It may be questioned whether such advice was ethical. I am sure no two professors of ethics could agree on the matter, and where they would disagree I chose the policy of expediency. Moreover, I felt certain that Mrs. R.'s remorse did not need the purge of confession to her husband, that she was not of that deeply fixed nature which requires heroic measures. Her confession to me was sufficient, and since it was apparent that she would not repeat her folly it was not necessary to go to extremes.
The last two cases make pertinent some further remarks on sex. It has previously been stated that the sex field is the one in which arise many of the difficulties which breed the psychoneuroses. It would not be the place here to give details of cases, though every neurologist of experience is well aware of the neuroses that arise in marriage, among both men and women. Some day society will reach the plane where matters relating to the great function by which the world is perpetuated can be discussed with the freedom allowed to the discussion of the details of nutrition.
No one seriously doubts that women are breaking away from traditional ideas in these matters. There was a time (the Victorian Age) in the United States and England when prudery ruled supreme in the manners and dress of women. That this has largely disappeared is a good thing, but whether there is a tendency to another extreme is a matter where division of opinion will occur. A transition from long skirts to dress that will permit complete freedom of movement and resembling in a feminine way the garments of men would be unqualifiedly good. It would remove undue emphasis of sex and accentuate the essential human-ness of woman. But a transition from long skirts to short tight ones, impeding movement, is the transition from prudery to pruriency and is by no means a clear gain. Plenty of scope for art and beauty might be found in a costume of which pantalettes of some kind are the basis. I doubt if women will ever be regarded quite as human beings so long as they paint, wear fantastic coiffures, hobble along on foolish heels, and are clad in over tight short skirts.
Similarly with the literature of the period. The so-called sex story, the sex problem, obsesses the writers. Nor are these frank, free discussions of the essential difficulties in the relation between man and woman. Usually the stories deal with the difficulties of the idle rich woman without children, or concern themselves with trivial triangles. In the type of interminable continued stories that every newspaper now carries, the woman's difficulties range around the most absurd petty jealousies, and she never seems to cook or sew or have any responsibility, and they always end so "sweetly." On the stage the epidemic of girl and music shows has quite displaced the drama. Here sex is exploited to the point of the risque and sometimes beyond it.
