sum up a situation by phrases such as: "All is not gold that glitters."
Or, "Such is life." Or, "Well, well, it's a weary world." The husband
can hear them coming.
There are scores of these little cruel things which wear away love as
surely as trickling water will wear away a stone. (Observe how
contagious _cliches_ are!) The dilemma is horrible; if the offended
party speaks out, he or she may speak out much too forcibly and raise
this sort of train of thought: "He didn't seem to mind when we were
engaged. He loved me then, and little things didn't matter. He doesn't
love me now. I wonder whether he is in love with some one else. Oh! I'm
so unhappy." If, on the other hand, one does not speak out forcibly, or
does not speak at all, the offender goes on doing it for the rest of his
or her life, and there is nothing to do except to wait until one has got
used to it and has ceased to care. But by that time one has generally
ceased to care for the offender.
There are ideal marriages where both parties aim at perfection and are
willing to accept mutual criticism. But there is something a little
callous in this form of self-improvement society. People who are too
much together are always making notes, adding up in their hearts bitter
little adverse balances with which they will one day confront the fallen
lover. Some slight offense will bring up the bill of arrears. A quarrel
about a forgotten ticket will give life to the cruel thing he said seven
years before about her mother's bonnets, or her sudden dismissal of the
cook, or the dreadful day when he sat on the eggs in the train. (Clumsy
brute!) All these things pile up and pile up until they form a terrible,
towering cairn made up of tiny stones, but of great total weight, just
as an avalanche rests securely upon a crest until a whisper releases it.
Nearly all marriages are in a state of permanent mobilization. There is
only one thing to do, to remember all the time that one could not hope
to meet one quite great enough to be one's mate, and that this is the
best the world can do. The thought that nobody can quite understand one
or quite appreciate one arouses a delicious sorrow and an enormous
pride.
4
Too much together is bad, and too much apart may be worse. As I
suggested before, there is no pleasing this institution.
It is easier to live too separate than too close, for one comes together
freshly, and marriage feels less irremediable when it hardly exists.
There really are couples who care for each other very well, who meet in
a country house and say: "What! you here! How jolly!" That is an extreme
case. In practice, separateness means conjugal acquaintanceship.
Different pleasures, different friends, perhaps different worlds;
indeed, one is mutually fresh, but traveling different roads, one may
find that there is nothing in common. Of two evils, it is better perhaps
to be too intimate than too distant, because there are many irritating
things that with reminiscence become delightful. The dreadful day when
he sat on the eggs in the train is not entirely dreadful, for he looked
so silly when he stood up, removing the eggs, and though one was angry,
one vaguely loved him for having made a fool of himself. (There are nine
and sixty ways of gaining affection, and one of them is to be a
good-tempered butt.)
Separateness, naturally, cannot coincide with the sense of mutual
property. This is perhaps the cause of the greatest unhappiness in
marriage, for so many forget that to be married is not to be one. They
do not understand that however much they may love, whatever delights
they may share, whatever common ambitions they may harbor, whatever they
hope, or endeavor, or pray, two people are still two people. Or if they
know it, they say, "He is mine." "She is mine." If one could give
oneself entirely, it would be well enough, but however much one may want
to do so one cannot, just because one is the axis of the earth. Because
one cannot, one will not, and he that would absorb will never forgive.
He will be jealous, he will be suspicious, tyrannical, he will watch and
lay traps, he will court injury, he will air grievances, because the
next best thing to complete possession is railing at his impotency to
conquer. That jealousy is turned against everything, against work,
against art, against relatives, friends, dead loves, little children,
toy dogs: "Thou shalt have none other gods but me" is a human
commandment.
Men do not, as a rule, suffer very much from this desire to possess,
because they are so sure that they do possess, because they find it so
difficult to conceive that their wife can find any other man attractive.
They are too well accustomed to being courted, even if they are old and
repulsive, because they have power and money; only they think it is
because they are men. Beyond a jealous care for their wives' fidelity,
which I suspect arises mainly from the feeling that an unfaithful wife
is a criticism, they do not ask very much. But women suffer more deeply
because they know that man has lavished on them for centuries a
condescending admiration, that the king who lays his crown at their feet
knows that his is the crown to give. While men possess by right of
possession, women possess only by right of precarious conquest. They
feel it very bitterly, this fugitive empire, and their greatest tragedy
is to find themselves growing a little older, uncertain of their power,
for they know they have only one power; they are afraid, as age comes,
of losing their man, while I have never heard of a husband afraid of
losing his wife, or able to repress his surprise if she forsook him.
It would not matter so much if the feeling of property were that of a
good landlord, who likes to see his property develop and grow beautiful,
but mutual property is the feeling of the slave owner. Sometimes both
parties suffer so, and by asking too much lose all. Man seldom asks
much: if only a wife will not compromise his reputation for
attractiveness while maintaining her own by flirtation, if she will
accept his political views, acquire a taste for his favorite holiday
resorts, and generally say, "Yes, darling", or "No, darling",
opportunely, she need do nothing, she has only "beautifully to be." He
is not so fortunate, however, when she wants to possess him, for she
demands that he should be active, that the pretty words, caresses, the
anxious inquiries after health, the presents of flowers and of stalls
should continue. It is not enough that he should love her; he must still
be her lover. When she is not sure that he still is her lover, a
madness of unrest comes over her; she will lacerate him, she will invent
wishes so that he may thwart them, she will demand his society when she
knows it is mortgaged to another occupation, so that she may suffer his
refusal, exaggerate his indifference. Here are cases:
M 21. She: "He used to take me to dances. The other day he wouldn't
come, he said he was tired. He wasn't tired when we were engaged."
The Investigator: "But why should he go if he didn't want to?"
She: "Because I wanted to."
The Investigator: "But he didn't want to."
She: "He _ought_ to take pleasure in pleasing me."
(The conversation here degenerates into a discussion on duty and becomes
uninteresting.)
M 4. The husband is a doctor with a very extended city practice. He is
busy eleven hours a day and has night calls. His marriage has been
spoilt because in the first years the wife, who is young and gay, could
not understand that the man, who was always surrounded by people, in
houses, streets, conveyances, should not desire society. She resented
his wish to be alone for some hours, to shut himself up. There were
tears, and like most people she looked ugly when she cried. She was
lonely, and when one is lonely, it is difficult to realize that other
people may be too much surrounded.
5
A great deal of all this, however, might pass away if one could feel
that it would not last. Nothing matters that does not last. Only one
must be conscious of it, and in marriage many people are dully aware
that they have settled down, that they have drawn the one and only
ticket they can ever hope to draw, unless merciful death steps in. There
will be no more adventures, no more excitements, no more marsh fires,
which one knows deceptive yet loves to follow. It will be difficult to
move to other towns or countries, to change one's occupation; it will
even be difficult to adopt new poses, for the other will not be taken
in. One will be for evermore what one is. True there is elopement,
divorce; in matters of art, there is the artist courage that enables a
man to see another suffer for the sake of his desire. But all this is
very difficult, and few of us have courage enough to make others suffer;
if one had the courage to do no harm at all, it might not be so bad, but
not many can follow Mr. Bernard Shaw: "If you injure your neighbor, let
it not be by halves." They almost invariably do injure by halves: he
that will not kill, scratches. There is no refuge from a world of rates,
and taxes, and bills, and houses overcrowded by children, and old
clothes, dull leaders in the papers, stupid plays, the morning train,
the unvarying Sunday dinner. It is so bad sometimes that it causes
willful revolt. I sincerely believe that a great many men would be model
husbands if only they were not married. Only when everything is
respectable and nice there is a terrible temptation to introduce a
change; the wild animal in man, that is in a few a lion, in most a
weasel, reacts against the definite, the irremediable, the assured. He
must do something. He must break through. He must prove to himself that
he has not really sentenced himself to penal servitude for life. That is
why so few of the respectable are respectable, and why reformed rakes do
make good husbands. (Generally, that is, for a few rakes feel that they
must keep up their reputation; on the other hand, a really respectable
man knows no shame.)
Curiously enough, children seem to act both against and in favor of
these disruptive factors. It is difficult to deprive children of
influence; they must part, or they must unite. They are somebody in the
house; they make a noise, and it depends upon temperament whether the
noise exasperates or delights. Parents are divided into those who love
them, and those who bear their children; generally, men dislike little
babies, unless they are rather strong men whom weakness attracts, or
unless they feel pride of race, while women, excepting those who live
only for light pleasures, give them a quite unreasoning affection.
Children are a frequent source of trouble, for the tired man's nerves
are horribly frayed by screams and exuberances. He shouts: "Stop that
child howling!" and if his wife assumes a saintly air and says that "she
would rather hear a child cry than a man swear," the door opens towards
the club or public house. Likewise, a man who has given so many jewels
that the mother of the Gracchi might be jealous, will never understand
the appalling weariness that can come over the mother in the evening,
when she has administered, say, twelve meals, four or eight baths, and
answered several hundreds of questions varying between the existence of
God and the esoterics of the steam engine. Loving the children too much
to blame them, she must blame some one, and blames him.
People do not confess these things, but the socio-psychologist must
remember that when a man quietly picks up a flower pot and hurls it
through the window, the original cause may be found in the behavior of
the departmental manager six hours before. The irritation of children
can envenom two lives, for it seems almost inevitable that each party
should think the other spoils or tyrannizes. It is not always so, and
sometimes children unite by the bond of a common love; very much more
often they unite by the burden of a common responsibility. Indeed, it is
this financial responsibility that draws two people close, because tied
together they must swim together or sink together, until they are so
concerned individually with their salvation that they think they are
concerned with the salvation of the other. That bond of union is
dangerous, because marriage is expensive, and because one tends to
remember the time when bread was not so dear and flesh and blood so
cheap. There is affluence in bachelordom; there is atrocious discomfort
too, but when one thinks of the good old times, one generally forgets
all except the affluence. Of the present, one sees only that one cannot
take the whole family to Yellowstone; of the past, one does not see the
sitting room, or the hangings on which the landlady merely blew. The
wife thinks of her frocks, garlands of the sacrificial heifer, the
husband of the days when he could afford to be one of the boys. And, as
soon as the past grows glamorous, the present day grows dull; always
because one must blame something, one blames the other. It is so much
more agreeable to spend a thousand dollars than to spend a hundred, even
if one gets nothing for it. It is power. It is excitement. One thinks of
money until one may come to think of nothing but money, until, as
suggested before, a husband turns into a vaguely disagreeable person who
can be coaxed into paying bills. In the working class especially there
is bitterness among the women, who before their marriage knew the taste
of independence and of earned money in their purses. It is a great love
that can compensate a woman for the loss of freedom after she has
enjoyed it.
Nothing indeed can compensate a woman for this, except a lover, that is
to say, a return to an older state. That is to what she turns, for
strange as it may seem, marriage does not vaccinate against the
temptations of love. She does not easily love again, for she has been
married, and while it is easy to love again when one has been
atrociously betrayed, just because one invests the new with everything
that the old held back, it is difficult to love again when the promised
love turned merely to dullness. There is nothing to strike against.
There is no contrast, and so women slip into relationships that are
silly, because there is nothing real behind them. Boredom is the root of
all evil, and I doubt whether busy and happy women seek adventure, for
few of them want it for adventure's sake: they seek only satisfaction.
That is what most men cruelly misunderstand; they blame woman instead of
searching out their own remissness. Sins of omission matter more than
sins of commission, more even than infidelities, for love, which is all
a woman's life, is only a momentous incident in that of a man. Love may
be the discovery of a happiness, but man remains conscious of many other
delights. Woman is seldom like that. You will imagine a man and a woman
who have blundered upon mutual understanding standing upon the hill from
which Moses saw Canaan. The woman would fill her eyes with Canaan, and
could see nought else, while the man gazing at the promised land would
still be conscious of other countries. In the heart of a man who is
worth anything at all, love must have rivals,--art, science,
ambition,--and it is a delight to woman that there should be rivals to
overcome, even though it be a poor slave she tie to her chariot wheels.
Marriage does not always suffer when people drift away from their
allegiance; in countries such as France notably, where many husbands and
wives do not think it necessary to trust, or tactful to watch each
other, the problem does not set itself so sharply. It is mainly in
Anglo-Saxon countries where the little blue flower has its altars that
the trouble begins. A rather fascinating foreigner said to me once:
"Englishwomen are very troublesome; they are either so light that they
do not understand you when you tell them you love them, or so deep that
you must elope every time. This is a difficult country." I do not want
to seem cynical, but the polygamous nature of man is so ill-recognized
and the boredom of woman such a national institution that when it is too
late to pretend that that which has happened has not happened, most of
the mischief has already been done. Why a husband or wife who has found
attraction in another should immediately treat his partner abominably is
not easily understood, for falling in love with the present victim need
not make him rude or remiss to the rest of the world. But the British
are a strange and savage people. Also, when in doubt they get drunk, so
I fear I must leave a clearer recognition of polygamous instincts to the
slow-growing enlightenment of the mind of man.
He is growing enlightened; at least he is infinitely more educated than
he was, for he has begun to recognize that woman is to a certain extent
a human being, a savage, a barbarian, but entitled to the consideration
generally given to the Hottentot. I do not think woman will always be
savage, though I hope she will not turn into the clear-eyed,
weather-beaten mate that Mr. H. G. Wells likes to think of--for the
future. She has come to look upon man as an equation that can be solved.
He, too, in a sense, and both are to-day much less inclined than they
were fifty years ago to overlook a chance of pleasing. It is certain
that men and women to-day dress more deliberately for each other than
they ever did before, that they lead each other, sometimes with dutiful
unwillingness, to the theatre or the country; it is very painful
sometimes, this organization of pleasure, but it is necessary because
dull lives are bad lives, and better fall into the river than never go
to the river at all. It is dangerous and vain to take up the attitude,
"I alone am enough." Yet many do: as one walks along a suburban street,
where every window is shut, where every dining room has its aspidistra
in a pot, one realizes that scores of people are busily heaping ash upon
the once warm fire of their love. The stranger is the alternative; he
obscures small quarrels; if the stranger is beautiful, he urges to
competition; if he is inferior, he soothes pride. But above all, the
stranger is change, therefore hope. The stranger is an insurance against
loss of personal pride; he compels adornment, for what is "good enough
for my husband" is not good enough for the lady over the way. The
stranger serves the pleasure lust, this violent passion of man, and
cannot harm him because the lust for pleasure, within the limits of
hysteria, involves a desire for good looks, for elegance, for gaiety;
above all, love of pleasure was reviled of our fathers, and whatever our
fathers thought bad is become a good thing. Our fathers did not
understand certain forms of pride: there is more than pride of body in
good looks, good clothes, and showing off before acquaintances: there is
achievement, which means pride of conquest. I imagine that the happiest
couple in the world is the one where each lives in perpetual fear that
somebody will run away with the other.
Looking at it broadly, I see marriage as a Chinese puzzle, almost, but
not quite, insoluble. Spoilt by coldness, spoilt by ardour, spoilt by
excess, spoilt by indifference, spoilt by obedience, by stupidity, by
self-assertion, spoilt by familiarity, spoilt by ignorance. Spoilt in
every possible way that man can invent. Spoilt by every ounce of
influence a jealous or ironical world can muster, spoilt by habit, by
contrast, by obtuseness quite as much as by overclose understanding. And
yet it stands. It stands because there is nothing much to put into its
place, because marriage is the only road that leads a man away from his
dinner when he is forty-five, or teaches a woman to preserve her
complexion. It stands like most human things, because it is the better
of two bad alternatives. Only because it stands we must not think that
it will never change. All things change, otherwise one could not bear
them. I suspect that marriage, that was once upon a time the taking of a
woman by a man, which has now grown legalized, and may become courteous,
will turn into a very skilled occupation. It will be recognized still
more than now that all freedom need not be lost after putting on the
wedding ring. As legal right and privilege grow, as women develop
private earnings, a consciousness of worth must arise. Already women
realize their value and demand its recognition. If they demand it long
enough, they will get it. I suspect that the economic problem is at the
root of the marriage problem, for people are not indiscriminate in their
relationships, and even Don Juan, after a while, longs to be faithful,
if only somebody could teach him how to be it. Marriage can be made
close only by making divorce easy, by extending female labor. For labor
makes woman less attractive and to be attractive is rather a trap: how
much higher can a woman rise? But the economic freedom of woman will
mean that she need not bind herself; she will be able to break away, and
in those days she will be most completely bound, for who would run away
from a jail if the door were always left open?
I detest Utopia, and these things seem so far away that I am more
content to take marriage as it is in the hope that unhealthy novels,
unnecessary discussions, unwholesome views, and unnatural feelings may
little by little reform mankind. Meanwhile, I hold fast to the private
maxim that hardly anything is unendurable if one sets up that all
mankind could not give one a quite worthy mate. But there is another
alleviation: understanding not only that one is married to somebody
else, but also that somebody else is married to yourself, and that it is
quite as hard for the other party. There are many excellent things to be
done; here are a few:
(1) Do not open each other's letters. (For one reason you might not
like the contents.) And try not to look liberal if you don't even
glance at the address or the postmark.
(2) Vary your pursuits, your conversation, and your clothes. If
required, vary your hair.
(3) If you absolutely must be sincere, let it be in private.
(4) (Especially for wives.) Find out on the honeymoon whether
crying or swearing is the more effective.
(5) Once a day say to a wife: "I love you"; to a husband: "How
strong you are!" If the latter remark is ridiculous, say: "How
clever you are!" for everybody believes that.
(6) Forgive your partner seventy times seven. Then burn the ledger.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
_By the author of "The Second Blooming"_
THE STRANGERS' WEDDING
_By_ W. L. GEORGE
12mo. Cloth. 450 pages. $1.35 _net_.
Readers of "The Second Blooming," one of the most discussed novels of
1915, will welcome the announcement of another novel of married life by
this talented English author.
"The Strangers' Wedding" is the story of Roger Huncote, a young man of
the upper classes who, inflamed with philanthropic ideals, joins a
settlement to work among the poor. He is speedily undeceived as to the
usefulness of the movement and the worthiness of those who control it,
and conceiving an unreasonable disgust of his own class, marries the
daughter of a washerwoman. Realizing that there may be little
difficulties, he believes that when two people care deeply for each
other nothing else can matter. But Huncote has much to learn; and most
of the story is concerned with the pitiful misunderstandings between
the young husband and the young wife, both of whom are charming but as
unable to meet as east and west. Mr. George indicates with much
psychological subtlety the reversion of the "strangers" to their own
class, which ultimately leads them to a happy ending.
This novel is throughout pathetic, but it contains a great deal of broad
humor and deserves its sub-title, "The Comedy of a Romantic."
_By the Author of "The Stranger's Wedding"_
THE SECOND BLOOMING
_By_ W. L. GEORGE
12mo. 438 pages. $1.35 _net_.
A strong and thoughtful story.--_New York World._
A story of amazing power and insight.--_Washington Evening Star._
Mr. George is one of the Englishmen to be reckoned with. One now says
Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett--and W. L. George.--_New York Globe._
This writer has entered with more courage and intensity into the inner
sanctuaries of life than Mr. Howells and Mr. Bennett have cared to
do.--_Chicago Tribune._
Mr. George follows a vein of literary brilliancy that is all his own,
and his study of feminine maturity will find ample vindication the round
world over.--_Philadelphia North American._