Woman and Womanhood

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Woman and Womanhood, by C. W. Saleeby

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Title: Woman and Womanhood A Search for Principles
Author: C. W. Saleeby
Release Date: November 17, 2006 [EBook #19848]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD
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BY DR. C. W. SALEEBY
WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD HEALTH, STRENGTH AND HAPPINESS THE CYCLE OF LIFE EVOLUTION: THE MASTER KEY WORRY: THE DISEASE OF THE AGE THE CONQUEST OF CANCER: A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN PARENTHOOD AND RACE CULTURE
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WOMAN AND WOMANHOOD
A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES
by C. W. SALEEBY M.D., F.R.S.E., Ch.B., F.Z.S.
Fellow of the Obstetrical Society of Edinburgh and formerly Resident Physician Edinburgh Maternity Hospital; Vice-President Divorce Law Reform Union; Member of the Royal Institution and of Council of the Sociological Society.
MITCHELL KENNERLEY NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXI
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Copyright 1911 by Mitchell Kennerley
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co. East Twenty-fourth Street New York
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CONTENTS
PAGE I. FIRST PRINCIPLES 1 II. THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME 34 III. THE PURPOSE OF WOMANHOOD 52 IV. THE LAW OF CONSERVATION 64 V. THE DETERMINATION OF SEX 72 VI. MENDELISM AND WOMANHOOD 81 VII. BEFORE WOMANHOOD 92 VIII. THE PHYSICAL TRAINING OF GIRLS 99 IX. THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN 128 X. THE PRICE OF PRUDERY 132 XI. EDUCATION FOR MOTHERHOOD 151 XII. THE MATERNAL INSTINCT 163 XIII. CHOOSING THE FATHERS OF THE FUTURE 193 XIV. THE MARRIAGE AGE FOR GIRLS 197 XV. THE FIRST NECESSITY 219 XVI. ON CHOOSING A HUSBAND 234 XVII. THE CONDITIONS OF MARRIAGE 258 XVIII. THE CONDITIONS OF DIVORCE 291 XIX. THE RIGHTS OF MOTHERS 296 XX. WOMEN AND ECONOMICS 327 XXI. THE CHIEF ENEMY OF WOMEN 348 XXII. CONCLUSION 386
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CHAPTER I
FIRST PRINCIPLES
We are often and rightly reminded that woman is half the human race. It is truer even than it appears. Not only is woman half of the present generation, but present woman is half of all the generations of men and women to come. The argument of this book, which will be regarded as reactionary by many women called "advanced"--presumably as doctors say that a case of consumption is "advanced"--involves nothing other than adequate recognition of the importance of woman in the most important of all matters. It is true that my primary concern has been to furnish, for the individual woman and for those in charge of girlhood, a guide of life based upon the known physiology of sex. But it is a poor guide of life which considers only the transient individual, and poorest of all in this very case.
If it were true that woman is merely the vessel and custodian of the future lives of men and women, entrusted to her ante-natal care by their fathers, as many creeds have supposed, then indeed it would be a question of relatively small moment how the mothers of the future were chosen. Our ingenious devices for ensuring the supremacy of man lend colour to this idea. We name children after their fathers, and the fact that they are also to some extent of the maternal stock is obscured.
But when we ask to what extent they are also of maternal stock, we find that there is a rigorous equality between the sexes in this matter. It is a fact which has been ignored or inadequately recognized by every feminist and by every eugenist from Plato until the present time. Salient qualities, whether good or ill, are more commonly displayed by men than by women. Great strength or physical courage or endurance, great ability or genius, together with a variety of abnormalities, are much more commonly found in men than in women, and the eugenic emphasis has therefore always been laid upon the choice of fathers rather than of mothers. Not so long ago, the scion of a noble race must marry, not at all necessarily the daughter of another noble race, but rather any young healthy woman who promised to be able to bear children easily and suckle them long. But directly we observe, under the microscope, the facts of development, we discover that each parent contributes an exactly equal share to the making of the new individual, and all the ancient and modern ideas of the superior value of well-selected fatherhood fall to the ground. Woman is indeed half the race. In virtue of expectant motherhood and her ante-natal nurture of us all, she might well claim to be more, but she is half at least.
And thus it matters for the future at least