of family links, they have gained some independence. I am not talking of
America, where men have deposited their liberty and their fortunes into
the prettiest, the greediest, the most ruthless hands in the world; but
rather of England, where for a long time a man set up in life with a dog
as a friend, a wife to exercise it, and a cat to catch the mice. Until
recently the householder kept a tight hand upon domestic expenditure; he
paid all the bills, inspected the weekly accounts with a fierce air and
an internal hope that he understood them; rent, taxes, heat, light,
furniture, repairs, servants' wages, school fees--he saw to it that
every penny was accounted for and then, when pleased, gave his wife a
tip to go and buy herself a ribbon with. (There are still a great many
men who cannot think of anything a woman may want except a ribbon; in
1860 it was a shawl.) When a woman had property, even for some time
after the Act, she was not considered fit to administer it. She was not
fit, but she should have been allowed to administer it so as to learn
from experience how not to be swindled. Anyhow, the money was taken from
her, and I know of three cases in a single large family where the wife
meekly indorses her dividend warrant so that the husband may pay it into
his banking account. That spirit survives, but every day it decays; man,
finding his wife competent, tends to make her an allowance, to let her
have her own banking account, and never to ask for the pass book. He has
thrown upon her the responsibility for all the household and its
finance; by realizing that she was capable he has made her capable.
Though she be educated, he loves her not less; perhaps he loves her
more. It is no longer true to say with Lord Lyttleton that "the lover in
the husband may be lost." Formerly the lover was generally lost, for
after she had had six children before she was thirty the mother used to
put on a cap and retire. Now she does not retire; indeed, she hides his
bedroom slippers and puts out his pumps, for life is more vivid and
exterior now; this is the cinema age.
Finding her responsible, amusing, capable of looking after herself, man
is developing a still stranger liberalism; he has recognized that he
may not be enough to fill a woman's life, that she may care for
pleasures other than his society, and indeed for that of other men. He
has not abandoned his physical jealousy and will not so long as he is a
man, but he is slowly beginning to view without dismay his wife's
companionship with other men. She may be seen with them; she may lunch
with them; she may not, as a rule, dine with them, but that is an
evolution to come. This springs from the deep realization that there are
between men and women relations other than the passionate. It is still
true that between every man and every woman there is a flicker of love,
just a shadow, perhaps; but not so long ago between men and women there
was only "yes" or "no," and to-day there are also common tastes and
common interests. This is fine, this is necessary, but it is not good
for the old British household where husband and wife must cleave unto
each other alone; where, as in the story books, they lived happy ever
after. As with the home, so with the family; neither can survive when it
suffers comparison, for it derives all its strength from its
exclusivism. As soon as a woman begins to realize that there is charm in
the society of men other than her uncles, her brothers, and her
cousins, the solid, four-square attitude of the family is menaced.
Welcome the stranger, and legal hymen is abashed.
All this springs from woman's new estate--that of human being. She must
be considered almost as much as a man. Where there is wealth her tastes
must be consulted, and more than one man has been sentenced by a
tyrannous wife to wear blue coats and blue ties all his life. She is
coming to consider that the husband who dresses in his wife's bedroom
should be flogged, while the one who shaves there should be
electrocuted. And she defends her view with entirely one-sided logic and
an extended vocabulary. Here again is a good, a necessary thing; but
where is the old family where a husband could in safety, when slightly
overcome, retire to bed with his boots on? He is no longer king of the
castle, but a menaced viceroy in an insurgent land.
All through society this loosening of the marriage bond is operative. By
being freer within matrimony men and women view more tolerantly breaches
of the matrimonial code. There was a time when a male co-respondent was
not received: that is over. In those days a divorcee was not received
either, even when the divorce was pronounced in her favor. Nowadays, in
most social circles, the decree absolute is coming to be looked upon as
an absolution. I do not refer to the United States, where (I judge only
from your novels) divorce outlaws nobody, but to steady old England, who
still pretends that she frowns on the rebels and finally takes them back
with a sigh and wonders what she is coming to. What England is coming to
is to a lesser regard for the marriage bond, to a recognition that
people have the right to rebel against their yoke. There totters the
family--for marriage is its base, and the more English society receives
in its ranks those who have flouted it, the more it will be shaken by
the new spirit which bids human creatures live together, but also with
the rest of the world. Woman was kept within the family by threats, by
banishment, by ostracism, but now she easily earns forgiveness. At least
English society is deciding to forget if it cannot forgive the guilt--a
truly British expedient. At the root is a decaying respect for the
marriage bond, a growing respect for rebellion. That tendency is
everywhere, and it is becoming more and more common for husband and wife
to take separate holidays; there are even some who leave behind them
merely a slip: "Gone away, address unknown." They are cutting the wire
entanglements behind which lie dangers and freedoms. All this again
comes from mutual respect with mutual realization, from education, and
especially from late marriages. Late marriages are one of the most
potent causes of the break-up of the family, for now women are no longer
caught and crushed young; they are no longer burdened matrons at thirty.
The whole point of view has changed. I remember reading in an
early-Victorian novel this phrase: "She was past the first bloom of her
youth; she was twenty-three." The phrase is not without its meaning; it
meant that the male was seeking not a wife, but a courtesan who, her
courtesanship done, could become a perfect housekeeper. Now men prefer
women of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, forsake the _backfisch_ for her
mother, because the mother has personality, experience, can stimulate,
amuse, and accompany. Only the older and more formed woman is no longer
willing to enter the family as a jail; she will enter it only as a
hotel.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, from child to parent erosion also operates. I do not think
that the modern child honors its father and its mother unless it thinks
them worthy of honor. There is a slump in respect, as outside the family
there is a slump in reverence. As in the outer world a man began by
being a worthy, then a member of Parliament, then a minister, finally
was granted a pension and later a statue; and as now a man is first a
journalist, then a member of Parliament, a minister, and in due course a
scoundrel, so inside the family does a father become an equal instead of
a tyrant, and a good sort instead of an old fogy. For respect, I
believe, was mainly fear and greed. The respect of the child for its
father was very like the respect that Riquet, the little dog, felt for
Monsieur Bergeret. Anatole France has expressed it ideally:
"Oh, my master, Bergeret, God of Slaughter, I worship thee! Hail, oh God
of wrath! Hail, oh bountiful God! I lie at thy feet, I lick thy hand.
Thou art great and beautiful when at the laden board thou devourest
abundant meats. Thou art great and beautiful when, from a thin strip of
wood causing flame to spring, thou dost of night make day...."
That was a little the child's cosmogony. Then the child became educated,
capable of argument. In contact with more reasonable parents it grew
more reasonable. The parent, confronted with the question, "Why must I
do what you order?" ceased to say, "Because I say so." That reply did
not seem good enough to the parent, and it ceased to be good enough for
the child. If the child rebelled, the only thing to do was to strike it,
and striking is no longer done; the parent prefers argument because the
child is capable of understanding argument. The child is more lawful,
more sensitive; it is unready to obey blindly, and it is no longer
required to obey blindly, because, while the parent has begun to doubt
his own infallibility, the child has been doing so, too. The child is
more ready and more able to criticize its parents; indeed, the whole
generation is critical, has acquired the habit of introspection. The
child is a little like the supersoul of Mr. Stephen Leacock, and is
developing thoughts like, "Why am I? Why am I what I am? How? and why
how?" Obviously, such questions, when directed at one's father and
mother, are a little shattering. It is true that once upon a time the
child readily obeyed; now and then it criticized, but still it obeyed,
for it had been told that its duty was to execute, as was its parents'
to command. But duty is in a bad way, and I, for one, think that we
should be well rid of duty, for it appears to me to be merely an excuse
for acting without considering whether the deed is worthy. The man who
dies for his country because he loves it is an idealist and a hero; the
man who does that because he thinks it his duty is a fool. The
conception of duty has suffered; from the child's point of view, it is
almost extinct; it has been turned upside down, and there is a growth of
opinion that the parent should have the duties and the child the
privileges. It is the theory of _La Course du Flambeau_, where Hervieu
shows us each generation using and bleeding the elder generation. Or
perhaps it is a more subtle conception. It may be that the eugenic idea
is vaguely forming in the young generation, and that, in an unperceived
return to nature, they are deciding to eat their grandfathers, a
primitive taste which I have never been able to understand. Youth,
feeling that the world is its orange to suck, is inclined to consider
that the elder generation, being responsible for its presence, should
look after it and serve it. That is not at all illogical; it is borne
out by Chinese law, where, if you save a man from suicide, you must feed
him for the rest of his life.
Or perhaps it is a broader view, a more socialized one. Very young, the
child is acquiring a vague sense of its responsibility to the race, is
very early becoming a citizen. It is directed that way; it hears that
liberty consists in doing what you like, providing you injure no other
man. Its personality being encouraged to develop, the child acquires a
higher opinion of itself, considers that it owes something to itself,
that it has rights. Sacrifice is still inculcated in the child, but not
so much because it is a moral duty as because it is mental discipline.
The little boy is not told to give the chocolates to his little sister
because she is a dear little thing, and he must not be cruel to her and
make her cry; he is told that he must give her the chocolates because it
is good for him to learn to give up something. That impulse is the
impulse of Polycrates, who threw his ring into the sea. But, then,
Polycrates had no luck. The child, more fortunate, is tending to realize
itself as a person, and so, as it becomes more responsible, acquires
tolerance; it makes allowances for its parents, it is kind, it realizes
that its parents have not had its advantages. All that is very
swollen-headed and unpleasant, but still I prefer it to the old
attitude, to the time when voices were hushed and footsteps slowed when
father's latchkey was heard in the lock. To the child the parent is
becoming a person instead of the God of Wrath; a person with rights, but
not a person to whom everything must be given up. Sacrifice is out of
date, and in the child as well as in the elders there is a denial of the
dream of Ellen Sturges Cooper, for few wake up and find that life is
duty. _My_ life, _my_ personality--all that has sprung from Stirner,
from Nietzsche, from the great modern reaction against socialism and
uniformity; it is the assertion of the individual. It is often harsh;
the daughter who used to take her father for a walk now sends the dog.
But still it is necessary; old hens make good soup. I do not think that
this has killed love, for love can coexist with mutual forbearance,
however much Doctor Johnson may have doubted it. Doctor Johnson was the
bad old man of the English family, and I do not suppose that anybody
will agree that
"If the man who turnips cries
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father."
A possible sentiment in an older generation, but sentiments, like
generations, grow out of date; they are swept out by new ideas and new
rejections--rejection of religion, rejection of morals. We tend toward
an agnostic world, with a high philosophical morality; we have attained
as yet neither agnosticism nor high morality, but the child is shaking
off the ready-made precepts of the faiths and the Smilesian theories. It
is unwillingly bound by the ordinances of a forgotten alien race; as a
puling child, carried in a basket by an eagle, like the tiny builders of
Ecbatana, it calls for bricks and mortar with which to build the airy
castle of the future.
3
As a house divided against itself, the family falls. It protests, it
hugs that from which it suffered; it protests in speech, in the
newspapers, that still it is united. The clan is dead, and blood is not
as thick as marmalade. There are countries where the link is strong, as
in France, for instance. I quote from a recent and realistic novel the
words of a mother speaking of her young married daughter:
"Every Tuesday we dine at my mother's, and every Thursday at my
mother-in-law's. Of course, now, at least once a week we go to Madame
de Castelac; later on I shall expect Pauline and her husband every
Wednesday."
"That is a pity," said Sorel. "That leaves three days."
"Oh, there are other calls. Every week my mother comes to us the same
evening as does my father-in-law, but that is quite informal."
Family dinners are rare in England. They flourish only at weddings and
at funerals, especially at funerals, for mankind collected enjoys woe.
But other occasions--birthdays, Christmas--are shunned; Christmas
especially, in spite of Dickens and Mr. Chesterton, is not what it was,
for its quondam victims, having fewer children, and being less bound to
their aunts' apron strings, go away to the seaside, or stay at home and
hide. That is a general change, and many modern factors, such as travel,
intercourse with strangers, emigration, have shown the family that there
are other places than home, until some of them have begun to think that
"East or West, home's worst." There is a frigidity among the relations
in the home, a disinclination to call one's mother-in-law "Mother."
Indeed, relations-in-law are no longer relatives; the two families do
not immediately after the wedding call one another Kitty or Tom. The
acquired family is merely a sub-family, and often the grouping resembles
that of the Montagues and the Capulets, if Romeo and Juliet had married.
Mrs. Herbert said, charmingly, in _Garden Oats_, "Our in-laws are our
strained relations."
With the closeness of the family goes the regard for the name, once so
strong. I feel sure that in all seriousness, round about 1850, a father
may have said to his son that he was disgracing the name of Smith. Now
he may almost disgrace the name of FitzArundel for all anybody cares.
There was a time when it was thought criminal that a man should become a
bankrupt, but few families will now mortgage their estate to prevent a
distant member's appearance before the official receiver. The name of
the family is now merely generic, and the bold young girl of to-morrow
will say, "My father began life as a forger and was ultimately hanged,
but that shouldn't bother you, should it?" Much of that deliquescence is
due to the factory system, for it opened opportunities to all, which
many took, raised men high in the scale of wealth; one brother might be
a millionaire in Manchester, while another tended a bar in Liverpool.
Sometimes the rich member of the family came back, such as the uncle who
returned from America with a fortune, in a state of sentimental
generosity, but most of the time it has meant that the family split into
those who keep their carriage and those who take the tram. Perhaps
Cervantes did not exaggerate when saying that there are only two
families: Have-Much and Have-Little.
4
What the future reserves I disincline to prophesy. It is enough to point
to tendencies, and to say, "Along this road we go, we know not whither."
But of one thing I feel certain: the family will not become closer, for
the individualistic tendency of man leads to instinctive rebellion; his
latent anarchism to isolate him from his fellows. There is a growing
rebellion among women against the thrall of motherhood, which, however
delightful it may be, is a thrall--the velvet-coated yoke is a yoke
still. I do not suppose that the mothers of the future will unanimously
deposit their babies in the municipal creche. But I do believe that with
the growth of cooeperative households, and especially of that quite new
class, the skilled Princess Christian or Norland nurses, there will be a
delegation of responsibility from the mother to the expert. It will go
down to the poor as well as to the rich. Already we have district
nurses for the poor, and I do not see why, as we realize more and more
the value of young life, there should not be district kindergartens.
They would remove the child still more from its home; they would throw
it in contact with creatures of its own age in its very earliest years,
prepare it for school, place it in an atmosphere where it must stand by
itself among others who will praise or blame without special
consideration, for they are strangers to it and do not bear its name.
I suspect, too, that marriage will be freer; it will not be made more
easy or more difficult, but greater facilities will be given for divorce
so that human beings may no longer be bound together in dislike, because
they once committed the crime of loving unwisely. This, too, must loosen
the family link, to-day still strong because people know that it is so
hard to break it. It will be a conditional link when it can easily be
done away with, a link that will be maintained only on terms of good
behavior on both sides. The marriage service will need a new clause; we
shall have to swear to be agreeable. The relation between husband and
wife must change more. Conjugal tyranny still exists in a country such
as England where the wife is not co-guardian of the child, for during
his wife's lifetime a husband may remove her child into another country,
refuse her access save at the price of a costly and uncertain legal
action. The child itself must have rights. At present, all the rights it
has are to such food as its parents will give it; it needs very gross
cruelty before a man can be convicted of starving or neglecting his
child. And when that child is what they call grown up--that is to say,
sixteen--in practice it loses all its rights, must come out and fend for
itself. I suspect that that will not last indefinitely, and that the new
race will have upon the old race the claim that owing to the old race it
was born. A socialized life is coming where there will be less freedom
for those who are unfit to be free, those who do not feel categorical
impulses, the impulse to treat wife and child gently and procure their
happiness. Men will not indefinitely draw their pay on a Friday and
drink half of it by Sunday night. Their wages will be subject to liens
corresponding to the number of their children. These liens may not be
light, and may extend long beyond the nominal majority of the child. I
suspect that after sixteen, or some other early age, children will, if
they choose, be entitled to leave home for some municipal hostel where
for a while their parents will be compelled to pay for their support. It
will be asked, "Why should a parent pay for the support of a child who
will not live in his house?" It seems to me that the chief reply is,
"Why did you have that child?" There is another, too: "By what right
should this creature for whom you are responsible be tied to a house
into which it has been called unconsulted? Why should it submit to your
moral and religious views? to your friends? to your wall-paper?" It is a
strong case, and I believe that, as time goes on and the law is
strengthened, the young will more and more tend to leave their homes. In
good, liberal homes they will stay, but the others they will abandon,
and I believe that no social philosopher will regret that children
should leave homes where they stay only because they are fed and not
because they love.
So, flying apart by a sort of centrifugal force, the family will become
looser and looser, until it exists only for those who care for one
another enough to maintain the association. It cannot remain as it is,
with its right of insult, its claim to society; we can have no more
slave daughters and slave wives, nor shall we chain together people who
spy out one another's loves and crush one another's youth. The family
is immortal, but the immortals have many incarnations--from Pan and
Bacchus sprang Lucifer, Son of the Morning. There is a time to
come--better than this because it is to come--when the family,
humanized, will be human.
VII
SOME NOTES ON MARRIAGE
1
The questioning mind, sole apparatus of the socio-psychologist, has of
late years often concerned itself with marriage. Marriage always was
discussed, long before Mrs. Mona Caird suggested in the respectable
'eighties that it might be a failure, but it is certain that with the
coming of Mr. Bernard Shaw the institution which was questioned grew
almost questionable. Indeed, marriage was so much attacked that it
almost became popular, and some believe that the war may cut it free
from the stake of martyrdom. Perhaps, but setting aside all prophecies,
revolts and sermons, one thing does appear: marriage is on its trial
before a hesitating jury. The judge has set this jury several questions:
Is marriage a normal institution? Is it so normal as to deserve to
continue in a state of civilization? given that civilization's function
is to crush nature.
A thing is not necessarily good because it exists, for scarlet fever,
nationality, art critics, and black beetles exist, yet all will be
rooted out in the course of enlightenment. Marriage may be an invention
of the male to secure himself a woman freehold, or, at least, in fee
simple. It may be an invention of the female designed to secure a
somewhat tyrannical protection and a precarious sustenance. Marriage may
be afflicted with inherent diseases, with antiquity, with spiritual
indigestion, or starvation: among these confusions the
socio-psychologist, swaying between the solidities of polygamy and the
shadows of theosophical union, loses all idea of the norm. There may be
no norm, either in Christian marriage, polygamy, Meredithian marriage
leases; there may be a norm only in the human aspiration to utility and
to happiness.
For we know very little save the aimlessness of a life that may be
paradise, or its vestibule, or an instalment of some other region. Still
there is a key, no doubt: the will to happiness, which, alas! opens
doors most often into empty rooms. It is the search for happiness that
has envenomed marriage and made it so difficult to bear, because in the
first rapture it is so hard to realize that there are no ways of
living, but only ways of dying more or less agreeably.