Let us not forget, however, in our sympathy for the superfluous women,
that their children must have fathers as well as mothers. Who are the
fathers to be? All monogamists and married women will reply hastily:
either bachelors or widowers; and this solution will serve as well as
another; for it would be hypocritical to pretend that the difficulty is
a practical one. None the less, the monogamists, after due reflection,
will point out that if there are widowers enough the superfluous women
are not really superfluous, and therefore there is no reason why the
parties should not marry respectably like other people. And they might
in that case be right if the reasons were purely numerical: that is,
if every woman were willing to take a husband if one could be found
for her, and every man willing to take a wife on the same terms; also,
please remember, if widows would remain celibate to give the unmarried
women a chance. These ifs will not work. We must recognize two classes
of old maids: one, the really superfluous women, and the other, the
women who refuse to accept maternity on the (to them) unbearable
condition of taking a husband. From both classes may, perhaps, be
subtracted for the present the large proportion of women who could
not afford the extra expense of one or more children. I say "perhaps,"
because it is by no means sure that within reasonable limits mothers do
not make a better fight for subsistence, and have not, on the whole, a
better time than single women. In any case, we have two distinct cases
to deal with: the superfluous and the voluntary; and it is the voluntary
whose grit we are most concerned to fertilize. But here, again,
we cannot put our finger on any particular case and pick out Miss
Robinson's as superfluous, and Miss Wilkinson's as voluntary. Whether we
legitimize the child of the unmarried woman as a duty to the superfluous
or as a bribe to the voluntary, the practical result must be the same:
to wit, that the condition of marriage now attached to legitimate
parentage will be withdrawn from all women, and fertile unions outside
marriage recognized by society. Now clearly the consequences would not
stop there. The strong-minded ladies who are resolved to be mistresses
in their own houses would not be the only ones to take advantage of the
new law. Even women to whom a home without a man in it would be no home
at all, and who fully intended, if the man turned out to be the right
one, to live with him exactly as married couples live, would, if they
were possessed of independent means, have every inducement to adopt the
new conditions instead of the old ones. Only the women whose sole means
of livelihood was wifehood would insist on marriage: hence a tendency
would set in to make marriage more and more one of the customs imposed
by necessity on the poor, whilst the freer form of union, regulated,
no doubt, by settlements and private contracts of various kinds, would
become the practice of the rich: that is, would become the fashion.
At which point nothing but the achievement of economic independence by
women, which is already seen clearly ahead of us, would be needed to
make marriage disappear altogether, not by formal abolition, but by
simple disuse. The private contract stage of this process was reached in
ancient Rome. The only practicable alternative to it seems to be such
an extension of divorce as will reduce the risks and obligations of
marriage to a degree at which they will be no worse than those of the
alternatives to marriage. As we shall see, this is the solution to which
all the arguments tend. Meanwhile, note how much reason a statesman has
to pause before meddling with an institution which, unendurable as its
drawbacks are, threatens to come to pieces in all directions if a
single thread of it be cut. Ibsen's similitude of the machine-made chain
stitch, which unravels the whole seam at the first pull when a single
stitch is ripped, is very applicable to the knot of marriage.