The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎628r] (146/239)

THE DUEL OF THE SEXES.
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divergence in development among this complex sex ; and in both
directions they seem to create almost equal horror !
On the one hand we find the shrinking from the maternal func
tion in varying degrees of intensity; on the other a desperate
and overwhelming desire for it, quite regardless of the proprieties.
If some strange facts of history were more generally known, 1
the methods of reward and threat and savage punishment re
sorted to among almost every people of the world in order to
persuade and force women to their “ divine mission,” there would
be less surprise at this painful obsession in unapproved circum
stances. Since the numbers of the sexes are not equal, many
women must remain unmarried, and the suffering that often arises
from this cause is piteous. Brought up, as a rule, with the sole
idea of marriage and the domestic life, they have few resources
and their existence becomes a struggle between instinct and prin
ciple, or settles down into a state of hopeless endurance. Escape
for a woman of this type there is none, for she will not satisfy
her desire for the duties of motherhood by adopting and caring for
the children of others. No, other people’s children have not
caused her unspeakable agony, have not perchance broken her
health, her nerves, and perhaps her heart. Therefore—so says
this strange instinct—they cannot claim the devotion of her long
ing heart, be their helplessness and their need ever so pitiful!
This blind animal feeling we are taught to call holy, and supremely
unselfish! Yet this very sentiment in a stepmother actually
prompts to hardness and injustice towards those children in her
power who do not happen to be compounded of her own flesh and
blood! Such a woman, not really fit to bring up a canary, is
thought a suitable educator for a family of human creatures, who
are destined, in their different degrees, to be makers of the world !
It is preposterous to claim for such an impulse a place among the
higher affections. The world is miserable and tormented because
its inhabitants are all more or less like the orthodox mother—who
has no tenderness but for her own.
It is surely time for a little plain-speaking on this subject,
especially at a moment when w'e seem to be threatened by a move
ment of thought that w T ould drive the developing race back upon
mere instinct, just when it seemed to be on the eve of rising
to the level of a more human sentiment.
2 A writer The lowest of the four classes into which East India Company civil servants were divided. A Writer’s duties originally consisted mostly of copying documents and book-keeping. in the Revue des Idees on ” Les Origines de 1’Amour
Maternel,” is even inclined to deny, in the case of animals, any
real attachment of the mother to the young, the attraction—one
(1) Ellis Ethelmer, in a small volume entitled Woman Free, has collected ex
traordinary instances. (To be obtained from Mrs. Elmy Congleton, Cheshire.)
(2) M. Alfred Giard, de Vlnstitut Revue des Idees, April 15, 1905
i 2