The sensory element of vision in human sexual selection

Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 by Havelock Ellis is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. VISION III

VISION III

Beauty not the Sole Element in the Sexual Appeal of Vision—Movement—The Mirror—Narcissism—Pygmalionism—Mixoscopy—The Indifference of Women to Male Beauty—The Significance of Woman's Admiration of Strength—The Spectacle of Strength is a Tactile Quality made Visible.

Our discussion of the sensory element of vision in human sexual selection has been mainly an attempt to disentangle the chief elements of beauty in so far as beauty is a stimulus to the sexual instinct. Beauty by no means comprehends the whole of the influences which make for sexual allurement through vision, but it is the point at which all the most powerful and subtle of these are focussed; it represents a fairly definite complexus, appealing at once to the sexual and to the æsthetic impulses, to which no other sense can furnish anything in any degree analogous. It is because this conception of beauty has arisen upon it that vision properly occupies the supreme position in man from the point of view which we here occupy.

Beauty is thus the chief, but it is not the sole, element in the sexual appeal of vision. In all parts of the world this has always been well understood, and in courtship, in the effort to arouse tumescence, the appeals to vision have been multiplied and at the same time aided by appeals to the other senses. Movement, especially in the form of dancing, is the most important of the secondary appeals to vision. This is so well recognized that it is scarcely necessary to insist upon it here; it may suffice to refer to a single typical example. The most decent of Polynesian dances, according to William Ellis, was the hura, which was danced by the daughters of chiefs in the presence of young men of rank with the hope of gaining a future husband. "The daughters of the chiefs, who were the dancers on these occasions, at times amounted to five or six, though occasionally only one exhibited her symmetry of figure and gracefulness of action. Their dress was singular, but elegant. The head was ornamented with a fine and beautiful braid of human hair, wound round the head in the form of a turban. A triple wreath of scarlet, white, and yellow flowers adorned the head-dress. A loose vest of spotted cloth covered the lower part of the bosom. The tihi, of fine white stiffened cloth frequently edged with a scarlet border, gathered like a large frill, passed under the arms and reached below the waist; while a handsome fine cloth, fastened round the waist with a band or sash, covered the feet. The breasts were ornamented with rainbow-colored mother-of-pearl shells, and a covering of curiously wrought network and feathers. The music of the hura was the large and small drum and occasionally the flute. The movements were generally slow, but always easy and natural, and no exertion on the part of the performers was wanting to render them graceful and attractive."[168] We see here, in this very typical example, how the extraneous visual aids of movement, color, and brilliancy are invoked in conjunction with music to make the appeal of beauty more convincing in the process of sexual selection.

It may be in place here to mention, in passing, the considerable place which vision occupies in normal and abnormal methods of heightening tumescence under circumstances which exclude definite selection by beauty. The action of mirrors belongs to this group of phenomena. Mirrors are present in profusion in high-class brothels—on the walls and also above the beds. Innocent youths and girls are also often impelled to contemplate themselves in mirrors and sometimes thus, produce the first traces of sexual excitement. I have referred to the developed forms of this kind of self-contemplation in the Study of Auto-erotism, and in this connection have alluded to the fable of Narcissus, whence Näcke has since devised the term Narcissism for this group of phenomena. It is only necessary to mention the enormous production of photographs, representing normal and abnormal sexual actions, specially prepared for the purpose of exciting or of gratifying sexual appetites, and the frequency with which even normal photographs of the nude appeal to the same lust of the eyes.

Pygmalionism, or falling in love with statues, is a rare form of erotomania founded on the sense of vision and closely related to the allurement of beauty. (I here use "pygmalionism" as a general term for the sexual love of statues; it is sometimes restricted to cases in which a man requires of a prostitute that she shall assume the part of a statue which gradually comes to life, and finds sexual gratification in this performance alone; Eulenburg quotes examples, Sexuale Neuropathie, p. 107.) An emotional interest in statues is by no means uncommon among young men during adolescence. Heine, in Florentine Nights, records the experiences of a boy who conceived a sentimental love for a statue, and, as this book appears to be largely autobiographical, the incident may have been founded on fact. Youths have sometimes masturbated before statues, and even before the image of the Virgin; such cases are known to priests and mentioned in manuals for confessors. Pygmalionism appears to have been not uncommon among the ancient Greeks, and this has been ascribed to their æsthetic sense; but the manifestation is due rather to the absence than to the presence of æsthetic feeling, and we may observe among ourselves that it is the ignorant and uncultured who feel the indecency of statues and thus betray their sense of the sexual appeal of such objects. We have to remember that in Greece statues played a very prominent part in life, and also that they were tinted, and thus more lifelike than with us. Lucian, Athenæus, Ælian, and others refer to cases of men who fell in love with statues. Tarnowsky (Sexual Instinct, English edition, p. 85) mentions the case of a young man who was arrested in St. Petersburg for paying moonlight visits to the statue of a nymph on the terrace of a country house, and Krafft-Ebing quotes from a French newspaper the case which occurred in Paris during the spring of 1877 of a gardener who fell in love with a Venus in one of the parks. (I. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil II, pp. 297-305, brings together various facts bearing on this group of manifestations.)

Necrophily, or a sexual attraction for corpses, is sometimes regarded as related to pygmalionism. It is, however, a more profoundly morbid manifestation, and may perhaps he regarded as a kind of perverted sadism.

Founded on the sense of vision also we find a phenomenon, bordering on the abnormal, which is by Moll termed mixoscopy. This means the sexual pleasure derived from the spectacle of other persons engaged in natural or perverse sexual actions. (Moll, Konträre Sexualempfindung, third edition, p. 308. Moll considers that in some cases mixoscopy is related to masochism. There is, however, no necessary connection between the two phenomena.) Brothels are prepared to accommodate visitors who merely desire to look on, and for their convenience carefully contrived peepholes are provided; such visitors are in Paris termed "voyeurs." It is said by Coffignon that persons hide at night in the bushes in the Champs Elysées in the hope of witnessing such scenes between servant girls and their lovers. In England during a country walk I have come across an elderly man carefully ensconced behind a bush and intently watching through his field-glass a couple of lovers reclining on a bank, though the actions of the latter were not apparently marked by any excess of indecorum. Such impulses are only slightly abnormal, whatever may be said of them from the point of view of good taste. They are not very far removed from the legitimate curiosity of the young woman who, believing herself unobserved, turns her glass on to a group of young men bathing naked. They only become truly perverse when the gratification thus derived is sought in preference to natural sexual gratification. They are also not normal when they involve, for instance, a man desiring to witness his wife in the act of coitus with another man. I have been told of the case of a scientific man who encouraged his wife to promote the advances of a young friend of his own, in his own drawing-room, he himself remaining present and apparently taking no notice; the younger man was astonished, but accepted the situation. In such a case, when the motives that led up to the episode are obscure, we must not too hastily assume that masochism or even mixoscopy is involved. For information on some of the points mentioned above see, e.g., I. Bloch, Beiträge zur Ætiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis, Teil I, pp. 200 et seq.; Teil II, pp. 195 et seq.

Wide, however, as is the appeal of beauty in sexual selection, it cannot be said to cover by any means the whole of the visual field in its sexual relationship. Beauty in the human species is, above all, a feminine attribute, making its appeal to men. Even for women, as has already been noted, beauty is still a feminine quality, which they usually admire, and in cases of inversion worship with an ardor which equals, if it does not surpass, that experienced by normal men. But the normal woman experiences no corresponding cult for the beauty of man. The perfection of the body of man is not behind that of woman in beauty, but the study of it only appeals to the artist or the æsthetician; it arouses sexual enthusiasm almost exclusively in the male sexual invert. Whatever may be the case among animals or even among savages, in civilization the man is most successful with women is not the most handsome man, and may be the reverse of handsome.[169] The maiden, according to the old saying, who has to choose between Adonis and Hercules, will turn to Hercules.

A correspondent writes: "Men are generally attracted in the first instance by a woman's beauty, either of face or figure. Frequently this is the highest form of love they are capable of. Personally, my own love is always prompted by this. In the case of my wife there was certainly a leaven of friendship and moral sympathies but these alone would never have been translated into love had she not been young and good-looking. Moreover, I have felt intense passion for other women, in my relations with whom the elements of moral or mental sympathy have not entered. And always, as youth and beauty went, I believe I should transfer my love to some one else.

"Now, in woman I fancy this element of beauty and youth does not enter so much. I have questioned a large number of women—some married, some unmarried, young and old ladies, shopgirls, servants, prostitutes, women whom I have known only as friends, others with whom I have had sexual relations—and I cannot recollect one instance when a woman said she had fallen in love with a man for his looks. The nearest approach to any sign of this was in the instance of one, who noticed a handsome man sitting near us in a hotel, and said to me: 'I should like him to kiss me.'

"I have also noticed that women do not like looking at my body, when naked, as I like looking at theirs. My wife has, on a few occasions, put her hand over my body, and expressed pleasure at the feeling of my skin. (I have very fair, soft skin.) But I have never seen women exhibit the excitement that is caused in me by the sight of their bodies, which I love to look at, to stroke, to kiss all over."

It is interesting to point out, in this connection, that the admiration of strength is not confined to the human female. It is by the spectacle of his force that the male among many of the lower animals sexually affects the female. Darwin duly allows for this fact, while some evolutionists, and notably Wallace, consider that it covers the whole field of sexual selection. When choice exists, Wallace states, "all the facts appear to be consistent with the choice depending on a variety of male characteristics, with some of which color is often correlated. Thus, it is the opinion of some of the best observers that vigor and liveliness are most attractive, and these are, no doubt, usually associated with some intensity of color, ... There is reason to believe that it is his [the male bird's] persistency and energy rather than his beauty which wins the day." (A. R. Wallace, Tropical Nature, 1898, p. 199.) In his later book, Darwinism (p. 295), Wallace reaffirms his position that sexual selection means that in the rivalry of males for the female the most vigorous secures the advantage; "ornament," he adds, "is the natural product and direct outcome of superabundant health and vigor." As regards woman's love of strength, see Westermarck, History of Marriage, p. 255.

Women admire a man's strength rather than his beauty. This statement is commonly made, and with truth, but, so far as I am aware, its meaning is never analyzed. When we look into it, I think, we shall find that it leads us into a special division of the visual sphere of sexual allurement. The spectacle of force, while it remains strictly within the field of vision, really brings to us, although unconsciously, impressions that are correlated with another sense—that of touch. We instinctively and unconsciously translate visible energy into energy of pressure. In admiring strength we are really admiring a tactile quality which has been made visible. It may therefore be said that, while through vision men are sexually affected mainly by the more purely visual quality of beauty, women are more strongly affected by visual impressions which express qualities belonging to the more fundamentally sexual sense of touch.

The distinction between the man's view and the woman's view, here pointed out, is not, it must be added, absolute. Even for a man, beauty, with all these components which we have already analyzed in it, is not the sole sexual allurement of vision. A woman is not necessarily sexually attractive in the ratio of her beauty, and with even a high degree of beauty may have a low degree of attraction. The addition of vivacity or the addition of languor may each furnish a sexual allurement, and each of these is a translated tactile quality which possesses an obscure potency from vague sexual implications.[170] But while in the man the demand for these translated pressure qualities in the visible attractiveness of a woman are not usually quite clearly realized, in a woman the corresponding craving for the visual expression of pressure energy is much more pronounced and predominant. It is not difficult to see why this should be so, even without falling back on the usual explanation that natural selection implies that the female shall choose the male who will be the most likely father of strong children and the best protector of his family. The more energetic part in physical love belongs to the man, the more passive part to the woman; so that, while energy in a woman is no index to effectiveness in love, energy in a man furnishes a seeming index to the existence of the primary quality of sexual energy which a woman demands of a man in the sexual embrace. It may be a fallacious index, for muscular strength is not necessarily correlated with sexual vigor, and in its extreme degrees appears to be more correlated with its absence. But it furnishes, in Stendhal's phrase, a probability of passion, and in any case it still remains a symbol which cannot be without its effect. We must not, of course, suppose that these considerations are always or often present to the consciousness of the maiden who "blushingly turns from Adonis to Hercules," but the emotional attitude is rooted in more or less unerring instincts. In this way it happens that even in the field of visual attraction sexual selection influences women on the underlying basis of the more primitive sense of touch, the fundamentally sexual sense.

Women are very sensitive to the quality of a man's touch, and appear to seek and enjoy contact and pressure to a greater extent than do men, although in early adolescence this impulse seems to be marked in both sexes. "There is something strangely winning to most women," remarks George Eliot, in The Mill on the Floss, "in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help—the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs—meets a continual want of the imagination."

Women are often very critical concerning a man's touch and his method of shaking hands. Stanley Hall (Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 8) quotes a gifted lady as remarking: "I used to say that, however much I liked a man, I could never marry him if I did not like the touch of his hand, and I feel so yet."

Among the elements of sexual attractiveness which make a special appeal to women, extreme personal cleanliness would appear to take higher rank than it takes in the eyes of a man, some men, indeed, seeming to make surprisingly small demands of a woman in this respect. If this is so we may connect it with the fact that beauty in a woman's eye is to a much greater extent than in a man's a picture of energy, in other words, a translation of pressure contracts, with which the question of physical purity is necessarily more intimately associated than it is with the picture of purely visual beauty. It is noteworthy that Ovid (Ars Amandi, lib. I) urges men who desire to please women to leave the arts of adornment and effeminacy to those whose loves are homosexual, and to practice a scrupulous attention to extreme neatness and cleanliness of body and garments in every detail, a sun-browned skin, and the absence of all odor. Some two thousand years later Brummell in an age when extravagance and effeminacy often marked the fashions of men, introduced a new ideal of unobtrusive simplicity, extreme cleanliness (with avoidance of perfumes), and exquisite good taste; he abhorred all eccentricity, and may be said to have constituted a tradition which Englishmen have ever since sought, more or less successfully to follow; he was idolized by women.

It may be added that the attentiveness of women to tactile contacts is indicated by the frequency with which in them it takes on morbid forms, as the délire du contact, the horror of contamination, the exaggerated fear of touching dirt. (See, e.g., Raymond and Janet, Les Obsessions et la Psychasthénie.)

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