If there is a mistake peculiarly fatal to a young man's or a girl's
future, it is that supreme act of social destruction called a
_mesalliance_. Indeed it is not measurable by any of the usual
conditions of life, and death itself would be a kindness compared with
the long misery of some kinds of _mesalliances_. They may arise from
inequalities of birth, differences in religious faith, or great
discrepancies in age; but whatever their occasion, they are always a
far-reaching and irretrievable mistake; the mistake _par excellence_
of any life.
An unequal marriage is not only the most fatal blunder of life, it is
also the most common one; and although it is not very easy for a man
to ruin himself with a single act, a foolish marriage will afford him
at least one decided way. In regard to men's _mesalliances_, they
cannot be said to be specially the temptation of youth. Foolish old
men who marry their cooks, and foolish young men who burden themselves
with some Casino divinity, keep up a very steady average. But the
young man's mistake is much the worst of the two; for he has his whole
life before him, and has probably made no provision against such a
social suicide.
If an old man marries beneath his station and culture, he believes he
is getting the wife he most desires; and if he is disappointed, he is
at any rate near the end of life, and he either has no children to
suffer from his folly, or they have already grown beyond its most
painful reach. But a young man who binds himself to a woman who is
every way beneath his own station, education, and professional
ambition, is in a different case. In a very short time the disillusion
of those senses begins under which he permitted mere physical beauty
to bind him; and he knows that, as far as his future progress is
concerned, he has put a millstone about his neck.
The effect of a social _mesalliance_ on a girl is still worse. In the
first place, it ought to be so; for she has to sin against the natural
instinct of a good woman, which is always to marry above herself, an
instinct which is, both physiologically and socially, noble. For a
woman is less than a woman who does not consider the consequence of
marriage, and provide in every way possible to her the best father for
her offspring. And if she marries beneath herself socially, the almost
certain presumption is that the social status of her husband is the
measure of his intellectual abilities, and of his personal refinement
also. And when a woman considers herself only in her marriage, and has
no care for the circumstances to which she may doom her unborn
children, she is an incarnation of animal selfishness.
Without stopping to analyze the sources of its disapproval, this is
undoubtedly an instinctive motive for the persistent cold shouldering
which society gives girls who degrade themselves by a _mesalliance_.
It is obvious to every one that she has sinned against herself, her
family, her class, and the highest instincts of her sex. Women have
no pardon for such sinners; for they see not only the present wrong,
they look forward also to the possible children of such a union. They
understand that they will have to suffer all the limitations of
poverty when they ought to have had all the advantages of wealth. They
may possibly inherit their father's vulgar tastes and tendencies, or
they may have to endure the misery of fine tastes without any
opportunity to gratify them. For this premeditated sin against
motherhood and against posterity, good women find it hard to tolerate
the offender; for they know that a woman's honor is in her husband,
and that her social station and her social life is determined by his.
When a girl is guilty of a _mesalliance_, it is sometimes said in
extenuation that "she has married a man of noble disposition; and it
is better to marry a poor, ignorant man, with a noble disposition,
than a rich man who is selfish and vicious." If the alternative was a
positive one, yes, but there is no need to make a choice between these
characters. Men of refined habits and manners and good education may
also have noble dispositions; and poor, ill-bred men have not always
noble ones; at any rate, a good woman will always find in her own
class just as good men as she will find in a class below her own.
All this danger is evident to parents. They know how fleeting
passion and fancy are; and they rightly conceive that it is their
duty by all possible means to prevent their daughter making an
unworthy marriage. How far parents may lawfully interfere is a
question not yet decided, nor yet easy to decide. The American
idea of marriage is, theoretically, that every soul finds its
companion soul, and lives happily ever after; and in this romantic
search for a companion soul, young girls are allowed to roam about
society, just when their instincts are the strongest and their
reason the weakest. The French theory--to which the English is akin
somewhat--is that a mother's knowledge is better than a girl's fancy;
and that the wisdom that has hitherto chosen her teachers, physicians,
spiritual guides, and companions, that has guided her through
sickness and health, is not likely to fail in selecting the man most
suitable for her husband.
This latter theory supposes women to love naturally any personable man
who is their own, and who is kind to them; that is, if she has a
virgin heart, and comes in this state from her lessons to her marriage
duties. The American theory supposes girls to love by sympathy, and
through soul attraction and personal attraction; consequently, our
girls are let loose early--too early--to choose among a variety of
Wills and Franks and Charlies; and the natural result is a great
number of what are called "love matches" to which it must be
acknowledged _mesalliances_ are too often the corollary. Between these
two theories, it is impossible to make a positive selection; for the
bad of each is so bad, and the good of each so good that both alike
are capable of the most unqualified praise and blame. It may, however,
be safely asserted that the confidence every American girl has in her
own power to choose her own husband helps to lessen the danger and to
keep things right. For an honorable girl may be trusted with her own
honor; and a dishonorable one, amid a number to choose from, may
peradventure fare better than she deserves; for Fortune does sometimes
bring in the bark that is not steered.
Most girls make _mesalliances_ in sheer thoughtlessness, or through
self-will, or in that youthful passion for romance which thinks it
fine to lose their world for love. Foolish novels are as often to
blame for their social crime as foolish men,--novels which are an
apotheosis of love at any cost! Love against every domestic and social
obligation! Love in spite of all prudent thought of meat and money
matters! Love in a cottage, and nightingales and honeysuckles to pay
the rent! And if parents object to their daughter marrying ruin, then
they are represented as monsters of cruelty; while the girl who flies
stealthily to her misery, and breaks every moral tie to do so, is
idealized into an angel of truth and suffering.
In real life what are parents to do with a daughter whose romantic
folly has made her marry their groom or their footman? We have
outlived the inexorable passions of our ancestors, and their undying
loves and hatreds, sacrifices and revenges. Our social code tolerates
no passion swallowing up all the rest; and we must be content with a
decent expression of feeling. What their daughter has done they cannot
undo; nor can they relieve her from the social consequences of her
act. She has chosen to put their servant above and before them, and to
humiliate her whole family, that she may please her low-born lover and
herself, and she has therefore no right to any more consideration than
she has given. Her parents may not cease to love her, and they may
spare her all reproaches, knowing that her punishment is certain; but
they cannot, for the sake of their other children, treat her socially
above the station she has chosen. She has become the wife of a
servant, and they cannot accept her husband as their equal nor can
they insult their friends by introducing him to them. How wretched is
the position she has put herself in; for if the man she married be
naturally a low man, he will probably drag her to his level by the
"grossness of his nature." If she be a woman of strong character she
may lift her husband upward, but she accepts such a labor at the peril
of her own higher life. And if she finds it impossible either to lift
him to her level or to sink herself to his level, what then remains?
Life-long regrets, bitter shame and self-reproach, or else a forcible
setting of herself free. But the latter remedy carries desperation
instead of hope with it. Never can she quite regain her maiden place,
and an _aura_ of a doubtful kind influences every effort of her future
life.
After all, though men have not the reputation of being romantic, it is
certain that in the matter of unequal marriage, they are more
frequently imprudent than women. There is some possibility of lifting
a low-born woman to the level of a cultivated man, and men dare this
possibility far more frequently than is generally supposed. Perhaps
after a long season they find the fine ladies with whom they have
flirted and danced a weariness; and in this mood they are suddenly
taken with some simple, unfashionable girl, who does not know either
how to dress, or flirt, or dance. So they make the grave error of
thinking that because fine ladies are insupportable, women who are not
fine ladies will be sweet and companionable. But if the one be a
blank, will that prove the other a prize? The dulness or folly of a
polite woman is bad enough; but the dulness and folly of an uneducated
woman is worse. Very soon they find this out, and then comes
indifference, neglect, cruelty, and all the misery that attends two
ruined lives.
The result of unequal marriage in both sexes is certain wretchedness,
and this verdict is not to be altered by its exceptions, however
brilliant they may seem to be. For when a man of means and education
marries an uneducated girl of low birth, or a woman of apparent
culture and high social position marries her servant, and the
marriages are reasonably happy, then it may be positively said,
"_There has been no mesalliance_." The husband and wife were unequal
only in their externals. The real characters of both must have been
vulgar and naturally low and under-bred.
It is folly to talk of two beings unequally married "growing
together," or of "time welding their differences," and making things
comfortable. Habit indeed reconciles us to much suffering, and to many
trials; but an unequal marriage is a trial no one has any business to
have. It is without excuse, and therefore without comfort. When the
Almighty decrees us a martyrdom he blends his peace and consolations
therewith; but when we torture ourselves our sufferings rage like a
conflagration. Perhaps the chain may be worn, as a tight shoe is worn
into shape until it no longer lames; but oh, the misery in the
process! And even in such case the resigned sufferer has no credit in
his patience; quite the contrary, for he knows as well as others know,
though submission to what God ordains is the very height of energy and
nobility, submission to the mistakes we ourselves make is the very
climax of cowardice and weakness.