The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

CONTINENCE AND PSYCHIC LOVE
to deciding when and how sexual activity should take place
and whether or not to bear children. In The Human Flower she
described the plight of the married woman in relation to sex
and reproduction in detail, with the aim of implanting the idea
of mutuality and woman’s right to decide at an early age:
Seeing the still existent unjust conditions, legal or social, in
marriage and noting the misery so frequently the lot of the
wife—too usually led or left to accept marriage ignorant of
the actual incidents of matrimony, and with no word of
forewarning as to marital physical intimacies which, unless
of reciprocal impulse, may prove repugnant and intolerable
to her; involving moreover the sufferings and dangers of
repeated and undesired childbearing—the conviction is every
day growing that under no plea or promise can it be
permissible to submit the individuality, either mental or
physical, of the wife, to the will and coercion of the husband;
the functions of wifehood and motherhood must remain solely
and entirely within the wife’s own option. Coercion, like
excess, is in itself a contravention and annihilation of the
psychic nature of the sexual relation; since no true affection
or love would either prompt or permit to inflict a grief or an
injustice on a reluctant partner, and to submit her thus to the
possibility of undesired maternity is a procedure equally
unjustifiable and inhuman to the mother and the ‘unwelcome
child’. 4
Such a sympathetic understanding of the effects of unwanted
sexual intercourse upon women will not be found in
contemporary sex education literature for children. It is a very
clear statement of woman’s right to physical integrity and selfdetermination.
Wolstenholme Elmy hoped to relieve some of the misery of
wives caused by ignorance as to what their husbands expected
of their bodies. She was particularly concerned about the concept
of ‘conjugal rights’ which gave the husbands the backing of the
law in requiring sexual use of their wives’ bodies whether they
were willing or not. The law allowed wives no redress against
husbands who forced them into sexual intercourse. The situation
is no different today as the contemporary feminist ‘Rape in
Marriage’ campaign is seeking to point out. An article in the
Westminster Review entitled ‘Judicial Sex Bias’ by Ignota shows
how Wol stenholme Elmy, along with other women, had been
fighting a long battle to alter the law. Ignota quotes extracts
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