bride’s mother the night before, or the morning of the day itself, it would be difficult with the utmost deliberation and skill better to ensure absolute repulsion and horror on the part of the bride.  I think that any man who would consider this from the bride’s point of view would see that she need not necessarily be cold or unresponsive because, in such circumstances, she needs rest and consideration more than passion.  But I wish men could know a little more than this, and understand that to enforce physical union when a woman’s psychical and emotional nature does not desire it, is definitely and physically cruel.  Woman is not a passive instrument, and to treat her as such is to injure her.

Perhaps I may be forgiven for labouring this point because, in fact, misunderstanding here is so disastrous.  Marriage, after all, is a relation into which the question of physical union enters, and if there is no equality of desire, marriage will be much less than it might be.  Women are—­idiotically—­taught to believe that passion is a characteristic of the depraved woman and of the normal man, who is shown by this fact to be on a lower spiritual level than (normal) woman.  This senseless pride in what is merely a defect of temperament where it exists has poisoned the marital relations of many men and women, and has led women into marrying when they were temperamentally unfitted for such a relation, and quite unable to make anyone happy in it.  Nor ought they to be too much blamed, since they are often unaware of what they ought to be prepared to give in marriage and firmly convinced that their preposterous ignorance is in some inexplicable way a virtue.  Why it should be admirable, or even commonly honest, to undertake duties of whose nature you are ignorant, neither men nor women seem ever to have decided, and the illusion is beginning to pass.  But it is still not understood that the woman who is not temperamentally asexual may easily be made so by being forced when she is not ready, and physically hurt when a little patience and tenderness would have saved her.  Forel, Havelock, Ellis and others have insisted on this, but their books are unfortunately not easily accessible to the general public; and something may be added to the more widely read productions of Dr. Stopes.[H] Not only the physiological but the psychological side of the problem has to be considered, and it would be hard to decide which is the more important or which the vera causa of the other’s reaction.  Scientists may perhaps tell us some day:  here I want only to point out that there is a spiritual factor in the case which needs at least to be recognized.

[Footnote H:  Married Love, Wise Parenthood, and Radiant Motherhood.  By Marie Carmichael Stopes.]