OUR
CHANGING MORALITY
_A SYMPOSIUM_
EDITED BY
FREDA KIRCHWEY
ALBERT & CHARLES BONI
NEW YORK 1924
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, INC.
_Printed in the United States of America by_
J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION
BY FREDA KIRCHWEY
The subject of sex has been treated in this generation with a strange,
rather panic-stricken lack of balance. Obscenity hawks its old wares
at one end of the road and dogmatic piety shouts warnings at the
other--while between is chaos. And the chaos extends beyond ideas and
talk, beyond novels and scenarios and Sunday feature stories, into the
realm of actual conduct. Religion has indeed found substantial matter
for its words of caution and disapproval: never in recent generations
have human beings so floundered about outside the ropes of social and
religious sanctions.
But while John Roach Straton and Billy Sunday point a pleasant way
toward hell, while sensationalism finds in new manners of life subject
for five-inch headlines, and while modern novelists make their modern
characters stumble through pages of inner conflict to ends of darkness
and desperation, a few people are at work quietly sorting out the
elements of chaos and holding fragments of conduct up in the sun and
air to find what they really are made of.
No one seeks to argue chaos away. Certainly Mr. Straton and Mr. Sunday
are right: Men and women are ignoring old laws. In their relations
with each other they are living according to tangled, conflicting
codes. Remnants of early admonitions and relationships, the dictates of
custom, the behavior of their friends, their own tastes and desires,
elusive dreams of a loveliness not provided for by rules--all these are
scrambling to fill the gap that was left when Right and Wrong finally
followed the other absolute monarchs to an empty, nominal existence
somewhere in exile. But the traditional, ministerial method with chaos
was not Jehovah’s method. He brought order and light into the world;
but the way of our current moralists has been to clamp down the hatches
even though “sin” bubbled beneath. A few courageous, matter-of-fact
glances into the depths have been embodied in the articles in this
volume. The men and women who have written them have approached the
subject variously; the fragments they have brought up to examine do
not necessarily fit together. But none of these writers is afraid to
saunter up to the edge and see what moral disorder looks like.
Some of them find it thoroughly disagreeable. They believe that old
laws were born of old desires and find their sanctions in the emotions
of men. They seek for new and rational ways back to the sort of
stability provided by the traditional relationships of men and women.
Others find in contemporary manners merely the disorder incident to
reconstruction; they find there tentative beginnings rather than
ruinous endings. They see chaos as an interesting laboratory, filled
with strange ferments and the pungent odors of new compounds. None of
these writers offers dogmatic conclusions--and in this they differ
delightfully from our most popular novelists and preachers. They
present facts, they analyze and interpret; they suggest directions,
they even prophesy. But they never announce or warn or reprove. When
these chapters first appeared as articles in _The Nation_ it became
evident that this exercise of thought was itself commonly held to be
a simple blasphemy. Letters from readers came in scores charging the
articles with the sin of intelligence where only faith and conformity
were tolerable. Dogma is so deep in the bone of even the more
enlightened and adult members of our modern world that the most modest
doubt regarding the success of monogamy or the virtue of chastity
becomes in some way an insult to Moses or Saint Paul.
It is interesting to see how many of the authors of this group of
articles find a connection between the changing standards of sex
behavior and the increasing freedom of women. Are women forcing this
change? Or does freedom itself make change inevitable? Possibly only
the woman in the isolation of the home is able to sustain the double
load of her own virtue and her husband’s ideals. Out in the world,
in contact and competition with men, she is forced to discriminate;
questions are thrust upon her. The old rules fail to work; bewildering
inconsistencies confront her. Things that were sure become unsure. And
slowly, clumsily, she is trying to construct a way out to a new sort of
certainty in life; she is seeking something to take the place of the
burden of solemn ideals and reverential attitudes that rolled off her
shoulders when she emerged. That some such process may be going on is
hinted at in more than one of these articles. Certainly, of the factors
involved in modern sex relations, women and economic conditions are the
two that have suffered the most revolutionary change; and men’s morals
must largely shape themselves to the patterns laid down by these two
masters of life.
Much has been said about sex--and everything remains to be said.
Largely, new conclusions will be reached through new processes of
living. People will act--and then a new code will grow up. But along
the way guidance and interpretation are deeply needed, if only to take
the place of the pious imprecations of those who fear life and hate the
dangers and uncertainties of thought and emotion.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
_By Freda Kirchwey_
STYLES IN ETHICS 3
_By Bertrand Russell_
MODERN MARRIAGE 19
_By Arthur Garfield Hays_
CHANGES IN SEX RELATIONS 37
_By Elsie Clews Parsons_
TOWARD MONOGAMY 53
_By Charlotte Perkins Gilman_
WOMEN--FREE FOR WHAT? 69
_By Edwin Muir_
VIRTUE AND WOMEN 85
_By Isabel Leavenworth_
WHERE ARE THE FEMALE GENIUSES? 107
_By Sylvia Kopald_
MAN AND WOMAN AS CREATORS 129
_By Alexander Goldenweiser_
DOMINANT SEXES 147
_By M. Vaerting_
MODERN LOVE AND MODERN FICTION 167
_By J. W. Krutch_
CAN MEN AND WOMEN BE FRIENDS? 183
_By Floyd Dell_
LOVE AND MARRIAGE 197
_By Ludwig Lewisohn_
COMMUNIST PURITANS 207
_By Louis Fischer_
STEREOTYPES 219
_By Florence Guy Seabury_
WOMEN AND THE NEW MORALITY 235
_By Beatrice M. Hinkle_
Styles in Ethics
By Bertrand Russell
Hon. Bertrand Arthur William Russell
_is a mathematician, writer, and lecturer on international affairs and
problems of government. Born at Trellech, England, May 18th, 1872.
F.R.S. 1908; Late Lecturer and Fellow Trinity College, Cambridge. Heir
presumptive to 2nd Earl Russell. Author of “German Social Democracy,”
1896; “Essay on the Foundation of Geometry,” 1897; “Philosophy of
Leibnitz,” 1900; “Principles of Mathematics,” 1903; with D. A. N.
Whitehead, “Principia Mathematica,” 1910; “Our Knowledge of the
External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy,” 1914;
“Principles of Social Reconstruction,” 1917; “Why Men Fight,” 1917;
“Mysticism and Logic,” 1918; “Roads to Freedom,” 1918; “Introduction
to Mathematical Philosophy,” 1919; “The Practice and Theory of
Bolshevism,” 1920; “The Analysis of the Mind,” 1921; “The Problem of
China,” 1922; “The A. B. C. of Atoms,” 1923; “Icarus, or the Future of
Science,” 1924._
OUR CHANGING MORALITY
STYLES IN ETHICS
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL
In all ages and nations positive morality has consisted almost wholly
of prohibitions of various classes of actions, with the addition
of a small number of commands to perform certain other actions.
The Jews, for example, prohibited murder and theft, adultery and
incest, the eating of pork and seething the kid in its mother’s
milk. To us the last two precepts may seem less important than the
others, but religious Jews have observed them far more scrupulously
than what seem to us fundamental principles of morality. South Sea
Islanders could imagine nothing more utterly wicked than eating
out of a vessel reserved for the use of the chief. My friend Dr.
Brogan made a statistical investigation into the ethical valuations
of undergraduates in certain American colleges. Most considered
Sabbath-breaking more wicked than lying, and extra-conjugal sexual
relations more wicked than murder. The Japanese consider disobedience
to parents the most atrocious of crimes. I was once at a charming spot
on the outskirts of Kioto with several Japanese socialists, men who
were among the most advanced thinkers in the country. They told me that
a certain well beside which we were standing was a favorite spot for
suicides, which were very frequent. When I asked why so many occurred
they replied that most were those of young people in love whose parents
had forbidden them to marry. To my suggestion that perhaps it would
be better if parents had less power they all returned an emphatic
negative. To Dr. Brogan’s undergraduates this power of Japanese parents
to forbid love would seem monstrous, but the similar power of husbands
or wives would seem a matter of course. Neither they nor the Japanese
would examine the question rationally; both would decide unthinkingly
on the basis of moral precepts learned in youth.
When we study in the works of anthropologists the moral precepts which
men have considered binding in different times and places we find the
most bewildering variety. It is quite obvious to any modern reader
that most of these customs are absurd. The Aztecs held that it was a
duty to sacrifice and eat enemies captured in war, since otherwise
the light of the sun would go out. The Book of Leviticus enjoins that
when a married man dies without children his brother shall marry the
widow, and the first son born shall count as the dead man’s son. The
Romans, the Chinese, and many other nations secured a similar result by
adoption. This custom originated in ancestor-worship; it was thought
that the ghost would make himself a nuisance unless he had descendants
(real or putative) to worship him. In India the remarriage of widows
is traditionally considered something too horrible to contemplate.
Many primitive races feel horror at the thought of marrying any one
belonging to one’s own totem, though there may be only the most distant
blood-relationship. After studying these various customs it begins at
last to occur to the reader that possibly the customs of his own age
and nation are not eternal, divine ordinances, but are susceptible
of change, and even, in some respects, of improvement. Books such as
Westermarck’s “History of Human Marriage” or Müller-Lyer’s “Phasen
der Liebe,” which relate in a scientific spirit the marriage customs
that have existed and the reasons which have led to their growth and
decay, produce evidence which must convince any rational mind that
our own customs are sure to change and that there is no reason to
expect a change to be harmful. It thus becomes impossible to cling to
the position of many who are earnest advocates of _political_ reform
and yet hold that reform in our moral precepts is not needed. Moral
precepts, like everything else, can be improved, and the true reformer
will be as open-minded in regard to them as in regard to other matters.
Müller-Lyer, from the point of view of family institutions, divides
the history of civilization into three periods--the clan period, the
family period, and the personal period. Of these the last is only now
beginning; the other two are each divided into three stages--early,
middle, and late. He shows that sexual and family ethics have at all
times been dominated by economic considerations; hunting, pastoral,
agricultural, and industrial tribes or nations have each their own
special kinds of institutions. Economic causes determine whether a
tribe will practice polygamy, polyandry, group marriage, or monogamy,
and whether monogamy will be lifelong or dissoluble. Whatever the
prevailing practice in a tribe it is thought to be the only one
compatible with virtue, and all departures from it are regarded with
moral horror. Owing to the force of custom it may take a long time for
institutions to adapt themselves to economic circumstances; the process
of adaptation may take centuries. Christian sexual ethics, according to
this author, belong to the middle-family period; the personal period,
now beginning, has not yet been embodied in the laws of most Christian
countries, and even the late-family period, since it admits divorce
under certain circumstances, involves an ethic to which the church is
usually opposed.
Müller-Lyer suggests a general law to the effect that where the state
is strong the family is weak and the position of women is good,
whereas where the state is weak the family is strong and the position
of women is bad. It is of course obvious that where the family is
strong the position of women must be bad, and vice versa, but the
connection of these with the strength or weakness of the state is less
obvious, though probably in the main no less true. Traditional China
and Japan afforded good instances. In both the state was much weaker
than in modern Europe, the family much stronger, and the position of
women much worse. It is true that in modern Japan the state is very
strong, yet the family also is strong and the position of women is
bad; but this is a transitional condition. The whole tendency in Japan
is for the family to grow weaker and the position of women to grow
better. This tendency encounters grave difficulties. I met in Japan
only one woman who appeared to be what we should consider emancipated
in the West--she was charming, beautiful, high-minded, and prepared to
make any sacrifice for her principles. After the earthquake in Tokio
the officer in charge of the forces concerned in keeping order in the
district where she lived seized her and the man with whom she lived
in a free union and her twelve-year-old nephew, whom he believed to be
her son; he took them to the police station and there murdered them
by slow strangulation, taking about ten minutes over each except the
boy. In his account of the matter he stated that he had not had much
difficulty with the boy, because he had succeeded in making friends
with him on the way to the police station. The boy was an American
citizen. At the funeral, the remains of all three were seized by armed
reactionaries and destroyed, with the passive acquiescence of the
police. The question whether the murderer deserved well of his country
is now set in schools, half the children answering affirmatively.
We have here a dramatic confrontation of middle-family ethics with
personal ethics. The officer’s views were those of feudalism, which is
a middle-family system; his victims’ views were those of the nascent
personal period. The Japanese state, which belongs to the late-family
period, disapproved of both.
The middle-family system involves cruelty and persecution. The
indissolubility of marriage results in appalling misery for the wives
of drunkards, sadists, and brutes of all kinds, as well as great
unhappiness for many men and the unedifying spectacle of daily quarrels
for the unfortunate children of ill-assorted couples. It involves also
an immense amount of prostitution, with its inevitable consequence of
widespread venereal disease. It makes marriage, in most cases, a matter
of financial bargain between parents, and virtually proscribes love.
It considers sexual intercourse always justifiable within marriage,
even if no mutual affection exists. It is impossible to be too thankful
that this system is nearly extinct in the Western nations (except
France). But it is foolish to pretend that this ideal held by the
Catholic church and in some degree by most Protestant churches is a
lofty one. It is intolerant, gross, cruel, and hostile to all the best
potentialities of human nature. Nothing is gained by continuing to pay
lip-service to this musty Moloch.
The American attitude on marriage is curious. America, in the main,
does not object to easy divorce laws, and is tolerant of those who
avail themselves of them. But it holds that those who live in
countries where divorce is difficult or impossible ought to submit to
hardships from which Americans are exempt, and deserve to be held up to
obloquy if they do not do so. An interesting example of this attitude
was afforded by the treatment of Gorki when he visited the United
States.
There are two different lines of argument by which it is possible to
attack the general belief that there are universal absolute rules of
moral conduct, and that any one who infringes them is wicked. One
line of argument emerges from the anthropological facts which we have
already considered. Broadly speaking the views of the average man on
sexual ethics are those appropriate to the economic system existing
in the time of his great-grandfather. Morality has varied as economic
systems have varied, lagging always about three generations behind. As
soon as people realize this they find it impossible to suppose that
the particular brand of marriage customs prevailing in their own age
and nation represents eternal verities, whereas all earlier and later
marriage customs, and all those prevailing in other latitudes and
longitudes, are vicious and degraded. This shows that we ought to be
prepared for changes in marriage customs, but does not tell us what
changes we ought to desire.
The second line of argument is more positive and more important.
Popular morality--including that of the churches, though not that of
the great mystics--lays down rules of conduct rather than ends of life.
The morality that ought to exist would lay down ends of life rather
than rules of conduct. Christ says: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself”; this lays down one of the ends of life. The Decalogue says:
“Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day”; this lays down a rule
of action. Christ’s conduct to the woman taken in adultery showed the
conflict between love and moral rules. All his priests, down to our own
day, have gone directly contrary to his teachings on this point, and
have shown themselves invariably willing to cast the first stone. The
belief in the importance of rules of conduct is superstitious; what
is important is to care for good ends. A good man is a man who cares
for the happiness of his relations and friends, and, if possible, for
that of mankind in general, or, again, a man who cares for art and
science. Whether such a man obeys the moral rules laid down by the Jews
thousands of years ago is quite unimportant. Moreover a man may obey
all these rules and yet be extremely bad.
Let us take some illustrations. I have a friend, a high-minded man,
who has taken part in arduous and dangerous enterprises of great
public importance and is almost unbelievably kind in all his private
relations. This man has a wife who is a dipsomaniac, who has become
imbecile, and has to be kept in an institution. She cannot divorce him
because she is imbecile; he cannot divorce her because she affords
him no ground for divorce. He does not consider himself morally bound
to her and is therefore, from a conventional point of view, a wicked
man. On the other hand a man who is perpetually drunk, who kicks his
wife when she is pregnant, and begets ten imbecile children, is not
generally regarded as particularly wicked. A business man who is
generous to all his employees but falls in love with his stenographer
is wicked; another who bullies his employees but is faithful to his
wife is virtuous. This attitude is rank superstition, and it is high
time that it was got rid of.
Sexual morality, freed from superstition, is a simple matter. Fraud and
deceit, assault, seduction of persons under age, are proper matters for
the criminal law. Relations between adults who are free agents are a
private matter, and should not be interfered with either by the law or
by public opinion, because no outsider can know whether they are good
or bad. When children are involved the state becomes interested to the
extent of seeing that they are properly educated and cared for, and it
ought to insure that the father does his duty by them in the way of
maintenance. But neither the state nor public opinion ought to insist
on the parents living together if they are incompatible; the spectacle
of parents’ quarrels is far worse for children than the separation of
the parents could possibly be.
The ideal to be aimed at is not life-long monogamy enforced by legal
or social penalties. The ideal to be aimed at is that all sexual
intercourse should spring from the free impulse of both parties, based
upon mutual inclination and nothing else. At present a woman who sells
herself successively to different men is branded as a prostitute,
whereas a woman who sells herself for life to one rich man whom she
does not love becomes a respected society leader. The one is exactly
as bad as the other. The individual should not be condemned in either
case; but the institutions producing the individual’s action should be
condemned equally in both cases. The cramping of love by institutions
is one of the major evils of the world. Every person who allows himself
to think that an adulterer must be wicked adds his stone to the prison
in which the source of poetry and beauty and life is incarcerated by
“priests in black gowns.”
Perhaps there is not, strictly speaking, any such thing as “scientific”
ethics. It is not the province of science to decide on the ends of
life. Science can show that an ethic is unscientific, in the sense that
it does not minister to any desired end. Science also can show how to
bring the interest of the individual into harmony with that of society.
We make laws against theft, in order that theft may become contrary to
self-interest. We might, on the same ground, make laws to diminish the
number of imbecile children born into the world. There is no evidence
that existing marriage laws, particularly where they are very strict,
serve any social purpose; in this sense we may say that they are
unscientific. But to proclaim the ends of life, and make men conscious
of their value, is not the business of science; it is the business of
the mystic, the artist, and the poet.
Modern Marriage and Ancient Laws
By Arthur Garfield Hays
Arthur Garfield Hays
_is an attorney practicing in New York City. He was manager of the New
York State La Follette campaign, 1924._
MODERN MARRIAGE AND ANCIENT LAWS
BY ARTHUR GARFIELD HAYS
“Are we married?” This was a query recently put to a New York lawyer.
The woman wanted to have been married, but wished not to be married
any longer; at the same time she rather objected to a divorce. The man
did not care much about it, so long as he could marry, or marry again,
without too much inconvenience arising from the earlier entanglement.
The lawyer’s answer was so obvious that it might have been made by a
layman: “How do I know?”
The two had been living together, had called each other husband and
wife, and had in general passed as such, but at the beginning of the
relationship each had felt that if one wanted to be free the other
would not hold him or her; it was agreed that they should have no
financial responsibility for each other and that there should be
nothing about the arrangement which would make it last “till death
do us part.” In speaking of themselves as “husband and wife” they had
intended the words to represent merely a formula of their own.
Now common-law marriage as recognized in New York State consists in a
meeting of the minds--a contract. Thus, if two people live together
as husband and wife this may be evidence of a common-law marriage. No
formal agreement is necessary. But if there has not been even a private
agreement of marriage their living together would be unimportant. If
they wished to separate they would need no divorce, for they would
never have been married. By passing as husband and wife they might
gain the social advantages that come from a recognized relationship,
and, since there had been no definite agreement, they might save the
inconvenience of divorce if they wished to separate. Difficulty arises
only when both parties do not agree that there was no agreement.
Sometimes one party claims there was and the other that there was not.
Then the very indefiniteness of the tie means added difficulty and
publicity in breaking it.
In order to avoid future disagreement one couple made a contract in
which they stated that they lived as husband and wife in order to avoid
social stigma, but that as between themselves there was no agreement
of marriage. The situation was trying because they always felt they
were living a lie. Their answer was that society foolishly demanded
either a penalty or a form and they preferred to provide the form.
Fortunately, neither ever had to swear to the status and they felt that
this contract--which provided for future maintenance of the wife and
custody of the children--solved the problem or doubt of a life-long
relationship. To those who made ethical objection, they answered that
they were willing to contract on matters which concerned their wills,
but knew it was contrary to human nature to contract on matters which
concerned their emotions.
Not long ago in New York City a young woman who had scruples about
promising to love a man forever expressed to the city clerk her
unwillingness to use the form of marriage ceremony which he had
produced committing her to love, honor, and cherish the man for the
rest of his or her life. She said she was in good faith willing to
contract to marry, and that she would do the best she could to make the
marriage successful, but that was all; to which the clerk answered that
if she were entering marriage in that spirit she should not be married
at all. He was finally persuaded that the parties could be tied merely
by agreement on her part to become the man’s wife and on his part to
become her husband.
If the law seems full of vagaries on the problem of entering marriage
it is still more perplexing and technical when it concerns the question
whether or not two people are still legally married when one has
obtained a supposed divorce--so much so that it is not at all uncommon
for a lawyer to be faced by a client asking whether or not he, or she,
is really married. Some years ago a man was married in Philadelphia
and later, having separated from his wife, went to New York. She
obtained a decree of divorce in Pennsylvania, the papers having been
served on him in New York. He married again and died a generation
later, leaving a considerable fortune and three children by his second
marriage. The first wife, or her attorneys, then discovered that the
original divorce was not legal, since the Pennsylvania courts had not
acquired a jurisdiction which would be recognized in New York. Since
the man had left the estate to his “wife,” there were complications.
As the question involved the meaning of a will, the matter was one of
intention and it was not difficult to prove that the deceased intended
as his beneficiary the woman whom he regarded as his wife. But had
he owned real estate at the time of his divorce the first wife might
have had a dower interest, and had his status become one of public
importance his enemies might successfully have charged him with bigamy.
Ordinarily, people are satisfied with a decree of divorce. It gives
them the desired social status. Its technical legality becomes of
importance only in connection with estates or the legitimacy of
children. But a difficult question arises in case of remarriage.
Legality depends upon the jurisdiction of the court. This can be
acquired by personal service of papers upon the defendant within the
State or a voluntary submission to the jurisdiction by appearing
in the case personally or by attorney. But State courts claim and
recognize their own jurisdiction even though papers are served outside
the State. Under these latter circumstances, suppose a divorce granted
a man in Utah is not recognized in New York. If he remarries in Utah he
will have one wife there, while in New York another woman would be his
wife and he would be obliged to support her there. If his wife in New
York married again, she would be guilty of bigamy. In Utah it would be
his duty to live with one woman. New York would attempt to make it his
pleasure to live with another, and this on the ground of morality, for,
although, ordinarily, the law of the place of the new marriage (in this
case, Utah) would apply, yet this would result in his having two wives
in New York. So on legal grounds we disregard the divorce, and on moral
grounds we negative the second marriage.
Foreign divorces raise the question not only of jurisdiction but
of recognition by treaty of a judgment of the particular foreign
country. For instance, judgments of French courts are not absolutely
binding upon the courts of this country, as are the judgments of
sister-States. In the case of Russia, where any two parties by
agreement or a single person by request may become divorced, there is
no treaty whatever. Occasionally, cases arise where persons abroad have
obtained a decree for a rabbinical divorce. Under the old Jewish custom
a rabbi could pronounce a divorce and the law of the state permitted a
decree to be entered upon his pronouncement. Some states and countries
make bids for the divorce business; not long ago an advertisement
appeared announcing that a divorce might be had in Yucatan for $25,
not, of course, including the expense of travel. Questions of the
effect of interlocutory and final judgments, of the provisions of
a divorce decree forbidding remarriage within a certain period, of
the _bona fides_ of residence, of the jurisdiction of the court, of
treaties with foreign countries may make it difficult to answer the
question whether or not two people are legally married.
All this confusion represents a beating of wings against a cage--an
endeavor to obtain a legal paper with a red seal which will avoid a
situation which two people find intolerable. We are tending toward a
new moral conception of the marriage relationship, well expressed by
Premier Zahle of Denmark when submitting a new liberal divorce law: “It
is based on the fundamental conception that it is morally indefensible
to maintain a marriage relation by legal statute where all the real
bonds between the parties are broken. This is a measure which certainly
means a great step forward in the recognition of marriage as a moral
relation.”
Marriage is a status resulting from a civil contract, but very few
people who enter into it know what this contract is. It assumes
certain rights and obligations. What are they? That the wage-earner
will provide. This is enforcible, at least theoretically. What else?
That the parties live in an emotional and mental state designated by
an agreement “to love, honor, and cherish,” and, sometimes, “obey.”
This is obviously unenforcible. (I make this assertion despite the
recent Texas case in which a husband obtained an injunction restraining
his wife’s employer from flirting with her.) The contract continues
for life, subject to termination for causes which depend chiefly
upon the place of residence, actual or acquired. If they live in
South Carolina and stay there, the contract is indissoluble. In New
York the contract may be terminated for adultery, unless the other
party has likewise sought refuge outside of marriage; in Alabama, for
habitual drunkenness; in Nevada, for neglect to provide for one year;
in Kentucky and New Hampshire, for joining a religious sect which
believes marriages unlawful; in New Jersey, for extreme cruelty; in
Wisconsin, if the parties have voluntarily lived separately for five
years; in Massachusetts and a host of other States, for desertion; in
Pennsylvania and Oregon, for personal indignities or conduct rendering
life burdensome; in Vermont, for intolerable severity; in France, if
the parties have other emotional interests; in Denmark, by consent;
in Russia, by request. Of course, in most of these states there are
other grounds, but the result is that either party can bring about a
situation which permits divorce or can make life so intolerable for
the other that he or she consents to it. But these grounds must arise
subsequent to marriage; the agreement cannot be made in advance.
In life the duration of marriage depends upon the desires or consent
of individuals. In law it is perpetual, subject to termination not
by agreement made at the outset, or by later consent, but by court
decree. At the time of entering into marriage people usually know
merely that somehow, somewhere, some time there is a way out if the
situation becomes too strained. Technically, since the contract is
for life, a divorce is granted for a breach. Thus there is an implied
term, as there is in every contract, that relief is granted for a
breach--but what constitutes a breach depends not upon the terms of the
contract or the law of the place where the contract is made but upon
the jurisdiction where relief is sought--a matter of which the parties
ordinarily know nothing when they make the contract. Convention seems
to demand that the parties know not what they do.
Modern society, this summary seems to show, has been moving toward
freedom of contract in marriage. Those phases which concern the state,
such as economic provision and children, must be conserved. But time
was--and still is in some places--when marriage itself was a tribal
or a state matter. Then it became a family matter, determined by
the parents, and property and family rights and interests were the
important considerations. But parents, knowing by experience that
there can be no happiness without security--although there might
be unhappiness with it--failed to take into sufficient account the
emotional content, and, particularly in the Western World, there
developed a certain freedom of contract in making a choice. To-day,
when people have come to recognize the necessity of sexual and social
compatibility, which cannot be determined in advance, there has come
a demand for a further freedom of contract, to which society has
responded by more liberal divorce laws. The laws which permit a divorce
where parties have not lived together for a certain length of time make
the duration of the marriage relation really a matter of consent. They
mean in effect that a contract of marriage contains an implied term
that it is to continue until the parties consent to its end, and in
human relations this means until one party demands its end.
If a person proposed that the law recognize a marriage contract which
was to continue until either party desired its termination, he would
be regarded as a wrecker of our institutions; but society is doing
this very thing--obscurely, perhaps, as an after-effect, not as a
preconceived design; blindly, and not with intelligent forethought.
Many have suggested that marriages be made harder and divorces easier.
But how revolutionary would seem a suggestion that marriage contracts
be made in advance, conforming to the teachings of experience,
providing for maintenance and custody of children and limited by the
understanding of the parties; that those who, for religious or ethical
reasons, wished to enter into a life contract be permitted to do so;
that those who wished to enter into a contract to terminate by joint
consent or at the option of either party likewise be permitted to do
so? An objection that this would be dangerous assumes that people
choose the present form only because compelled to do so. Individuals
are breaking from the old conventions, and the law, usually a laggard
by a generation, is following them. In forty-three States desertion is
a ground for divorce; in twenty of them, desertion for one year. In
seven States, failure or neglect to provide is a ground; in four of
them, the period is one year. In some States, if the parties live apart
for a certain length of time--in three of them for five years--that
is ground for divorce. Is not this divorce by agreement? And by
implication, since living together requires the willingness of two
parties, the result is a contract which may be ended by either of the
parties at any time he or she sees fit--after an intervening cooling
period. Thus does freedom creep in by the back door.
Does this work harm to society? There is little difference in the
marital or social conditions or in the welfare of children in Norway
and Sweden, where there are liberal laws, and in England, where divorce
is a long, complicated, and expensive process. No one could discover
that he had crossed the State line from New York to Pennsylvania by
observation of the state of society, the happiness or apparent duration
of marriage, the welfare of children, or the social conventions of
the people. Yet in Pennsylvania there was one divorce for every 10.2
marriages in 1922 and only one for every 22.6 in New York. In South
Carolina there are no divorces; in Oregon, the number of marriages
to one divorce was 2.6; in Wyoming, 3.9; in California, 5.1. In the
District of Columbia, the banner section, there were 35.8 marriages
to one divorce. There, as in New York, the only ground is adultery.
Yet San Francisco society seems as stable as that of Washington. Of
course, the figures do not mean that seven times as many Washington
couples as California couples, and four times as many New York couples,
make a success of marriage or live together when it has ceased to be a
success; but rather, that New Yorkers and Washingtonians solve their
marital troubles elsewhere than at home. Thus, in Nevada in 1922 there
were more divorces than marriages, because people married in other
States repented in Nevada.
Whatever effect it may have on society, the extension of grounds for
divorce which has taken place in the last decade, and the modern
improvement in communication and travel, which opens other States or
foreign countries to an increasing number, brings about a situation
by which people, though not free to contract, do avail themselves
of means which have the same effect. Revolutionary changes occur
unnoticed, while our delusions persist and our sense of conservatism is
gratified.
Changes in Sex Relations
By Elsie Clews Parsons
Elsie Clews Parsons
_is widely known as an anthropologist and writer. She has contributed
largely to scientific journals and in 1922 edited the volume on
American Indian Life by various students of the subject. Graduated
from Barnard 1896; Ph.D. Columbia 1899. Fellow and Lecturer in
Sociology at Barnard; Lecturer in Anthropology in New School for
Social Research. She is editor of the_ Journal of American Folklore;
_Treasurer of American Ethnological Society; President of Folk Lore
Society. Is author of “The Family”; “The Old-Fashioned Woman”; “Fear
and Conventionality”; “Social Freedom” and “Social Rule.”_
CHANGES IN SEX RELATIONS
BY ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS
The other day I listened to a conversation on marriage and divorce
between a well-known feminist, her daughter, and an Episcopal
clergyman. The celibate cleric and the younger woman were in fair
accord: the institution of marriage was invaluable to society and had
to be protected. Let there be no divorce, said the cleric, on any
ground, at least within the church; children should be cared for by
both parents, divorce being sought only as an ultimate recourse, said
the girl, who was two years married and had a son.
The feminist was biding her time. Finally she said: “So much for the
institution. What of the actual sex life? No divorce and continence or
no divorce and intimacy with another?”
“The first, of course,” said the cleric.
“Not at all; the second,” said the girl. “And you, mother?”
“Oh, on the whole I’m for the brittle marriage as against the lax, the
American way against the European. But most of all I am for tolerance
in sex relations and for respecting privacy. Why not all kinds of
relations for all kinds of persons? Just as there are now, but with
respect or tolerance for the individual and without hypocrisy.”
“Even if we did not agree,” the cleric said later to the feminist, “we
could talk about it as twenty years ago we could not. So much to the
good.”
“So much to the bad,” said the girl’s father, still later; “better for
all of us the old reserve.” The speaker was a lawyer with divorce cases
in his practice.
Had we not here a mingling of currents from law, the church, feminism,
and the younger generation which illustrates what divergency of
attitude on sex and sex institutions or practices may exist to-day,
even within the same cultural and local circle? Include circles of
different education and locality and although the range of difference
would be no larger the expressions of opinion would vary. Is the
variation in opinion due to variation in experience or is it due
to that contemporaneous lifting of the taboo on discussion which
characterizes not only our talk about sex but about other interests as
well? A remarkable and indisputable change of attitude, this release
from verbal taboo, which often gives us a sense of change in general
greater perhaps than the facts themselves warrant.
In the conversation I quoted the women were on the whole the radicals,
the men on the whole the conservatives. This alignment was far from
typical, I think, and yet in contemporaneous life, whether or not
in opinion, women have been the exponents of cultural change in sex
relations. The increase in the divorce rate, it seems probable, has
been effected predominantly by women; about two-thirds of the total
number of divorces are granted to women. (Of course the tradition that
it is decent for the man to let the woman get the divorce must not be
ignored in this connection.) This increase in divorce may indicate a
changing attitude toward the criteria of marriage on the part of women.
Women may be demanding more of marriage than in the day when they had
little to expect but marriage. In other words, marriage standards mount
as marriage has other relations to compete with. At any rate in the
talk of women it seems to me that desire for integral satisfaction
in marriage is more consciously or realistically expressed than ever
before. Emotional and sexual appeasements are considered as well as
social or economic advantage. What of the part played by women in
changes in sex relations outside marriage?
Unfortunately, we have no dependable statistics of prostitution, but
whatever decrease there has been in prostitution, and opinion is that
with the passing of segregated districts there has been a decrease,
may be, on the whole, put down to women, if only indirectly through an
increase in illicit relations. Illicit relations are not subject to
statistics, but that there has been an increase in them in this country
in this century will be generally accepted, likewise that in this, too,
the increase is due to women, alike more willing to participate in such
relations and more tolerant of them in others. Again those curious
suits for alienation of affection appear to be brought against women
as much as against men; and theories of seduction by men have long
since been sounding archaic to our ears. Even on the screen, the great
present vehicle of traditional manners and morals, although rape is
always in order, seduction is infrequent. Seduction with its complement
of marital honor has been rendered an anachronism, through women.
The theory of seduction is affiliated with the proprietary theory of
woman and, needless to say, this general theory has been undergoing
considerable change for several decades. To-day women are not only not
property, they are property holders, and property holding has become a
significant factor in the social independence of women. Of this social
independence, independence in mating is the most recent expression,
more recent even than political independence, and less fully realized
or accomplished. Indeed it would be rash to predict how this type of
independence may be expected to come about; apart from the gesture,
sometimes gay, sometimes merely comic, of keeping one’s name in
marriage, there is no conscious feministic movement, in this country at
least, toward freedom in sex. The political emancipation of women came
to us as a reflex from abroad, largely through England. Whatever the
political effect of militancy in England, without the advertisement
of the British suffragette American women would be voteless to-day.
Quite likely the direction of emancipation in mating may be determined
likewise from abroad, perhaps from innovating Scandinavia or from
Soviet Russia, where the last legal word has been said on sex equality.
In the soviet laws on marriage and domestic relations there is no
mention of suit for breach of promise or for alimony whereby woman
proclaims herself a chattel, and according to the soviet code husband
as well as wife is entitled to support if incapacitated for work.
Incapacity for work is the sole condition which entitles either spouse
to support. In other words, the Russian state has interested itself
not in maintaining the proprietary theory of woman; but in providing
for the care of man or woman in distress. Of such clear distinction
American law is innocent. In American law the husband is still the
provider and in this law lags but little behind current opinion, which
holds that a married woman should work only when she has to. Dr.
Herskowits tells me that this American attitude is so well represented
in the Negro population of Harlem that in gathering statistics of
employment as soon as he learns the occupation of the husband he can
predict whether or not the wife is at work. Low-paid employment for
the husband means wage-earning by the wife, and highly paid employment
means that the woman is not a wage-earner. Surveys in other parts of
the country have shown the same condition. These surveys have been
made among wage-earners, and concerned primarily with the margin of
subsistence; but familiar enough is the record in other economic
classes of the persuasion that marriage exempts a woman from industry
or professional activity. The standing controversies about married
women as school-teachers are fully documented instances. The Harvard
prize play acted last year on Broadway hinged on the rigidity of the
alternative of a man marrying and sacrificing his career or pursuing
his career and sacrificing his love. There was not the faintest
suggestion that the woman might contribute to the family income and so
render marriage and career economically compatible. The young couple,
to be sure, belonged to smart Suburbia, economically a conservative
circle; but there was no indication in the play that the university
intelligentsia did not hold to the theory of wifely parasitism, nor
that audiences might question the theory. And I incline to think that
few in those Broadway audiences, although drawn as they were from
fairly composite circles, did question. Wifely parasitism is holding
its own.
In less invidious terms, where income permits, the wife continues to
be the consumer, the husband the producer. Conjugal partnership in
production, familiar in Europe, remains by and large unfamiliar in
this country. Outside of marriage, on the other hand, the last years
have seen considerable lessening in our American forms of segregating
the sexes. Not only has there been an increase of women in gainful
occupations together with an increase of occupations open to women, but
between men and women in business and in the professions relations are
increasingly less restricted, influenced less by sex taboo. There is
more coöperation, more goodwill, more companionship.