Cleveland Moffett

“ A woman is desperate and must confide in someone. She has lost her position and is struggling to find another. She craves innocent pleasure—music, the theatre, the dance. She is so horribly lonely. Help me, counsel me, she pleads to some man whom she trusts—any man, the average man. Does he help her? Yes, on one condition, that she use her power as a woman. Not otherwise. This is a great mystery to women—how men, who are naturally kind, can be so cruel, so persistent, so infernally clever in forcing women to use their power for their own undoing. ”

“ We must establish the right love-connections. We must set the love-current flowing, and keep it flowing, from God to us and from us back to God; and this can be done only by confessing our sins, by cleansing our hearts of evil thoughts and desires. Not even God Himself can make the sun shine upon those who wilfully hide in the shadows!
I saw that they were listening impatiently and more than once Roberta tried to interrupt me, but I persisted and said what I had to say as well as I could, with all the love in my heart, for I knew that my precious Penelope's fate was hanging in the balance. ”

“ SHALL A WIFE FORGIVE HER HUSBAND FOR UNFAITHFULNESS?
I have thought deeply about this, remembering what I suffered with Julian. It is terribly hard to tell the truth; a woman is filled with shame for herself and for her whole sex when she tries to tell the truth about the unfaithfulness of husbands.
How long shall a wife forgive? How much shall she deliberately ignore?
Many women say: “I would never forgive my husband if he deceived me.” Others say: “I would never forgive my husband if I knew that he had deceived me.” ”

“ Everywhere the old standards of decency and honor had been set aside, greed and lust were rampant, the whole human race seemed to be swept as with a mighty tide, by three fierce desires—for money, for pleasure, for sensuality. And God had been forgotten!
I, who know how hideously true this is, tried to show these women why it is true, especially Penelope, whose eyes were burning dangerously, but they were not interested in my moralizing. “Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” mocked Margaret G——, emptying her glass, and Roberta joined her, while Penelope hesitated. ”

“ The truth is that the attraction which draws a man and a woman together in what they call platonic friendship always has something of the physical in it—on one side or the other. Or on both sides. Women will not admit this, but it is true. They talk about the intellectual bond that joins them to a man—what a precious interchange of thoughts! Or the spiritual bond—such a soulful and inspiring companionship—nothing else, my dear! I used to talk that way myself about Jimsy Brooks before my husband died. ”

“ I suppose some women would take it all simply, like a grateful patient cured of an illness. Alas! that is not my nature.
∵
How little we know ourselves! We all wear masks of one kind or another that hide our true personalities even from ourselves. How will a woman act in sudden peril? In a moral crisis? In the face of shattering disgrace? Let the most beautiful wife and mother realize that some painful chapter in her life is to be opened to the world—what price will she not pay to avert this scandal? ”

“ THE MIRACLE (From Penelope's Diary) Lourdes. A Week Later.
Today, with a multitude of the afflicted, I bathed in the piscine, a long trough filled with holy water from the grotto. The water was cold and not very clean (for hours it had received bodies carrying every disease known to man) , but as I lay there, wrapped in a soaking apron and immersed to the head, I felt an indescribable peace possessing my soul. Was it the two priests who held my hands and encouraged me with kindly eyes? Was it the shouts and rejoicings, the continual prayers of pilgrims all about me? ”

“ She wanted to dance, to enjoy the society of men—their intimate society. That brings us to the oldest and most resistless force in the world, a blessed force, a God-given force upon which all life depends—you know what I mean. And how do we deal with this most formidable of forces? Are we grateful for it? Do we acknowledge its irresistible supremacy? No! We deal with it by pretending that it doesn't exist. We say to Friend Dora that, being unmarried, she has nothing whatever to do with sex attraction, except to forget it. ”

“ Leroy's when the evil cloud was lifted from my soul and I knew and remembered—everything!
I have never heard from Seraphine. They do not even know where I am, they must not know—that is part of my plan, but it is frightfully hard. I pray for strength to be reconciled to my life of loneliness and to find comfort in good works; but the strength has not come to me. Every day I think of Christopher and the separation from him grows harder and harder. Life is not worth living. ”

“ To any tortured wife who knows or half knows certain things about her husband, I say this—“Dear friend, as long as you love him, forgive him. As long as he loves you, forgive him. Be patient—enduring. Make the hard fight against sensuality with your husband, but don't let him know you are making it. Make this fight exactly as you would a similar fight against alcohol or drugs.”
A woman must be on her guard, however, lest she hide under a cloak of forgiveness, some base motive in her own heart. Alas! I know, better than anyone, how easily we women can deceive ourselves. ”

“ The editor of a popular magazine told me once about a prize contest that they had for the best essay on a woman's sex solidarity union—they called it the W.S.S.U. The idea was that if women would stand together against men they could get anything in the world they wanted—equal rights and privileges, equal wages, fair treatment in every department of life; and do away with evils of ignorance and poverty, child labor evils, prostitution evils. We could have an ideal world if women, using their sex power, would only stand together against men. ”

“ And poor, weak human nature! Katherine! And all our good resolutions!”
Pen's eyes teased her lover with a gay diablerie as she slowly emptied her glass, and Herrick's heart quickened at the realization that this beautiful woman belonged to him—she belonged to him. At the same time he was conscious of a vague uneasiness under the increasing allurement of her glances. Were there ever such eyes in the world? Was there ever such a woman? Adorable as a saint, dangerous as a siren! ”

“ If a woman cannot marry and will not have a lover, then she must stop all stimulation of her emotions, she must put men out of her thoughts, out of her life and concentrate on something worth while that will not harm her. Let her take up the purely intellectual life, some cultural effort—history, art, municipal reform, anything, and absorb herself in it. Or let her follow the old path that has led thousands of women to peace of mind—let her seek the comforts of religion.' Then smiling, he added: 'You might become a missionary, Pen, in China or Armenia. ”

“ She loves a man as I loved Christopher—as I love him still. She is proud, she has always been admired, she cannot bear the thought of being pitied. And suddenly she learns that she has disgraced herself, she has violated the sacred traditions of modesty that restrain all women. She has acted like an abandoned woman towards the man she worships. ”

“ I could not live without admiration, and other women are the same. They all have something that they are vain about—eyes, nose, mouth, voice, teeth, hair, complexion, hands, feet, figure—something that they are vain about. And what is vanity but a consciousness of power to attract men and make other women envious? There are only two efforts that the human race take seriously (after they have fed themselves) : the effort of women to attract men, the effort of men to capture women. ”

“ But not the men! The women have tried to live by love and prayer and unselfishness; they have said: 'God's will be done,' 'God will protect us'; and what is the result? How has God protected the women, who did believe? And how has He punished the men who refused to believe? He has made the men masters of the world, lords of everything; and He has kept the women in bondage, hasn't He?—in factory bondage, in nursery bondage, in prostitution bondage? ”

“ While the vast majority of women will agree that such feminine reticence about past wrong-doing is justifiable, the truth, as I have come to see it, is that, in so agreeing, women must subscribe to a creed of deliberate deception. A man marries a woman whom he believes to be virtuous, a woman whom he might refuse to marry if he knew that she were not virtuous. And this woman does nothing to disabuse him of his error. Is that right? She allows her husband to keep a certain good opinion of her that is not justified. ”

“ I also admit that the chances are against a husband's discovering such a transgression, if the wife keeps silent. It is apparently to the wife's advantage to keep silent; it apparently pays, in this case, to live a lie; but if deeper values are considered, if the sacredness of a woman's soul is taken into account, then a woman will see that she must confess, regardless of consequences. Alas, this is a very hard thing for the ordinary woman to do—the ordinary woman who is neither a saint on a stained glass window nor the heroine of a novel. ”

“ I do not think religion keeps women back very much from doing what they want to do or have resolved to do in love affairs. It is a comfort, an emotional satisfaction rather than a restraint. They come tripping in on their high heels with all their smiles and finery, and they trip out again, unchanged in their sentimental natures. A woman will go to church in the afternoon and flirt with another woman's husband in the evening. ”

“ I rejected the first solution for reasons already given and the second solution because of evidence all about me that one lover usually means two, three, half a dozen lovers, since men grow weary and change and women, in loneliness or desperation, change also. Never would I let myself sink to the degrading level of sex complaisance that is sadly or cynically accepted by many women, self-supporting and self-respecting, in many American cities, simply because they cannot combat conditions that have been created and perpetuated by the stronger sex. ”

“ There was a time when women prayed sincerely: “Lead us not into temptation”; now it seems as if they pray to be led into temptation, with just this reservation: that they may come out of it unscathed. Demi-vierges!
I have watched many attractive women treading the primrose path and I have seen that it always leads them to unhappiness. Not that they are disgraced or openly degraded—life goes on with many of them very much as before, but gradually their faces change, their souls change. ”

“ I know that sin and evil come chiefly from selfishness and sensuality. I can conquer selfishness by love. I can conquer sensuality by love. I can overcome all evil, all fear, all vanity, by love. There is no death, but the death of love. ”

“ And women yield on one pretense or another, smilingly or tearfully—how can they resist the dominant will of half the human race?
I find this in my diary heavily underscored:
“How can the same act be a sin for half the race and not a sin for the other half? For centuries men have proclaimed that women must not give themselves to men, but men may give themselves to women. Is there any greater absurdity? Wine may mix with water, but water must not mix with wine.”
If these sex-complaisant women were really filled with remorse, burdened with a sense of shame, we should all know it. ”

“ I know that right living comes only from right thinking. To do right under stress of law or custom while desiring to do wrong is to make a mockery of virtue. I must sincerely desire to do right. The forces of life-control must act from within me, not from without. From all hypocrisy and false pretense,
Dear Lord, deliver me.
[Pg 254]
V
I know that a woman cannot be virtuous if she longs for sensuality, or dallies with it, or dwells upon it in her thoughts, even though she refrain from any sinful act. ”

“ He told me also that a man can love his wife so sincerely that he would gladly die for her, yet, in a moment of temptation, he may be untrue to her. Julian was an impossible person, but other clean-minded men, including my dear Christopher, have told me the same thing.
The truth is that most men have never learned to resist sex temptation; they grow up with the knowledge that they need not resist temptation, which is the fault of society, as now organized, the fault of wrong teaching, of insincere preaching, of nation-wide hypocrisy. ”

“ The doctor wants to know about my married life, about my husband. Why was I unhappy? Why is any woman unhappy? Because her love is trampled on, degraded—the spiritual part of it unsatisfied. Women are made for love and without love life means nothing to them. Women are naturally finer than men, they aspire more strongly to what is beautiful and spiritual, but their souls can be coarsened, their love can be killed. They can be driven—they have been driven for centuries (through fear of men) into lies and deceits and sensuality or pretence of sensuality. ”

“ The truth is that women love pursuit and are easily reconciled to capture. Why else do they deck themselves out in finery, perfume themselves, bejewel themselves, flaunt their charms (including decolleté charms and alluring bathing suit charms) in every possible way? I do this myself—why? I have a supple figure and I dance without corsets, or rather with only a band to hold up my stockings. I wear low cut evening gowns, the most captivating I can afford. ”

“ Only the homely women would be loyal!
ARE WOMEN GREATER HYPOCRITES THAN MEN?
In all my troubles I kept at least to the form of religious belief, although I missed the substance, namely, that any life can be made happy, even glorious, if it is founded on purity of soul and unselfish love and service. I was selfish—even in my love; therefore I brought upon myself the fruits of selfishness which are ill health, inefficiency and unhappiness. The beauty of a selfish woman fades quickly. ”

“ It may be argued that women are willing victims of this man conspiracy, I say no! Every woman in her heart longs to love one man, to give herself to one man, to be true to one man. Even the unfortunate in the streets, if she receives just a little kindness, if she has only half a chance and is encouraged to right living by some decent fellow, will go through fire and water to show her gratitude and devotion. ”

“ Thousands of women who long to do right will agree with me that it is a terribly difficult question to answer.
If this were an ideal world where men and women had been purified and spiritualized to a Christ-like loftiness of soul, one would say yes; but it is not. A loving wife does not wish her husband to confess to her his past transgressions, she takes him as he is and is happy to start a new life with him, turning over a clean page. She only asks that he be loyal and faithful in the future. ”

“ A spirit of wild gaiety and abandon had caught Penelope—there was no restraining her. They must sit on the divan under that dull blue light, and talk of their love—their wonderful love that had swept aside all barriers—while she smoked another cigarette. Christopher forgot to be afraid—he, too, was young! ”