Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/703

 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONFLICT 679

real unity actually corresponds with the peculiarly ideal one in which men conceptualize them when they speak of " the women" in general, and which has quite the character of a partisan antithesis. This solidarity which they have in contrast with the men, and which is expressed in the lines of Freidank

Der Mann tragt seine Schmach allein ;

Doch kommt ein Weib zu Falle,

So schilt man auf sie alle

this solidarity of sex has in its interest for morality, as its com- mon means of struggle, a real vehicle. Consequently, there is repeated here again the sociological form which we have been discussing. Women recognize, as a rule, with reference to another woman, only complete inclusion or complete exclusion from the realm of morality. There exists among them the tend- ency so far as possible not to concede a breach of morality by a woman to interpret it as harmless, except where love of scandal and other individual motives work in the other direction. If this assumption, however, is no longer possible, they render an irrevocable and severe judgment of exclusion from good societv. If the violation of morality must be confessed, the culprit is also eliminated radically from that unity which is held together by the common interest for morality. We have seen, therefore, that women have sometimes passed the same condemnation upon Gretchen as upon Marguerite Gauthier, upon Stella as upon Messalina. Thus, by negation of differences in degree, they have made impossible an intermediation between those within and those outside the boundaries of morality. The defensive situation of women does not permit that the wall of morality be lowered at even a single point. Their party knows, in principle at least, no compromise, but only decisive acceptance of the indi- vidual into the ideal totality of "respectable women," or the equally decisive exclusion an alternative whose abruptness cannot by any means be justified from the purely moral stand- point. It is only intelligible when understood in connection with the above-considered demand for inviolable unity, occasioned by the need of a party firmly consolidated against an opponent. For the same reasons it may be advantageous for political