Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/133

Woman's Rôle in the Sex Relations. As has been stated, the male plays the aggressive, and the female the passive, rôle. By "passive," let us reiterate, it is not meant that woman's normal sexual life is without feeling or expression. Quite the contrary, her sexual feeling and sensibility are as deep and profound as in man, but of a different kind, not so conspicuously aggressive, and passive, therefore, in a relative sense.

There are important physiological reasons for the relatively passive rôle of the female, which implies not only the fact that she is less aggressive than the male, but also that she is intuitively reserved and hesitant leading up to the sexual relations.

This attitude includes a natural defensive armor of coyness, indirectness and a tendency to delay the consummation of the sexual act. It is paralleled in the period of courtship in the comparative reserve of the female. Even when a woman is anxious to receive the love of a man, her method—if she follows the normal feminine course—is that of convincing him that she is rather indifferent and has to be won.

Of course, the rôle of the female, even more so than that of the male, is considerably swerved from its "natural" bent under the influences of modern civilization. This is due to the artificial character of our social fabric in general, and to the many incidental factors that affect our lives in considering matrimony.

The principal artificial factor is undoubtedly the economic motive, particularly on the part of parents in their anxiety to see that their daughters "marry well"—usually meaning marrying a man with money, with the assurance of social position, rather than marrying primarily for the sake of love. Mercenary incentives in marriage are not infrequent and further complicate a complex problem.