The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [177]
The third speaker was Mrs. Henrietta Skinner, representing the Fabian Society, and speaking bravely and directly about Women for Sale. She spoke in praise of Josephine Butler, whose courage had brought about the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and of W. T. Stead, whose—perhaps sensational but efficacious—exposure of the Maiden Tribute had exposed the trade in virgin female children, and caused Parliament to raise the age of consent to sixteen. Elsie thought Mrs. Skinner looked like a pie with a frill—her round head, under a plain, “rural” straw hat, was perched on the mound of her Liberty clothing, which hung in bronze-green folds like a tent. Her hands, too, were little, pale, and plump. She used them to make very precise stabbing gestures to illustrate her uncomfortable points. She made no apology, she said, for using words that polite society was more accustomed to conceal behind euphemisms and hints, which were themselves part of the oppression and harm they avoided. She would speak of prostitution, she would speak of venereal diseases, she would speak of the damage done to women’s bodies by unfeeling and unnecessary medical examinations to which they were subjected. She hoped no one would feel they should leave the room when she spoke of such things. Ignorance killed. Men—husbands and fathers—with what they thought of as “natural” urges and needs—went out and contracted diseases from sick women, and passed these diseases on, not only to other so-called “fallen” women and girls—or children—who had been bought, certified as virgins, and sold—but to their own innocent and ignorant wives, and to the generations to come, the infant son in his cradle, the daughter singing to her doll in the nursery. No one had suggested subjecting these men to medical examinations. It was unthinkable that they would submit.
And who were the “fallen women” who the popular imagination believed led these men, with their natural urges, astray, painting themselves with rouge and henna, showing pretty ankles and covering themselves with exotic perfumes? They were working girls and mothers as often as not, who could not feed their children on what the sweat-shop paid them, whose husbands had had accidents that left them unable to bear burdens or wield picks and shovels. They were young servant-girls, seduced by the master of the house, or his son, and turned out without a character when they were found to be with child. Men must regulate their urges, or be made responsible for the consequences.
Pomona’s hands were clasped defensively in her lap. She was trembling a little, although her facial expression was one of detached attentiveness, like the child in the schoolroom who is really thinking about something other than the lesson. Elsie stopped listening to her own body and considered Pomona. What had been done to Pomona, what did Pomona know, whose white thighs were curled and spread in modelled china forms? Did she model for them, or did he guess? Elsie didn’t want to know. She didn’t think he guessed. She imagined, briefly, his fingers at work. She remembered families in Burslem where someone’s little brother or sister was generally thought to be really her child by her brother or father. They slept so close there, flesh to flesh. Here she had her own bed, and tossed in it, consumed by undirected desire. Did Elsie care about Pomona? She didn’t want to. She wanted. She wanted. She did not think anyone could ever really have desired Etta Skinner, so what did Etta Skinner know of all this from the inside? She looked at Professor Skinner, handsome in profile in the dusty light, and thought—does he have these urges, does he do anything about