Lindsey found that only in one in twenty cases had the parents ever spoken to the children of s.e.xual subjects. In nearly every case the children acknowledged that it was not from their parents, but in the street or from older companions, that they learnt the facts of s.e.x. The parents usually imagined that their children were absolutely ignorant of these matters, and were astonished to realize their mistake; "parents do not know their children, nor have they the least idea of what their children know, or what their children talk about and do when away from them." The parents guilty of this neglect to instruct their children, are, Lindsey declares, traitors to their children. From his own experience he judges that nine-tenths of the girls who "go wrong," whether or not they sink in the world, do so owing to the inattention of their parents, and that in the case of most prost.i.tutes the mischief is really done before the age of twelve; "every wayward girl I have talked to has a.s.sured me of this truth." He considers that nine-tenths of school-boys and school-girls, in town or country, are very inquisitive regarding matters of s.e.x, and, to his own amazement, he has found that in the girls this is as marked as in the boys.

It is the business of the girl's mother, at least as much as of the boy's, to watch over her child from the earliest years and to win her confidence in all the intimate and personal matters of s.e.x. With these aspects the school cannot properly meddle. But in matters of physical s.e.xual hygiene, notably menstruation, in regard to which all girls stand on the same level, it is certainly the duty of the teacher to take an actively watchful part, and, moreover, to direct the general work of education accordingly, and to ensure that the pupil shall rest whenever that may seem to be desirable. This is part of the very elements of the education of girls. To disregard it should disqualify a teacher from taking further share in educational work. Yet it is constantly and persistently neglected. A large number of girls have not even been prepared by their mothers or teachers for the first onset of the menstrual flow, sometimes with disastrous results both to their bodily and mental health.[26]

"I know of no large girl's school," wrote a distinguished gynaecologist, Sir W. S. Playfair ("Education and Training of Girls at p.u.b.erty," British Medical Journal, Dec. 7, 1895), "in which the absolute distinction which exists between boys and girls as regards the dominant menstrual function is systematically cared for and attended to. Indeed, the feeling of all schoolmistresses is distinctly antagonistic to such an admission. The contention is that there is no real difference between an adolescent male and female, that what is good for one is good for the other, and that such as there is is due to the evil customs of the past which have denied to women the ambitions and advantages open to men, and that this will disappear when a happier era is inaugurated. If this be so, how comes it that while every practical physician of experience has seen many cases of anaemia and chlorosis in girls, accompanied by amenorrhaea or menorrhagia, headaches, palpitations, emaciation, and all the familiar accompaniments of breakdown, an a.n.a.logous condition in a school-boy is so rare that it may well be doubted if it is ever seen at all?"

It is, however, only the excuses for this almost criminal negligence, as it ought to be considered, which are new; the negligence itself is ancient. Half a century earlier, before the new era of feminine education, another distinguished gynaecologist, Tilt (Elements of Health and Principles of Female Hygiene, 1852, p. 18) stated that from a statistical inquiry regarding the onset of menstruation in nearly one thousand women he found that "25 per cent. were totally unprepared for its appearance; that thirteen out of the twenty-five were much frightened, screamed, or went into hysterical fits; and that six out of the thirteen thought themselves wounded and washed with cold water. Of those frightened ... the general health was seriously impaired."

Engelmann, after stating that his experience in America was similar to Tilt's in England, continues ("The Health of the American Girl," Transactions of the Southern Surgical and Gynaecological Society, 1890): "To innumerable women has fright, nervous and emotional excitement, exposure to cold, brought injury at p.u.b.erty. What more natural than that the anxious girl, surprised by the sudden and unexpected loss of the precious life-fluid, should seek to check the bleeding wound-as she supposes? For this purpose the use of cold washes and applications is common, some even seek to stop the flow by a cold bath, as was done by a now careful mother, who long lay at the point of death from the result of such indiscretion, and but slowly, by years of care, regained her health. The terrible warning has not been lost, and mindful of her own experience she has taught her children a lesson which but few are fortunate enough to learn-the individual care during periods of functional activity which is needful for the preservation of woman's health."

In a study of one hundred and twenty-five American high school girls Dr. Helen Kennedy refers to the "modesty" which makes it impossible even for mothers and daughters to speak to each other concerning the menstrual functions. "Thirty-six girls in this high school pa.s.sed into womanhood with no knowledge whatever, from a proper source, of all that makes them women. Thirty-nine were probably not much wiser, for they stated that they had received some instruction, but had not talked freely on the matter. From the fact that the curious girl did not talk freely on what naturally interested her, it is possible she was put off with a few words as to personal care, and a reprimand for her curiosity. Less than half of the girls felt free to talk with their mothers of this most important matter!" (Helen Kennedy, "Effects of High School Work upon Girls During Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1896.)

The same state of things probably also prevails in other countries. Thus, as regards France, Edmond de Goncourt in Cherie (pp. 137-139) described the terror of his young heroine at the appearance of the first menstrual period for which she had never been prepared. He adds: "It is very seldom, indeed, that women speak of this eventuality. Mothers fear to warn their daughters, elder sisters dislike confidences with their younger sisters, governesses are generally mute with girls who have no mothers or sisters."

Sometimes this leads to suicide or to attempts at suicide. Thus a few years ago the case was reported in the French newspapers of a young girl of fifteen, who threw herself into the Seine at Saint-Ouen. She was rescued, and on being brought before the police commissioner said that she had been attacked by an "unknown disease" which had driven her to despair. Discreet inquiry revealed that the mysterious malady was one common to all women, and the girl was restored to her insufficiently punished parents.

Half a century ago the s.e.xual life of girls was ignored by their parents and teachers from reasons of prudishness; at the present time, when quite different ideas prevail regarding feminine education, it is ignored on the ground that girls should be as independent of their physiological s.e.xual life as boys are. The fact that this mischievous neglect has prevailed equally under such different conditions indicates clearly that the varying reasons a.s.signed for it are merely the cloaks of ignorance. With the growth of knowledge we may reasonably hope that one of the chief evils which at present undermine in early life not only healthy motherhood but healthy womanhood generally, may be gradually eliminated. The data now being acc.u.mulated show not only the extreme prevalence of painful, disordered, and absent menstruation in adolescent girls and young women, but also the great and sometimes permanent evils inflicted upon even healthy girls when at the beginning of s.e.xual life they are subjected to severe strain of any kind. Medical authorities, whichever s.e.x they belong to, may now be said to be almost or quite unanimous on this point. Some years ago, indeed, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, in a very able book, The Question of Rest for Women, concluded that "ordinarily healthy" women may disregard the menstrual period, but she admitted that forty-six per cent, of women are not "ordinarily healthy," and a minority which comes so near to being a majority can by no means be dismissed as a negligible quant.i.ty. Girls themselves, indeed, carried away by the ardor of their pursuit of work or amus.e.m.e.nt, are usually recklessly and ignorantly indifferent to the serious risks they run. But the opinions of teachers are now tending to agree with medical opinion in recognizing the importance of care and rest during the years of adolescence, and teachers are even prepared to admit that a year's rest from hard work during the period that a girl's s.e.xual life is becoming established, while it may ensure her health and vigor, is not even a disadvantage from the educational point of view. With the growth of knowledge and the decay of ancient prejudices, we may reasonably hope that women will be emanc.i.p.ated from the traditions of a false civilization, which have forced her to regard her glory as her shame,-though it has never been so among robust primitive peoples,-and it is encouraging to find that so distinguished an educator as Princ.i.p.al Stanley Hall looks forward with confidence to such a time. In his exhaustive work on Adolescence he writes: "Instead of shame of this function girls should be taught the greatest reverence for it, and should help it to normality by regularly stepping aside at stated times for a few years till it is well established and normal. To higher beings that looked down upon human life as we do upon flowers, these would be the most interesting and beautiful hours of blossoming. With more self-knowledge women will have more self-respect at this time. Savagery reveres this state and it gives to women a mystic awe. The time may come when we must even change the divisions of the year for women, leaving to man his week and giving to her the same number of Sabbaths per year, but in groups of four successive days per month. When woman a.s.serts her true physiological rights she will begin here, and will glory in what, in an age of ignorance, man made her think to be her shame. The pathos about the leaders of woman's so-called emanc.i.p.ation, is that they, even more than those they would persuade, accept man's estimate of this state."[27]

These wise words cannot be too deeply pondered. The pathos of the situation has indeed been-at all events in the past for to-day a more enlightened generation is growing up-that the very leaders of the woman's movement have often betrayed the cause of women. They have adopted the ideals of men, they have urged women to become second-rate men, they have declared that the healthy natural woman disregards the presence of her menstrual functions. This is the very reverse of the truth. "They claim," remarks Engelmann, "that woman in her natural state is the physical equal of man, and constantly point to the primitive woman, the female of savage peoples, as an example of this supposed axiom. Do they know how well this same savage is aware of the weakness of woman and her susceptibility at certain periods of her life? And with what care he protects her from harm at these periods? I believe not. The importance of surrounding women with certain precautions during the height of these great functional waves of her existence was appreciated by all peoples living in an approximately natural state, by all races at all times; and among their comparatively few religious customs this one, affording rest to women, was most persistently adhered to." It is among the white races alone that the s.e.xual invalidism of women prevails, and it is the white races alone, which, outgrowing the religious ideas with which the menstrual seclusion of women was a.s.sociated, have flung away that beneficent seclusion itself, throwing away the baby with the bath in an almost literal sense.[28]

In Germany Tobler has investigated the menstrual histories of over one thousand women (Monatsschrift fur Geburtshulfe und Gynakologie, July, 1905). He finds that in the great majority of women at the present day menstruation is a.s.sociated with distinct deterioration of the general health, and diminution of functional energy. In 26 per cent. local pain, general malaise, and mental and nervous anomalies coexisted; in larger proportion come the cases in which local pain, general weak health or psychic abnormality was experienced alone at this period. In 16 per cent. only none of these symptoms were experienced. In a very small separate group the physical and mental functions were stronger during this period, but in half of these cases there was distinct disturbance during the intermenstrual period. Tobler concludes that, while menstruation itself is physiological, all these disturbances are pathological.

As far as England is concerned, at a discussion of normal and painful menstruation at a meeting of the British a.s.sociation of Registered Medical Women on the 7th of July, 1908, it was stated by Miss Bentham that 50 per cent. of girls in good position suffered from painful menstruation. Mrs. Dunnett said it usually occurred between the ages of twenty-four and thirty, being frequently due to neglect to rest during menstruation in the earlier years, and Mrs. Grainger Evans had found that this condition was very common among elementary school teachers who had worked hard for examinations during early girlhood.

In America various investigations have been carried out, showing the prevalence of disturbance in the s.e.xual health of school girls and young women. Thus Dr. Helen P. Kennedy obtained elaborate data concerning the menstrual life of one hundred and twenty-five high school girls of the average age of eighteen ("Effect of High School Work upon Girls During Adolescence," Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1896). Only twenty-eight felt no pain during the period; half the total number experienced disagreeable symptoms before the period (such as headache, malaise, irritability of temper), while forty-four complained of other symptoms besides pain during the period (especially headache and great weakness). Jane Kelley Sabine (quoted in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Sept. 15, 1904) found in New England schools among two thousand girls that 75 per cent. had menstrual troubles, 90 per cent. had leucorrha and ovarian neuralgia, and 60 per cent. had to give up work for two days during each month. These results seem more than usually unfavorable, but are significant, as they cover a large number of cases. The conditions in the Pacific States are not much better. Dr. Mary Ritter (in a paper read before the California State Medical Society in 1903) stated that of 660 Freshmen girls at the University of California, 67 per cent. were subject to menstrual disorders, 27 per cent. to headaches, 30 per cent. to backaches, 29 per cent. were habitually constipated, 16 per cent. had abnormal heart sounds; only 23 per cent. were free from functional disturbances. Dr. Helen MacMurchey, in an interesting paper on "Physiological Phenomena Preceding or Accompanying Menstruation" (Lancet, Oct. 5, 1901), by inquiries among one hundred medical women, nurses, and women teachers in Toronto concerning the presence or absence of twenty-one different abnormal menstrual phenomena, found that between 50 and 60 per cent. admitted that they were liable at this time to disturbed sleep, to headache, to mental depression, to digestive disturbance, or to disturbance of the special senses, while about 25 to 50 per cent. were liable to neuralgia, to vertigo, to excessive nervous energy, to defective nervous and muscular power, to cutaneous hyperaesthesia, to vasomotor disturbances, to constipation, to diarrha, to increased urination, to cutaneous eruption, to increased liability to take cold, or to irritating watery discharges before or after the menstrual discharge. This inquiry is of much interest, because it clearly brings out the marked prevalence at menstruation of conditions which, though not necessarily of any gravity, yet definitely indicate decreased power of resistance to morbid influences and diminished efficiency for work.

How serious an impediment menstrual troubles are to a woman is indicated by the fact that the women who achieve success and fame seem seldom to be greatly affected by them. To that we may, in part, attribute the frequency with which leaders of the women's movement have treated menstruation as a thing of no importance in a woman's life. Adele Gerhard, and Helene Simon, also, in their valuable and impartial work, Mutterschaft und Geistige Arbeit (p. 312), failed to find, in their inquiries among women of distinguished ability, that menstruation was regarded as seriously disturbing to work.

Of late the suggestion that adolescent girls shall not only rest from work during two days of the menstrual period, but have an entire holiday from school during the first year of s.e.xual life, has frequently been put forward, both from the medical and the educational side. At the meeting of the a.s.sociation of Registered Medical Women, already referred to, Miss Sturge spoke of the good results obtained in a school where, during the first two years after p.u.b.erty, the girls were kept in bed for the first two days of each menstrual period. Some years ago Dr. G. W. Cook ("Some Disorders of Menstruation," American Journal of Obstetrics, April, 1896), after giving cases in point, wrote: "It is my deliberate conviction that no girl should be confined at study during the year of her p.u.b.erty, but she should live an outdoor life." In an article on "Alumna's Children," by "An Alumna" (Popular Science Monthly, May, 1904), dealing with the s.e.xual invalidism of American women and the severe strain of motherhood upon them, the author, though she is by no means hostile to education, which is not, she declares, at fault, pleads for rest for the p.u.b.ertal girl. "If the brain claims her whole vitality, how can there be any proper development? Just as very young children should give all their strength for some years solely to physical growth before the brain is allowed to make any considerable demands, so at this critical period in the life of the woman nothing should obstruct the right of way of this important system. A year at the least should be made especially easy for her, with neither mental nor nervous strain; and throughout the rest of her school days she should have her periodical day of rest, free from any study or overexertion." In another article on the same subject in the same journal ("The Health of American Girls," Sept., 1907), Nellie Comins Whitaker advocates a similar course. "I am coming to be convinced, somewhat against my wish, that there are many cases when the girl ought to be taken out of school entirely for some months or for a year at the period of p.u.b.erty." She adds that the chief obstacle in the way is the girl's own likes and dislikes, and the ignorance of her mother who has been accustomed to think that pain is a woman's natural lot.

Such a period of rest from mental strain, while it would fortify the organism in its resistance to any reasonable strain later, need by no means be lost for education in the wider sense of the word, for the education required in cla.s.srooms is but a small part of the education required for life. Nor should it by any means be reserved merely for the sickly and delicate girl. The tragic part of the present neglect to give girls a really sound and fitting education is that the best and finest girls are thereby so often ruined. Even the English policeman, who admittedly belongs in physical vigor and nervous balance to the flower of the population, is unable to bear the strain of his life, and is said to be worn out in twenty-five years. It is equally foolish to submit the finest flowers of girlhood to a strain which is admittedly too severe.

It seems to be clear that the main factor in the common s.e.xual and general invalidism of girls and young women is bad hygiene, in the first place consisting in neglect of the menstrual functions and in the second place in faulty habits generally. In all the more essential matters that concern the hygiene of the body the traditions of girls-and this seems to be more especially the case in the Anglo-Saxon countries-are inferior to those of youths. Women are much more inclined than men to subordinate these things to what seems to them some more urgent interest or fancy of the moment; they are trained to wear awkward and constricting garments, they are indifferent to regular and substantial meals, preferring innutritious and indigestible foods and drinks; they are apt to disregard the demands of the bowels and the bladder out of laziness or modesty; they are even indifferent to physical cleanliness.[29] In a great number of minor ways, which separately may seem to be of little importance, they play into the hands of an environment which, not always having been adequately adjusted to their special needs, would exert a considerable stress and strain even if they carefully sought to guard themselves against it. It has been found in an American Women's College in which about half the scholars wore corsets and half not, that nearly all the honors and prizes went to the non-corset-wearers. McBride, in bringing forward this fact, pertinently remarks, "If the wearing of a single style of dress will make this difference in the lives of young women, and that, too, in their most vigorous and resistive period, how much difference will a score of unhealthy habits make, if persisted in for a life-time?"[30]

"It seems evident," A. E. Giles concludes ("Some Points of Preventive Treatment in the Diseases of Women," The Hospital, April 10, 1897) "that dysmenorrha might be to a large extent prevented by attention to general health and education. Short hours of work, especially of standing; plenty of outdoor exercise-tennis, boating, cycling, gymnastics, and walking for those who cannot afford these; regularity of meals and food of the proper quality-not the incessant tea and bread and b.u.t.ter with variation of pastry; the avoidance of overexertion and prolonged fatigue; these are some of the princ.i.p.al things which require attention. Let girls pursue their study, but more leisurely; they will arrive at the same goal, but a little later." The benefit of allowing free movement and exercise to the whole body is undoubtedly very great, both as regards the s.e.xual and general physical health and the mental balance; in order to insure this it is necessary to avoid heavy and constricting garments, more especially around the chest, for it is in respiratory power and chest expansion more than in any other respect that girls fall behind boys (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, Ch. IX). In old days the great obstacle to the free exercise of girls lay in an ideal of feminine behavior which involved a prim restraint on every natural movement of the body. At the present day that ideal is not so fervently preached as of old, but its traditional influence still to some extent persists, while there is the further difficulty that adequate time and opportunity and encouragement are by no means generally afforded to girls for the cultivation and training of the romping instincts which are really a serious part of education, for it is by such free exercise of the whole body that the neuro-muscular system, the basis of all vital activity, is built up. The neglect of such education is to-day clearly visible in the structure of our women. Dr. F. May d.i.c.kinson Berry, Medical Examiner to the Technical Education Board of the London County Council, found (British Medical Journal, May 28, 1904) among over 1,500 girls, who represent the flower of the schools, since they had obtained scholars.h.i.+ps enabling them to proceed to higher grade schools, that 22 per cent, presented some degree, not always p.r.o.nounced, of lateral curvature of the spine, though such cases were very rare among the boys. In the same way among a very similar cla.s.s of select girls at the Chicago Normal School, Miss Lura Sanborn (Doctors' Magazine, Dec., 1900) found 17 per cent, with spinal curvature, in some cases of a very p.r.o.nounced degree. There is no reason why a girl should not have as straight a back as a boy, and the cause can only lie in the defective muscular development which was found in most of the cases, sometimes accompanied by anaemia. Here and there nowadays, among the better social cla.s.ses, there is ample provision for the development of muscular power in girls, but in any generalized way there is no adequate opportunity for such exercise, and among the working cla.s.s, above all, in the section of it which touches the lower middle cla.s.s, although their lives are destined to be filled with a constant strain on the neuro-muscular system from work at home or in shops, etc., there is usually a minimum of healthy exercise and physical development. Dr. W. A. B. Sellman, of Baltimore ("Causes of Painful Menstruation in Unmarried Women," American Journal Obstetrics, Nov., 1907), emphasizes the admirable results obtained by moderate physical exercise for young women, and in training them to care for their bodies and to rest their nervous systems, while Dr. Charlotte Brown, of San Francisco, rightly insists on the establishment in all towns and villages alike of outdoor gymnastic fields for women and girls, and of a building, in connection with every large school, for training in physical, manual, and domestic science. The provision of special playgrounds is necessary where the exercising of girls is so unfamiliar as to cause an embarra.s.sing amount of attention from the opposite s.e.x, though when it is an immemorial custom it can be carried out on the village green without attracting the slightest attention, as I have seen in Spain, where one cannot fail to connect it with the physical vigor of the women. In boys' schools games are not only encouraged, but made compulsory; but this is by no means a universal rule in girls' schools. It is not necessary, and is indeed highly undesirable, that the games adopted should be those of boys. In England especially, where the movements of women are so often marked by awkwardness, angularity and lack of grace, it is essential that nothing should be done to emphasize these characteristics, for where vigor involves violence we are in the presence of a lack of due neuro-muscular coordination. Swimming, when possible, and especially some forms of dancing, are admirably adapted to develop the bodily movements of women both vigorously and harmoniously (see, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, Ch. VII). At the International Congress of School Hygiene in 1907 (see, e.g., British Medical Journal, Aug. 24, 1907) Dr. L. H. Gulick, formerly Director of Physical Training in the Public Schools of New York City, stated that after many experiments it had been found in the New York elementary and high schools that folk-dancing const.i.tuted the very best exercise for girls. "The dances selected involved many contractions of the large muscular ma.s.ses of the body and had therefore a great effect on respiration, circulation and nutrition. Such movements, moreover, when done as dances, could be carried on three or four times as long without producing fatigue as formal gymnastics. Many folk-dances were imitative, sowing and reaping dance, dances expressing trade movements (the shoemaker's dance), others ill.u.s.trating attack and defense, or the pursuit of game. Such neuro-muscular movements were racially old and fitted in with man's expressive life, and if it were accepted that the folk-dances really expressed an epitome of man's neuro-muscular history, as distinguished from mere permutation of movements, the folk-dance combinations should be preferred on these biological grounds to the unselected, or even the physiologically selected. From the aesthetic point of view the sense of beauty as shown in dancing was far commoner than the power to sing, paint or model."

It must always be remembered that in realizing the especial demands of woman's nature, we do not commit ourselves to the belief that higher education is unfitted for a woman. That question may now be regarded as settled. There is therefore no longer any need for the feverish anxiety of the early leaders of feminine education to prove that girls can be educated exactly as if they were boys, and yield at least as good educational results. At the present time, indeed, that anxiety is not only unnecessary but mischievous. It is now more necessary to show that women have special needs just as men have special needs, and that it is as bad for women, and therefore, for the world, to force them to accept the special laws and limitations of men as it would be bad for men, and therefore, for the world, to force men to accept the special laws and limitations of women. Each s.e.x must seek to reach the goal by following the laws of its own nature, even although it remains desirable that, both in the school and in the world, they should work so far as possible side by side. The great fact to be remembered always is that, not only are women, in physical size and physical texture, slighter and finer than men, but that to an extent altogether unknown among men, their centre of gravity is apt to be deflected by the series of rhythmic s.e.xual curves on which they are always living. They are thus more delicately poised and any kind of stress or strain-cerebral, nervous, or muscular-is more likely to produce serious disturbance and requires an accurate adjustment to their special needs.

The fact that it is stress and strain in general, and not necessarily educational studies, that are injurious to adolescent women, is sufficiently proved, if proof is necessary, by the fact that s.e.xual arrest, and physical or nervous breakdown, occur with extreme frequency in girls who work in shops or mills, even in girls who have never been to school at all. Even excesses in athletics-which now not infrequently occur as a reaction against woman's indifference to physical exercise-are bad. Cycling is beneficial for women who can ride without pain or discomfort, and, according to Watkins, it is even beneficial in many diseased and disordered pelvic conditions, but excessive cycling is evil in its results on women, more especially by inducing rigidity of the perineum to an extent which may even prevent childbirth and necessitate operation. I may add that the same objection applies to much horse-riding. In the same way everything which causes shocks to the body is apt to be dangerous to women, since in the womb they possess a delicately poised organ which varies in weight at different times, and it would, for instance, be impossible to commend football as a game for girls. "I do not believe," wrote Miss H. Ballantine, Director of Va.s.sar College Gymnasium, to Prof. W. Thomas (s.e.x and Society, p. 22) "women can ever, no matter what the training, approach men in their physical achievements; and," she wisely adds, "I see no reason why they should." There seem, indeed, as has already been indicated, to be reasons why they should not, especially if they look forward to becoming mothers. I have noticed that women who have lived a very robust and athletic outdoor life, so far from always having the easy confinements which we might antic.i.p.ate, sometimes have very seriously difficult times, imperilling the life of the child. On making this observation to a distinguished obstetrician, the late Dr. Engelmann, who was an ardent advocate of physical exercise for women (in e.g. his presidential address, "The Health of the American Girl," Transactions Southern Surgical and Gynaecological a.s.sociation, 1890), he replied that he had himself made the same observation, and that instructors in physical training, both in America and England, had also told him of such cases among their pupils. "I hold," he wrote, "precisely the opinion you express [as to the unfavorable influence of muscular development in women]. Athletics, i.e., overdone physical training, causes the girl's system to approximate to the masculine; this is so whether due to sport or necessity. The woman who indulges in it approximates to the male in her attributes; this is marked in diminished s.e.xual intensity, and in increased difficulty of childbirth, with, in time, lessened fecundity. Healthy habits improve, but masculine muscular development diminishes, womanly qualities, although it is true that the peasant and the laboring woman have easy labor. I have never advocated muscular development for girls, only physical training, but have perhaps said too much for it and praised it too unguardedly. In schools and colleges, so far, however, it is insufficient rather than too much; only the wealthy have too much golf and athletic sports. I am collecting new material, but from what I already have seen I am impressed with the truth of what you say. I am studying the point, and shall elaborate the explanation." Any publication on this subject was, however, prevented by Engelmann's death a few years later.

A proper recognition of the special nature of woman, of her peculiar needs and her dignity, has a significance beyond its importance in education and hygiene. The traditions and training to which she is subjected in this matter have a subtle and far-reaching significance, according as they are good or evil. If she is taught, implicitly or explicitly, contempt for the characteristics of her own s.e.x, she naturally develops masculine ideals which may permanently discolor her vision of life and distort her practical activities; it has been found that as many as fifty per cent. of American school girls have masculine ideals, while fifteen per cent. American and no fewer than thirty-four per cent. English school girls wished to be men, though scarcely any boys wished to be women.[31] With the same tendency may be connected that neglect to cultivate the emotions, which, by a mischievously extravagant but inevitable reaction from the opposite extreme, has sometimes marked the modern training of women. In the finely developed woman, intelligence is interpenetrated with emotion. If there is an exaggerated and isolated culture of intelligence a tendency shows itself to disharmony which breaks up the character or impairs its completeness. In this connection Reibmayr has remarked that the American woman may serve as a warning.[32] Within the emotional sphere itself, it may be added, there is a tendency to disharmony in women owing to the contradictory nature of the feelings which are traditionally impressed upon her, a contradiction which dates back indeed to the identification of sacredness and impurity at the dawn of civilization. "Every girl and woman," wrote h.e.l.lmann, in a pioneering book which pushed a sound principle to eccentric extremes, "is taught to regard her s.e.xual parts as a precious and sacred spot, only to be approached by a husband or in special circ.u.mstances a doctor. She is, at the same time, taught to regard this spot as a kind of water-closet which she ought to be extremely ashamed to possess, and the mere mention of which should cause a painful blush."[33] The average unthinking woman accepts the incongruity of this opposition without question, and grows accustomed to adapt herself to each of the incompatibles according to circ.u.mstances. The more thoughtful woman works out a private theory of her own. But in very many cases this mischievous opposition exerts a subtly perverting influence on the whole outlook towards Nature and life. In a few cases, also, in women of sensitive temperament, it even undermines and ruins the psychic personality.

Thus Boris Sidis has recorded a case ill.u.s.trating the disastrous results of inculcating on a morbidly sensitive girl the doctrine of the impurity of women. She was educated in a convent. "While there she was impressed with the belief that woman is a vessel of vice and impurity. This seemed to have been imbued in her by one of the nuns who was very holy and practiced self-mortification. With the onset of her periods, and with the observation of the same in the other girls, this doctrine of female impurity was all the stronger impressed on her sensitive mind." It lapsed, however, from conscious memory and only came to the foreground in subsequent years with the exhaustion and fatigue of prolonged office work. Then she married. Now "she has an extreme abhorrence of women. Woman, to the patient, is impurity, filth, the very incarnation of degradation and vice. The house wash must not be given to a laundry where women work. Nothing must be picked up in the street, not even the most valuable object, perchance it might have been dropped by a woman" (Boris Sidis, "Studies in Psychopathology," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 4, 1907). That is the logical outcome of much of the traditional teaching which is given to girls. Fortunately, the healthy mind offers a natural resistance to its complete acceptation, yet it usually, in some degree, persists and exerts a mischievous influence.

It is, however, not only in her relations to herself and to her s.e.x that a girl's thoughts and feelings tend to be distorted by the ignorance or the false traditions by which she is so often carefully surrounded. Her happiness in marriage, her whole future career, is put in peril. The innocent young woman must always risk much in entering the door of indissoluble marriage; she knows nothing truly of her husband, she knows nothing of the great laws of love, she knows nothing of her own possibilities, and, worse still, she is even ignorant of her ignorance. She runs the risk of losing the game while she is still only beginning to learn it. To some extent that is quite inevitable if we are to insist that a woman should bind herself to marry a man before she has experienced the nature of the forces that marriage may unloose in her. A young girl believes she possesses a certain character; she arranges her future in accordance with that character; she marries. Then, in a considerable proportion of cases (five out of six, according to the novelist Bourget), within a year or even a week, she finds she was completely mistaken in herself and in the man she has married; she discovers within her another self, and that self detests the man to whom she is bound. That is a possible fate against which only the woman who has already been aroused to love is ent.i.tled to regard herself as fairly protected.

There is, however, a certain kind of protection which it is possible to afford the bride, even without departing from our most conventional conceptions of marriage. We can at least insist that she shall be accurately informed as to the exact nature of her physical relations to her future husband and be safeguarded from the shocks or the disillusions which marriage might otherwise bring. Notwithstanding the decay of prejudices, it is probable that even to-day the majority of women of the so-called educated cla.s.s marry with only the vaguest and most inaccurate notions, picked up more or less clandestinely, concerning the nature of the s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps. So highly intelligent a woman as Madame Adam has stated that she believed herself bound to marry a man who had kissed her on the mouth, imagining that to be the supreme act of s.e.xual union,[34] and it has frequently happened that women have married s.e.xually inverted persons of their own s.e.x, not always knowingly, but believing them to be men, and never discovering their mistake; it is not long indeed since in America three women were thus successively married to the same woman, none of them apparently ever finding out the real s.e.x of the "husband." "The civilized girl," as Edward Carpenter remarks, "is led to the 'altar' often in uttermost ignorance and misunderstanding of the sacrificial rites about to be consummated." Certainly more rapes have been effected in marriage than outside it.[35] The girl is full of vague and romantic faith in the promises of love, often heightened by the ecstasies depicted in sentimental novels from which every touch of wholesome reality has been carefully omitted. "All the candor of faith is there," as Senancour puts it in his book De l'Amour, "the desires of inexperience, the needs of a new life, the hopes of an upright heart. She has all the faculties of love, she must love; she has all the means of pleasure, she must be loved. Everything expresses love and demands love: this hand formed for sweet caresses, an eye whose resources are unknown if it must not say that it consents to be loved, a bosom which is motionless and useless without love, and will fade without having been wors.h.i.+pped; these feelings that are so vast, so tender, so voluptuous, the ambition of the heart, the heroism of pa.s.sion! She needs must follow the delicious rule which the law of the world has dictated. That intoxicating part, which she knows so well, which everything recalls, which the day inspires and the night commands, what young, sensitive, loving woman can imagine that she shall not play it?" But when the actual drama of love begins to unroll before her, and she realizes the true nature of the "intoxicating part" she has to play, then, it has often happened, the case is altered; she finds herself altogether unprepared, and is overcome with terror and alarm. All the felicity of her married life may then hang on a few chances, her husband's skill and consideration, her own presence of mind. Hirschfeld records the case of an innocent young girl of seventeen-in this case, it eventually proved, an invert-who was persuaded to marry but on discovering what marriage meant energetically resisted her husband's s.e.xual approaches. He appealed to her mother to explain to her daughter the nature of "wifely duties." But the young wife replied to her mother's expostulations, "If that is my wifel