Marriage and Morals/Chapter XI

So long as the virtue of respectable women is regarded as a matter of great importance, the institution of marriage has to be supplemented by another institution which may really be regarded as a part of it—I mean the institution of prostitution. Everybody is familiar with the famous passage in which Lecky speaks of prostitutes as safeguards of the sanctity of the home, and of the innocence of our wives and daughters. The sentiment is Victorian, and the manner of expression is old-fashioned, but the fact is undeniable. Moralists have denounced Lecky because his remark made them feel furious and they did not quite know why, but they have not succeeded in showing that what he said was untrue. The moralist asserts, of course quite truly, that if men followed his teaching there would be no prostitution, but he knows quite well that they will not follow it, so that the consideration of what would happen if they did is irrelevant.

​The need for prostitution arises from the fact that many men are either unmarried or away from their wives on journeys, that such men are not content to remain continent, and that in a conventionally virtuous community they do not find respectable women available. Society therefore sets apart a certain class of women for the satisfaction of those masculine needs which it is ashamed to acknowledge yet afraid to leave wholly unsatisfied. The prostitute has the advantage, not only that she is available at a moment’s notice, but that, having no life outside her profession, she can remain hidden without difficulty, and the man who has been with her can return to his wife, his family, and his church with unimpaired dignity. She, however, poor woman, in spite of the undoubted service she performs, in spite of the fact that she safeguards the virtues of wives and daughters and the apparent virtue of churchwardens, is universally despised, thought to be an outcast, and not allowed to associate with ordinary people except in the way of business. This blazing injustice began with the victory of the Christian religion, and has been continued ever since. The real offence of the prostitute is that she shows up the ​hollowness of moralistic professions. Like the thoughts repressed by the Freudian censor, she must be banished into the unconscious. Thence, however, as such exiles will, she wreaks an unintended vengeance.

Prostitution was not always the despised and hidden thing that it has become. Its origin, indeed, is as lofty as could be. Originally the prostitute was a priestess dedicated to a god or a goddess, and in serving the passing stranger she was performing an act of worship. In those days she was treated with respect, and while men used her they honoured her. The Christian Fathers filled many pages with invectives against this system, which, they said, showed the lasciviousness of the Pagan worship, and its origin in the wiles of Satan. The temples were closed. and prostitution became everywhere what it had already become in many places, a commercialized institution run for profit—not, of course, for the profit of the prostitutes, but of those whose virtual slaves they were, for until fairly recent times the in​dividual prostitute, who is now the rule, was a rare exception, and the great majority were in brothels or baths or other institutions of ill-fame. In India the transition from religious to commercial prostitution is not yet quite complete. Katherine Mayo, the author of “Mother India,” adduces the survival of religious prostitution as one of the counts of her indictment against that country.

Prostitution, except in South America,^[1] appears to be on the decline, partly, no doubt, owing to the fact that other means of livelihood are more available to women than they used to be, and partly also to the fact that many more women than used to be the case are now willing to have extra-marital relations with men, from inclination and not from commercial motives. Nevertheless I do not think that prostitution can be abolished wholly. Take, for example, sailors when they come ashore after a long voyage. They cannot be expected to have the patience to woo women who will only come to them out of affection. Or take again the fairly large class of men who are unhappy in marriage and afraid of their wives. Such men will seek ease and release when they are ​away from home, and will desire it in a form as free from psychological obligations as possible. There are, nevertheless, serious reasons for wishing to reduce prostitution to a minimum. It is open to three grave objections. First, the danger to the health of the community; second, the psychological damage to women; and third, the psychological damage to men.

The danger to health is the most important of these three. It is, of course, mainly through prostitutes that venereal disease is spread. The attempts to cope with this problem by registration of prostitutes and State inspection have not been found very successful from a purely medical point of view, and are liable to unpleasant abuses because of the hold which they give to the police over prostitutes, and even on occasion over women who had no intention of becoming professional prostitutes but have found themselves unintentionally included within the legal definition. Venereal disease could, of course, be coped with much more effectively than it is, if it were not regarded as a just punishment for sin. It is possible to take precautions in advance which much diminish the likelihood of it, but it is thought ​undesirable to make the nature of these precautions widely known, on the ground that such knowledge might promote sin. And those who acquire a venereal disease often postpone treatment because they are ashamed, any disease of this sort being considered disgraceful. The attitude of the community in these respects is undoubtedly better than it used to be, and if it improves still further, the result may be a very considerable diminution of venereal disease. Nevertheless it is obvious that prostitution, so long as it exists, will afford a means of spreading disease more dangerous than any other.

Prostitution as it exists at present is obviously an undesirable kind of life. The risk of disease in itself renders prostitution a dangerous trade, like working in white lead, but apart from that the life is a demoralizing one. It is idle, and tends to excessive drinking. It has the grave drawback that the prostitute is generally despised, and is probably thought ill of even by her clients. It is a life against instinct—quite as much against instinct as the life of a nun. For all these reasons prostitution, as it exists in Christian countries, is an extraordinarily undesirable career.

​In Japan, apparently, the matter is quite otherwise. Prostitution is recognized and respected as a career, and is even adopted at the instance of parents. It is often a not uncommon method of earning a marriage dowry. According to some authorities, the Japanese have a partial immunity from syphilis. Accordingly the career of a prostitute in Japan has not the sordidness that it has where morality is more stern. Clearly, if prostitution must survive, it is better that it should exist in the Japanese form than in that to which we are accustomed in Europe. It is obvious that the more strict the standard of morality in any country, the more degradation will attach to the life of a prostitute.

Association with prostitutes, if it becomes at all habitual, is likely to have a bad psychological effect upon a man. He will get into the habit of feeling that it is not necessary to please in order to have sexual intercourse. He will also, if he respects the usual moral code, tend to feel contempt for any woman with whom he has intercourse. The reaction of this state of mind upon marriage may be extraordinarily unfortunate, both where it takes the form of assimilating marriage to prostitution, and ​where it takes the opposite form of differentiating it as widely as possible. Some men are incapable of desiring sexual intercourse with a woman whom they deeply love and respect. This is attributed by Freudians to the Oedipus complex, but is, I think, quite as often due to the desire to place as wide a gulf as possible between such women and prostitutes. Without going to such extreme lengths, many men, especially old-fashioned men, treat their wives with an exaggerated respect, which leaves them psychologically virginal, and prevents them from experiencing sexual pleasure. Exactly the opposite evils result when a man in imagination assimilates his wife to a prostitute. This leads him to forget that sexual intercourse should occur only when both desire it, and that it should be approached invariably by a period of courtship. He is accordingly rough and brutal with his wife, and produces in her a disgust which it is very difficult to eradicate.

The intrusion of the economic motive into sex is always in a greater or less degree disastrous. Sexual relations should be a mutual delight, entered into solely from the spontaneous impulse of both parties. Where this is ​not the case, everything that is valuable is absent. To use another person in so intimate a manner is to be lacking in that respect for the human being as such, out of which all true morality must spring. To a sensitive person, such an act cannot be in any serious way attractive. If, nevertheless, it is performed from the sheer strength of the physical urge, it is likely to lead to remorse, and in remorse a man’s judgments of value are disordered. This applies, of course, not only to prostitution, but almost as much to marriage. Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially of respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires. It is because prostitution sins against this principle that it would remain undesirable even if prostitutes were respected and the risk of venereal disease were eliminated.

Havelock Ellis, in his very interesting study of prostitution, advances an argument in its favour which I do not believe to be valid. He ​begins by a consideration of the orgy, which exists in most early civilizations, and affords an outlet for anarchic impulses which at other times have to be controlled. According to him, prostitution developed out of the orgy, and serves in some degree the purpose which the orgy formerly served. Many men, he says, cannot find complete satisfaction within the restraints, the decorum, and the decent limitations of a conventional marriage, and such men, he thinks, find in an occasional visit to a prostitute an outlet less anti-social than any other that is open to them. At bottom, however, this argument is the same as Lecky’s, although its form is more modern. Women whose sexual life is uninhibited are as liable as men to the impulses which Havelock Ellis is considering, and if the sexual life of women is liberated, men will be able to find satisfaction for the impulses concerned, without having to seek the company of professionals whose motive is purely pecuniary. This is indeed one of the great advantages to be hoped from the sexual liberation of women. As far as I have been able to observe, women whose opinions and feelings about sex are not subject to the old taboos are able to find and give much fuller ​satisfaction in marriage than was possible in Victorian days. Wherever the older morality has decayed, prostitution also has decayed. The young man who would formerly have been driven to occasional visits to prostitutes is now able to enter upon relations with girls of his own kind, relations which are on both sides free, which have a psychological element quite as important as the purely physical, and which involve often a considerable degree of passionate love on both sides. From the point of view of any genuine morality, this is an immense advance upon the older system. Moralists regret it because it is less easy to conceal, but it is after all not the first principle of morality that lapses from it should not come to the ears of the moralist. The new freedom between young people is, to my mind, wholly a matter of rejoicing, and is producing a generation of men without brutality and women without finicky fastidiousness. Those who oppose the new freedom should face frankly the fact that they are in effect advocating the continuance of prostitution as the sole safety valve against the pressure of an impossibly rigid code.