Reviews

Frances Love, MFT

While written almost 100 years ago, Happy Married Love, by Dr. Marie Stopes is as relevant today as it was then. The topic of frequency in marital relations was taboo then, but still a question today. “How often is normal?” is the number one question many couples ask in marital counseling. Often women think that their partner is pressuring them for sex much more frequently than the women think is “normal”. Dr. Stopes answers this question and much more. She provides some technical information, which will be helpful to young couples considering a new relationship as well as more experienced couples who have some basic questions.

Happy Married Love is written in the style of the day, 1918, giving the reader a delightful window into the thoughts and mores of the time while addressing important questions the modern reader may have about love and sex. This is a helpful book for some of the most basic issues one might about this ever-popular subject.

Frances Love, MFT

Walnut Creek, CA

ERNEST H. STARLING

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON UNIVERSITY COLLEGE GOWER STREET, LONDON, W.C.

NOVEMBER 23, 1917

Dear Dr. Stopes,

The need of such guidance as you give is very evident. After all, instinct in man is insufficient to determine social behavior, and there is need of instruction in the highest of physiological functions that of reproduction, as there is in the lower functions of eating and drinking- the only difference being that in the former, instruction can be deferred to a later age. In addition, there is no doubt that in this case it is better to acquire knowledge by instruction that any type of experience which is nearly always sordid and may be fraught with danger to the health of the individual and of the family.

            Now, it is of vital importance to the State that its marriages should be fruitful - in children, happiness, and efficiency (and all three are closely connected).

            If your book helps in securing this object, your trouble will not have been in vain.

            Believe me,

Yours very truly

ERNEST H. STARLING

Miss Jessie Murray, M.B., B.S.

By Miss Jessie Murray, M.B., B.S.

In this little book, Dr. Marie Stopes’s deals with subjects generally regarded as too sacred for an entirely frank treatment. Some earnest and delicate minds may feel apprehensive that such frankness in details is “dangerous,” because the effect on prurient minds might be to give them food for their morbid fancies. It is just such a fear, which has been largely responsible for the silence and mystery, which have for so long, been wrapped round the sacred rites of mating.

The question now is, has this reticence been carried too far? Have the keepers of public morals carried this reserve so far that they defeated its original purpose? There are many who unhesitatingly answer such questions in the affirmative. Their intimate knowledge of human lives compels them to recognize that silence inflicts at least as much harm as speaking out.  Everything depends on the presentation of the matter.

Those who are shocked at the publication of such a book as this on the ground that it gives material for impure minds to sport with, need only reflect that such material is already amply provided in certain comic papers, in hosts of inferior novels, too often on the stage and film, and presented thus in coarse and demoralizing guise. It can do nothing but good to such minds to meet the facts they are already so familiar with in an entirely new light.

On the other hand, there are all the earnest and noble young minds who seek to know what responsibilities they are taking on themselves when they marry, and how they may best meet these responsibilities. How few of them have more than the vaguest ideas on the subject! How few of them know how or where to obtain the help they desire!

They recoil from the coarse and impure sources of information, which are so accessible. Young men hesitate to approach sources they have learned to regard as virtuous and modest, realizing that they will receive little actual information, and that it is veiled as to be almost useless.

Dr. Stopes has attempted to meet the need of such seekers, and they will certainly welcome her book. Reading this book will prevent many mistakes, which wreck the happiness of countless lovers as soon as they are actually married. If it did no more than this, it would be valuable indeed!

However, there is an even more important aspect to be considered – the effect on the child. In all civilized lands, there is a growing sense of responsibility toward the young.

The problems of their physical and mental nurture attract more attention every day. Eugenists,educationists, physicians, politicians, philanthropists, and even ordinary parents discuss and ponder, ponder and discuss matters great and small which have a bearing on child development. By common consent, experts regard the first seven years of life as the most critical. It is during these years that life experience lays the foundations of the personality –“well and truly” or otherwise. It is during these years that the deepest and most lasting impressions of the child’s personality develop in its malleable constitution, arresting or developing instinctive trends and fixing them, often for life.

     It is during these years, above all, that the parents play the most important role in the inner history of the child’s life. The child isn’t influenced so much by anything parents directly teach through verbal exhortations, warnings, or commands, as by those subtler influences, which they convey in gesture, tone, and facial expression. The young child is influenced through these more primitive modes of expression even when they are not directed towards itself.

Isn’t it of the utmost importance that these earliest impression should be of the finest nature? Shouldn’t we welcome all help, as this book can, to make the living cradle of the next generation as full of beauty and harmony as love and mutual understanding can?

Each soul, in every marriage fights the age-long conflict between the “lower” and the “higher” impulses, between the primitive animal nature and the specifically human developments of an altruistic and ethical order.

We need to realize more clearly that the lower instinct ought never be-eliminated but rather subsumed by the higher. Repressing or ignoring one of these instincts does not create true harmony.

Dr. Stopes makes some very important biological suggestions. Do not dismiss them lightly.  Further observation is required to establish or disprove her theory of the normal sexual cycle in women, but my own observation certainly tends to confirm it.

J.M.M.