The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage In Free Society, by Edward Carpenter This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Marriage In Free Society Author: Edward Carpenter Release Date: July 11, 2012 [EBook #40209] Last Updated: January 25, 2013 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE IN FREE SOCIETY *** Produced by David Widger
* Woman: Labour Press Society, Manchester.
As a rule they know but little of each other; society has kept the two
sexes apart; the boy and the girl have been brought up along different
lines; they hardly understand each other's nature; their mental interests
and occupations are different; and as they grow up their worldly interests
and advantage are seen to be different, often opposed; public opinion
separates their spheres and their rights and their duties, and their honor
and their dishonor* very sharply from each other. The subject of sex is a
sealed book to the girl; to the youth it is possibly a book whose most
dismal page has been opened first; in either case with its very mention is
probably connected a painful and irrational sense of wickedness.
In this state of confusion of mind, of mutual misunderstanding, and often
of suffering, the Sex-glamor suddenly descends upon the two individuals
and drives them into each other's arms. It envelopes in a gracious and
misty halo all their differences and misapprehensions. They marry without
misgiving; and their hearts overflow with gratitude to the white-surpliced
old gentleman who reads the service over them. It is only at a later hour,
and with calmer thought, that they realise that it is a life-sentence
which he has so suavely passed upon them—not reducible (as in the
case of ordinary convicts) even to a term of 20 years.
* See Webster's Dictionary, which gives as one of the
meanings of Honor, "any particular virtue much valued, as
bravery in men and chastity in females."
The married life, in so strange and casual a way begun, or drifted into,
is hardly, one might think, likely to turn out well. Sometimes, of course,
it does; but in many cases, perhaps the majority, there follows a painful
awakening. A brief burst of satisfaction, accompanied, probably through
sheer ignorance, by gross neglect of the law of transmutation; satiety on
the physical plane, followed by vacuity of affection on the higher planes,
and that succeeded by boredom, and even nausea; the girl, full perhaps of
a tender emotion, and missing the sympathy and consolation she expected in
the man's love, only to find its more materialistic side—"This, this
then is what I am wanted for." The man, who looked for a companion,
finding he can rouse no mortal interest in his wife's mind save in the
most exasperating trivialities;—whatever the cause may be, a veil
has fallen from before their faces, and there they sit, held together now
by the least honorable interests, the interests which they themselves can
least respect, but to which Law and Religion lend all their weight. The
monetary dependence of the woman, the mere sex-needs of the man, the fear
of public opinion, all form motives, and motives of the meanest kind, for
maintaining the seeming tie; and the relation of the two hardens down into
a dull neutrality, in which lives and characters are narrowed and blunted,
and deceit becomes the common weapon which guards divided interests.
A sad picture! and of course in this case a portrayal deliberately of the
seamy side of the matter. But who shall make light of the agonies often
gone through in those first few years of married life?
It may be said—and often of course is said—that such cases as
these only prove that marriage was entered into under the influence of a
passing glamor and delusion, and that there was not much real devotion to
begin with. And no doubt there is truth enough in such remarks. But—we
may say in reply—because two young people make a mistake in youth,
to condemn them, for that reason, to lifelong suffering and mutual
degradation, or to see them so condemned, without proposing any hope or
way of deliverance, but with the one word "serves you right" on the lips,
is a course which can commend itself only to the grimmest and dullest
Calvinist. Whatever safe-guards against a too frivolous view of the
relationship may be proposed by the good sense of society in the future,
it is certain that the time has gone past when Marriage can continue to be
regarded as a supernatural institution to whose maintenance human bodies
and souls must be indiscriminately sacrificed; a humaner, wiser, and less
panic-stricken treatment of the subject must set in; and if there are
difficulties in the way they must be met by patient and calm consideration
of human welfare—superior to any law, however ancient and
respectable.
I take it then that, without disguising the fact that the question is a
complex one, and that our conclusions may be only very tentative, we have
to consider as rationally as we conveniently can, first, some of the
drawbacks or defects of the present marriage-customs, and secondly such
improvements in these as may suggest themselves to us, and as may seem
feasible.
And if we turn to the question of how things stand in the present day, one
of the first points to strike us—and one that we have already
touched on in another paper*—is the serious want of any special
teaching to young folk on matters of love and sex, and the responsibility
resting on parents and teachers to supply this want. That one ought to
distinguish a passing sex-spell from a true comradeship and devotion is no
doubt a wise remark, but that it is often difficult, even for adults, to
do so makes it all the more necessary that young people should have some
rational ideas on the subject, and above all that they should get some
understanding of the nature of that true love which alone can make
marriage a success. The search for a fitting mate, especially among the
more sensitive and highly-organised types of mankind, is a most complex
affair. And it is indeed hard that the young man or woman should have to
set out—as they mostly have to do to-day—on this difficult
quest without a word of suggestion or help, as to the choice of the way or
the very real perplexites and doubts that beset it.
*Sex-Love, and its place in a Free Society. Labour Press,
Manchester.
Then, besides this more general teaching, it is also highly necessary that
those in question should have some knowledge of the use and guardianship
of their own sex-functions. If the youth and girl whom we have supposed as
about to be married had been brought up in almost any tribe of savages,
they would a few years previously have gone through regular offices of
initiation into manhood and womanhood, during which time ceremonies
(possibly indecent in our eyes) would at any rate have made many
misapprehensions impossible. As it is, the civilised girl is led to the
'altar;' often in uttermost ignorance and misunderstanding as to the
nature of the sacrificial rites about to be consummated. The youth too
(does it not seem strange?) has never been taught how to use the female in
this most important moment of their joint lives. Perhaps he is unaware
that love in the female is, in a sense, more diffused than in the male,
less specially sexual; that it dwells longer in caresses and embraces, and
determines itself more slowly towards the reproductive system. Impatient,
he injures and horrifies his partner, and unconsciously perhaps aggravates
the very hysterical tendency which marriage might and should have
allayed.*
Among the middle and well-to-do classes especially, the conditions of high
civilisation, by inducing an overfed masculinity in the males and a
nervous and hysterical tendency in the females,** increase the
difficulties mentioned; and it is among the 'classes' too that public
opinion, largely by repressing the utterance and ignoring the existence of
sex-feeling, has created the special evils of sex-starvation and
sex-ignorance on the one hand, and of mere licentiousness on the other.
* It must be remembered too that to many women (though of
course by no means a majority) the thought of Sex brings
little sense of pleasure, and the fulfilment of its duties
constitutes a real, even though a willing, sacrifice.
** Thus Bebel in his book on Woman speaks of "the idle and
luxuriant life of so many women in the upper classes, the
nervous stimulant afforded by exquisite perfumes, the over-
dosing with poetry, music, the stage—which is regarded as
the chief means of education, and is the chief occupation,
of a sex already suffering from hypertrophy of nerves and
sensibility."
Among the comparatively uncivilised mass of the people, where a good deal
of familiarity between the sexes exists before marriage, and where indeed
marriage not unfrequently follows on sex-connection, these special evils
are not so prominent. But among the masses the crying need for some
sensible and coherent teaching for the young is only too clear; and it is
perhaps among the masses that the neglect of the law of transmutation
works to more evil results than among the classes; since among the former—sex-intercourse
being comparatively accessible, and obstacles to marriage (from monetary
and other considerations) comparatively infrequent—the feeling is
liable to flow far too much along the mere physical channels; and the
romance and sweet comradeship of love, especially after marriage, comes
too often to be replaced by an inert and indeed rather brutish sentiment
of simple juxtaposition.
So far with regard to difficulties arising from personal ignorance or
inexperience in youth. But stretching beyond and around all these are
those other difficulties which are due to the marked special relation of
the woman to the man in civilised society generally, and of the man to the
woman; and which arise from deep-lying historic and economic causes. Into
the large subject of these causes it is not necessary to enter here.
Suffice it to say that the difference in physical strength between the
sexes, together with woman's disability during the period of child-birth
and rearing, gave man from early times an advantage, which complicating
itself during the historical period has ultimated (though not of course in
the present day only) in what may be called the slavery of woman, her
subordination to man, and dependence on him for the means of subsistence;
the result being that, till a comparatively few years ago, the woman was
condemned to the most special and indeed narrow sphere of life and action;
her education, as for this sphere, was most limited, and quite different
from that of the man; and her interests were wholly diverse from and often
quite opposed to his. Under these circumstances there was naturally little
common ground for Marriage, except sex. And the same remains
largely true even down to to-day. The sex-needs once satisfied, and the
emotional charm weakened or undone, man and wife not unfrequently wake up
with something like dismay to find how little they have left in common; to
find that they have nothing in which they can take interest together; that
they cannot work at the same things, that they cannot read the same books,
that they cannot keep up half-an-hour's conversation together on any
topic, and that secretly they are cherishing their own thoughts and
projects quite apart from each other.
It must suffice too to remind the reader quite briefly that this
divergence has crept deep down into the moral and intellectual natures of
the two sexes, exaggerating the naturally complementary relation of the
male and female into a painful caricature of strength on the one hand and
dependence on the other. This is well seen in the ordinary
marriage-relation of the common-prayer-book type. The frail and delicate
female is supposed to cling round the sturdy husband's form, or to depend
from his arm in graceful incapacity; and the spectator is called upon to
admire the charming effect of the union—as of the ivy with the oak—forgetful
of the terrible moral, namely, that (in the case of the trees at any rate)
it is really a death-struggle which is going on, in which either the oak
must perish suffocated in the embraces of its partner, or in order to free
the former into anything like healthy development the ivy must be
sacrificed.
Too often of course of such marriages the egoism, lordship and physical
satisfaction of the man are the chief motive causes. The woman is
practically sacrificed to the part of the maintenance of these male
virtues. It is for her to spend her days in little forgotten details of
labor and anxiety for the sake of the man's superior comfort and
importance, to give up her needs to his whims, to 'humour' him in all ways
she can; it is for her to wipe her mind clear of all opinions in order
that she may hold it up as a kind of mirror in which he may behold
reflected his lordly self; and it is for her to sacrifice even her
physical health and natural instincts in deference to what is called her
'duty' to her husband.
How bitterly alone many such a woman feels! She has dreamed of
being folded in the arms of a strong man, and surrendering herself, her
life, her mind, her all, to his service. Of course it is an unhealthy
dream, an illusion, a mere luxury of love; and it is destined to be
dashed. She has to learn that self-surrender may be just as great a crime
as self-assertion. She finds that her very willingness to be sacrificed
only fosters in the man, perhaps for his own self-defence, the egotism and
coldness that so cruelly wound her.
For how often does he with keen prevision see that if he gives way from
his coldness the clinging dependent creature will infallibly overgrow and
smother him!—that she will cut her woman-friends, will throw aside
all her own interests and pursuits in order to 'devote' herself to him,
and, affording no sturdy character of her own in which hecan take
any interest, will hang the festoons of her affection on every
ramification of his wretched life—nor leave him a corner free—till
he perishes from all manhood and social or heroic uses into a mere
matrimonial clothespeg, a warning and a wonderment to passers by!
However, as a third alternative, it sometimes happens that the Woman, too
wise to sacrifice her own life indiscriminately to the egoism of her
husband, and not caring for the 'festoon' method, adopts the middle course
of appearing to minister to him while really pursuing her own
purposes. She cultivates the gentle science of indirectness. While holding
up a mirror for the Man to admire himself in, behind that mirror
she goes her own way and carries out her own designs, separate from him;
and while sacrificing her body to his wants, she does so quite
deliberately and for a definite reason, namely, because she has found out
that she can so get a shelter for herself and her children, and can solve
the problem of that maintenance which society has hitherto denied to her
in her own right. For indeed by a cruel fate women have been placed in
exactly that position where the sacrifice of their self-respect for base
motives has easily passed beyond a temptation into being a necessity. They
have had to live, and have too often only been able to do so by selling
themselves into bondage to the man. Willing or unwilling, overworked or
dying, they have had to bear children to the caprice of their lords; and
in this serf-life their very natures have been blunted; they have lost—what
indeed should be the very glory and crown of woman's being—the
perfect freedom and the purity of their love.
At this whole spectacle of woman's degradation the human male has looked
on with stupid and open-mouthed indifference—as an ox might look on
at a drowning oxherd—not even dimly divining that his own fate was
somehow involved. He has calmly and obliviously watched the woman drift
farther and farther away from him, till at last, with the loss of an
intelligent and mutual understanding between the sexes, Love with unequal
wings has fallen lamed to the ground. Yet it would be idle to deny that
even in such a state of affairs as that depicted, men and women have in
the past and do often even now find some degree of satisfaction—simply
indeed because their types of character are such as belong to, and have
been evolved in accordance with, this relation.
To-day, however, there are thousands of women—and everyday more
thousands—to whom such a lopsided alliance is detestable; who are
determined that they will no longer endure the arrogant lordship and
egoism of men, nor countenance in themselves or other women the craft and
servility which are the necessary complements of the relation; who see too
clearly in the oak-and-ivy marriage its parasitism on the one hand and
strangulation on the other to be sensible of any picturesqueness; who feel
too that they have capacities and powers of their own which need space and
liberty, and some degree of sympathy and help, for their unfolding; and
who believe that they have work to do in the world, as important in its
own way as any that men do in theirs. Such women have broken into open
warfare—not against marriage, but against a marriage which makes
true and equal love an impossibility. They feel that as long as women are
economically dependent they cannot stand up for themselves and
insist on those rights which men from stupidity and selfishness will not
voluntarily grant them.
On the other hand there are thousands—and one would hope every day
more thousands—of men who (whatever their forerunners may have
thought) do not desire or think it delightful to have a glass
continually held up for them to admire themselves in; who look for a
partner in whose life and pursuits they can find some interest, rather
than for one who has no interest but in them; who think perhaps that they
would rather minister than be (like a monkey fed with nuts in a cage) the
melancholy object of another person's ministrations; and who at any rate
feel that love, in order to be love at all, must be absolutely open and
sincere, and free from any sentiment of dependence or inequality. They see
that the present cramped condition of women is not only the cause of the
false relation between the sexes, but that it is the fruitful source—through
its debarment of any common interests—of that fatal boredom of which
we have spoken, and which is the bugbear of marriage; and they would
gladly surrender all of that masterhood and authority which is supposed to
be their due, if they could only get in return something like a frank and
level comradeship.
Thus while we see in the present inequality of the sexes an undoubted
source of marriage troubles and unsatisfactory alliances, we see also
forces at work which are tending to reaction, and to bringing the two
nearer again to each other—so that while differentiated they will
not perhaps in the future be quite so much differentiated as now,
but only to a degree which will enhance and adorn, instead of destroy,
their sense of mutual sympathy.
There is another point which ought to be considered as contributing to the
ill-success of many marriages, and which no doubt is closely connected
with that just discussed—but which deserves separate treatment. I
mean the harshness of the line which social opinion (at any rate in this
country) draws round the married pair with respect to their relations to
outsiders. On the one hand, and within the matrimonial relation, society
allows practically the utmost passional excess or indulgence, and condones
it; on the other hand (I am speaking of the middling bulk of the people,
not of the extreme aristocratic and slum classes) beyond that limit, the
slightest familiarity, or any expression of affection which might by any
possibility be interpreted as deriving from sexual feeling, is sternly
anathematised.
Marriage, by a kind of absurd fiction, is represented as an oasis situated
in the midst of an arid desert—in which latter, it is pretended,
neither of the two parties is so fortunate as to find any objects of real
affectional interest. If they do they have carefully to conceal the same
from the other party.
The result of this convention is obvious enough. The married pair, thus driven
as well as drawn into closest continual contact with each other, are put
through an ordeal which might well cause the stoutest affection to quail.
Not only, as already pointed out, have the man and the wife too few joint
interests in the great world, few common plans, projects, purposes,
'causes,' recreations; but—by this insistance of public opinion—all
outside interests of a personal nature, except of the most abstract
kind, are also debarred; if there happens to be any natural jealousy in
the case it is heightened and made the more imperative; and unless the
contracting parties are fortunate enough to be, both of them, of such a
temperament that they are capable of strong attachments to persons of
their own sex—and this does not always exclude jealousy—they
must be condemned to have no intimate friendships of any kind except what
they can find at their own fireside.
It is necessary here to point out, not only how dull a place this makes
the home, but also how narrowing it acts on the lives of the married pair.
However appropriate the union may be in itself it cannot be good that it
should degenerate—as it tends to degenerate so often, and where man
and wife are most faithful to each other, into a mere égoisme à deux.
And right enough no doubt as a great number of such unions actually are,
it must be confessed that the bourgeois marriage as a rule, and just in
its most successful and pious and respectable form, carries with it an
odious sense of Stuffiness and narrowness, moral and intellectual; and
that the type of Family which it provides is too often like that which is
disclosed when on turning over a large stone we disturb an insect. Home
that seldom sees the light.
But in cases where the marriage does not happen to be particularly
successful or unsuccessful, when perhaps a true but not overpoweringly
intense affection is satiated at a needlessly early stage by the continual
and unrelieved impingement of the two personalities on each other, then
the boredom resulting is something frightful to contemplate—and all
the more so because of the genuine affection behind it, which contemplates
with horror its own suicide. The weary couples that may be seen at seaside
places and pleasure resorts—the respectable working-man with his
wife trailing along by his side, or the highly respectable stock-jobber
arm-in-arm with his better and larger half—their blank faces, utter
want of any common topic of conversation which has not been exhausted a
thousand times already, and their obvious relief when the hour comes which
will take them back to their several and divided occupations—these
illustrate sufficiently what I mean. The curious thing is that jealousy
(accentuated as it is by social opinion) sometimes increases in exact
proportion to mutual boredom; and there are thousands of cases of married
couples leading a cat-and-dog life, and knowing that they weary each other
to distraction, who for that very reason dread all the more to lose sight
of each other, and thus never get a chance of that holiday from their own
society, and renewal of outside interests, which would make a genuine
affectional association possible.
Thus the sharpness of the line which society draws around the pair, and
the kind of fatal snap-of-the-lock with which marriage suddenly cuts them
off from the world, not only precluding the two, as might fairly be
thought advisable, from sexual, but also barring any openly affectional
relations with outsiders, and corroborating the selfish sense of monopoly
which each has in the other,—these things lead inevitably to the
narrowing down of lives and the blunting of general human interests, to
intense mutual ennui, and when (as an escape from these evils) outside
relations are covertly indulged in, to prolonged and systematic deceit.
From all which the only conclusion seems to be that marriage must be
either alive or dead. As a dead thing it can of course be petrified into a
hard and fast formula, but if it is to be a living bond, that living bond
must be trusted to, to hold the lovers together; nor be too forcibly
stiffened and contracted by private jealousy and public censorship, lest
the thing that it would preserve for us perish so, and cease altogether to
be beautiful. It is the same with this as with everything else. If we
would have a living thing, we must give that thing some degree of liberty—even
though liberty bring with it risk. If we would debar all liberty and all
risk, then we can have only the mummy and dead husk of the thing.
Thus far I have had the somewhat invidious task, but perhaps necessary as
a preliminary one, of dwelling on the defects and drawbacks of the present
marriage system. I am sensible that, with due discretion, some things
might have been said, which have not been said, in its praise; its
successful, instead of its unsuccessful, instances might have been cited;
and taking for granted the dependence of women, and other points which
have already been sufficiently discussed—it might have been possible
to show that the bourgeois arrangement was on the whole as satisfactory as
could be expected. But such a course would neither have been sincere, nor
have served any practical purpose. In view of the actually changing
relations between the sexes, it is obvious that changes in the form of the
marriage institution are impending, and the questions which are really
pressing on folks' mind are: What are those changes going to be; and, Of
what kind do we wish them to be?
In answer to the last question it is not improbable that the casual reader
might suppose the writer of these pages to be in favor of a general and
indiscriminate loosening of all ties—for indeed it is always easy to
draw a large inference even from a careful expression.
But such a conclusion would be rash. There is little doubt, I think, that
the compulsion of the marriage-tie (whether moral, social, or merely
legal) acts beneficially in a considerable number of cases—though it
is obvious that the more the compelling force takes a moral or social form
and the less purely legal it is, the better; and that any changes which
led to a cheap and continual transfer of affections from one object to
another would be disastrous both to the character and happiness of a
population. While we are bound to see that the marriage-relation—in
order to become the indwelling-place of Love—must be made far more
free than it is at present, we may also recognise that a certain
amount of external pressure is not (as things are at least) without its
uses: that, for instance, it tends on the whole to concentrate affectional
experience and romance on one object, and that though this may mean a loss
at times in breadth it means a gain in depth and intensity; that, in many
cases, if it were not for some kind of bond, the two parties, after their
first passion for each other was past, and when the unavoidable period of
friction had set in, might in a moment of irritation easily fly apart,
whereas being forced for a while to tolerate each other's defects they
learn thereby one of the best lessons of life—a tender forbearance
and gentleness, which as time goes on does not unfrequently deepen again
into a more pure and perfect love even than at first—a love founded
indeed on the first physical intimacy, but concentrated and intensified by
years of linked experience, of twined associations, of shared labors, and
of mutual forgiveness; and in the third place that the existence of a
distinct tie or pledge discredits the easily-current idea that mere
pleasure-seeking is to be the object of the association of the sexes—a
phantasmal and delusive notion, which if it once got its head, and the bit
between its teeth, might soon dash the car of human advance in ruin to the
ground.
But having said thus much, it is obvious that external public opinion and
pressure are looked upon only as having an educational value; and
the question arises whether there is beneath this any reality of
marriage which will ultimately emerge and make itself felt, enabling men
and women to order their relations to each other, and to walk freely,
unhampered by props or pressures from without.
And it would hardly be worth while writing on this subject, if one did not
believe in some such reality. Practically I do not doubt that the more
people think about these matters, and the more experience they have, the
more they must ever come to feel that there issuch a thing as a
permanent and life-long union—perhaps a many-life-long union—founded
on some deep elements of attachment and congruity in character; and the
more they must come to prize the constancy and loyalty which rivets such
unions, in comparison with the fickle passion which tends to dissipate
them.
In all men who have reached a certain grade of evolution, and certainly in
almost all women, the deep rousing of the sexual nature carries with it a
romance and tender emotional yearning towards the object of affection,
which lasts on and is not forgotten, even when the sexual attraction has
ceased to be strongly felt. This, in favorable cases, forms the basis of
what may almost be called an amalgamated personality. That there should
exist one other person in the world towards whom all openness of
interchange should establish itself, from whom there should be no
concealment; whose body should be as dear to one, in every part, as one's
own; with whom there should be no sense of Mine or Thine, in property or
possession; into whose mind one's thoughts should naturally flow, as it
were to know themselves and to receive a new illumination; and between
whom and oneself there should be a spontaneous rebound of sympathy in all
the joys and sorrows and experiences of life; such is perhaps one of the
dearest wishes of the soul. It is obvious however that this state of
affairs cannot be reached at a single leap, but must be the gradual result
of years of intertwined memory and affection. For such a union Love must
lay the foundation, but patience and gentle consideration and self-control
must work unremittingly to perfect the structure. At length each lover
comes to know the complexion of the other's mind, the wants, bodily and
mental, the needs, the regrets, the satisfactions of the other, almost as
his or her own—and without prejudice in favor of self rather than in
favor of the other; above all, both parties come to know in course of
time, and after perhaps some doubts and trials, that the great want, the
great need, which holds them together, is not going to fade away into thin
air, but is going to become stronger and more indefeasible as the years go
on. There falls a sweet, an irresistible, trust over their relation to
each other, which consecrates as it were the double life, making both feel
that nothing can now divide; and robbing each of all desire to remain,
when death has indeed (or at least in outer semblance) removed the other.*
It is curious that the early Church Service had "Till
death us depart"—but in 1661 this was altered to "Till
death us do part."
So perfect and gracious a union—even if not always realised—is
still, I say, the bonâ fide desire of most of those who have ever
thought about such matters. It obviously yields far more and more enduring
joy and satisfaction in life than any number of frivolous relationships.
It commends itself to the common sense, so to speak, of the modern mind—and
does not require, for its proof, the artificial authority of Church and
State. At the same time it is equally evident—and a child could
understand this—that it requires some rational forbearance and
self-control for its realisation, and it is quite intelligible too, as
already said, that there may be cases in which a little outside
pressure, of social opinion, or even actual law, may be helpful for the
supplementing or re-inforcement of the weak personal self-control of those
concerned.
The modern Monogamic Marriage however, certified and sanctioned by Church
and State, though apparently directed to this ideal, has for the most part
fallen short of it. For in constituting—as in a vast number of cases—a
union resting on nothing but the outside pressure of Church and
State, it constituted a thing obviously and by its nature bad and
degrading; while in its more successful instances by a too great
exclusiveness it has condemned itself to a fatal narrowness and
stuffiness.
Looking back to the historical and physiological aspects of the question
it might of course be contended—and probably with some truth—that
the human male is, by his nature and needs, polygamous. Nor is it
necessary to suppose that polygamy in certain countries and races is by
any means so degrading or unsuccessful an institution as some folk would
have it to be.* But, as Letourneau in his "Evolution of Marriage" points
out, the progress of society in the past has on the whole been from
confusion to distinction; and we may fairly suppose that with the progress
of our own race (for each race no doubt has its special genius in such
matters), and as the spiritual and emotional sides of man develop in
relation to the physical, there is probably a tendency for our deeper
alliances to become more unitary. Though it might be said that the growing
complexity of man's nature would be likely to lead him into more rather
than fewer relationships, yet on the other hand it is obvious that as the
depth and subtlety of any attachment that will really hold him increases,
so does such attachment become more permanent and durable, and less likely
to be realised in a number of persons. Woman, on the other hand, cannot be
said to be by her physical nature polyandrous as man is polygynous. Though
of course there are plenty of examples of women living in a state of
polyandry both among savage and civilised peoples, yet her more limited
sexual needs, and her long periods of gestation, render one mate
physically sufficient for her; while her more clinging affectional nature
perhaps accentuates her capacity of absorption in the one.
* See R. F. Burton's Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah,
ch. xxiv. He says however "As far as my limited observations
go polyandry is the only state of society in which jealousy
and quarrels about the sex are the exception and not the
rule of life!"
In both man and woman then we may say that we find a distinct tendency
towards the formation of this double unit of wedded life (I hardly like to
use the word Monogamy on account of its sad associations)—and while
we do not want to stamp such natural unions with any false irrevocability
or dogmatic exclusiveness, what we do want is a recognition to-day of the
tendency to their formation as a natural fact, independent of any
artificial laws, just as one might believe in the natural bias of two
atoms of certain different chemical substances to form a permanent
compound atom or molecule. Such unions as that depicted a page or two
back, built up by patient and loving care over a long stretch of years,
and becoming at last in a sense impregnable, do, we maintain, by their
actual growth and evolution exemplify this tendency.
It might not be so very difficult to get quite young people to understand
this—to understand that even though they might have to contend with
some superfluity of passion in early years, yet that the most permanent
and most deeply-rooted desire within them will in all probability lead
them at last to find their complete happiness and self-fulfilment only in
a close union with a life-mate; and that towards this end they must be
prepared to use self-control to prevent the aimless straying of their
passions, and patience and tenderness towards the realisation of the union
when its time comes. Probably most youths and girls, at the age of
romance, would easily appreciate this position; and it would bring to them
a much more effective and natural idea of the sacredness of Marriage than
they ever get from the artificial thunder of the Church and the State on
the subject.
No doubt the suggestion of the mere possibility of any added freedom of
choice and experience in the relations of the sexes will be very alarming
to some people—but it is so, I think, not because they are at all
ignorant that men already take to themselves considerable latitude, and
that a distinct part of the undoubted evils that accompany that latitude
springs from the fact that it is not recognised; not because they are
ignorant that a vast number of respectable women and girls suffer
frightful calamities and anguish by reason of the utter inexperience
of sex in which they are brought up and have to live; but because such
good people assume that any the least loosening of the formal barriers
between the sexes must mean (and must be meant to mean) an utter
dissolution of all ties, and the reign of mere licentiousness. They are
convinced that nothing but the most unyielding and indeed exasperating
straight-jacket can save society from madness and ruin.
To such folk the appearance of our child—the real Marriage—now
presented for their consideration (not without some care it must be
admitted, as to the smoothing of its hair and pinafore, and the trimming
of its naughty little nails) will be strangely disquieting. Accustomed to
look on human nature as essentially bad, and on Law and Convention as the
only things that restrain it from wild excess, it will be hard for
them to believe that there is any formative principle of decent life in
the apparition before them. We are however prepared to contend that,
appearances or prejudices notwithstanding there is a heart of goodness in
the young thing; and that, anyhow, whatever we may think or wish, it is
here already and among us, and that practically what we have to do is to
consider how it can best be made to grow up into a useful member of
society.
In fact, and to leave metaphor; when after quietly looking all round the
subject we have satisfied ourselves that the formation of a mere or less
permanent double unit is—for our race and time—on the whole
the natural and ascendant law of sex-union, slowly and with whatever
exceptions establishing and enforcing itself independently of any
artificial enactments that exist, then we shall not feel called upon to
tear our hair or rend our garments at the prospect of added freedom for
the operation of this force, but shall rather be anxious to consider how
it may best befreed and given room for development and growth to
its most perfect use in the social order. And it will probably seem to us
(looking back to the earlier part of this paper) that the points which
most need consideration, as means to this end, are (1) the furtherance of
the freedom and self-dependence of women; (2) the provision of some
rational teaching, of heart and of head, for both sexes during the period
of youth; (3) the recognition in marriage itself of a freer, more
companionable, and less pettily exclusive relationship; and (4) the
abrogation or modification of the present odious law which binds people
together for life, without scruple, and in the most artificial and
ill-assorted unions.
It must be admitted that the first point (1) is of basic importance. As
true Freedom cannot be without Love, so true Love cannot be without
Freedom. You cannot truly give yourself to another, unless you are master
or mistress of yourself to begin with. Not only has the general custom
of the self-dependence and self-ownership of women to be gradually
introduced, but the Law has to be altered in a variety of cases where it
lags behind the public conscience in these matters—as in actual
marriage, where it still leaves woman uncertain as to her rights over her
own body, or in politics, where it still denies to her a voice in the
framing of the laws which are to bind her. And beyond this, since in the
modern industrial-commercial State all Freedom has to be largely based on
industrial and monetary freedom, it is obviously of paramount necessity
that woman should have liberal access to professional spheres and the
means of securing her own independent monetary position through ordinary
industrial channels. Whatever the future may bring about in the way of a
changed social order and a consequently changed basis for woman's
independence, it is clear that as things are now, and for a long time yet,
her real freedom can only be secured through her command, even in the face
of man, of the ordinary resources of the wage-earner.
With regard to (2) hardly any one at this time of day would seriously
doubt the desirability of giving adequate teaching to boys and girls. That
is a point on which we have sufficiently touched, and which need not be
farther discussed here. But beyond this it is important, and especially
perhaps, as things stand now, for girls—that each youth or girl
should personally see enough of the other sex at an early period to be
able to form some kind of judgment of his or her relation to that sex and
to sex-matters generally. It is monstrous that the first case of
sex-glamor—the true nature of which would be exposed by a little
experience—should, perhaps for two people, decide the destinies of a
life-time. Yet the more the sexes are kept apart, the more overwhelming
does this glamor become, and the more ignorance is there, on either side,
as to its nature. No doubt it is one of the great advantages of
co-education of the sexes, that it tends to diminish these evils.
Co-education, games and sports to some extent in common, and the doing
away with the absurd superstition that because Corydon and Phyllis happen
to kiss each other sitting on a gate, therefore they must live together
all their lives, would soon mend matters considerably. Nor would a
reasonable familiarity between the sexes in youth—tempered, as it
would be, by previous education and by the subsidence of the blind passion—necessarily
mean an increase of casual or clandestine sex-relations. But even if
casualties of this kind did occur they would not be the fatal and
unpardonable sins that they now at least for girls—are considered to
be. Though the recognition of anything like common pre-matrimonial
sex-intercourse would probably be foreign to the temper of a northern
nation; yet it is open to question whether Society here, in its mortal and
fetichistic dread of the thing, has not, by keeping the young of both
sexes in ignorance and darkness and seclusion from each other, created
worse ills and suffering than it has prevented, and whether it has not
indeed intensified the particular evil that it dreaded, rather than abated
it.
In the next place (3) we come to the establishment in marriage itself of a
freer and broader and more healthy relationship than generally exists at
the present time. Attractive as the ideal of the exclusive attachment is,
it runs the fatal risk, as we have already pointed out, of lapsing into a
mere stagnant double selfishness. But, in this world, Love is fed not by
what it takes, but by what it gives; and the very excellent dual love of
man and wife must be fed also by the love they give to others. If they
cannot come out of their secluded haven to reach a hand to others, or even
to give some boon of affection to those who need it more than themselves,
or if they mistrust each other in doing so, then assuredly they are not
very well fitted to live together.
A marriage, so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide
excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate
objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in the
bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more
poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer
and more vital—would be in a sense indestructible; like the relation
of two suns which, revolving in fluent and rebounding curves, only recede
from each other in order to return again with renewed swiftness into close
proximity—and which together blend their rays into the glory of one
cosmic double star.
It has been the inability to see or understand this very simple truth that
has largely contributed to the failure of the Monogamie union. The narrow
physical passion of jealousy, the petty sense of private property in
another person, social opinion, and legal enactments, have all converged
to choke and suffocate wedded love in egoism, lust, and meanness. But
surely it is not very difficult (for those who believe in the real thing)
to imagine so sincere and natural a trust between man and wife that
neither would be greatly alarmed at the other's friendship with a third
person, nor conclude at once that it meant mere infidelity—or
difficult even to imagine that such a friendship might be hailed as a gain
by both parties. And if it is quite impossible (to some people) to see in
such intimacies anything but a confusion of all sex-relations and a chaos
of mere animal desire, we can only reply that this view of the situation
is probably one that arises greatly out of the present marriage system,
and the modes of thought which it engenders—and that anyhow the
difficulty to which it refers is likely to be guarded against better by
candor and a little common sense than by hysterics and deception. In order
to suppose a rational marriage at all one must credit the parties
concerned with some modicum of common sense and self-control.
Withal, seeing the remarkable and immense variety of love in human
nature, when the feeling is really touched—how the love-offering of
one person's soul and body is entirely different from that of another
person's, so much so as almost to require another name—how one
passion is predominantly physical, and another predominantly emotional,
and another contemplative, or spiritual, or practical, or sentimental; how
in one case it is jealous and exclusive, and in another hospitable and
free, and so forth—it seems rash to lay down any very hard and fast
general laws for the marriage-relation, or to insist that a real and
honorable affection can only exist under this or that special form. It is
probably through this fact of the variety of love that it does remain
possible, in some cases, for married people to have intimacies with
outsiders, and yet to remain perfectly true to each other; and in rare
instances, for triune and other such relations to be permanently
maintained.
We now come to the last consideration, namely (4) the modification of the
present law of marriage. It is pretty clear that people will not much
longer consent to pledge themselves irrevocably for life as at present.
And indeed there are already plentiful indications of a growing change of
practice. The more people come to recognise the sacredness and naturalness
of the real union, the less will they be willing to bar themselves from
this by a life-long and artificial contract made in their salad days.
Hitherto the great bulwark of the existing institution has been the
dependence of Women, which has given each woman a direct and most material
interest in keeping up the supposed sanctity of the bond—and which
has prevented a man of any generosity from proposing an alteration which
would have the appearance of freeing himself at the cost of the woman; but
as this fact of the dependence of women gradually dissolves out, and as
the great fact of the spiritual nature of the true Marriage crystalises
into more clearness—so will the formal bonds which bar the formation
of the latter gradually break away and become of small import.
Love when felt at all deeply has an element of transcendentalism in it,
which makes it the most natural thing in the world for the two lovers—even
though drawn together by a passing sex-attraction—to swear eternal
troth to each other; but there is something quite diabolical and
mephistophelean in the practice of the Law, which creeping up behind, as
it were, at this critical moment, and overhearing the two thus pledging
themselves, claps its book together with a triumphant bang, and exclaims:
"There now you are married and done for, for the rest of your natural
lives."
What actual changes in Law and Custom the collective sense of society will
bring about is a matter which in its detail we cannot of course foresee or
determine. But that the drift will be, and must be, towards greater
freedom is pretty clear. Ideally speaking it is plain that anything like a
perfect union must have perfect freedom for its condition; and while it is
quite supposable that a lover might out of the fulness of his heart make
promises and give pledges, it is really almost inconceivable that anyone
having that delicate and proud sense which marks deep feeling, could
possibly demand a promise from his loved one. As there is
undoubtedly a certain natural reticence in sex, so perhaps the most decent
thing in true Marriage would be to say nothing, make no promises—either
for a year or a lifetime. Promises are bad at any time, and when the heart
is full silence befits it best. Practically, however, since a love of this
kind is slow to be realised, since social custom is slow to change, and
since the partial dependence and slavery of Woman must yet for a while
continue, it is likely for such period that formal contracts of some kind
will still be made; only these (it may be hoped) will lose their
irrevocable and rigid character, and become in some degree adapted to the
needs of the contracting parties.
Such contracts might of course, if adopted, be very very various in
respect to conjugal rights, conditions of termination, division of
property, responsibility for and rights over children, etc. In some cases*
they might be looked upon as preliminary to a more permanent alliance to
be made later on; in others they would provide for disastrous marriages, a
remedy free from the inordinate scandals of the present Divorce Courts. It
may however be said that rather than adopt any new system of contracts,
public opinion in this country would tend to a simple facilitation of
Divorce, and that if the latter were made (with due provision for the
children) to depend on mutual consent, it would become little more than an
affair of registration, and the scandals of the proceeding would be
avoided. In any case we think that marriage-contracts, if existing at all,
must tend more and more to become matters of private arrangement as far as
the relations of husband and wife are concerned, and that this is likely
to happen in proportion as woman becomes more free, and therefore more
competent to act in her own right. It would be felt intolerable, in any
decently constituted society, that the old blunderbuss of the Law should
interfere in the delicate relations of wedded life. As it is to-day the
situation is most absurd. On the one hand, having been constituted from
times back in favor of the male, the Law still gives to the husband
barbarous rights over the person of his spouse; on the other hand, to
compensate for this, it rushes in with the farcicalities of Breach of
Promise; and in any case, having once pronounced its benediction over a
pair—however hateful the alliance may turn out to be to both
parties, and however obvious its failure to the whole world—the
stupid old thing blinks owlishly on at its own work, and professes itself
totally unable to undo the knot which once it tied!
* As suggested by Mrs. H. Ellis in her pamphlet A Noviciate
for Marriage.
The only point where there is a permanent ground for State-interference—and
where indeed there is no doubt that the public authority should in some
way make itself felt—is in the matter of the children resulting from
any alliance. Here the relation of the pair ceases to be private and
becomes social; and the interests of the child itself, and of the nation
whose future citizen the child is, have to be safe-guarded. Any contracts,
or any proposals of divorce, before they could be sanctioned by the public
authority, would have to contain satisfactory provisions for the care and
maintenance of the children in such casualties as might ensue; nor ought
there to be maintained any legal distinction between 'natural' and
'legitimate' children, since it is clear that whatever individuals or
society at large may, in the former case, think of the conduct of the
parents, no disability should on that account accrue to the child, nor
should the parents (if identifiable) be able to escape their full
responsibility for bringing it into the world.
If it be objected that such private contracts, or such facilitations of
Divorce, as here spoken of, would simply lead to frivolous experimental
relationships entered into and broken-off ad infinitum, it must be
remembered that the responsibility for due rearing and maintenance of
children must give serious pause to such a career; and that to suppose
that any great mass of the people would find their good in a kind of
matrimonial game of General Post is to suppose that the mass of the people
have really never acquired or been taught the rudiments of common sense in
such matters—is to suppose a case for which there would hardly be a
parallel in the customs of any nation or tribe that we know of.
In conclusion, it is evident that no very great change for the better in
marriage-relations can take place except as the accompaniment of
deep-lying changes in Society at large; and that alterations in the Law
alone will effect but a limited improvement. Indeed it is not very likely,
as long as the present commercial order of society lasts, that the
existing Marriage-laws—founded as they are on the idea of property—will
be very radically altered, though they may be to some extent. More likely
is it that, underneath the law, the common practice will slide forward
into newer customs. With the rise of the new society, which is already
outlining itself within the structure of the old, many of the difficulties
and bugbears, that at present seem to stand in the way of a more healthy
relation between the sexes, will of themselves disappear.
It must be acknowledged, however, that though a gradual broadening out and
humanising of Law and Custom are quite necessary, it cannot fairly be
charged against these ancient tyrants that they are responsible for all
the troubles connected with sex. There are millions of people to-day who
never could marry happily—however favorable the conditions might be—simply
because their natures do not contain in sufficient strength the elements
of loving surrender to another; and, as long as the human heart is what it
is, there will be natural tragedies arising from the willingness or
unwillingness of one person to release another when the former finds that
his or her love is not returned.* While it is quite necessary that these
natural tragedies should not be complicated and multiplied by needless
legal interference—complicated into the numberless artificial
tragedies which are so exasperating when represented on the stage or in
romance, and so saddening when witnessed in real life—still we may
acknowledge that, short of the millennium, they will always be with us,
and that no institution of marriage alone, or absence of institution, will
rid us of them. That entire and unswerving refusal to 'cage' another
person, or to accept an affection not perfectly free and spontaneous,
which will, we are fain to think, be always more and more the mark of
human love, must inevitably bring its own price of mortal suffering with
it; yet the Love so gained, whether in the individual or in society, will
be found in the end to be worth the pang—and as far beyond the other
love, as is the wild bird of Paradise that comes to feed out of our hands
unbidden more lovely than the prisoner we shut with draggled wings behind
the bars. Love is doubtless the last and most difficult lesson that
humanity has to learn; in a sense it underlies all the others. Perhaps the
time has come for the modern nations when, ceasing to be children, they
may even try to learn it.
* Perhaps one of the most sombre and inscrutable of these
natural tragedies lies, for Woman, in the fact that the man
to whom she first surrenders her body often acquires for her
(whatever his character may be) so profound and inalienable
a claim upon her heart. While, either for man or woman, it
is almost impossible to thoroughly understand their own
nature, or that of others, till they have had sex-
experience, it happens so that in the case of woman the
experience which should thus give the power of choice is
frequently the very one which seals her destiny. It reveals
to her, as at a glance, the tragedy of a life-time which
lies before her, and yet which she cannot do other than
accept.
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