What is marriage? At least in these United States where men once dreamed
they would create a new society of ideal form based on that poetic
illusion, "All men"--presumably women, too!--"are born free and equal!"
Yes, what has marriage been,--first among the pioneers pushing their way to
new land through the forest, their women at their sides, or in the ox-cart
behind them with the implements of conquest,--pushing out together into the
wide wilderness, there to fight side by side, to tame Nature and win from
her a small circle of economic order for their support? Together these two
cut the trees, build the cabin, clear the land and sow it, thus making
shelter and food. And then the Woman draws apart to bring _her_ increment,
the children, to fight with them, to follow in their steps. In that warfare
against stubborn Nature and Chaos, against the Brute, against the Enemy in
whatever form, the Man and the Woman are free and equal,--they stand
together and win or lose together, live or die in the life-long battle. And
the end? If they triumph in this primitive struggle for existence, they
have won a few acres of cleared land for the harvest, a habitation, and
food, and children who will take up from their hands the warfare for life,
to win further concessions from Nature, a wider circle of order from chaos.
This is the marriage type of the pioneer,--a primitive, body-wracking
struggle of two against all, a perfect type, elemental but whole,--and this
remains the large pattern of marriage to-day wherever sound. Two bodies,
two souls are united for the life struggle to wring order out of
chaos,--physical and spiritual.
Generations are born and die. The circles grow wider, more diversified,
overlap, intersect. But the type remains of that primitive wilderness
struggle of the family. Then comes to this breeding society the Crisis.
There came to us the great War,--the conflict of ideals. Now Man leaves
behind in the home the Woman and her children, and goes forth alone to
fight for the unseen,--the Idea that is in him, that is stronger than woman
or child, greater than life itself. Giving over the selfish struggle with
the Brute, he battles against articulate voices. And the Woman is left to
keep warm the forsaken nest, to nurse the brood there, to wait and want,
perchance to follow after her man to the battle-field and pick out her dead
and bear it back to burial. She, too, has her part in the struggle; not
merely the patient, economic part, but the cherishing and the shaping of
man's impulse,--the stuff of his soul that sends him into the battle-field.
Alone she cannot fight; her Man is her weapon. He makes to prevail those
Ideals which she has given him with her embraces. This also is the perfect
type of Marriage,--comradeship, togethership,--and yet larger than before
because the two share sacrifice and sorrow and truth,--things of the
spirit. Together they wage War for others.
And there follows a third condition of Marriage. The wilderness reduced,
society organized, wars fought, there is the time of peace. Now Man, free
to choose his task, goes down into the market-place to sell his force, and
here he fights with new weapons a harder fight; while his Woman waits
behind the firing line to care for him,--to equip him and to hoard his
pelf. On the strength and wisdom of her commissariatship the fate of this
battle in good part depends. Of such a nature was Colonel Price's marriage.
"He made the money, I saved it," Harmony Price proudly repeated in the
after-time. "We lived our lives together, your mother and I," her husband
said to their daughter. It was _his_ force that won the dollars, made the
economic position, and _her_ thrift and willingness to forego present ease
that created future plenty. Living thus together for an economic end,
saving the surplus of their energies, they were prosperous--and they were
happy. The generation of money-earners after the War, when the country
already largely reclaimed began to bear fruit abundantly, were happy, if in
no greatly idealistic manner, yet peacefully, contentedly happy, and
usefully preparing the way for the upward step of humanity to a little
nearer realization of that poetic illusion,--the brotherhood of man.
In all these three stages of the marriage state, the union of Man and Woman
is based on effort in common, together; not on sentiment, not on emotion,
not on passion, not on individual gratification of sense or soul. The two
are partners in living, and the fruit of their bodies is but another proof
of partnership....
And now emerges another economic condition, the inexorable successor of the
previous one, and another kind of Marriage. Society is complexly organized,
minutely interrelated; great power here and great weakness there, vast
accumulations of surplus energies, hoarded goods, many possessions,--oh, a
long gamut up and down the human scale! And the CHANCE, the great gamble,
always dangles before Man's eyes; not the hope of a hard-won existence for
woman and children, not a few acres of cleared wilderness, but a dream of
the Aladdin lamp of human desires,--excitements, emotions, ecstasies,--all
the world of the mind and the body. So Woman, no longer the Pioneer, no
longer the defender of the house, no longer the economist, blossoms--as
what? The Spender! She is the fine flower of the modern game, of the
barbaric gamble. At last she is Queen and will rule. The Man has the money,
and the Woman has--herself, her body and her charm. She traffics with man
for what he will give, and she pays with her soul.... To her the man comes
from the market-place soiled and worn, and lays at her feet his gain, and
in return she gives him of her wit, of her handsome person, gowned and
jewelled, of her beauty, of her body itself. She is Queen! She amuses her
lord, she beguiles him, she whets his appetite and pushes him forth to the
morrow's fight, to bring back to her more pelf, to make her greater yet.
She sits idle in her cabin-palace, attended by servants, or goes forth on
her errands to show herself before the world as her man's Queen. So long as
she may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold him by her
mind or her body, she will be Queen. She has found something softer than
labor with her hands, easier than the pains of childbirth,--she has found
the secret of rule,--mastery over her former master, the slave ruling the
lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian king she is heaped with jewels
and served with fine wines and foods and lives in the palace,--the
favorite.
And Woman, now the mistress rather than the wife, has longings for Love.
She listens to her heart, and it whispers strange fancies. "I cannot love
this man whom I have married, though he feeds me and gives me of his best.
My soul will have none of him,--I will not consent to live with him and
bear children for him and thus be a slave. Lo, am I not a Queen, to give
and take back, to swear and then swear again? I will divorce this man who
can no longer thrill me, and I will take another dearer to my heart,--and
thus I shall be nobler than I was. I shall be a person with a soul of my
own. To have me man must win me not once, but daily. For marriage without
the love of my soul is beastly." So she cheats herself with fine phrases
and shirks. Small comradeship here! Marriage to this woman is a state of
personal gratification, the best bargain she can make with man....
To this state has come the honorable condition of marriage in a country
where "men"--and surely women!--"are born free and equal." The flower of
successful womanhood--those who have bargained shrewdly--are to be found
overfed, overdressed, sensualized, in great hotels, on mammoth steamers and
luxurious trains, rushing hither and thither on idle errands. They have
lost their prime function: they will not or they cannot get children. They
are free! As never women were before. And these wives are the custodians of
men, not merely of their purses but of their souls. They whisper to them
the Ideals of their hearts: "Come bring me money, and I will kiss you. Make
me a name before the world, and I will noise it abroad. Build me a house
more splendid than other houses, set me above my sisters, and I will
reflect honor on you among men for the clothes I wear and the excellent
shape of my figure."
And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the revolution of the ages
what she was at first, the female creature, the possession, the thing for
lust and for amusement,--the cherished slave. For the death of woman's soul
follows when she pays with her body,--a simple, immutable law.... Woman in
America, splendidly free and Queen! What have you done with the men who
were given into your charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant,--our most
shining prize,--but what have you done for the souls of the men given into
your keeping? ... The answer roars up from the city streets,--the most
material age and the most material men and the least lovely civilization on
God's earth. No longer the fighting companion at man's side, but reaching
out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have become the slave of
the Brute as you were before. And a neurotic slave. For when Woman is no
longer comrade of man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a--but blot
the word!
* * * * *
Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civilization of eighty
millions, requires many shades. The darker shades are true only of the
rotting refuse, the scum of the whole. Among the married millions most are,
fortunately, still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to
the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea beyond. From the
prairie village to the city tenement, the American woman sees in marriage
the fulfilment of her heart's desire,--to be Queen, to rule and not work.
Thus for emancipated Woman.
And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? A trained energy, a
vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, dreaming great truths and seeing
little ends,--Man is still abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up,
"playing the game." There are moments when his sleep is troubled with
feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs,--"The body is more than
raiment," and "The soul is more than the body"; "There are other
hunting-grounds, another warfare." But roused from these idle fancies he
sallies forth from his cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his
steam-heated and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and
bring it home.... We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, unmindful that
in the dumb animal hordes, who labor and breed children, lies the future.
For Theirs Will Be The Land, when the blond hunter of the market and his
pampered female are swept into the dust heap.