Читать книгу Women, Children, Love, and Marriage - C. Gasquoine Hartley - Страница 10

Now, it may be asked: What has all this to do with Elsie Lindtner? My answer is: “Everything!” The customs of a past social life do subsist beneath the surface of modern society; we cannot without strong effort escape from the chains of our inheritance. In the sad nations of the cold north, where the natural joy of the body has been regarded as something to be fought with and denied, a perpetual confusion has arisen at the very source of life. For the sex-passion is a force, huge and fateful, which has to be reckoned with. Woman is more primitive, more intuitive, more emotional than man. And the outlets allowed to her in the past have been more restricted; thus the price she pays for any repression of the natural rights of love is heavier. Elsie Lindtner’s history is a sermon to all those who set up the false god of chastity for women.

I am aware that this statement will arouse opposition—especially in women. To-day we hear much talk, and often among women who are working nobly for the better life for women, of control of sex and the need of imposing on men the same code of repression which for so long has been imposed upon them. This is, of course, very natural, but that does not make it wise. It is a truth realised by few women that repression is not, and never can be, control. There seems to be a very widespread opinion that to use the divine gift of sex even in marriage, for joy, is wrong. One would be inclined to laugh, if the sadness of this falsehood did not make one want to weep.

The whole subject, wide as life itself, escapes anything like adequate treatment. The lady—the Elsie Lindtners of society—the household drudge and the prostitute, are the three main types of women resulting in our so-called civilisation of to-day, from the process of the past, and it is hard to know which is the most wretched, which is the most wronged, the most destructive, and the furthest removed from that ideal woman which a happier future may evolve.

What, then, in conclusion, is the lesson to be learnt from this “Tract for the Times?” Women must be free—free to work and free to love. Then, and then only, can they claim to be the fitting mates of men, then and then only, will they be able to fulfil aright their supreme work as the mothers of the sons and daughters of the race. This is the path along which freedom is to be found. What, then, is the individual woman to do? This question is one which women at the present have to answer for themselves. But one thing is certain—they must have the courage to tear from their eyes the old and the new bandages that have kept them, and still keep them, in the darkness of ignorance; better even to sin and know the truth than to live in falsehood and in a child’s world of pretence.