She Stands Accused | Page 7

Miss Tennyson Jesse, Mr Leonard R. Gribble,

and others of his estimable fellows seem to have swiped all the sole and
salmon. It may be a matter for envy that Mr Roughead, with his
uncanny skill and his gift in piquant sauces, can turn out the haddock
and hake with all the delectability of sole a la Normande. The sigh of
envy will merge into an exhalation of joy over the artistry of it. And
one may turn, wholeheartedly and inspired, to see what can be made of
one's own catch of gudgeon.

% III
``More deadly than the male.''
Kipling's line about the female of the species has been quoted,
particularly as a text for dissertation on the female criminal, perhaps
rather too often. There is always a temptation to use the easy gambit.
It is quite probable that there are moments in a woman's life when she
does become more deadly than the male. The probability is one which
no man of age and experience will lack instance for making a fact.
Without seeking to become profound in the matter I will say this: it is
but lightly as compared with a man that one need scratch a woman to
come on the natural creature.
Now, your natural creature, not inhibited by reason, lives by theft,
murder, and dissimulation. It lives, even as regards the male, but for
one purpose: to continue its species. Enrage a woman, then, or frighten
her into the natural creature, and she will discard all those petty rules
invented by the human male for his advantage over, and his safety from,
the less disciplined members of the species. All that stuff about
`honour,' `Queensberry rules,' `playing the game,' and what not will go
by the board. And she will fight you with tooth and talon, with lies,
with blows below the belt--metaphorically, of course.
It may well be that you have done nothing more than hurt her pride--the
civilized part of her. But instinctively she will fight you as the mother
animal, either potentially or in being. It will not occur to her that she is
doing so. Nor will it occur to you. But the fact that she is fighting at all
will bring it about, for fighting to any female animal means defence of
her young. She may not have any young in being. That does not affect
the case. She will fight for the ova she carries, for the ova she has yet to
develop. Beyond all reason, deep, instinct deep, within her she is the
carrier of the race. This instinct is so profound that she will have no

recollection in a crisis of the myriads of her like, but will think of
herself as the race's one chance to persist. Dangerous? Of course she's
dangerous--as dangerous as Nature! Just as dangerous, just as
self-centred, as in its small way is that vegetative organism the volvox,
which, when food is scarce and the race is threatened, against possible
need of insemination, creates separate husband cells to starve in
clusters, while `she' hogs all the food-supply for the production of eggs.
This small flight into biology is made merely for the dim light it may
cast on the Kipling half-truth. It is not made to explain why women
criminals are more deadly, more cruel, more deeply lost in turpitude,
than their male colleagues. But it may help to explain why so many
crime-writers, following Lombroso, THINK the female more deadly.
There is something so deeply shocking in the idea of a woman being
other than kind and good, something so antagonistic to the smug
conception of Eve as the ``minist'ring angel, thou,'' that leaps to
extremes in expression are easy.
A drunken woman, however, and for example, is not essentially more
degraded than a drunken man. This in spite of popular belief. A
nymphomaniac is not essentially more degraded than a
brothel-haunting male. It may be true that moral sense decays more
quickly in a woman than in a man, that the sex-ridden or drink-avid
woman touches the deeps of degradation more quickly, but the reasons
for this are patent. They are economic reasons usually, and physical,
and not adherent to any inevitably weaker moral fibre in the woman.
Women as a rule have less command of money than men. If they earn
what they spend they generally have to seek their satisfactions cheaply;
and, of course, since their powers of resistance to the debilitating
effects of alcohol are commonly less than those of men, they more
readily lose physical tone. With loss of health goes loss of earning
power, loss of caste. The descent, in general, must be quicker. It is
much the same in nymphomania. Unless the sex-avid woman has a
decent income, such as will provide her with