CAUSES OF FAILURE
'For Marriage is like Life in this, that it is a field of battle,
not a bed of roses.' --R. L. STEVENSON.
'Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my
soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful
surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.'
--_Man and Superman._
'A wise man should avoid married life, as though it were a burning
pit of live coals.' --_Dhammika Sutta._
I
THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MARRIAGE
'Marriage is the great mistake that wipes out the smaller
stupidities of Love.' --SCHOPENHAUER.
In one of his essays Stevenson says: 'I am so often filled with wonder
that so many marriages are passable successes, and so few come to open
failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on which
people regulate their choice.'
Out of the chaos which envelops this 'principle' four special motives
seem to stand out, and we can therefore roughly divide the marriages
that take place into five sections thus--
1. The Marriage of Passion.
2. The Marriage of Convenience.
3. Marriage for a Purpose.
4. Haphazard Marriage.
5. The Marriage of Affection.
* * *
_The Marriage of Passion._--One of Mr Somerset Maugham's characters in
_The Merry-Go-Round_ says: 'I'm convinced that marriage is the most
terrible thing in the world, unless passion makes it absolutely
inevitable.' Although a profound admirer of Mr Maugham's work, here I
find myself entirely at variance with him. Most of the mad, unreasonable
matches are those which 'passion makes inevitable.' Theoretically this
is one of the most promising types of marriage--in practice it proves
the most fatally unhappy of all. 'They're madly in love with each other,
it's an ideal match' is a comment one often hears expressed with much
satisfaction, but it is a painful fact that these desperate loves lead
very frequently to disaster and divorce. Most of the miserable married
couples personally known to me were 'madly in love' with each other at
the start.
Is it to be wondered at when one considers the matter? Nature, who
seldom makes a mistake where primitive mankind is concerned is by no
means infallible when dealing with the artificial conditions of our
Western civilisation. In the East where greater sex licence is allowed,
it seems quite safe to trust Nature and follow the instincts she
implants. Not so in our hemisphere. The young man and maid who fall
under passion's thrall are temporarily blind and mad; their judgment is
obscured, their reasoning powers non-existent, nothing in the world
seems of the slightest importance except the overwhelming necessity _to
give_ themselves--_to possess_ the beloved, the being who has fired
their blood.
If the Fates are cruel, these two are permitted to rush into matrimony.
Nature has worked her will and pays no more heed. She is well-satisfied:
the children born of these unions of utter madness are generally the
finest and strongest, and what else does Nature care about? But for the
young couple? . . . Gradually the roseate clouds lift, the intoxicating
fumes are wafted away--the rapture subsides, and each awakes from the
effects of the most potent drug in the universe to find a very ordinary
young person at their side--and around them a chain which men name
'Forever!'
Unhappy indeed are these two if, when they stand facing each other over
passion's grave, there proves to be no link at all between them except
the memory of the madness that has died. Fortunately this is by no means
always the case, but when it is a very unhappy married life must
inevitably follow. Schopenhauer gives as the reason for such matches
proving unhappy the fact that their participants look after 'the welfare
of the future generation at the expense of the present,' and quotes the
Spanish proverb, 'He who marries for love must live in grief.' From the
point of view of the individual's interest, and not that of the future
generation, it certainly seems a mistake to wed the object of intense
desire unless there is also spiritual harmony, community of tastes and
interests, and many other points of union in common. But under the
influence of suppressed passion people lose their clearness of mental
vision and are therefore more or less incapable of judging.
Let there be passion in marriage by all means--so far I entirely agree
with Mr Maugham--but let it be merely the outer covering of love--a
garment of flame the embrace of which is ecstasy indeed, but which, when
it has burnt itself away, still leaves love a solid form of joy and
beauty, erect beneath its ashes. 'Real friendship,' founded on harmony
of sentiment, does not exist until the instinct of sex has been
extinguished.[2]
[Footnote 2: Schopenhauer's _Metaphysics of Love_.]
* * *
_Marriages of Convenience_ are of two kinds, the wholly sordid, when
money, social position, or some personal aggrandisement has been the
motive on one or both sides, without any basis of affection; and the
partially-sordid, when these reasons are modified by some existing
affection or liking. In this category come the people who marry
principally in the interests of their business or profession, such as
the barrister who weds the solicitor's daughter, or the young doctor who
marries into the old doctor's family. In this connection one recalls the
father who advised his sons not to marry for money, but to love where
money was. No doubt the possession of a little money or 'influence' is
an added attraction to a maiden's charm in the eyes of the go-ahead
young man of to-day; and considering how hard it appears to be to earn a
living nowadays one cannot altogether blame them--distressing as it
seems from the sentimental point of view. I don't believe, however, that
there are so many wholly sordid marriages outside the confines of the
set generally prefixed as 'smart.' People who are not members of this
glittering circle are already sufficiently shy of matrimony nowadays,
and are afraid of the enormous additional handicap such a match would
carry. Of course these unions are almost inevitably miserable failures,
and one wonders what else the victims could have expected.
* * *
We now come to the third division, _Marriage for a Purpose_. These
matches are distantly allied with the partially-sordid, but there is
nothing sordid about them, as they are frequently undertaken from the
highest motives. In this class are the widowers who wed for the sake of
their children, the spinsters whose motive is their desire for
motherhood, the men and women who marry to possess a home, or for the
sake of companionship. All these reasons are justifiable enough, and
people who embark on matrimony with a set purpose generally take it very
seriously, and determine to make a success of it. Such marriages often
prove extremely happy, perhaps for the very reason that so little is
asked. The spirit of contentment is an excellent influence in married
life, since love is often killed by its own excessive demands, as I
shall endeavour to show later.
* * *
_Haphazard Marriages_ seem to me the best way to describe those unions
into which men drift without any special reason, sometimes almost
against their own wish. Nature does not care how the young people come
together as long as they do come, and sometimes a man finds himself
drifting into matrimony almost before he is aware. I write a 'man'
advisedly as women never _drift_ into wifehood. In these cases it is
generally their set and deliberate purpose that has steered the man into
the conjugal harbour unknown to him. He has merely followed the line of
least resistance and found to his surprise that it leads to the altar.
Mr Bernard Shaw has given a very amusing, and, in spite of itself,
convincing, picture of this manoeuvring in _Man and Superman_, where he
also expresses his conviction that 'men, to protect themselves . . .
have set up a feeble, romantic conviction that the initiative in sex
business must always come from the man . . . but the pretence is so
shallow, so unreal that even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of
unreality, it imposes only on the inexperienced. In Shakespeare's plays
the woman always takes the initiative. In his problem plays and his
popular plays alike the love interest is the interest of seeing the
woman hunt the man down. . . . The pretence that women do not take the
initiative is part of the farce. Why, the whole world is strewn with
snares, traps, gins, and pitfalls for the capture of men by women. It is
assumed that the woman must wait motionless to be wooed. Nay, she often
does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits for the fly. The
spider spins her web. And if the fly, like my hero, shows a strength
that promises to extricate him, how swiftly does she abandon her
pretence of passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil about him
until he is secured for ever!'
* * *
_The Marriage of Affection._--'Do you know any thoroughly happy
couples?' says one of the characters in _Double Harness_.
'Very hard to say. Oh, ecstasies aren't for this world, you know--not
permanent ecstasies. You might as well have permanent hysterics. And, as
you're aware, there are no marriages in heaven. So perhaps there's no
heaven in marriages either.'
These sentiments are of a nature to disgust and irritate the ignorant
girl of twenty by their callous unreality in her eyes, and to delight
the experienced woman of, say, thirty, by their profound truth in
hers--so utterly do one's ideas about life change in the course of ten
years or so!
Sixty years ago George Sand wrote: 'You ask me whether you will be happy
thro' love and marriage. You will not, I am fully convinced, be so in
either the one or the other. Love, fidelity, maternity are nevertheless
the most important, the most necessary things in the life of a woman.'
To the same effect writes R. L. Stevenson when he says: 'I suspect Love
is rather too violent a passion to make in all cases a good domestic
character.' Of course no very young people will believe this, but it is
a horrid sordid truth that, as a rule, the happiest marriages are those
in which the couple do not love too intensely. I am speaking of solid,
workaday happiness, not of ecstasies and raptures. The excessive claims
made by passionate love and the fevered state of mind it produces are
often the cause of its shipwreck. 'If I am horrid, darling,' a girl once
said to her lover, when trying to make up a quarrel she herself had
brought about, 'it's only because I love you so intensely.' 'Then, for
God's sake, love me less, and treat me better,' snapped the outraged
lover, and we can but sympathise with him.
I have purposely used the word _Affection_ in this division, in place of
one signifying a greater degree of feeling, and I unhesitatingly state
that generally speaking, the most successful marriages are those
which--'when the first sweet sting of love be past, the sweet that
almost venom is,' develop into the temperate, unexacting, peaceful and
harmonious unions which come under this heading. To the ardent youths
and maidens--restless seekers after the elusive joy of life--who will
have none of this prosaic and inglorious counsel, and who are prepared
to stake their all on the belief that the first sweet sting of love is
going to last for ever, I say: Get your roses-and-raptures over some
other way; don't look for romance in marriage or, unless your case prove
the exception to the rule, you will inevitably make a terrible
mistake! . . . Oh, don't ask _me_ how it is to be done, but remember
what I say, and don't marry until the quiet, sober, beautiful and
restful affection you now scorn becomes in your eyes a haven of peace
from the storm and stress of life, and the highest good it contains.
Another reason why the Marriage of Affection is the most likely to prove
a success is because mutual respect enters so largely into its
composition, and how enormously important this is in the holy estate,
none can realise until they marry. I shall have more to say later about
the urgent necessity for respect in married life.
II
WHY WE FALL OUT: DIVERS DISCORDS
'And yet when all has been said, the man who should hold back from
marriage is in the same case with him who runs away from battle.'
--R. L. STEVENSON.
We have discussed those types of marriage more or less doomed to failure
from the outset, and now come to the reason why so many matches prove
unhappy when apparently every circumstance has been favourable.
It was Socrates, I think, who said: 'Whether you marry or whether you
remain unmarried, you will repent it.' The people who assert that
marriage is a failure seem to lose sight of the fact that the estate was
not ordained for the purpose of happiness, but to meet the necessities
of society, and so long as these necessities are fulfilled by marriage,
then the institution must be pronounced successful, however unhappy
married people may be.
If the reasons 'why we fell out, my wife and I,' were to be considered
exhaustively, the subject would overflow the bounds of this modest
volume and run into several hundred giant tomes; indeed I believe an
entire library could be filled with books on this matter alone. Ever
since Adam and Eve had a few words over their dessert, husbands and
wives have gone on quarrelling continuously and the humble philosopher
who said that certain people quarrelled 'bitter and reg'lar, like man
and wife,' was merely describing a condition that habit had made
familiar to him.
As with the rest of life, in matrimony it is the little things that
count, and the frail barque of married happiness founders principally on
the insignificant, half-perceived rocks--the little jealousies, little
denials, little irritations, little tempers, little biting words, which
by degrees wear so many little holes in the stern that at last an
irreparable leak is sprung and the ship goes down in the next storm. The
big obstacles make a worse crash when they _do_ get in the way, but they
can be seen from afar and steered clear of.
A miserable husband who had come to the parting of the ways (having
started in the madly-in-love section), once confided in me that the
bitter and terrible quarrels between him and his wife always began for
some utterly trivial reason, generally because he did not admire her
clothes! Could anything be more pitifully absurd? 'Then why,' I asked,
'as you're so anxious to keep the peace, do you volunteer any criticism
at all?' 'Oh, I never do,' was the answer. 'She asks me my opinion of a
new gown, say, and gets angry when it's unfavourable. Then of course I
get angry too, I'm no saint, and presently we come to curses and words
that sting like blows. Then I clear out for a couple of days, and of
course there's the devil to pay when I go back, and it begins all over
again. Why, this present row has lasted five weeks or so, and in the
beginning it was simply because I said I didn't like the ostrich feather
in her hat!'
Again: I once met at a race-meeting a school-friend, long lost sight of,
whom I had last seen as a newly-wedded wife, loving and beloved. She was
now very much changed, hard and haggard of face. I asked after the man I
remembered as a radiant bridegroom.
'Oh, he's gone the way of all husbands,' she said, with a sigh; 'liver,
my dear.'
'Do you mean he's dead?' I asked, shocked and pained.
'Oh, dear, no, he's alive enough, but he's developed liver and that's
killed our love,' was the cynical reply.
It had. Devotion and dyspepsia are hard to reconcile and my friend's
husband had developed a nasty knack of throwing his dinner in the fire
whenever it displeased him, a habit hardly conducive to home happiness.
Food, as a fact, is one of the chief sources of friction in married
life. It sounds farcical, but I am perfectly serious. Food, the ordering
and cooking of it and the subsequent paying for it, is one of the great
tragedies of a wife's existence. Time, the great healer, mercifully
deadens the intensity of this anguish, and matrons of fifty or so can
face the daily burden of food-ordering with something like indifference.
But to a woman who has not yet reached the fatal landmark aptly
described as 'the same age as everybody else, namely, thirty-five,' it
is the greatest cross, whilst many a bride has had her early married
life totally ruined by the horrid and ever recurring necessity of
finding food for her partner. Men make fun of women because their
dinner, when alone, so often consists of an egg for tea, but women have
such a constitutional hatred of food-ordering, inherited, no doubt, from
a long line of suffering female ancestry, that the majority of them
would gladly live on tea and bread-and-butter for the rest of their
lives sooner than face the necessity of daily meditating on a menu. For
this reason I believe vegetarian husbands are particularly desirable,
since the whole principle of food-reform is simplicity. Those who go in
for it acquire an entirely fresh set of ideas on the importance of food,
and become quite pathetically easily pleased. I know a woman whose
husband is a vegetarian and she declared that the food question, so
disturbing a factor in most homes, had never caused her a single tear,
or frown, or angry word, or added wrinkle. She assured me that her
husband would cheerfully breakfast off a banana, lunch off a lettuce,
dine on a date and sup on a salted almond. When the house was upset on
the occasion of a large evening party and there were no conveniences for
the ordinary family dinner, the creature actually ate cheese sandwiches
in the bathroom, by way of a dinner, and was quite pleased to do so,
moreover! I could scarcely credit it at first, but it was really true.
Of the many paltry little causes for friction in married life
incompatibility of temperature has doubtless been a very fruitful source
of dissension. If one shivers when the window is opened and the other is
a fresh-air faddist and can't breathe with it shut, an endless vista of
possibilities of unhappiness is opened out. It was, I believe,
Napoleon's second wife, Marie Louise, who always got rid of her husband
when she wished to, by merely keeping her apartments cold. The great man
was only comfortable in a very hot room with a blazing fire.
That grievous deficiency, no sense of humour, is another of the tiny
little rocks on which married happiness often splits. This is natural
enough, since an absence of this priceless quality is about the worst
deprivation a traveller on life's journey can suffer from. Among men the
conviction is rife that women invariably suffer thus, but I think we can
afford to leave them this delusion, since it affords them so much
satisfaction. At one time I had a journalist friend of a painfully
stodgy and unusually depressing literary habit. This poor soul fancied
his vein was humour, and from him I have often endured the reading aloud
of the dreariest laboured pages of japes and jests, which to his
thinking were sparkling with wit. My patient, long-suffering listening
only brought bitter derision for my alleged lack of humorous perception,
but my criticism inspired the young man to write a cynical article on
'Women and Humour,' of the kind that editors--being men--delight in,
and for which he consequently got well paid.
As a fact, the things that amuse men frequently fail to amuse women and
_vice versâ_ but it is surely illogical to deduce from this that women's
humorous sense is inferior to men's--or non-existent. As, however, this
apparently insignificant question is of such importance in life
generally, whether it be in a palace, a convent, a villa or a
workhouse--I think a wife would be well-advised to assume amusement if
she feels it not, laugh with her lord even when she doesn't see the
point, and cultivate indifference when he fails to laugh with her.
Writers on marriage seem to have paid very little attention to this
important point. Stevenson is one of the exceptions: 'That people should
laugh over the same sort of jest,' he says, 'and have many an old joke
between them which time cannot wither or custom stale is a better
preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and
better-sounding in the world's ears. You could read Kant by yourself,
if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.'
In a beautiful poem, Stephen Phillips describes how a bereaved lover can
think calmly of his dead, when he looked at her possessions, the things
she had worn, even when he read her letters; and her saddest words had
no power to pain him, but when he came to--
'A hurried, happy line!
A little jest too slight for one so dead:
This did I not endure--
Then with a shuddering heart no more I read,'
In truth, the little joke shared, the old allusion at which both are
accustomed to laugh, is a more potent bond than many a deeper feeling.
One can recall these trifles long after one has forgotten the poignant
moments of passion, the breathless heartbeats, the wild embraces which
at the time seemed to promise such deathless memories. All, all are
forgotten, but the silly little joke has still the power to bring tears
to our eyes if the one with whom we shared it is lost to us.
* * *
A great many people are wretched who would have been perfectly happy
with another partner. 'In the inequalities of temperament lies the main
cause of unhappiness in marriage. Want of harmony in tastes counts for
much, but a misfit in temperament for more.' So ludicrously mismated are
some couples that one wonders how they could ever have dreamed of
finding happiness together. This again is frequently the fault of our
absurd conventions, which make it so difficult for single young men and
women to really get to know each other. However, things have improved so
much in this direction during the last decade or two that we ought not
to grumble, but, even now, if a man show a decided preference for a
girl's company his name is at once coupled with hers in a manner which
can but alarm a youth devoid of matrimonial intentions. That relic of
the dark ages, the intention-asking parent, is by no means extinct, and
many a promising friendship that might have ended in a happy marriage is
spoilt by the clumsy intervention of this barbaric relative.
A young barrister friend of mine--we will call him Anthony--once tried,
for reasons of professional policy, to make himself agreeable to a
solicitor with a very large family of daughters. Being a shrewd man,
he selected one of the girls still in the schoolroom to pay particular
attention to, and thus escaped the necessity of showing special interest
in her elder and marriageable sisters. His intimacy with the family
prospered, and the father became a very useful patron. However, as time
went on, he discovered to his dismay that his little friend, Amaryllis,
had grown up and that he was regarded in the family as her special
property. Speedily he transferred his attachment to Aphrodite, the
youngest girl then in the schoolroom, and by this means saved himself
from an entanglement with Amaryllis, whilst at the same time preserving
the valuable friendship of her father. In an incredibly short time,
however, Aphrodite was nubile, and the family once more expectant of
securing Anthony as a permanent member. Once again he executed the same
manoeuvre, choosing this time the little Andromeda, a plain child still
in the nursery. The family, though disappointed, remained hopeful, and
the years passed peacefully on, bringing a few sons-in-law in their
train, and innumerable boxes of sweets to the unprepossessing Andromeda.
When, however, Andromeda too grew up, the wily Anthony feared his
fruitful friendship must inevitably come to an end, since the only
remaining daughter had already reached the dangerous age of fifteen,
and bore moreover the improper name of Anactoria!
A long friendship and a short engagement is perhaps the best
combination. A prolonged engagement is the most trying relationship
between the sexes possible to conceive. For the woman it means the
drawbacks of matrimony without its charm of restful finality, or any of
its solid worldly advantages. On the man's side it means the irksomeness
of the marriage yoke without any of its satisfactions and comforts. On
the man, indeed, a long engagement is especially hard, as at least the
woman is spared the burden of ordering his food and coping with his
servants. Many a sincere affection has been killed by the restraints and
irritations of a long engagement. Many a genuine passion has waned
during its dreary course, until but a feeble spark of the great flame is
left to light the wedded life, and both man and woman carry the mark of
that suppressed ardour which, under happier circumstances, might have
come to a joyous fruition. Their children, too, sometimes lack vitality,
and show the need of the fire that died before they were begotten.
* * *
I don't know who it was who first coined the phrase 'the appalling
intimacy of married life'; certainly it is an apt expression, and one
wonders at what period in the world's history men and women began to
find that intimacy 'appalling.' It sounds a modern enough complaint, and
somehow one feels sure it was never indulged in by our grandmothers, who
looked upon their husbands as a kind of visible embodiment of the Lord's
Will, and respected them accordingly. They would never have dreamed of
finding irksome what Mrs Lynn Linton called the '_chair-à-chair_
closeness of the English home.'
Much has been written of the degradation of love by habit, and Alexandre
Dumas expresses the whole question to perfection in one crystal
sentence: 'In marriage when love exists habit kills it; when love does
not exist habit calls it into being.' This is profoundly true, and for
every passion habit has killed it must certainly have created more
genuine affections.
The Spartan plan of allowing husband and wife to meet only by stealth
shows an acute understanding of human nature and has much to recommend
it, if the object in view is to prolong the period of passion. But we
are not now dealing with passion, but with the ordinary affection
between people who have to live together under the trying conditions of
modern marriage, and in these circumstances one must agree with Dumas as
to the wonders worked by habit.
Indeed, if people only realised it, habit is the cement which holds the
edifice of matrimony together. With the passing of years, given the
slightest basis of mutual harmony, one's partner becomes
indispensable--not by reason of her charms or the love we bear him, but
simply because she or he is a part of our lives. That is why I think the
policy of constant separation foolish. It is based presumably on the
erroneous supposition that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Where
the basis of mutual harmony does _not_ exist, it may be true; and if a
couple dislike each other and get on badly, a short separation may serve
to relieve the tension, and to send them back each resolved to try and
make things smoother in future. But where affection exists, it is a
mistake. One learns to do without the other; that linking chain of
little daily intimacies, oft-repeated jests, endearing customs, is
temporarily snapped, and it is not easily put together again. My friend
Miranda said to me not long ago: 'If Lysander's been away from me a day
I've heaps to talk about when he returns--if we've been parted a month,
I've nothing on earth to say.'
I think it is de la Rochfoucauld who says: 'Absence deepens great
passions and lessens little ones just as the wind puts out the candle
and heightens the fire.' This is fine from the literary point of view,
but is it true? My experience says No. Yet _during_ the absence this
aphorism seems true enough. Disillusion comes with reunion. Who does not
remember that first departure of the Beloved--the innumerable letters,
the endless meditation, the ceaseless yearning and the everlasting
planning for the glorious return? What a meeting that is going to be!
How one dwells in thought on that first goodly satisfaction of the
desire of the eyes; goodlier still that joyous clasping of the hands;
goodliest of all that glorious locking of the lips, that unending
embrace in the ecstasy of which all the wretched hours of absence are to
be forgotten--and, oh! laughter of the gods! how different it really
proves! What a hideous disappointment the meeting is! How different the
Beloved looks from our passionate dream; his hair wants cutting; we
don't like his boots; his tie is not of our choosing; his speech does
not please us; his kiss has no thrill; his remarks bore; his presence
irritates: in short, _we have learnt to do without him_, so nothing he
does seems right. Poor Beloved! and did you think the same of us? Are
you disappointed too? Did you say to yourself: 'How fagged she looks!
By Jove! she's getting a double chin. I thought pink used to suit her.
What's she done to her hair? Her voice seems sharper. Why does she laugh
like that? I don't like her teeth. Good heavens, the woman's hideous!'
In short, _he has learnt to do without us_. When husbands and wives
learn this lesson, the good ship 'Wedded Bliss' is getting into perilous
waters where danger of utter wreck looms large.
But it is equally fatal to go to the other extreme, and I entirely agree
with that authoress (who was she?) who said that no house could be
expected to go on properly unless the male members of the family are out
of it for at least six hours daily, Sundays excepted. The woman whose
husband's occupation, or lack of it, keeps him at home all day has my
profound sympathy. Merely to have to think out and order a man's lunch
as well as his breakfast and dinner must be a bitter trial. For this
reason among others women should never marry a man who does not work at
_something_. If he has no bread-winning business to remove him from his
wife's sphere of action for several hours daily, then he must have a
hobby, or a game mania, or engrossing duties which serve the same
purpose. Otherwise the wife must be constituted on a plane of inhuman
goodness and possess infinite love, tact, and patience if the two are to
live happily together.
The same principle applies to women, though it is not generally
recognised. I am convinced that a great number of middle-class marriages
prove unhappy merely because the woman has not enough to do. Possessed
of sufficient servants, her household duties occupy a very small portion
of her leisure, and if her children are at school (or perhaps she has
none) she has nothing more engrossing to do than read novels and pay
visits. The result is that one type of woman cultivates nerves and
becomes a neurasthenic semi-invalid; another cultivates the opposite sex
and fills her leisure hours with undesirable philandering; another
develops temper or melancholy or jealous fancies; and so on--all of them
spoilt as companions merely for want of sufficient occupation.
III
THE AGE TO MARRY
'To me the extraordinary thing is not that so many people remain
unmarried, but that so many rush into marriage, as they might rush
into a station to catch a train. And if you catch the wrong train,
what then? All you have to comfort you is the fact that you have
travelled.' --ROBERT HICHENS.
A great many unhappy unions might be prevented if people could find
their right age for marrying. As it differs with the individual, it is
impossible to lay down any exact rule. Some men are capable of making a
good choice at twenty-two; others don't know their own minds at double
that age. Some girls are fit for wifehood and maternity in their teens;
others never.
In the interests of abstract morality early marriages are desirable,
and in England everything the law can do is done to encourage them. In
France the preservation of family authority is considered all-important,
and the law apparently tries to check early unions by every means in its
power, regardless of the high percentage of illegitimate births which is
the direct consequence.[3]
[Footnote 3: In 1903 one tenth of all the children born in France
were illegitimate. In Paris alone the percentage was higher
still--about one in every four.]
Broadly speaking, no woman should wed until she understands something of
life, has met a good many men, has acquired a certain knowledge of
physiology and eugenics and a clear understanding of what marriage
really means. No woman should marry until she has learnt the value of
money, and how to manage a household--until she has had plenty of
girlish fun and gaiety, and is thus ready for the more serious things of
life. Not until then is she likely to be happy in the monotony of
wedlock or capable of attuning her mind to the necessity of being
faithful to one man only, in thought as well as in deed. Broadly
speaking, also, no man is likely to marry happily until he has seen life
and plenty of it, has hammered out for himself something of a philosophy
and obtained considerable knowledge of women and a consequent
understanding of how to make one happy.
This is not so easily done as men suppose, and it takes time to learn.
Few men under thirty are fit to have the care of a wife, and Heaven
preserve a girl from a young husband who is still a cub! No doubt she
will have glorious moments, for there is something intoxicating about
the ardour of a very young heart, and that is why we find boy and girl
marriages so charming--in theory. Sometimes in the case of an
exceptional couple, well suited to each other, they really are charming,
and then it is the most beautiful marriage conceivable--two young
things, starting off hand in hand on life's journey, brave-hearted,
loving, full of high hopes. But as a rule the glory is limited to
moments only; young girls are mostly shallow and frivolous; very young
men are often madly selfish and reckless. They are so proud of being the
sole possessor of an attractive woman that their conceit, always
immense, swells into monstrous proportions and they grow wholly
unbearable. If dark days should come to the young couple, the
boy-husband has no philosophy to support him, no knowledge of women to
enable him to understand his wife and live happily with her, and little
self-control for his help; she has the same defects of youth, and the
result is failure. Stevenson puts it perfectly thus: 'You may safely go
to school with hope, but before you marry you should have learned the
mingled lesson of the world.' On the other hand, Grant Allen says that
'the best of men are, so to speak, born married,' and that it is only
the selfish, mean, and calculating man who waits till he can afford to
marry. 'That vile phrase scarcely veils hidden depths of depravity,' he
continues. 'The right sort of man doesn't argue with himself at all on
these matters. He doesn't say, with selfish coldness: "I can't afford a
wife"; or "If I marry now I shall ruin my prospects." He feels and acts.
He mates like the birds, because he can't help himself.'
I must say that these young men who do not think, but merely feel and
act, scarcely seem of the highest type in my opinion, and if mating like
the birds were to be generally accepted as a sign of a noble
nature--well, nobility would be decidedly less rare than at present!
IV
WILD OATS FOR WIVES
'Nothing that is worth saying is proper.' --G. BERNARD SHAW.
'I don't believe in the existence of Puritan women. I don't think
there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered
if one made love to her. It is that which makes woman so
irresistibly adorable.' --OSCAR WILDE.
If there be any readers whose susceptibilities are shocked by this
headline, they are respectfully requested--nay, commanded--to read no
further. If there be any whose susceptibilities waver without as yet
experiencing any actual shock, they are affectionately asked--nay,
implored--to re-read several times the above quotation from Mr Shaw's
immortal _Candida_, to thereupon pull themselves together and take the
plunge. I can promise them it won't be anything like as terrible as they
half hope--in fact its essential propriety will probably disappoint them
bitterly!
Curiously enough, though women are more anxious to marry than men,
and do everything in their power to achieve what men often strive to
resist--after marriage it is generally the woman who is most
discontented. Of late years a spirit of strange unrest has come over
married women, and they frequently rebel against conditions which our
grandmothers would never have dreamed of murmuring at. There are a
variety of causes for this: one that marriage falls short of women's
expectations, as I said in the opening chapter, another that they have
had no _feminine_ wild oats. Please note the qualifying adjective, duly
italicised, and do not attempt to misunderstand me. I am no advocate of
the licence generally accorded to men being extended to women.
'Wild oats' of this nature, otherwise an ante-hymeneal 'fling,' was
certainly not a necessity of our grandmothers, but a certain (fairly
numerous) type of modern women seem to make better wives when they have
reaped this harvest. Take for example the cases of Yvonne and Yvette
which are personally known to me. Yvette was engaged at eighteen and
married at twenty-one. At the age of twenty-six she was the mother of
four children. She had scarcely time to realise what youth meant and
begin to enjoy it before her girlhood was stifled under the
responsibilities of marriage and maternity. She had accepted her first
offer, and he was practically the only man she knew anything of. Beyond
him she had seen nothing of men, or of the world; certainly she had
never flirted or had men friends or enjoyed any admiration but that of
her _fiancé_.
At twenty-six Yvette began to realise that she had been cheated out of a
very precious part of life and an invaluable experience. Though a fairly
happy wife and a devoted mother, she felt that she might have had those
lost delights as well as the domestic joys, and the knowledge enraged
her.
A dangerous spirit of curiosity entered her heart, and a still more
dangerous longing for adventure and excitement. She realised that there
were other men in the world who admired her besides her Marcus, and that
she was pretty and still quite a young woman. At thirty Yvette was a
mistress of the art of intrigue--had engineered several dangerous
_affaires_, and might have come to serious grief had not Marcus been a
singularly wise, tender, and understanding husband.
'It isn't that I don't love him dearly,' she confided in me when
resolving to turn over a new leaf. 'I wouldn't exchange him for anyone
in the world, and you know what the children are to me--but somehow I
want something else as well--some excitement. I feel I've had no _fun_
in my life, and I wanted to have a fling before it was too late. When I
was engaged I scarcely ever even danced with anyone but Marcus, and for
the first four years of my married life I had a baby every eighteen
months--it was nothing but babies, nursing the old one and getting ready
for the new one! Not that I didn't love it, but the reaction was bound
to come, and it did. If only I could have had the excitement and the
gaiety and the glamour first, and then married when I was about
twenty-five, I should have been perfectly satisfied then, like Yvonne!'
Yvonne certainly managed her affairs better. Fate saved her from the
misfortune of falling in love too soon. She always had a train of
admirers, and was enabled to enjoy the power of her womanhood to the
full; she travelled, made delightful friendships with both sexes, learnt
to know the world and acquired a philosophy of life. When she married,
at twenty-nine, she had seen enough of other men to know exactly the
kind of husband she wanted, and had had enough excitement to make her
appreciate the peace and calm of matrimony.
The secrets of many wives lie heavily on my soul as I write, and more
than one woman, with some real reason for remorse, has confided in me
that it was only that fatal desire for excitement that primarily caused
her undoing. I shall instruct my son to be sure to marry a woman who has
got her wild oats safely over, or select a wife of the more
old-fashioned type who does not require them. With the modern
temperament they must almost inevitably come sooner or later, and to
what extent the modern temperament will have evolved by the time the Boy
of Boys is marriageable, the ironical gods alone know!
Bachelors take note! A woman--new style--who has knocked about over half
the world and sown a mild crop of the delectable cereal will prove a far
better wife, a more cheery friend and faithful comrade than the girl _of
more or less the same type_ whose first experience you are, and who will
make enormous claims on your love and patience by reason of her utter
ignorance of men. You will possibly even have to live up to an ideal
founded on novel-reading, and that you will find very wearing, my
friend! The experienced woman knows men so thoroughly, she will expect
nothing more of you than you can give her, and will appreciate your
virtues to the utmost and make the best of your vices. 'But she has
flirted so outrageously,' you say? Well, so much the better, she is less
likely to do it after marriage. 'But, hang it all, she has been kissed
by other men,' you say? Well then, she has no need for further
experiences of this kind and is not likely ever to give her lips again
to others once she is yours. . . . How can you be sure? That is one of
the innumerable risks of marriage. How can _she_ be sure that _your_
last crop is sown, still less reaped? . . . Oh, my dear man, you really
make me very angry--do for heaven's sake try and get away from
conventional ideas of right and wrong! Judge things _for yourself_, and
as they would seem, say, at the edge of an active volcano! . . . All the
things we fuss so much about would doubtless quickly assume their real
value if viewed from this perilous situation.
And even in the sad cases where a woman has sown real wild oats in the
man's sense of the word, how different the little moral rules and
regulations which we keep for these occasions would appear in the face
of an immediate and violent death. I heard not long ago of a very sad
story which bears this out. A man very narrowly escaped death from
drowning, shortly after he had broken his engagement with a girl he
genuinely loved, on her confessing to him that, many years before, she
had once yielded to the importunities of a passionate lover. I do not
know what were his emotions in the awful moment when the waters closed
over him, and he was experiencing that horrible fight for breath which
those who have known it describe as the most terrible sensation
conceivable. Apparently his hairbreadth escape from death tore from his
eyes the swathings of conventional opinion with which he had been
blinded. Instead of regarding himself as a deeply wronged man he
realised that he had behaved horribly to the unfortunate girl, who had
thus been doubly outraged by his sex. He sought her at once and begged
to be taken back again, but she happened to be a woman of some spirit,
and she refused to trust herself to a man of such narrow views, and
given to such harsh judgment.
Of course this treatment increased his love a thousandfold. It obsessed
him to a painful degree, and in the end his desperate entreaties
prevailed on her deep affection for him and she relented. Their marriage
was not very happy, as may be imagined; they both loved to madness and
the ghost of that dead passion stood ever between them, an invisible,
poisonous presence that killed their joy in each other. After a time a
deep melancholy settled on the woman, and she allowed some trifling
illness to take such a hold on her that it caused her death.
When she was dying, I am told, she said to her faithful friend: 'If ever
you meet another woman who has made one little slip--a thing which at
the time seemed so natural and inevitable as not to be sin at all--tell
her never _never_ to confess it to the man she is going to marry, least
of all if she loves him. If that confession doesn't part them
altogether, it will always be between them. One does it wishing to be
straight, but it's the most dreadful mistake a woman can make.'
Her wish to be straight had cost this poor woman not only her whole
life's happiness, and her very life itself, but the happiness of the man
she loved, in whose interests she had made the confession that wrought
the harm. 'How dearly I have paid! how dearly I have paid!' she used to
say over and over again in her last illness.
This is an absolutely true story, and it seems to me a burning injustice
that a woman should suffer so bitterly for what would be absolutely
disregarded in a man. I have no doubt there are many similar cases, and
emphatically I say that such confessions are ill-advised. The ordinary
conventional-thinking man placed in these circumstances would either
throw a woman over, or marry her against his convictions. The
extraordinary masculine code, for some reason beyond my feminine powers
of comprehension, will not admit that a spinster who has had a lover, or
even made one 'false step,' is a fit person to wed, though no man would
object to marrying a widow, and many men take respondent _divorcées_ to
wife.
Even in the case of a rarely generous-minded, tolerant and understanding
man, who judged the offence at its true computation, such knowledge
would only prove disturbing and a source of insecurity to conjugal
happiness. No good purpose of any kind can be served, and the ease which
confession is proverbially supposed to gain for the sinner would be
bought at a very heavy price.
'But two wrongs don't make a right, and surely it can't be proper for a
woman to deceive a man on such a vital point,' the stern moralist may
exclaim. Possibly not, according to the strictly ideal standard of
ethics; but, viewed from the larger standpoints of life and of
commonsense, this 'deceit' would appear to be advisable. And be assured,
my unpleasant moralist (I'm sure you are an unpleasant person), that the
sinner will not get off 'scot free,' as you seem to fear. Many and many
a stab will be her portion, for memory is a potent poison, and every
expression of love and trust from her husband will most likely carry its
own special sting, whilst the round, innocent eyes of adoring little
children, to whom she is a being that can do no wrong, will be a meet
punishment for an infinitely greater fault. Meanwhile the man is _in all
probability_ in every way a gainer by the woman's silence, for doubtless
he is doubly dear to her for the very fact that the first man treated
her badly, and she may perhaps be a better wife, a stronger and sweeter
woman, a more capable mother, by reason of the suffering she has
undergone.
Now let no maliciously obtuse person attribute to me the pernicious
doctrine that a woman with a past is the best wife for a man. I merely
say that a good woman who has surrendered herself to an ardent lover and
been afterwards deserted by him must necessarily have gone through such
intense suffering that her character is probably deepened thereby and
her capacity for love and faithfulness increased. It is another truism
that suffering is necessary to bring out the best qualities in women.
Men too should keep the details of their wild oats severely to
themselves. In married life there are bound to be secrets and the
happiest couples are those who know how to keep them, each to him or her
self. A very good motto for the newly betrothed would be that of Tom
Broadbent in _John Bull's Other Island_--'Let us have no
tellings--perfect confidence, but no tellings: that's the way to avoid
rows!'
V
A PLEA FOR THE WISER TRAINING OF GIRLS
If girls were more reasonably trained with regard to matters of sex,
there would be far fewer miserable wives in the world, and fewer
husbands would be driven to seek happiness outside their home circle.
If, when girls reach years of discretion, they were systematically
taught some rudimentary outline of the fundamental principles of
existence, instead of being left in utter ignorance as at present, the
extraordinarily false notions of sex which they now pick up would cease
to obtain, and a great deal of harm would thus be avoided. As it is,
maidens are now given tacitly to understand that the subject of sex is a
repulsive one, wholly unfit for their consideration, and the functions
of sex are loathsome, though necessary. I write tacitly with intention,
for little if anything is ever said to a girl on this subject; indeed,
it is extraordinary how the ideas are conveyed to her without words, but
inculcated somehow they certainly are, and it is difficult to understand
how mothers manage to reconcile this teaching with their evident wish
that their girls should marry. The ideal held up to girls nowadays is
apparently the sexless sort of Diana one--not merely chastity, but
sterility.
Most girls are aware from a very early age of the social advantages and
importance of marriage, and grow up with a keen desire to accomplish it
in due course, although secretly dreading it, because of their absurd
perverted ideas of its physical side. Why cannot girls--and boys too,
for that matter--be taught the plain truth (in suitable language of
course) that sex is the pivot on which the world turns, that the
instincts and emotions of sex are common to humanity, and in themselves
not base or degrading, nor is there any cause for shame in possessing
them, although it is necessary that they should be strenuously
controlled. Why cannot girls be taught that _all love_, even the
romantic love which occupies so large a portion of their dreams,
_springs from the instinct of sex_?[4] This may be thought a dangerous
lesson, but the present policy of silence on this subject is far more
dangerous, inducing as it does a tendency to brood over the forbidden
theme.
[Footnote 4: Schopenhauer's _Metaphysics of Love_.]
I remember when in my early teens a schoolfellow of about fifteen
confided in me that 'a man'--he was a harmless boy of about twenty--had
kissed her hand when passing her a tennis racquet. She drew her hand
indignantly away, and said: 'How dare you insult me!' then left the
tennis court and refused to play any more. I do not think many girls are
so silly as this, but the incident illustrates the general tone
inculcated at that school. And it shows what an emphasis on sex matters
the girl's mind had received, when she saw an insult in a perfectly
innocent and courteous act of admiring homage. What a harmful
preparation for life such training must be! This is the kind of teaching
that results in those wretched honeymoons which one occasionally hears
of in secret, and which produces unwilling wives whose disdainful
coldness is their husbands' despair. This lack of feeling and lack of
comprehension of the needs of stronger, warmer natures is one of the
deepest and most incurable causes of married misery.
Let us teach our girls to regard sex as a _natural_ and _ordinary_ fact,
and the infinite evils which spring from regarding it as extraordinary
and repulsive will thus be avoided. Let us bring them up to think that
loving wifehood, passionate motherhood are the proper expression of a
woman's nature and the best possible life for her.
In a very interesting book called _Woman in Transition_, recently
published, this view of woman's destiny is repeatedly scoffed at. The
writer, Annette B. Meakin, is a fellow of the Anthropological Institute,
and evidently widely read and travelled. I will give a few quotations:
'In the happy future when higher womanly ideals have spread around us we
shall all realise, no matter to which sex we belong, that to hold
unqualified motherhood before every girl's eyes as her highest ideal is
to play the traitor to our race and to humanity.' . . . 'English Head
Mistresses--though often unmarried themselves--still consider it their
pious duty to tell their pupils that motherhood is woman's highest
destiny, and the pupils . . . make marriage their first aim, and other
success in life has consequently to take a second place.' . . . 'Some
very good women in England are still telling our young girls that
motherhood is, for every woman, the worthiest goal, without suspecting
that the doctrine they preach is dangerously conducive to that legal
prostitution euphemistically known as loveless marriage, if not to
greater evils.' . . . 'How can any girl who has been taught that
maternity is woman's only destiny dare to run the risk of losing it?'
In answer to these objections: of course no sane person would hold
_unqualified_ motherhood up to girls as their noblest ideal. Nor does
any thoughtful individual believe that maternity is woman's _only_
destiny. But as to _highest_ (_i.e._ most noble) destiny--if worthy
motherhood (and by the word worthy I wish to imply all the fine
qualities of body and mind that go to produce healthy, intelligent, and
well-trained children) does not fulfil it, I should like to know what
does? In answer to this question that naturally springs to the mind of
every reader, Miss Meakin contents herself with the statement: 'In
Finland and Australia, as in America and Norway, the young girl is
taught that woman's highest destiny is within the reach of every woman;
that her highest destiny and her highest ideals depend, not on some man
who may or may not come her way, but on herself; and that the highest
ideal of womanhood is to be a true woman.' This is well enough, but it
is far too vague to be held up as woman's standard. We want a more
definite ideal than this to aim at. What, for instance, _is_ a 'true
woman' specifically? I should have thought the most essential part of
such a one's outfit was her potentialities for wifehood and motherhood.
Miss Meakin blames teachers for inculcating the importance of motherhood
into their pupils' minds with the result that 'other success in life has
to take a second place.' What then does this writer consider ought to
take the first place? Does she seriously think the success of women in
business or politics, as municipal councillors, as writers, artists,
thinkers, is of more importance than the success of women as mothers?
_Is it possible?_ . . . I recall a poem of W. E. Henley's on the woman
question, one line of which runs 'God in the garden laughed outright.'
Surely there must often be uproarious laughter in heaven nowadays when
the woman question is being discussed on earth!
So much for abstract ideals, but when we come to facts I must admit the
lady's argument is sound. 'In a country where there are a million and a
half more women than men,' she pertinently states, 'it is worse than
foolish to teach young girls that motherhood is their highest destiny.
Such teaching, if persisted in, will lead to greater evils than we care
to contemplate even at a distance.' But what greater evil could there
possibly be than the existence of 30,000 prostitutes in London alone,
as is the case to-day? If every one of these unfortunate women had been
made to believe firmly, as an article of faith, that worthy motherhood
was her highest destiny, there might be a good many less noughts to this
number.
Miss Meakin continues: 'Besides the sacred duties of motherhood, there
are the equally sacred duties of fatherhood, yet man does not allow
these latter to interfere with his mental growth.' Nor is there any need
that woman should do so; the idea that a woman, to be a good wife and
mother, must necessarily stunt her mental growth and forego all culture
has long since been discarded.
To my mind the whole trouble arises from the practice of teaching one
set of catchwords to girls and another to boys, as Stevenson says. Since
women cannot be mothers by themselves, it is useless to teach girls that
motherhood is their highest destiny when we do not also teach boys that
fatherhood is theirs, but--quite the contrary--give them to understand
that marriage is something to be avoided, in early manhood at least.
If we were to instruct all young people of _both_ sexes that worthy
marriage and parenthood are the highest destiny for average mortals,
and they acted on this precept, many of the problems of the day would be
solved, the numbers of superfluous women would be greatly reduced, the
social evil would perceptibly diminish, the physique of the race would
improve, and the birth-rate would quickly rise. In short, there would be
less ironical laughter in heaven, and a great deal more honest happiness
and health on earth! I shall have more to say of parenthood as an ideal
in Part IV.
VI
'KEEPING ONLY TO HER': THE CRUX OF MATRIMONY
'We make gods of men and they leave us; others make brutes of them
and they fawn and are faithful!' --OSCAR WILDE.
'It is part of the curse of nature that a man ceases after a time
to worship the body of a woman, and when after that there is nothing
his mind and soul can revere--who shall remain true, as it is
called?' --MARY L. PENDERED.
'And keep thee only to her as long as ye both shall live.' How many men
have solemnly undertaken this exacting vow sincerely meaning to abide by
it? I have no data for answering this question, but I have sufficient
belief in the essential good in human nature to believe that most people
start their married life meaning to be faithful. This belief was not
even shattered by the shock of hearing a very modern bride remark the
other day: 'Max says he can't promise to be faithful but he'll do his
best.' The amazing complacency of the young woman was a thing to marvel
at, though hardly to admire.
Schopenhauer asserts that 'Conjugal fidelity is artificial with men, but
natural to women.' Judging by the Divorce Court returns, it would seem
that this natural feminine trait has weakened somewhat, since this view
was expressed some sixty years ago. According to the Society
chroniclers--self-appointed--it certainly has in 'London's West End,
littered with broken vows.'
It is dangerous to generalise on such a topic, but since people resist
temptation far less often than moralists suppose, it is perhaps safe to
state that when men are faithful, it is principally from lack of
opportunity, or disinclination to be otherwise. This may disgust those
of my feminine readers who refuse to acknowledge, with Professor Lester
Ward, that man is essentially a polygamous animal, but the more
experienced in the sorrowful facts of life will own the truth of this
statement.
On the other hand, when women break their marriage vow, it is seldom for
any merely frivolous or sordid reason (of course excepting the
essentially wanton type, whom no man should be fool enough to marry),
but nearly always either because they are under the spell of infatuation
for the other man, or because they are utterly miserable in their
marriage and seek to drug themselves to forgetfulness or indifference by
means of the poison of some intrigue. Perhaps the Judge who is more
merciful than men will count both these reasons as excuses and will
pardon the sinners who have greatly loved or greatly sorrowed.
A doctor who is interested in the study of social questions once showed
me some interesting statistics on this subject. From seventy-six men
selected at random from his list of acquaintances, fourteen were
childless, and all but two of these were much happier than most men, and
gave their wives no cause for jealousy. This high percentage of happy
though childless marriages is rather curious--I cannot account for it.
Of the remaining sixty-two, all had families: five were fond of their
wives, but not faithful; two lived apart with other women; three others
were unhappily married, quarrelling bitterly and constantly. Of two
others, my friend was doubtful. One other disliked his wife, but was too
busy to bother about other women. The remaining forty-nine were
comparatively happy and devoted: 'Most of them are kept free from any
great temptation by busy lives and regular hours,' the doctor added,
'and those who are especially appreciative or susceptible in regard to
the fair sex have had enough love-making, and want no more outside their
homes.' I suspect this latter cause is applicable to a great many
so-called 'model' husbands!
This list, however, can scarcely be considered representative, as it
contained only two actors, three soldiers, one sailor, and no
stockbrokers--four classes in which inconstant husbands are particularly
numerous. The conditions of an actor's life obviously tend towards
infidelity; the unhealthy excitement and alternating depression of a
stockbroker's existence may have the same effect. Members of the
services are popularly supposed to be less faithful than the rest of
husbands, but possibly if the business and professional men had the same
amount of opportunities and temptation, a similar excess of leisure and
equally long intervals of separation from their wives, they would prove
as inconstant as the country's defenders are supposed to be. My doctor's
list also contains no members of the 'Smart Set,' a class containing
practically no faithful husbands, according to Father Vaughan!
Although it is the little things that spoil conjugal happiness, it is
the big things which separate husband and wife, and of these undoubtedly
infidelity is the most frequent cause. It might truly be called the crux
of marriage. Personally I think only three faults are bad enough to make
it socially worth while for a woman to leave her husband: drunkenness
with violence; misconduct with members of the household, temporary or
permanent; and introducing a mistress under a wife's roof. In the case
of a woman with children, even these are not enough if she cannot take
the children with her. For the last-named act alone a wife could obtain
a divorce under the code of Justinian.
Lapses from the marriage vow on the part of one's spouse are best
treated, like all other troubles, in a philosophical spirit. It is,
however, 'easy to talk!'--one often hears that sexual jealousy is the
most frightful of mental tortures: Men are more keenly affected by it
than women, and the man whose wife has been unfaithful seems to suffer
more acutely, even when he does not care for her, than the woman in the
reverse circumstances. That is because his passions are stronger, a man
will tell you, or because he looks up to the mother of his children as a
being above the sins of the flesh. Probably the real reason is that man
has generally had his own way since the _ménage_ in Eden, and he resents
having his belongings taken from him. Woman, however, can bear this
deprivation better, being more accustomed to share her lord from the
time when her sex began to multiply in excess of his--or is it that
women have no instinctive antagonism to polygamy?
The world has become well accustomed to man's polygamous instinct by
now, and even its laws are framed accordingly. In novels, the discovery
of a husband's infidelity always causes a perfect cataclysm; the reader
is treated to page after page of frenzied scenes; the wife almost loses
her reason; her friends and relatives sit in gloomy council deciding
'what is to be done'; the news is shouted from the housetops; and
everybody cuts the man dead.
But in real life, women keep these tragedies to themselves, sometimes
bearing them with a strange calmness and philosophy. Fortunately a man
is seldom so lacking in worldly wisdom as to let his wife discover his
misconduct, and, as a rule, a woman would rather die than reveal such a
wound to the world. The burden of a husband's infidelity is borne for
years in silence with smiling face and head held high, by many a wife
too proud to own herself incapable of keeping a man faithful. Only when
years have accustomed her to the humiliation, and dulled the sharp edge
of her grief, does she permit herself the relief of confidences.
Few women can understand why a husband, though fond of and devoted to
his wife, should nevertheless seek elsewhere that which she has ceased
to possess for him. She whose knowledge of the springs of life is deep
enough to enable her to understand this, knows also that hers is the
better part, that she represents to her husband the centre and
mainspring of his existence, which remains steadfast long after his
temporary amorous madnesses have burned away to ashes.
Nevertheless, after 'Alone'--'_Unfaithful_' is perhaps the saddest and
most awful word in human speech. One can imagine it written innumerable
times, in flaming letters, across the confines of Hell. . . .
_Unfaithful!_