A NEW MARRIAGE LAW
It results from the foregoing that the ideal form of marriage is
considered to be the perfectly free union of a man and a woman, who
through mutual love desire to promote the happiness of each other and
of the race.
But as development does not proceed by leaps no one can hope that
the whole of society will attain this ideal otherwise than through
transitional forms. These must preserve the property of the old form:
that of expressing the opinion of society on the morality of sexual
relations—and thus providing a support for the undeveloped—but at
the same time must be free enough to promote a continued development
of the higher erotic consciousness of the present time. The modern
man considers himself supreme in the sense that no divine or human
authority higher than the collective power of individuals themselves
can make the laws that confine his liberty. But he admits the necessity
of a legal limitation of freedom, when this prepares the way for a
more perfect future system for the satisfaction of the needs of the
individual and a more complete freedom for the use of his powers.
Insight into the present erotic needs and powers of individuals
must thus be the starting-point of a modern marriage law, but not
any abstract theories about the “idea of the family” or juridical
considerations of the “historical origin” of marriage.
Since, as already pointed out, society is the organisation which
results when human beings set themselves in motion to satisfy their
needs and exercise their powers in common, it must also be in a
condition of uninterrupted transformation according as new needs arise
and new powers are developed. This has now taken place in the erotic
sphere, especially since those emotional needs and powers of the
soul, which formerly were nourished by and directed towards religion,
have been nourished by and directed towards love. Love itself is thus
becoming more and more a religion, and one which demands new forms for
its practice.
But while the individualist can only be satisfied with the full freedom
of love, he is compelled by the sense of solidarity, at least for the
present, to demand a new law for marriage, since the majority is not
yet ready for perfect freedom.
The sense of solidarity and individualism have equally weighty
reasons for condemning the existing institution of marriage. It
forces upon human beings, who are seldom ideal, a unity which only an
ideal happiness renders them capable of supporting. It fulfils one
of its missions—that of protecting the woman—in a way that is now
humiliating to her human dignity. It performs its second function—that
of protecting the children—in an extremely imperfect fashion.
Its third—that of setting up an ideal of the morality of sexual
relations—it performs in such a way that this ideal is now a hindrance
to the further development of morality.
From a realistic point of view, what is the value of matrimony to a
woman? That the present law compels the husband to provide for his
wife and for the children born in wedlock, and that at the death of
the husband it secures to her the widow’s share in his estate and to
the legitimate children their inheritance. But she pays for these
economical advantages by resigning the right over her children, her
property, her work, her person, which she possessed when unmarried.
Even when there is a marriage settlement the husband—as guardian and
administrator of his wife’s property—may squander this, as well as
the proceeds of her work; he can forbid her exercise of a calling or
sell the implements of its exercise. In the eyes of the law, she is
placed on a footing with her children who are under age: her husband
has to sue and to answer for her, and there are certain functions of a
citizen which she cannot perform at all, while others, which she could
perform if unmarried, she can fulfil only with her husband’s consent.
As concerns the children, the law leaves those born outside wedlock
entirely without rights, except for an insufficient contribution to
their bringing-up, if the father does not free himself from this by
oath. The law provides very imperfectly for the welfare of the new
generation by limiting the right of marriage to certain degrees of
affinity, refusing it in the case of certain diseases, and fixing the
age for lawful marriage at fifteen to seventeen for the woman and
twenty-one years for the man.[8]
Finally, marriage binds the wife to the husband and him to her, by the
fact that neither can obtain a divorce without the other’s consent
unless certain acts of ill-treatment or misconduct can be proved. Even
when married people agree to a divorce, it entails a painful procedure
for both of them and poor guarantees for the children’s welfare. If
the man refuses a divorce, the woman—owing to the above-mentioned
obligation of proof, frequently impossible—is forced to remain with
a man she despises, since only thus can she keep her children and
receive support. If the husband is no longer capable of providing this;
if, perhaps, he has squandered means belonging to her which would
have provided it; nay, if the wife, by her own work, is keeping him,
herself, and the children, he still retains the same authority over her
and them.
The unmarried woman, on the other hand, who has given her love
“freely”—that is, without legal compensation in the form of a right
of maintenance—retains full authority over her children, as well as
personal liberty, responsibility, and civil rights. In other words,
she retains all that gives her a dignified position as a human being
in society—but loses the respect of society and economic security.
The married woman, on the other hand, loses all that is important to a
member of society of full age, but retains the respect of society, her
right of inheritance, and her support.
Truly, society has not made it easy for woman to fulfil her “natural
mission”! That she nevertheless—under one or other of these two
alternatives—still gladly performs it, is strong evidence that
it must be the most powerful demand of her nature. If other needs
become stronger—as is already the case with some women—then the
conditions of either alternative will be unacceptable. And as the new
women are still less likely to content themselves with the two other
extremes—lifelong asceticism or prostitution—a new marriage has
become for them a condition of life.
The marriage law now in force is a geological formation, with
stratifications belonging to various phases of culture now concluded.
Our own phase alone has left few and unimportant traces in it.
It has been perceived in our time that love ought to be the moral
ground of marriage. And love rests upon equality. But the law of
marriage dates from a time when the importance of love was not yet
recognised. It, therefore, rests upon the inequality between a lord and
his dependent.
Our time has given to the unmarried woman the opportunity of making
her own living, a legal status, and civil rights. But the marriage law
dates from a time when women had none of these things. The married
woman, thus, under this law, now occupies a position in sharp contrast
to the independence of the unmarried, which has been acquired since
that time.
Our time has displaced the ancient division of labour, by which the
wife cared for the children and the husband provided maintenance. But
the law of marriage dates from a time when this division held full sway
and when it was, therefore, almost impossible for a woman to receive
protection for herself and her child otherwise than in matrimony. Now
society has begun to provide such protection for unmarried mothers, and
the renunciation of liberty by which the wife purchases the protection
of marriage is seen to be not only more and more unworthy, but also
unnecessary.
Our time has recognised more and more the importance of every child as
a new member of society and the right of every child to be born under
healthy conditions. But the law of marriage was framed at a time when
this aspect had not presented itself to the consciousness of mankind;
when the illegitimate child was regarded as worthless, however superior
in itself, and the legitimate child as valuable, whatever might be its
hereditary defects.
Our time has recognised the value to morality of personal choice.
It admits as really ethical only such acts as result from personal
examination and take place with the approval of the individual
conscience.
The marriage system came into being when this sovereignty of the
individual was scarcely suspected, much less recognised; when souls
were bound by the power of society, and when compulsion was society’s
only means of attaining its ends. Marriage was the halter with which
the racial instinct was tamed, or, in other words, the instinct of
nature was ennobled by being brought into unity with social purpose.
Now love has been developed, the human personality has been developed,
and woman’s powers have been liberated.
On account of woman’s present independent activity and
self-determination outside marriage, the law must provide that the
married woman shall retain her freedom of action by giving her full
authority over her person and property.
On account of the individual’s dislike of being forced into religious
forms that have no meaning for him, the legal form of marriage must be
a civil one.
On account of the individual’s desire of personal choice in actions
that are personally important, the continuance of marriage—as well as
its inception—must depend upon either of the parties and divorce be
thus free; and this all the more, since the new idea of purity implies
that compulsion in this direction is a humiliation.
These are the claims the people of the present day make upon the form
of marriage, if it is to express their personal will and further the
growth of their personality. The actual institution of marriage, on the
other hand, involves forms that have become meaningless and therefore
repulsive, and places the parties under the law in a position with
regard to one another which, looked at ideally, is as far beneath the
merits and dignity of the modern man as it actually is beneath those of
the modern woman.
While thus the development of the ideas of personality and of love
have resulted in these demands of increased liberty for the individual
within marriage, the idea of solidarity and evolutionism, on the other
hand, demand great limitations of individual freedom. The knowledge
that every new being has a right to claim that its life shall be a
real value—as well as knowledge of the right of society that the new
life shall be a valuable one—has involved the demand of prohibiting
marriages which would be dangerous to the children, and of better
protecting the children where there is no marriage or where a marriage
has been dissolved.
The economic factor has in modern society an importance for marriage
which is felt to be more and more degrading as marriage becomes
established on the basis of love.
Marriages inwardly dissolved are now often held together because both
the parties would be in a worse financial position after divorce. The
husband can not or will not make his wife a sufficient allowance; he
is, perhaps, unable to realise her fortune, which he has invested in
his business, or perhaps he has spent it; the wife at marriage has
abandoned an occupation which she cannot now take up again in order to
support herself—and so on to infinity.
But even happy marriages suffer through the wife’s subordinate
position, economically as well as judicially.
It is, therefore, of great importance both in happy and unhappy
marriages that the wife should retain control over her property and
her earnings; that she should be self-supporting in so far as she
can combine this with her duties as a mother, and that she should be
maintained by the community during the first year of each child’s life.
Similar proposals have been made from the socialist side, but also in
other quarters.
A woman ought to be able to claim this subsidy if she can prove:
That she is of full legal age;
That she has performed her equivalent of military service by undergoing
a one year’s training in the care of children and in hygiene, and—if
possible—in nursing the sick;
That she will, herself, care for the children or provide other
efficient care;
That she is without sufficient personal means or earnings to provide
for her own and half of the children’s support, or that she has given
up work for the sake of looking after the children.
Those who are unwilling to conform to the above conditions will not
apply for the subsidy, which naturally cannot be greater than what
is strictly necessary, and which will only in exceptional cases be
distributed for longer than a child’s _three_ first and most important
years.
Those who renounced the subsidy would thus be as a rule the well-to-do,
or those who wished to devote themselves to self-support and thus gave
up, either altogether or after the first year, this help from the
community. The arrangement would fulfil its purpose in those classes of
society where at present the mother’s outdoor work, both in country and
town, involves equally great dangers to herself and the children. The
charges for this most important of defensive taxes ought, like other
similar ones, to be graduated and thus to fall most heavily upon the
rich, but upon the unmarried in the same degree as the married.
Inspection should be carried out by commissioners to be appointed in
every commune, varying in number according to the size of the commune,
but always composed of two-thirds women and one-third men. These
would distribute the subsidy and supervise the care not only of young
children but also of older ones. The mother who neglected her child
would, after three cautions, be deprived of the subsidy and the child
would be taken from her. The same would also apply to other parents who
subjected their children to bodily or mental ill-treatment.
The mother’s maintenance would always amount to the same sum per
annum, but for every child she would receive in addition the half of
its maintenance, until the number of children was reached that the
community might consider desirable from its point of view. Any children
born beyond that number would be the affair of the parents. Every
father would have to contribute a corresponding half of the child’s
maintenance from its birth up to the age of eighteen. At present the
community affords a man help as breadwinner for a family in the form
of higher wages calculated to that end and a rising scale according
to age, which, however, he receives whether he is married or single,
childless or the father of a family. But by paying the subsidy to the
mother, all need of unequal wages for the two sexes would cease, and
the subsidy would really further the purpose that is of importance to
the community: the rearing of the children.
The present system, on the other hand, maintains that most crude
injustice, the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children;
it frees unmarried fathers from their natural responsibility; it drives
unmarried mothers to infanticide, to suicide, to prostitution.
All these conditions would be altered by a law which prescribed that
every mother has a right, under certain conditions, to the support
of the community during the years in which she is bearing the burden
most important to the community; and that every child has a right to
maintenance by both its parents, to the name of both and—so far as
there may be property—to the inheritance of both.
Since the mother must now, with increasing frequency, be a breadwinner
as well as the husband, it is just, even from this point of view, that
she should share with him authority over the children. But since,
furthermore, she has suffered more for them, thus loves them more and
understands them better—and thus, as a rule, not only does more for
them but also means more to them—it is likewise just that, whereas the
mother now has to be satisfied with what power the father allows her,
the conditions should be reversed, so that the mother should receive
the greatest legal authority.
When the husband is not alone in bearing the burden of breadwinner,
there will be a possibility of his duty as educator being realised. He
will then have time to develop his qualities in this direction and the
growing value of his fatherly care and fatherly love will lighten for
the mother the task of education which at present often overwhelms her,
since with a growing consciousness of its responsibility this task is
becoming more and more difficult to perform with her increasing need of
personal freedom of movement.
The mother and child would, therefore, not have to look exclusively
to the father for the necessaries of life, and they could not become
entirely destitute through his incapacity or downfall. But he would,
nevertheless, continue to bear his half of the responsibility and
the family would still be dependent on the father and his voluntary
contributions for a great part of the pleasures of life, while he
would, moreover, be freed from the often unbearable burdens under which
his spiritual worth as a father and his family joys now suffer to so
great a degree. Far from its being the case—as one has heard certain
women declare—that the majority of men are nothing but egoists,
countless numbers of them have borne and still bear burdens of slavery,
not only for wife and children but also for the support of other female
relations. On the other hand, the prevailing system of society has
prompted fathers still more to enslave themselves in order to create
an advantageous position for their children. The existing rights and
duties of a father stand in immediate connection with the right of
inheritance, one of the greatest dangers of our system of society.
For inheritance often keeps inefficiency in a leading position, but
efficiency in a dependent one; it favours the possibility of the
degenerate propagating the race, above all if the parents have died
early, although—as it has been asserted—it is precisely such children
that are the least apt to have offspring. It is unfavourable to the
chances of the efficient in this as in every other direction, where
birth in poor circumstances involves hindrances to education and the
use of personal powers which wealth permits. On the other hand, poverty
favours natural talent, in so far as it braces the capabilities, while
it is often one of the misfortunes of heirs not to experience this
inciting and pleasurable tension. It is only the strongest or the
finest natures that become stronger and finer through the advantages
and the sense of responsibility that inherited wealth brings with it.
In the main, the productive sources of society would be multiplied
upwards as well as downwards, if wealth became personal in the fullest
sense of the word, depending on each person’s contribution of efficient
force, but the goad of acquisitiveness would be broken, through the
limited possibility of increasing one’s wealth and the needlessness of
thereby securing the existence of one’s children. A new system would
do away with the necessity of applying to the state for increase of
salary for the education of children as befits their class. For if all
children were placed in an equal position by the community providing
everything—from school materials to travelling scholarships—for the
complete education of the bodily and mental powers of individuals, an
education in which a true circulation of the classes would take place
by consideration being given only to ability; if each thus had the same
position when all entered upon their different careers; if each had the
same chances of there attaining to the right use of his special powers,
since he had had every means of training them; if society gave—as a
right, not as a charity—to every worker full care during sickness and
full support in old age, then the desire to favour one’s own children
at the cost of the rest would disappear. The father whose activity
had procured him a position of power, which during his lifetime made
his children’s circumstances more favourable than those of a number
of others, would certainly thus be able—and to the advantage of the
whole community—to allow his children to enjoy that differentiation
and refinement which, for instance, the richer culture of their home
might give. But when the right of inheritance disappeared—or at least
was greatly limited and heavily taxed—he could not exempt them from
permanently securing by the exercise of their own powers the advantages
of a higher or lower kind that they had learned to value at home.
When the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children is
abolished in every respect, the paternal home, as in classical and
Scandinavian antiquity, may include more often than at present the
children of more than one living mother; sometimes even a mother’s home
may include children of more than one living father. In either case
this would be a recognition of the children’s rights which would leave
present day customs with respect to children born out of wedlock a long
way behind.
No relation shows better than marriage how morals and emotions may be
centuries in advance of the laws within whose limits they have been
developed.
Many men now show their wives a delicacy of feeling and allow them a
freedom of action which render these fortunate wives unconscious of
the fact that—in the eyes of the law—they possess these only by the
grace of their husbands. It is not until relations become unhappy that
the wife discovers that all the legal power is placed in the hands of
one, who thus has judicial support if he wishes to use his power alone,
to the exclusion of his wife, or if he wishes to misuse it, to the
detriment of her and the children.
That, in spite of these circumstances, married men so often voluntarily
place themselves in a position of equality with their wives in regard
to authority in the home and with the children is the best proof of
the power of the feelings to protect essential values. And that men, in
spite of these marriage laws, have become more and more considerate,
redounds as much to their credit as their success in becoming human
beings—in spite of all hindrances—redounds to that of royal
personages. Just as the latter have more excuse than others when they
abuse their position, so the same is true of the husband, who must be a
very fair-minded person if an _I will_ is not to be the conclusion of
a difference of opinion between himself and his wife; for not even the
tenderest love will hinder the sense of mastery from flaring up in the
face of her obstinate resistance in one direction or another.
To the majority of men, however—and this is the more the case the
lower they are in other respects—the present marriage law still
forms the great hindrance in the way of their development to a higher
humanity. To have wife and child in his power makes of the wicked man
a torturer, of the low-minded a wretch. There is no exaggeration in
Stuart Mill’s words, that so long as the family is based upon laws
which are at variance with the first principles of social life in other
things, the law will be favouring what education and civilisation are
counteracting in other spheres, namely, the right of force instead of
that of personality. Everywhere—in morals as in politics—it is now
held that not what a man becomes through being born in a certain sex
or class, but what he is personally worth determines the respect he
should enjoy; that only his conduct and merits can be the source of his
power and authority. But marriage reverses the whole of this principle
of modern constitutional law and, therefore, the social application of
the principle of personality has not yet gone beyond the surface.
That the law continues to sanction what reality has begun to transform
is, as we have said, of comparatively little weight, since the law
is—in the better sense of the words—a dead letter. But the immediate
danger to the individual and the indirect danger to society become
greater in proportion as the possessor of uncontrolled power is worse,
or the life less ideal in which this authority is decisive. And even
when circumstances are favourable, the authority of the husband is the
more painful to the modern woman in proportion as she is more conscious
of being able to attain only through perfect equality a satisfactory
co-operation with her husband in every direction. It is this profound
vexation of the modern woman with her dependence which, amongst other
things, makes many women, even when they do not need it, wish to remain
at least self-supporting after marriage.
The labour market has hitherto favoured this desire of theirs. It can,
however, only be a question of time when the unmarried women will begin
to thrust out the married ones—owing to the conditions of competition
being more favourable to the former—when legislation has begun to deal
with the present disproportionate state of things, where the wives
lower the wages of the husbands, the children those of the parents,
and the result is the neglect of the homes and the physical and moral
degeneration of the children.
But when married women’s labour has been limited by legal “protection
for mothers”—especially if this takes the form proposed above—and
when, further, the married and the unmarried are protected by the
fixing of a minimum wage, an eight hours’ day, and prohibition of
working at night and in certain industries dangerous to health, then
the mothers will still be able—when their children have passed the
age of infancy—to take part in several occupations. This will be
still more the case if a collective system of dwellings sets them free
from the work of the kitchen and renders possible a good collective
superintendence of the children while their mothers are absent.
But the best thing for the children—especially if by the prohibition
of home work they were rescued from earning a livelihood to the
advantage of their school and home life—would be the liberation of
married women from outside labour through the higher wages of their
husbands, while in return _their home work would acquire the character
of spiritual care_. This would be brought about in the fullest sense
by the mothers being allowed the above-mentioned _subsidy from the
community_ for bringing up the children. In such an arrangement,
approved by the community, the majority might find that agreement
between their occupation and their powers which constitutes the true
joy of work. For it can scarcely be doubted that even now the wife,
as a rule, finds more employment in her home work, however heavy, for
her special talents, and thus finds a greater satisfaction than the
husband, who often slaves, not at the work he has chosen, but at that
he has been able to obtain.
But what, in spite of this, now makes women more and more unwilling
to undertake the duties of the home and to prefer outside work, is
that they carry out their domestic work under conditions derogatory to
themselves.
First and foremost, women are determined to enjoy the facilities in
their domestic work which here and there are already beginning to be
provided. These, however, will probably not become general until women
make more use of their capacity for thinking out the most convenient
and agreeable methods, both for labour-saving co-operation and for
the performance of domestic duties, which will in any case always
remain; and this again necessitates their educating themselves to a
real knowledge of the questions of consumption and other details of
modern household management. This will be the more necessary as the
servant problem within a short time will have reached that point at
which women of all classes will have to choose between doing the work
themselves and the complete dissolution of the home. Woman’s domestic
work and the care of children will be facilitated for all women only in
so far as the educated agree in making new and higher demands in the
matter of domestic arrangements as well as in practical and ornamental
appliances. They would thus not only further their own work, but also
evoke a higher culture as regards beauty and appropriateness, both in
architecture and industry.
But this is not enough to enable domestic work to regain its dignity.
This will not take place until society shows such appreciation of
woman’s domestic work as shall remove her present sense of being kept
by her husband to perform a subordinate work, a work which does not
receive the appreciation which at the present time has become the
absolute standard of the economical value of labour, that of a money
wage.
The existing institution of marriage came into being when woman had no
real field of employment outside the home, since its income was for the
most part received in kind, and the wife was thus indispensable for
turning it to account. Her domestic activity was of great value from
the point of view of national economy, and under these circumstances
the joint estate was natural. Furthermore, the mistress of the
house possessed at this time—as manager of the consumption of the
commodities she had prepared from raw materials—a freedom of action
and an authority which she now quite naturally lacks in her own eyes
and those of her husband. It is of no avail that she has a legal
right to be supported by her husband according to his position and
circumstances; for if her task frequently consists simply in asking her
husband for money and keeping an account of its expenditure through
the cook and the needlewoman, she has reason to feel herself kept in a
humiliating way. Neither indirectly nor directly is it through her work
that the food comes to the table or the clothes are fitted to the body,
since the husband alone earns the means wherewith she—efficiently or
otherwise—keeps house.
For this reason wives are becoming increasingly desirous of personally
earning a livelihood. They see how their husbands are developed through
devotion to a profession, through the patience, the accumulation, and
tension of forces which this demands. And only professional training,
in the opinion of modern woman, can give her the same energy, only a
direct income can give her the same certainty of her fitness for work.
But there is another expedient which would afford these advantages
without, however, driving women away from home, namely, that their
special training for, and their work in, the field of housekeeping and
the care of children should be as serious as in any other occupation.
Not until she has a sense of the new value of her domestic work will
the wife be able to demand that it shall be economically estimated like
any other efficient work.
When wives speak of the humiliation of being kept by their
husbands—since they have more and more frequently been self-supporting
before marriage—their husbands always become profoundly idealistic.
They use fine words about the wife’s important mission, the adapting
power of love, until one asks some particular man: whether any love
could make it pleasant _for him_, instead of drawing his own income,
to be obliged to ask his wife for what she considered necessary for
their joint expenditure or for his own. In spite of the consciousness
of having herself brought wealth, or in spite of the knowledge of
constantly making important contributions of work in the home, the
necessity of asking for money is the wife’s unbearable torment. For
the husband in his heart has often the same feeling as she; that
work nowadays means earning money outside, since the management
of an income—in spite of its immense importance to the strength,
health, and comfort of the workers and thus indirectly to the whole
national economy—is more and more overlooked. In part this idea of
the husband is due to the very fact that women have not acquired the
new kind of domesticity which is necessary for the efficient conduct
of expenditure, and that the husband is, therefore, often right in
thinking that his wife neither works nor saves, but only wastes.
However touchingly idealistic a girl may be in this question before
marriage; however confidingly she allows her husband to handle her
fortune, after a few years of married life experience will turn her
into a complete realist. However happy she has otherwise been, she
will, nevertheless, remember more than one occasion when she has
bitterly regretted the absence of the freedom of action a separate
income gives; when, for instance, her husband has refused to allow her
to use—for some ideal purpose or other—the means which in many cases
she herself brought him, and how perhaps this for the first time really
made a division between them.
The dependence of woman can only be abolished through the _economic
appreciation of her domestic work_. This appreciation is an easy matter
when she has left a salaried employment for her domestic duties, for
the performance of the latter must be regarded as worth at least as
much as her occupation formerly brought her. Where there is no such
measure of value, she ought to receive the same amount as a stranger in
corresponding circumstances would receive in salary and cost of keep.
The wife would thus be able to meet her personal expenditure, her share
in the joint housekeeping and in the maintenance of the children, when
the subsidy for this purpose came to an end but the couple were agreed
that the wife’s work at home was of such value that she ought rather to
continue it than to try to earn money outside.
The carrying out of this arrangement need not cause any dislocation of
existing conditions. The wife would continue to manage the domestic
funds to which each would contribute according to agreement, but she
would probably be better able to solve the problem of making them
suffice for their joint expenses. She would be perfectly free to forego
her allowance, as her husband would be to increase it according to
need and ability. The direct economical appreciation of her domestic
work would transform her own and her husband’s respect for it and
thus give wives, on the one hand, a sense of independence which even
the conscientious are now without, on the other, a sense of duty
which in the case of the less conscientious is doubtless in need of
strengthening; for the existing arrangement favours not only domestic
tyranny on the part of the husbands, but also inefficiency on the
part of certain wives. But the fact that a small number of women of
the upper class now do no work at all in the home, or that a number
of others do it badly, must not obscure the truth that innumerable
women are constantly expending in their homes great sums of working
power, without being able legally to claim any corresponding income
of their own. This applies not only to the wives but also to the
daughters of the house, who often work from morning till night, but
are nevertheless obliged to accept as gifts from their parents all
that they personally need, and thus also have to do without anything
that their parents consider unnecessary. The same is true of the wife
in relation to her husband. When unmarried—whether she was in private
or public service, a factory hand or a clerk—she had the chance
of in some measure providing for her own interests. When married,
every present she gives, every contribution she makes for a public
purpose, every book she buys, every amusement she allows herself, has
to be taken from her husband’s money. The wife who, in a farmer’s
home perhaps, saves thousands—both by economy and by the direct
contribution of her labour—frequently has not a silver piece at her
disposal.
This dependence, as we have said, now drives wives and daughters
from their homes to earn a livelihood, which often does not by any
means compensate economically for the loss of their work at home. But
they simply cannot endure to be without the personal income, which
to them has become a more and more important value, according as
their general freedom of movement and their needs in other directions
have increased—above all, through increase of education and social
interests.
Woman’s present unpaid position in domestic work is an obsolete
survival from earlier conditions of housekeeping and production, as
from the ecclesiastical doctrine that woman was created to be man’s
helpmate and he to be her head. Women have thus often received worse
heads than nature gave them—and thereby man has had less valuable help
than life intended for him.
Not until an incorruptible realism establishes the principle within
the family as elsewhere, that each retains his own head and that every
labourer is worthy of his hire, will idealism find there a full field
for unforced generosity in the free will of mutual help.
While what is said above applies to all women who wish to work at
home, it need not apply to those who are able through the fortune they
brought with them to meet their household expenses and those of the
children and who wish in return to be free from the trouble of domestic
work.
Every attempt at mediation in the question of married women’s
property—such as an obligatory marriage settlement and similar
proposals—only introduces endless complications. It will be simple and
clear only when—as in Russia even from the time of Catherine II—the
woman simply retains her fortune. The law ought to express the great
principle, that either party owns what is his or hers, while those,
on the other hand, who desire to introduce another arrangement, must
decide by contract how much of the property is to be held jointly.
Only a separation of property carried out as a principle will be
able to form the new and clear ideas of justice that the present
time demands. A separate estate places two individuals side by side,
co-operating with the freedom that is enjoyed by a brother and sister
or two friends. Both parties retain full right of decision and full
responsibility. Either leaves transactions to the other only in that
degree that the other’s qualities have won his confidence. Both show
each other mutual consideration in the planning of joint undertakings
and neither can be drawn into such without a personal examination.
The rights of a third party are, in these circumstances, equally
well protected as when brothers and sisters or friends work or live
together. For the mutual transactions of married people must to this
end have the same publicity as all other similar transactions between
business partners.
Not only as regards her property, but also in her full civil rights
and the disposition of her person, the married woman must be placed on
an equal footing with the unmarried. It is true that the law is not so
favourable as many people believe to “conjugal rights.” But this belief
has survived for centuries and in turn influences morals; moreover,
it is not without a certain legal support, in case such a question is
brought into court. As a rule, of course, this does not happen, but, on
the other hand, the idea of legality—which is further encouraged by
the Bible—influences the husband’s sense of right and the wife’s sense
of duty. So long as the law maintains even a shadow of “rights” in that
relation which ought to be the most voluntary of all, it involves a
gross violation of love’s freedom.
This—like all other obsolete laws—is meaningless to the erotically
refined, who live above the law’s standpoint. But the lower the
level, the more certainly does the husband enforce his “right” under
circumstances the most repulsive or most dangerous to the wife, just
as—contrary to his present right—he extorts from her the earnings of
her labour.
No law will be able to hinder the wife from continuing voluntarily to
allow her husband to violate her person, squander her property, or ruin
her children; for the law cannot seal up the sources of weakness and
conflict which arise from the human being’s own nature.
But what we have a right to demand of the marriage law is that it shall
cease itself to extend these sources.
The law must be so contrived that it leaves to happiness the greatest
possible freedom for its own formative power, while, on the other hand,
it limits as far as possible the consequences of unhappiness; and this
can be brought about only by each party’s complete independence of the
other.
It is, therefore, not sufficient that the husband’s guardianship and
the wife’s legal incapacity should cease. Every provision also which
has for its object to bind the wife by her husband’s condition and
circumstances must be revoked.
The majority of men now cherish the belief that a wife who leaves her
husband’s house can be brought back with the aid of the law. This is,
doubtless, a mistake. But even if the letter of the law in this case
also is better than the popular idea of it, the whole spirit of the
law, nevertheless, entails the obligation of married people to live
together.
The more personality is developed, however, the more uncertain
it becomes that every person’s erotic needs are answered by this
arrangement. There are, on the contrary, such natures as would have
loved for life, if they had not, day after day, year after year, been
forced to adapt their wills, their habits, and their opinions to
one another. Nay, many misfortunes depend upon pure trifles, which
two people with courage and foresight might easily have dealt with,
if the instinct of happiness had not been silenced by consideration
for convention. The more a woman has enjoyed personal liberty before
marriage, the less she can endure not to have a moment or a corner in
her home which she can call her own. And the more the people of the
present day enlarge their individual freedom of movement, their need of
solitude in other respects, the more will both man and woman enlarge
them in marriage.
But even if those desiring solitude remain in the minority, they must
still be granted both by the law and by public opinion full liberty to
shape their married life according to their own requirements.
Conventionality and mental inertness pronounce this unheard-of, even
immoral. On the other hand, it is regarded as equally natural and moral
that the majority of sailors and commercial travellers should live for
the greater part of the year apart from their wives; that journeys for
scientific or artistic purposes should separate married people for
years, or that—in exceptional cases—one of them, for instance, should
spend the winters as a gymnast in England while the other is a teacher
in Sweden.
All these things, it is thought, are nothing but external necessities.
And to these one always submits! Ought we not, nevertheless, to find
room for the thought that there may also be necessities of the soul?
Our time, for instance, tends more and more to bring together artists
who work at different, or, still more often, at the same art. The
nerves of both are worn in the same way; both need the same freedom of
movement and the same undisturbed quiet. But in the claims of everyday
life for mutual sympathy and mutual consideration, nearly all their
spiritual energy is used up. They see that, if they are not to consume
one another’s mental resources, they must adopt a system of spiritual
separation, which is possible only at a certain distance. The holiday
happiness of these natures may be rapturous, the sympathetic union of
their souls richer than any others. But each feels for the other what
is expressed by one of Shakespeare’s joyous young women, when she calls
a suitor “too costly for every day’s wear.” Each is tempted at times
to exclaim, like another young woman in a modern book: “I want to be
able to say, let me now for three weeks be altogether free from loving
you”—since each knows that this freedom would only renew the feeling.
But now married people are bound by custom to a common life, which
often ends in their separating for ever, simply because conventional
considerations prevented their living apart.
Natures of other types may also feel the constraint of narrow
dependence, enforced association, the daily accommodations and constant
considerations. More people ought, therefore, quietly to begin
reforming matrimonial customs, so that they may more nearly correspond
to the need of renewal just alluded to. Let each, for instance, travel
separately, if he or she feels the desire of solitude; let one visit
by himself the entertainment the other does not care for, but formerly
either forced herself to, or kept the other from visiting. More and
more married people have separate bedrooms. And in another generation
perhaps separate dwellings will have ceased to attract attention.
Companionship on week-days as on holidays, co-operation in the
satisfaction of everyday claims as well as of life’s highest purposes,
will, nevertheless, continue to be the form of married life chosen by
the majority, even when public opinion has left room for other systems
of living. But full freedom for the latter will not be won till the law
ceases to place any limit to the self-determination of each partner in
marriage.
Another matter that ought to be left to personal decision is the
degree of publicity that is to be given to a matrimonial union. An
otherwise conservative father of a family once put forward the weighty
reasons which might be in favour of keeping secret a marriage that was,
nevertheless, intended to be fully legal. Amongst the reasons which
now frequently cause the postponement of a marriage are, for instance,
the necessity of completing studies, or reluctance to hasten, through
sorrow, the death of parents or others. The possibility of not having
to publish the union in these or similar cases would spare the lovers
unnecessary waiting without in any way encroaching on the rights of
others.
Further, to personal determination belong not only free divorce but
also new forms of divorce. As divorce itself has been treated in the
last chapter, we will speak here only of the method of it. The wife’s
infidelity, as well as the husband’s right to refuse divorce, at
present frequently affords an opportunity for blackmail on the part of
the husband from his wife, who, in the latter case, has to buy her
freedom, and in both cases often has to buy permission to keep her
children. The husband, too, may be exposed to blackmailing by a wife
who refuses divorce or who can prove his infidelity and tries to take
from him the children, whom he knows to be exposed to corruption in
her hands. But, since society and nature favour the man’s infidelity,
while both are against that of the woman, it is in the nature of the
case that the wife often has difficulty in proving the husband’s
infidelity, while he can prove hers easily. His repeated acts of
unfaithfulness have, perhaps, been the cause of her single one. But it
is, nevertheless, he—since there is no valid evidence against him—who
has the children assigned to him, or, it may be, sells them to his wife.
The same applies to divorce on account of “hatred and ill-will.” Before
a court which cannot test the reasons that have most spiritual weight,
but only the evidence that has most to say, all the details of married
life have to be dragged forth, all its wounds inspected. The evidence
which, as a rule, is decisive is that of servants! The profoundest
spiritual concerns of educated people are thus made to depend upon the
opinion of uneducated persons on all the complicated circumstances of
an unhappy marriage. And not only this: the result in most cases is
determined by the indelicacy with which the husband and wife have drawn
their servants and their acquaintances into the conflict. If husband
or wife has summoned the servants to witness violent behaviour, then
that party is in a much better position in an action for divorce than
the one who has sought to the utmost to preserve the dignity of their
marriage. There are, moreover, some sufferings of which no proof can be
produced. Such, for instance, is misuse of “conjugal rights”; another
is the power of either party, under forms of outward politeness, to
make life entirely worthless to the other; a third, the constant
opposition of two conflicting views of life.
It is only in the case of the grossest and most palpable evils that
it is now possible to furnish the necessary evidence without such
difficulties as—both in the granting of divorce and in the disposal of
the children—may give rise to the grossest injustice. And all this is
only a part of the humiliations and sufferings which now—especially
for the wife—attend a divorce. Finally, an action for divorce is
sufficiently expensive to render it on this account alone a matter
of great difficulty for many people in poor circumstances to obtain
justice.
Such a system of divorce—which makes either partner dependent on the
worst qualities of the other; which calls forth all that is indelicate
in the nature of both; which drags their weaknesses and sufferings
before the eyes of strangers, and which, nevertheless, provides no real
protection for the children—such a system ought to give no thoughtful
person peace until its degrading and deteriorating influence is
abolished and a new system, which shall protect both personal dignity
and the children, introduced.
In looking back upon the preceding, it would seem to result clearly
that nothing that has been said here contemplates the establishment of
a single form—recognised as the only moral one—for sexual life. But
since only the fixity possessed by the law is capable of transforming
in a profound and permanent manner the feelings and customs of the
majority, there is need, for the present, of a new law to support the
growth of the higher feelings which will finally render any marriage
law unnecessary.
In connection with the course of development of sexual morality it
was pointed out that the ecclesiastical and legal establishment of
the ideal of monogamy as _the only form of sexual morality_ has had
for its result the unconditional acquiescence in the idea that the
claims of evolution are in complete agreement with existing laws and
customs; with the further result that we are now—through the want of
a recognised right to manifold experience—almost in the same position
of ignorance as to the form of sexual morality most favourable to the
development of the race, as we were a thousand years ago, and that,
therefore, the vital needs of the race as well as the individual’s
demands of happiness speak for a more extended right to such
experiences.
No one knows whether, at the end of the new paths, we shall not again
be confronted by the riddle of the sphinx: how the parents are to avoid
being sacrificed for the children or the children for the parents. The
one thing certain is that on the path we have hitherto followed we have
arrived at the sphinx. And all those who have been torn to pieces at
its feet are witnesses that on this path mankind did not arrive at the
solution of the riddle.
The point of view which has here, throughout, been the leading one
is, that in the same degree as life itself becomes the meaning of
life human beings will also in all their sensations and all their
undertakings become more and more conscious of regard for the race.
It is thus only a question of time when the respect of society for a
sexual union shall not depend upon the form of cohabitation that makes
a couple of human beings become parents, but only upon the value of the
children they thus create as new links in the chain of generations. Men
and women will then dedicate to their mental and bodily fitness for
the mission of the race the same religious earnestness that Christians
devote to the salvation of their souls. Instead of divine codes of the
morality of sexual relations, the desire of, and responsibility for,
the enhancement of the race will be the support of morals. But the
knowledge of the parents that the meaning of life is also in their
own lives, that they thus do not exist solely for the sake of their
children, may liberate them from other duties of conscience which at
present bind them in respect of the children, above all that of keeping
up a union in which they themselves perish. The home may then more than
at present be synonymous with the mother, which—far from excluding the
father—contains the germ of a new and higher “right of the family.”
When every life is regarded as an end in itself from the point of view
that it can never be lived again; that it must, therefore, be lived as
completely and greatly as possible; when every personality is valued
as an asset in life that has never existed before and will never occur
again, then also the erotic happiness or unhappiness of a human being
will be treated as of greater importance, and not to himself alone. No,
it will be so also to the whole community—through the life and the
work his happiness may give the race or his unhappiness deprive it of.
For himself, as well as for others, the individual will then examine
the right of renouncing happiness as conscientiously as he now submits
to the duty of bearing unhappiness. The importance to children of their
parents’ life together will depend upon the kind of life it is, when
it has been seen that when all is said the new generation has most to
gain by love being always and everywhere set up as the condition of the
highest worth of cohabitation.
This is the rich promise that the new path offers; but the majority
cannot see the promise on account of the possible new dangers. It is
this dread that still paralyses the courage to dare the untried, in
order to win the valuable.
It is astonishing that those who tremble for the future never seek
consolation in the past. They would there find, for example, that when
the family ceased to be the match-maker, when the guardian could no
longer keep a woman in a position of legal incapacity and prevent her
marrying—then there were prophecies of exactly the same “dissolution
of society and of the family” as are now dreaded in freer forms of
matrimony. But the same people who now laugh at the former forebodings
are convinced that the latter will be realised; for man believes in
nothing so reluctantly as in his own nature’s power of replacing
outward bonds with inner ones. And yet, long before the new forms are
ready, there is an abundance of the new feelings which are to fill
them. Nothing is more certain than that, if feelings were no better
than laws, we should never have new laws (Mill). But human beings
will never believe in the possibilities of development of their own
feelings until they leave off seeking their strength from above. They
will never have faith in themselves as pathfinders until they no longer
believe themselves “guided.” As soon as a change has taken place, it is
regarded “historically,” as a given consequence of “rational” causes
and “divine” guidance. But to look historically at the future; to trust
in regard to what has not yet happened to the given consequences—for
good and evil—of the same constantly operating causes, this does not
occur to the guardians of society. Their belief in God’s guidance is
always—retrospective.
The believers in Life, on the other hand, know that vital needs were
the productive soil of the feelings that gave the pith to those laws,
whereof now only the straw remains. But the earth has not exhausted
its powers of fertility, any more than the feelings have lost their
creative force. The believers in Life, therefore, attach small
importance to the old straw, but consider the increasing of the earth’s
productiveness of supreme significance.
A great and healthy will to live is what our time needs in the matter
of the erotic emotions and claims. It is here that there is a menace of
real dangers from the woman’s side; and it is, amongst other things, to
avert these dangers that new forms of marriage must be created.
A human material increasing in value and in capacity for
development—this is what the earth will produce. The chances of
obtaining this may be decreased under fixed, but favoured under freer,
forms of sexual life. It is not only because the present day demands
more freedom that these claims are full of promise. They are so
because the claims are coming nearer and nearer to the kernel of the
question—the certainty that love is the most perfect condition for
the life-enhancement of the race and of the individual—and because
the present time acknowledges the necessity of temporarily limiting
freedom, though only by means of laws which will form an education in
love.
Such a law must, for the sake of woman’s liberty, deprive man of
certain of his present rights; for the sake of the children, limit the
present liberty both of man and woman. But these limitations will all
be to the final profit of love.
Those who believe in the perfectibility of mankind for and through love
must, however, learn to reckon not in hundreds of years, and still less
in tens, but in thousands.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Many of the facts in the foregoing pages are taken from a
detailed biographical pamphlet on Ellen Key by J. F. D. Mossel
in the series of _Mannen en Vrouwen von Beteekenis in Onze
Dagen_. The reader may be referred to an interesting account
of Ellen Key, from personal knowledge, by Miss Helen Zimmern,
in _Putnam’s Magazine_, Jan., 1908.
[2] In England, Tennyson, in _The Princess_, was the first to
give to “the new woman” her name and to speak of her objects,
and many others began in the middle of the last century
indirectly to develop the idea of love, especially Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, the sisters Brontë, and Miss Muloch among
women writers. Robert Browning, George Meredith, and other
great poets among the men have also furthered it indirectly.
In later days, George Egerton in _Rosa Amorosa_ and Edward
Carpenter in _Love’s Coming of Age_ have, in their different
ways, given a remarkable treatment of the evolution of love.
_Woman Free_ by Ellis Ethelmer, _A Noviciate for Marriage_ by
Edith M. Ellis, _The Woman Who Did_ by Grant Allen, belong to
the same group of writings.
[3] Walt Whitman.
[4] As far as England is concerned I will here only remind my
readers of Galton’s contributions to this subject; of Geddes
and Thomson’s _Evolution of Sex_; of Havelock Ellis’s _Man and
Woman, Sex in Relation to Society_, etc.
[5] See _Woman and Economics_ and later works by this American
authoress, who has many adherents in Europe as well as in
America.
[6] Every English reader knows what Dickens achieved in this
respect. I will only remind them here of Hannah Lynch’s
(anonymously published) _Autobiography of a Child_.
[7] Before 1857, no legal divorce in the usual meaning of
the term existed in England. The ecclesiastical courts could
grant a sort of “divorce from bed and board,” whereupon
the aggrieved party could get rid of his unfaithful half
by a special Act of Parliament in each particular case. As
a consequence, only very wealthy people could afford this
luxury, for it cost immense sums to get a special motion of
this kind through Parliament. The further injustice prevailed,
that in practice this course was open only to men, not to
women.
It was, moreover, with the greatest difficulty that Palmerston
succeeded in carrying the reform of 1857. The friends of
reform urged above all that the old law was unjust to poor
people, and that among both rich and poor it had become
increasingly common to marry again in an illegal way, so that
in the eyes of the law thousands of people in England were
living in bigamy.
The new law of 1857 introduced a separate secular court for
divorce causes, divorce was made legal, and the possibility of
taking advantage of it was placed within the reach of others
than the wealthiest.
But the experience of fifty years has shown that divorce
procedure is still altogether too costly for the poor, and
entails an infinity of time and trouble. Furthermore, a number
of revolting injustices remain.
Thus, for instance, a wife cannot obtain legal divorce from
her husband either because he is an habitual drunkard, or an
incurable lunatic, or is imprisoned for life for some grave
crime, or has abandoned his home and refused to contribute to
the support of his wife and children! The most she can obtain
under such circumstances is a judicial separation—which makes
it possible for either party to enter into any illegitimate
connection they please. A husband can obtain divorce from his
wife if he can prove a single case of infidelity on her part;
but the wife cannot obtain divorce from her husband even if
he can be proved to be living in continual adultery. In order
to get rid of him she must be able to prove that he has been
guilty of cruelty towards her or has deserted her for a period
of two years.
The worst thing is that the greater offence is punished far
more leniently than the less. A wife can get a judicial
separation on account of her husband’s infidelity, but loses
therewith the right of proceeding against him for divorce,
and neither she nor her husband may marry again. But if the
husband has also been guilty of cruelty to her, she obtains a
divorce, and then both she and her husband are at liberty to
remarry. The man who deceives his wife is not free to marry
another; but if he both deceives her and beats her, he is
divorced and may marry again!
In general the opponents of the existing law declare that
it contributes powerfully to the formation of illegitimate
connections.
[8] These details refer, of course, to the Swedish
law.—TRANSLATOR.
THE END