Love's Coming-of-age: A Series of Papers on the Relations of the SexesLabour Press, 1896 - 168 pages This advocate of women's liberation and equality between the sexes elaborates on the oppression of women in marriage. |
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Common terms and phrases
actual affection alliance animal Aphrodite artificial asceticism beautiful become body certainly child civilisation common course customs desire developed Divorce Courts Djahid doubt egoism emotional evolution existence experience fact feeling female freedom function future girl give group-marriage hand HARVARD COLLEGE Havelock Ellis heart human husband ideal important instinct institution interests jealousy kind labor less lives look lovers male man's marriage married mate maternal maternal instinct matter means mind modern Monogamic moral nature needs never object passion peccary perfect perhaps physical physical plane pistil pleasure polyandry Polygamy possible pretty primitive probably prostitute race realisation recognise relation rude record self-control sense sentiment serf serfdom sex-passion sex-relations sexual sexual intercourse sexual selection society soul speak spermatozoa spiritual stamens suppose tendency tender things thought to-day unclean understand union Upanishad whole wife women worship youth
Popular passages
Page 73 - ... drag it from its sanctuary into the light of the common gaze. Compared with this, the actual marriage, in its squalid perversity as we too often have occasion of knowing it, is as the wretched idol of the savage to the reality which it is supposed to represent ; and one seems to hear the Aristophanic laughter of the gods as they contemplate man's little clay image of the Heavenly Love — which, cracked in the fire of daily life, he is fain to bind together with rusty hoops of law, and parchment...
Page 163 - Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to — though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him — he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations.
Page 8 - He is indeed a master of life who, accepting the grosser desires as they come to his body, and not refusing them, knows how to transform them at will into the most rare and fragrant flowers of human emotion." Beyond its functions in building up character, in heightening and ennobling the erotic life, and in subserving the adequate fulfilment of family and social duties, chastity has a more special value for those who cultivate the arts. We may not always be inclined to believe the writers who have...
Page 168 - She gave him comprehension of the meaning of love : a word in many mouths, not often explained. With her, wound in his idea of her, he perceived it to signify a new start in our existence, a finer shoot of the tree stoutly planted in good gross earth; the senses running their live sap, and the minds companioned, and the spirits made one by the whole-natured conjunction. In sooth, a happy prospect for the sons and daughters of Earth, divinely indicating more than happiness : the speeding of us, compact...
Page 87 - ... deux. And right enough no doubt as a great number of such unions actually are, it must be confessed that the bourgeois marriage as a rule, and just in its most successful and pious and respectable form, carries with it an odious sense of Stuffiness and narrowness, moral and intellectual ; and that the type of Family which it provides is too often like that which is disclosed when on turning over a large stone we disturb an insect Home that seldom sees the light.
Page 61 - There is no solution which will not include the redemption of the terms "free woman" and "free love" to their true and rightful significance. Let every woman whose heart bleeds for the sufferings of her sex, hasten to declare herself and to constitute herself, as far as she possibly can, a free woman. Let her accept the term with all the odium that belongs to it ; let her insist on her right to speak, dress, think, act, and above all to use her sex, as she deems best ; let her face the scorn and...
Page 155 - IT was not without much anxiety that I took the first step on the road I intended to explore alone. Chance favoured me. I was in Java, and amongst my servants was a dressmaker, married to the groom. This woman had a dear little baby with a velvety brown skin and bright black eyes, the admiration of my little daughter, whom I took with me to see mother and child, when the baby was a few days old. While she admired and petted it wonderingly, I said to her : ' This pretty little baby came out of Djahid...
Page 160 - But this conception is, as we have seen, no longer possible. It is clearly unfair also to compel the mother to depend on her own previous exertions. The reproduction of the race is a social function, and we are compelled to conclude that it is the duty of the community, as a community, to provide for the child-bearer when in the exercise of her social function she is unable to provide for herself.
Page 107 - ... of his heart, make promises and give pledges, it is really almost inconceivable that anyone having that delicate and proud sense which marks deep feeling, could possibly demand a promise from his loved one. As there is undoubtedly a certain natural reticence in sex, so perhaps the most decent thing in true marriage would be to say nothing, make no promises — either for a year or a lifetime. Promises are bad at any time, and when the heart is full silence befits it best. Practically, however,...
Page 109 - Appendix. constituted society, that the old blunderbuss of the Law should interfere in the delicate relations of wedded life. As it is to-day the situation is most absurd. On the one hand, having been constituted from times back in favor of the male, the Law still gives to the husband barbarous rights over the person of his spouse ; on the other hand, to compensate for this, it rushes in with the farcicalities of Breach of Promise ; and in any case, having once pronounced its benediction over a pair...