Havelock Ellis

“ A song is started, and with small, slow steps this ring of bodies, like a winding snake, moves sideways, backward, closes, opens again, the steps become heavier, the songs and drums louder, the girls enter the circle and with closed eyes grasp the girdle of their chosen youths, who clasp them by the hips and necks, the chain becomes longer and longer, the dance and song more ardent, until the dancers grow tired and disappear in the gloom of the forest. ”

“ But if we realize to how large an extent woman is a sexual organism, and how diffused and even unconscious the sexual impulses may be, it becomes very difficult to assert that she has never shown any manifestation of the sexual impulse. All we can assert with some degree of positiveness in some cases is that she has not manifested sexual gratification, more particularly as shown by the occurrence of the orgasm, but that is very far indeed from warranting us to assert that she never will experience such gratification or still less that she is organically incapable of experiencing it. ”

“ In the art craze I am rather vague as to how it came about, but I think, as a rule, there was rather a craving for pleasure than pleasure itself. I do not remember ever thinking much about the physical feeling. It seemed as natural that a pleasant emotion should produce pleasant physical effects as that a painful one should cause tears. As a child, one takes so much for granted, and later on my mind was so much occupied with worrying about the truth of religion that I hardly thought enough about anything else to analyze it carefully. ”

“ Such a tendency is certainly normal. To abandon herself to her lover, to be able to rely on his physical strength and mental resourcefulness, to be swept out of herself and beyond the control of her own will, to drift idly in delicious submission to another and stronger will—this is one of the commonest aspirations in a young woman's intimate love-dreams. In our own age these aspirations most often only find their expression in such dreams. In ages when life was more nakedly lived, and emotion more openly expressed, it was easier to trace this impulse. ”

“ When pain has occasionally been associated with passion, pleasure has been sensibly diminished. I can imagine that, when there is a want of sensitiveness so that the tender kiss or caress might fail to give pleasure, more forcible methods are desired; but in that case what would be pain to a sensitive person would be only a pleasant excitement, and it could not be truly said that such obtuse persons liked pain, though they might appear to do so. I cannot think that anyone enjoys what is pain to them, if only from the fact that it detracts and divides the attention. ”

“ It seems to me that a state of sexual anesthesia, relative or absolute, cannot be considered as anything but abnormal. To take even the lowest ground, the satisfaction of the reproductive function ought to be at least as gratifying as the evacuation of the bowels or bladder; while, if we take, as we certainly must, higher ground than this, an act which is at once the supreme fact and symbol of love and the supreme creative act cannot under normal conditions be other than the most pleasurable of all acts, or it would stand in violent opposition to all that we find in nature. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to remark that a mother, however highly intelligent, is by no means an infallible judge as to the presence or absence in her children of so shy, subtle, and elusive an impulse as that of sex. At the same time I am by no means disposed to question the existence in individuals, and even in families or stocks, of a relatively weak sexual impulse, which, while still enabling procreation to take place, is accompanied by no strong attraction to the opposite sex and no marked inclination for marriage. ”

“ Groos regards the dance as, above all, an intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of intoxication,—and even apart from its relationship to combat and love,—the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and lead us into a self-created dream-world. ”

“ But anger and fear are not less fundamental in the sexual life. Courtship on the male's part is largely a display of combativity, and even the very gestures by which the male seeks to appeal to the female are often those gestures of angry hostility by which he seeks to intimidate enemies. On the female's part courtship is a skillful manipulation of her own fears, and, as we have seen elsewhere, when studying the phenomena of modesty, that fundamental attitude of the female in courtship is nothing but an agglomeration of fears. ”

“ Submission to the man's will is still, and always must be, the prelude to pleasure, and the association of ideas will probably always produce this much misunderstood instinct. Now, I find, indirectly from other women and directly from my own experience, that, when the point in dispute is very important and the man exerts his authority, the desire to get one's own way completely obliterates the sexual feeling, while, conversely, in small things the sexual feeling obliterates the desire to have one's own way. ”

“ A certain amount of passivity, a desire to have their emotions worked on, seems to me, so far as my small experience goes, very common among ordinary, presumably normal men. A good deal of stress is laid on femininity as an attraction in a woman, and this may be so to very strong natures, but, so far as I have seen, the women who obtain extraordinary empire over men are those with a certain virility in their character and passions. If with this virility they combine a fragility or childishness of appearance which appeals to a man in another way at the same time, they appear to be irresistible. ”

“ I find, too, that, when I want a man to say or do to me what would cause me pleasure and he does not gratify me, I feel an intense longing to change places, to be the man and make him, as the woman, feel what I want to feel. Combined with this is a sense of irritation at not being gratified and a desire to punish him for my deprivation, for his stupidity in not saying or doing the right thing. I don't feel any anger at a man not caring for me, but only for not divining my feelings when he does care. ”

“ Courtship resembles very closely, indeed, a drama or game; and the aggressiveness of the male, the coyness of the female, are alike unconsciously assumed in order to bring about in the most effectual manner the ultimate union of the sexes. The seeming reluctance of the female is not intended to inhibit sexual activity either in the male or in herself, but to increase it in both. The passivity of the female, therefore, is not a real, but only an apparent, passivity, and this holds true of our own species as much as of the lower animals. ”

“ Among some peoples and in some stages of culture, tending to withdraw the men from women and the thought of women, this phase of courtship and this attitude assume a prominence which is absolutely normal. The literature of the Middle Ages presents a state of society in which men were devoted to war and to warlike sports, while the women took the more active part in love-making. The medieval poets represent women as actively encouraging backward lovers, and as delighting to offer to great heroes the chastity they had preserved, sometimes entering their bed-chambers at night. ”

“ The women squat together by the fire, making a deafening noise with the gongs and the drums, while the young girls, richly adorned with pearls and fragrant flowers, await the beginning of the dance. Then appear the men and youths without weapons, but in full war-costume, the girdle freshly marked with the number of slain enemies. [Among the Alfuras it is the man who has the largest number of heads to show who has most chance of winning the object of his love.] ”

“ In the thirteenth century we have found Marie de France—a French poetess living in England who has been credited with "an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart," and whose work was certainly highly appreciated in the best circles and among the most cultivated class of her day—describing as a perfect, wise, and courteous knight a man who practically commits a rape on a woman who has refused to have anything to do with him, and, in so acting, he wins her entire love. ”

“ It is the presence of this essential tendency which leads to a certain apparent contradiction in a woman's emotions. On the one hand, rooted in the maternal instinct, we find pity, tenderness, and compassion; on the other hand, rooted in the sexual instinct, we find a delight in roughness, violence, pain, and danger, sometimes in herself, sometimes also in others. The one impulse craves something innocent and helpless, to cherish and protect ”

“ Thus, Tilt, an eminent gynecologist of the middle of the nineteenth century, in discussing this question, wrote: "When we consider how much of the lifetime of woman is occupied by the various phases of the generative process, and how terrible is often the conflict within her between the impulse of passion and the dictates of duty, it may be well understood how such a conflict reacts on the organs of the sexual economy in the unimpregnated female, and principally on the ovaria, causing an orgasm, which, if often repeated, may possibly be productive of subacute ovaritis." ”

“ There can be little doubt that the plea of force is very frequently seized on by women as the easiest available weapon of defense when her connection with a man has been revealed. She has been so permeated by the current notion that no "respectable" woman can possibly have any sexual impulses of her own to gratify that, in order to screen what she feels to be regarded as an utterly shameful and wicked, as well as foolish, act, she declares it never took place by her own will at all. ”

“ So that we have come to see that in the phrase "love and pain" we have to understand by "pain" a state of intense emotional excitement with which pain in the stricter sense may be associated, but is by no means necessarily associated. It is the strong emotion which exerts the irresistible fascination in the lover, in his partner, or in both. The pain is merely the means to that end. It is the lever which is employed to bring the emotional force to bear on the sexual impulse. The question of love and pain is mainly a question of emotional dynamics. ”

“ Even if we regard "marriage by capture" as simply a primitive human institution stimulated by tribal exigencies and early social conditions, yet, when we recall its widespread and persistent character, its close resemblance to the most general method of courtship among animals, and the emotional tendencies which still persist even in the most civilized men and women, we have to recognize that we are in presence of a real psychological impulse which cannot fail in its exercise to introduce some element of pain into love. ”

“ No better illustration could be given of the real significance of the sexual passivity of women, even at its most negative point.
"The women I have known," a correspondent writes, "do not express their sensations and feelings as much as I do. Nor have I found women usually anxious to practise 'luxuries.' They seldom care to practice fellatio; I have only known one woman who offered to do fellatio because she liked it. Nor do they generally care to masturbate a man; that is, they do not care greatly to enjoy the contemplation of the other person's excitement. ”

“ In men I have several times noticed that those who were most desirous of subjection to the women they loved had, in ordinary life, very strong and determined characters. I know of others, too, who with very weak characters are very imperious toward the women they care for. Among women I have often been surprised to see how a strong, determined woman will give way to a man she loves, and how tenacious of her own will may be some fragile, clinging creature who in daily life seems quite unable to act on her own responsibility. ”

“ Nature has put upon women the greater part of the burden of sexual reproduction; they have consequently become the supreme authorities on all matters in which the sexual emotions come into question. Many circumstances, however, that are fairly obvious, conspire to make it difficult for women to assert publicly the wisdom and knowledge which, in matters of love, the experiences of life have brought to them. The ladies who, in all earnestness and sincerity, write books on these questions are often the last people to whom we should go as the representatives of their sex ”

“ I will bite you, I will gnaw you all over,' exhibiting every appearance of great pleasure. If a child commits some slight fault they do not resort to simple blows, but pursue it through the street and bite it on the face, ears, and arms until the blood flows. At such moments the face of even a beautiful woman is transformed, with injected eyes, gnashing teeth, and convulsive tremors. Among both men and women a very common threat is 'I will drink your blood.' It is told on ocular evidence that a man who had murdered another in a quarrel licked the hot blood from the victim's hand. ”

“ At the outset, then, the impulse to inflict pain is brought into courtship, and at the same time rendered a pleasurable idea to the female, because with primitive man, as well as among his immediate ancestors, the victor in love has been the bravest and strongest rather than the most beautiful or the most skilful. Until he can fight he is not reckoned a man and he cannot hope to win a woman. ”

“ It becomes forgotten that the woman's pleasure is an essential element in the process of courtship. A woman is often reduced to seek a man for the sake of maintenance; she is taught that pleasure is sinful or shameful, that sex-matters are disgusting, and that it is a woman's duty, and also her best policy, to be in subjection to her husband. Thus, various external checks which normally inhibit any passing over of masculine sexual energy into cruelty are liable to be removed. ”