Marriage as a Trade | Page 4

from his point of view, decided that she was
flesh without a soul, and to be treated accordingly; the troubadour
seems to have found in her a spiritual incentive to aspiration in deed
and song. The early Fathers of the Church, who were in the habit of
giving troubled and nervous consideration to the subject, denounced
her, at spasmodic intervals, as sin personified. What the modern man
understands by woman I have already explained ; and he further
expects his theory to materialize and embody itself in a being who
combines the divergent qualities of an inspiration and a good general
servant. He is often disappointed.
All these are rule of thumb definitions, based on insufficient knowledge
and inquiry, which, each in its turn, has been accepted, acted upon, and
found wanting. Each of the generations and classes mentioned -- and
many more beside -- has worked out its own theory of woman's orbit
(round man); and has subsequently found itself in the position of the
painstaking astronomer who, after having mapped the pathway of a
newly-discovered heavenly body to his own satisfaction, suddenly
finds his calculations upset, and the heavenly body swerving off
through space towards some hitherto unexpected centre of attraction.
The theory of the early Fathers was upset before it was enunciated --
for sin personified had wept at the foot of the Cross, and men adored
her for it. The modern angel with the cookery-book under her wing has
expressed an open and pronounced dislike to domestic service, and
cheerfully discards her wings to fight her way into the liberal

professions. And those who hold fast to the Nietzschean theory that
motherhood is the secret and justification of woman's existence, must
be somewhat bewildered by latter-day episcopal lamentations over the
unwillingness of woman to undergo the pains and penalties of
childbirth, and by the reported intention of an American State
Legislature to stimulate a declining birth-rate by the payment of one
dollar for each child born. One feels that the strength of an instinct that
has, in an appreciable number of cases, to be stimulated by the offer of
four shillings and twopence must have been somewhat overestimated.
No wonder woman is a mystery in her unreliability; she has broken
every law of her existence, and does so day by day.
As a matter of fact, the various explanations which have been given for
woman's existence can be narrowed down to two -- her husband and
her child. Male humanity has wobbled between two convictions -- the
one, that she exists for the entire benefit of contemporary mankind; the
other, that she exists for the entire benefit of the next generation. The
latter is at present the favourite. One consideration only male humanity
has firmly refused to entertain -- that she exists in any degree
whatsoever for the benefit of herself. In consequence, woman is the one
animal from whom he demands that it shall deviate from, and act in
defiance of, the first law of nature -- self-preservation.
It seems baldly ridiculous, of course, to state in so many words the that
first and iron law applies to women as well as to men, birds, and beetles.
No one in cold blood or cold ink would contradict the obvious
statement; but all the same, I maintain that I am perfectly justified in
asserting that the average man does mentally and unconsciously except
the mass of women from the workings of that universal law.
To give a simple and familiar instance. Year by year there crops up in
the daily newspapers a grumbling and sometimes acrid correspondence
on the subject of the incursion of women into a paid labour market
formerly monopolized by their brothers. (The unpaid labour market, of
course, has always been open to them.) The tone taken by the objector
is instructive and always the same. It is pointed out to us that we are
working for less than a fair wage; that we are taking the bread out of

the mouths of men; that we are filching the earnings of a possible
husband and thereby lessening, or totally destroying, our chances of
matrimony.
The first objection is, of course, legitimate, and is shared by the women
to whom it applies; from the others one can only infer that it is an
impertinence in a woman to be hungry, and that, in the opinion of a
large number of persons who write to the newspapers, the human
female is a creature capable of living on air and the hopes of a possible
husband. The principle that it is impolite to mention a certain organ of
the body which requires to be replenished two or three times a day is,
in the case of a woman, carried so far that it is considered impolite of
her