Little Essays of Love and Virtue | Page 5

beforehand, even
while still in complete ignorance of the matter, that there could not fail
to be frequently a sexual tinge in the affection of a father for his
daughter, of a mother for her son, of a son for his mother, or a daughter
for her father. Needless to say, that does not mean that there is present
any physical desire of sex in the narrow sense; that would be a
perversity, and a rare perversity. We are here on another plane than that
of crude physical desire, and are moving within the sphere of the
emotions. But such emotions are often strong, and all the stronger
because conscious of their own absolute rectitude and often masked
under the shape of Duty. Yet when prolonged beyond the age of
childhood they tend to become a clog on development, and a hindrance
to a wholesome life. The child who cherishes such emotion is likely to
suffer infantile arrest of development, and the parent who is so selfish
as to continue to expend such tenderness on a child who has passed the
age of childhood, or to demand it, is guilty of a serious offence against
that child.
That the intimate family life which sometimes resulted--especially
when, as frequently happened, the seeming mutual devotion was also
real--might often be regarded as beautiful and almost ideal, it has been
customary to repeat with an emphasis that in the end has even become
nauseous. For it was usually overlooked that the self-centred and
enclosed family, even when the mutual affection of its members was
real enough to bear all examination, could scarcely be more than
partially beautiful, and could never be ideal. For the family only
represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's
functions and activities. He cannot, she cannot, be divorced from the
life of the social group, and a life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse,
only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as
the family relationship. When the family claims to prevent the free
association of an adult member of it with the larger social organisation,

it is claiming that the part is greater than the whole, and such a claim
cannot fail to be morbid and mischievous.
The old-world method of treating children, we know, has long ago been
displaced as containing an element of harsh tyranny. But it was not
perceived, and it seems indeed not even yet to be generally recognised,
that the system which replaced it, and is only now beginning to pass
away, involved another and more subtle tyranny, the more potent
because not seemingly harsh. Parents no longer whipped their children
even when grown up, or put them in seclusion, or exercised physical
force upon them after they had passed childhood. They felt that that
would not be in harmony with the social customs of a world in which
ancient feudal notions were dead. But they merely replaced the external
compulsion by an internal compulsion which was much more effective.
It was based on the moral assumption of claims and duties which were
rarely formulated because parents found it quite easy and pleasant to
avoid formulating them, and children, on the rare occasions when they
formulated them, usually felt a sense of guilt in challenging their
validity. It was in the nineteenth century that this state of things
reached its full development. The sons of the family were usually able,
as they grew up, to escape and elude it, although they thereby often
created an undesirable divorce from the home, and often suffered, as
well as inflicted, much pain in tearing themselves loose from the
spiritual bonds--especially perhaps in matters of religion--woven by
long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was on the daughters that
the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed, there was often the
possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that of marriage. But such
escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for a large number.
During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in
invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the reticences and the
duties and the subserviences that their parents silently demanded of
them, that we can never know all the tragedies that took place. In
exceptional cases, indeed, they gave a sign. When they possessed
unusual power of intellect, or unusual power of character and will, they
succeeded in breaking loose from their cages, or at least in giving
expression to themselves. This is seen in the stories of nearly all the
women eminent in life and literature during the nineteenth century,

from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft onwards. The Brontës, almost,
yet not quite, strangled by the fetters placed upon them by their stern
and narrow-minded father, and