Just now, I turned to a pile of common novels, the sort that is here
today and gone tomorrow, and opened them at the last page. Somewhere
there I found that “she floated into his arms,” “the strains of the
Wedding March were borne on an afternoon air,” “You are the only one I
have lived for,” or some such sentence.
I also find that of ten short stories submitted for inspection, nine
deal with the problem of getting a wife.
Now, as will be clear to every thinking man, the problems of life do
not end with marriage. Rather do they begin with them. Marriage is
not an ideal state, the end of grief, the solution of all problems.
In fact, under present economic conditions, it is exactly what has
been called an _egosime a deux_. To throw two people together, in
everlasting close proximity, is a dangerous thing to do at any time,
and in any conditions. The only possible amelioration is a community
of intellectual interests between man and wife, which, as we know, is
extremely rare. Lacking that, there must be frequent discontent. The
two parties to the contract are thrown too much together. The feminine
“moods” get on the nerves of the man. The very fact that convention
prevents the man from having other female friends, and the woman from
having male friends, exacerbates the trouble. The two become more or
less isolated and there is revolt--perhaps openly expressed, perhaps
hidden. The first fierce sexual appetite being satisfied, “love” passes
into coldness and by a natural transition, coldness into dislike. Then
come children perhaps, and marriage sinks into a stern, indissolvable
partnership with never ending worry and fret for the man, and unending
petty toil for the woman. Utter boredom is called virtue and morality.
A musty, fusty old pair, yawning in each other’s faces on a front porch
in utter vacuity, are pointed out by the conventional as a model of
contentment. A volume would not exhaust the list of troubles that come
when the marriage state is entered. So, let us in writing, paint things
as they are to the end that the young shall hold no illusions. Paint no
idyllic picture of love in a cottage, nor present something that has
but the remotest reference to life as it is.
Edward Carpenter, in his “Love’s Coming of Age” has much to say on
this subject. The little book is packed full of sound common sense.
Stories on the relations of the sexes that do not touch on the triangle
feature have been written in plenty, and the _Smart Set_ has had many
good pages on the theme. But it has been overlooked by Americans, that
William Makepeace Thackeray, a satirist second only to Swift, brought a
consummate cleverness to bear on the subject. His married couples pass
in review before the reader like a series of warnings. We read with
amusement, to recognize with seriousness, moving among us in life the
very characters he portrays. We know his _Miss Blanche_, acting the
martyr, eyes ever welling with tears, trying to catch a husband who
will sympathize with her sensitive heart. We have seen a _Mrs. O’Dowd_,
pompous and boastful and proud, bent on marrying every bachelor she can
lay her hands on. We know _Amelias_, wildly jealous, leading a husband
a devil of a time. We remember many like _Helen Pendennis_, silly
country prudes of no education, full of the harshness of Puritanism.
We recall decent women like _Lady Castlewood_ married to drunken and
imbecile boors, and by contrast, high-strung fellows tied to women who
have the minds and the education of a kitchen maid. There are families
of _Pontos_ yawning in solitude, men whose acquaintances are too vulgar
for their wives, and wives who scorn their husbands.... Go to Thackeray
if you would write, and, when tempted to dismiss your characters with
the reflection that marriages are made in Heaven, bear in mind that if
such was the case, Heaven was often a bad workman as far as generating
earthly happiness is concerned.