One way of escape is through the door of the Divorce Court. Sir Francis
Jeune, when he was President of the Divorce Court, saw before him many
of these escaping women, and he noted down the fact about the Eighth
Year; and sitting there with an impassive face, but watchful eyes, he
saw the characters in all these little tragedies and came to know the
type and the plot from constant reiteration. Sometimes the plot varied,
but only in accidentals, never in essentials. As the story was rehearsed
before him, it always began in the same way, with a happy year or two
of marriage. Then it was followed by the first stress and strain. Then
there came the drifting apart, the little naggings, the quarrels, the
misunderstandings, until the wife--it was generally the wife--became
bored, lonely, emotional, hysterical, and an easy victim for the first
fellow with a roving eye, a smooth tongue, and an easy conscience. The
procession still goes on, the long procession of women who try to escape
through the Divorce Court door. Every year they come, and the same story
is told and retold with sickening repetition. In most cases they are
childless wives. That is proved, beyond dispute, by all statistics of
divorce. Sometimes they have one or two children, but those cases are
much more rare. But even when there are children to complicate the
issues and to be the heirs of these tragedies, the causes behind the
tragedies are the same. The woman has had idle hands in her lap before
the Eighth Year of marriage has been reached. In the early years her
little home was enough to satisfy her mind and heart, and her interests
were enough to keep her busy. The coming of the first child, and of the
second, if there is a second, was for a time sufficient to crowd her
day with little duties and to prevent any restlessness or any deadly
boredom. All went well while she had but one maidservant, and while
her husband’s feet were still on the lower rungs of the ladder. But
the trouble began with the arrival of the extra servant and with the
promotion of her husband. It began when gradually she handed over
domestic duties to paid people, when she was seldom in the kitchen and
more in the drawing-room, when the children were put under the charge
of a nurse, and when the responsibilities of motherhood had become a
sinecure. The fact must be faced that a child is not always a cure for
the emptiness of a woman’s heart, nor an absolute pledge of fidelity
between husband and wife. These women who seek a way of escape from
their little homes are not always brought to that position by the
unfulfilled instincts of motherhood. For many of them have no instincts
of motherhood. They feel no great natural desire to have a child.
They even shrink from the idea of motherhood, and plead their lack of
courage, their ill-health, their weakness. With their husbands they are
partners in a childless scheme, or if they have a child--they quickly
thrust it into the nursery to leave themselves free.
But, on the other hand, it is a fact borne out by all the figures that
a child does in the vast majority of cases bind together the husband and
wife, as no other influence or moral restraint; and that among all the
women who come to the Divorce Court the overwhelming majority is made up
of childless wives.
These women are not naturally vicious. They have not gone wrong because
their principles are perverted. They are not, as a rule, intellectual
anarchists who have come to the conclusion that the conventional moral
code is wrong and that the laws of marriage are neither divine nor just.
On the contrary, they are conscience-stricken, they are terrified by
their own act. Many of them are brokenhearted and filled with shame.
It is pitiful to hear their letters read in court, letters to their
husbands pleading for forgiveness, asking for “another chance,”
or trying, feebly, to throw the blame on the man, and to whitewash
themselves as much as possible. To judge from their letters it would
seem that they were under some evil spell, and that they were conscious
of being dragged away from their duty as though Fate had clutched them
by the hair, so that although they struggled they could not resist, and
were borne helplessly along upon a swift tide of passion carrying them
to destruction. “I could not help myself” is the burden of their cry, as
though they had no free-will, and no strength of will. Occasionally they
give tragic pictures of their idle lives, so lacking in interest, so
barren, so boring. There is another phrase which crops up again and
again: “Oh, I was bored--bored--bored!” It was the man that saved her
from boredom who now shares the woman’s guilt, and stands in the witness
box in this court of honor. He came to her just at that moment in the
Eighth Year when she was bored to death. He was kind, sympathetic,
understanding. He brought a little color back into her cheeks, a little
laughter into her eyes, a little sunshine into her life. He seemed such
a boy, so youthful and high-spirited, such a contrast to her husband,
always busy, and always worrying over his business. He told good
stories, took her to the theatre, arranged little supper-parties, made
a new adventure of life. He would sit chatting with her over the fire,
when there were flickering shadows on the walls. He chased away the
ghosts, gave her new dreams, brought new hopes.... And then suddenly he
begins to tempt her; and she shrinks back from him, and is afraid. He
knows she is afraid, but he tries to laugh away her fears. She pleads
with him to go away, but there is insincerity in her voice, her words
are faltering. She knows that if he were to go away she would be left
more lonely than before, in intolerable loneliness till the ghosts would
rush back at her. So he stays, and tempts her a little more. Gradually,
little by little, he becomes her great temptation, overwhelming all
other things in life dwarfing all other things, even her faith and
honor. How can she resist? By what power within her can she resist?
She does not resist. And yet by yielding she does not gain that
happiness to which she stretched out her hands. She does not satisfy the
great hunger in her heart or quench her burning thirst. She has not
even killed the ghosts which haunt her, or healed the pin pricks of her
conscience. Her conscience is one great bleeding wound. For this woman
of the middle-classes is a creature of her caste Nor in most cases can
she break the rules of her caste without frightful hurt to herself. She
was brought up in a “nice” home. Her mother was a woman of old-fashioned
virtues. Her father was a man who would have seen her dead rather than
shamed. She received a High School education, and read Tennyson and
Longfellow with moral notes by her class-mistress. She used to go to
church, and sometimes goes there still, though without any fervor or
strength of faith. She has heard the old words, “The wages of sin is
death,” and she shrinks a little when she thinks of them. Above all she
has been brought up on romantic fiction, and that is always on the side
of the angels. The modern problem novel has arrested her intellect, has
startled her, challenged her, given her “notions”; but in her heart of
hearts she still believes in the old-fashioned code of morals, in the
sweet old virtues. This sin of hers is a great terror to her. She is not
brazen-faced. She does not justify it by any advanced philosophy. She is
just a poor, weak, silly woman, who has gone to the edge of a precipice,
grown giddy, and fallen off the cliff. She throws up her hands with a
great cry. The way of escape through the Divorce Court door is not a way
to happiness. It is a way to remorse, to secret agonies, to a life-long
wretchedness. Her second husband, if he “plays the game” according to
the rules of the world, is not to be envied. Between him and this woman
there are old ghosts. This way of escape is into a haunted house.