Sex Variant Women in Literature: A Historical and Quantitative Survey
9781465506986
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
This study is concerned with certain types of emotional reaction among women as these appear in literature. Its primary aim is neither psychiatric nor critical; that is, it does not pretend to solve the problems described nor to pass conventional judgment on the literature examined, though rudiments of aesthetic and psychological evaluation will inevitably be included. Its purpose is to trace historically the quantity and temper of imaginative writing on its chosen subject from earliest times to the present day, on the assumption that what has been written and read for pleasure is a fair index of popular interest and social attitude from one century to another. Since new viewpoints and methods of study are constantly altering our sex vocabulary, some preliminary definitions seem advisable. First, what is meant by sex variant? The term was selected because it is not as yet rigidly defined nor charged with controversial overtones. Intrinsically, variant means no more than differing from a chosen standard, and in the field of sex experience the standard generally accepted is adequate heterosexual adjustment. But even this phrase lacks precision. Lawyer, clergyman, physician, psychoanalyst, biologist, sociologist, each will interpret it from his particular viewpoint. The meaning a layman meets oftenest in the literature of our western Christian culture is happy marriage and parenthood, but this is nearer to the churchman’s and sociologist’s ideal than to the working compromise by which average citizens worry along. Perhaps the highest practical common denominator is a heterosexual union agreeable to both its parties and not detrimental to them, to the society in which they live, or to the continuance of the race. Possible deviations from this standard are many, but the present study will stay within the limits set by a work of 1941 entitled Sex Variants, which was devoted to persons having emotional experience with others of their own sex. Under this head the author included homosexuals, a term which he confined to those having only such experience; bisexuals, capable of enjoying relations with both sexes; and narcissists, attracted to both but able to achieve satisfaction with neither. The author of this work, Dr. G. W. Henry, was, as his terminology indicates, a psychiatrist. His case histories provided very complete personal data, his volumes dealt with both men and women, and he included only those who had engaged in overt sexual activity. By contrast, the present study is not strictly oriented to any professional school of thought. It is limited to relations between women, and “relations” is substituted for “experience” by intent. Because of the comparative sex reticence prevailing in our culture, few details of sexual action are reported in nonscientific writing, and in the peculiarly discredited field of sex variance authors often avoid even implying action. For this reason scientists tend to disparage studies based on literature, but where women are concerned a lack of specific detail is not too serious. Current scientific work, notably that of Dr. A. C. Kinsey, has established the fact that women as a whole engage in much less sex activity than men. But in spite of, or perhaps because of, this relative infrequency of “outlet,” passionate emotion more often plays a dominant role in their lives. Not all women recognize a sexual factor in their subjective emotional relations, particularly in the intrasexual field so heavily shadowed by social disapproval. Still they often exhibit indirect responses which have all the intensity of physical passion and which quite as basically affect the pattern of their lives.
