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THE ART OF TAKING A WIFE
BY PAOLO MANTEGAZZA
_New Edition_
GAY AND BIRD LONDON MDCCCXCVI
_All rights reserved_
TO THE IMPATIENT,
WHO WISH TO MARRY TOO SOON;
TO THE LIBERTINES,
WHO TAKE A WIFE TOO LATE;
TO THE TIMID
WHO, WAVERING BETWEEN YES AND NO,
END BY NOT TAKING ONE AT ALL,
This Book is Dedicated
BY A MAN
WHO HAS ALWAYS BLESSED HIS FIRST MARRIAGE,
AND HOPES TO BLESS THE SECOND;
BELIEVING THIS SEXUAL CONTRACT TO BE
THE LEAST EVIL ONE
OF THE TIES WHICH BIND THE
MAN TO THE WOMAN,
IN SPITE
OF ITS MANY DEFECTS AND DANGERS.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
PROLOGUE: BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS—TO TAKE OR NOT TO TAKE
A WIFE? vii
I. MARRIAGE IN MODERN SOCIETY, 1
II. SEXUAL CHOICE IN MARRIAGE—THE ART OF CHOOSING WELL, 36
III. AGE AND HEALTH, 55
IV. PHYSICAL SYMPATHY—RACE AND NATIONALITY, 95
V. THE HARMONY OF FEELINGS, 125
VI. HARMONY OF THOUGHTS, 154
VII. THE FINANCIAL QUESTION IN MARRIAGE, 171
VIII. THE INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS OF MARRIAGE, 192
IX. HELL, 224
X. PURGATORY, 251
XI. PARADISE, 283
PROLOGUE.
BETWEEN SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.—TO TAKE, OR NOT TO TAKE A WIFE?
For the majority of men, and for at least thirty years of their lives,
love is the strongest necessity, and governs them like a tyrant with
no other curb than the wretched brake of written codes, which they
do not read, and of social conventionalities, which they can easily
silence by employing hypocrisy’s mask; an hypocrisy, let it be well
understood, well dressed, well curled, and well educated.
How can one satisfy this greatest of all human needs?
_By buying love, at so much an hour, so much a month, or so much a
year._
_By gaining it by seduction or violence._
_By taking a wife._
It would seem as if these three ways of loving were totally distinct,
one from the other; in fact, that any one would exclude the others,
and that they would stand in direct opposition to each other. But when
hypocrisy is at the helm of the vessel which bears us over the great
sea of life, it contrives so ably and so cleverly, as to enable us
to enjoy all three methods at one moment, and, while we are sailing
between rocks free of danger or shipwreck, it affords us, as it
were, all the delights of a voyage in a beautiful archipelago, where
islands and islets seem to meet and touch each other; and where land,
mountains, and scenery all form a bright, picturesque, and beautiful
picture.
We row upon the tranquil waters of matrimony, and yet glide so near to
the shores of venal love that we can grasp the flowers and gather the
shells and precious pearls which lie there. We sail with the wind over
the more tempestuous sea of seduction, but all the while we coast the
island of poetic, faithful, and constant love; thus, vice, adultery,
and domestic peace, debauchery and eternal vows, angels and beasts,
find themselves guests at the same table, without false modesty, and
without remorse.
Civilisation has opened three ways of loving to men of the present
day, and one would have thought that since they are free to choose
one, they would have been satisfied with that. Not at all. Civilised
man is by nature insatiable, for the hammer of the _excelsior_ beats
ever at his heart, the thirst for something better wears him away, and
the hunger for _something more_ consumes him; hence he has set himself
to destroy the boundaries and walls which separate the three roads, so
that he can easily take short cuts from one to the other without risk;
and so matrimony, prostitution, and adultery walk hand in hand; and if
in public they appear very cool to each other, that is only a blind,
for in the secrecy of their houses they wink at each other, sup and
sleep together. If all this is indeed so, a Turk would say it is so
because it must be. If all this can indeed be, an epicurean optimist
would say, let us, too, try and sail in this sea, now so calm, and now
so tempestuous, and let us set that sanctified hypocrisy at the helm.
However, I am neither Turk nor cynic, and I still believe in moral
progress, and in the efficacy of books and the spoken word; and even
though I be left alone in the belief that there is no happiness save
in the good, nor cheerfulness save in sincerity, and in being the same
inwardly as outwardly, I would still die in this conviction.
I like a mixture of things at table, but I have no heart for it in
the field of morality. I wish to see the family on one side, and the
brothel on the other; and when two natures living together have become
an intolerable torment to each other, I should wish the law to apply
the instrument of divorce to their chains and to set them free.
The three ways of loving should be separate one from the other, and
should never be united. So far from breaking down the walls that
divide them, I wish to have them so high as to become impregnable
fortresses.
⁂
Only one of these three ways, however, is that which the honest and
happy ought to take. That of seduction and violence, only thieves,
assassins, and villains can enter. The third, unfortunately, the way
of venal love, nearly all enter, though still desiring and invoking
some distant ideal, where this way shall be closed, and no path
left free save that of matrimony, though its dignity must be always
guaranteed by the law of divorce.
But is marriage always possible and always easy?
No; it is often impossible, and always difficult.
And the honest man stops and meditates upon it as upon the gravest,
the most intricate, and most obscure problem of life. The misfortune
is this, that just these timid and thoughtful men are the best, and
the fear is sometimes so great, and the meditation lasts so long,
that old age comes upon them before they have resolved the problem or
made themselves a family nest. Instead of this, the improvident, the
thoughtless, and villains precipitate themselves headforemost along
the road of matrimony; and if for a few moments they struggle in the
tortures of doubt, they quickly silence apprehension and remorse by
saying to themselves:
“If it should turn out badly, if I find nettles and thorns on this
road, I will clear another cross-road with one good stroke of my
spade, and will buy love like so many others, and will, like them,
seek it either in the house of my friend or neighbor. Immorality on
this point is so lax, the indulgence of the public is so merciful,
that I may enjoy this violation of home without falling under
the penalty of the law. Mahomet also, generally so severe on all
transgressions of the written law, when he speaks of the sins of love,
even of the greatest, always adds: ‘_But God is good and merciful._’
And all think with Mahomet, though they have not written the Koran,
that to the sins of love ‘_God is good and merciful._’”
I, however, the warmest advocate of marriage for myself and others,
desire with all my soul that the honest and wise man should marry, to
increase the capital of honesty and wisdom in future generations. And
so I preach and shall preach to my last breath:
Marry! Marriage is still and always will be the most honest, healthy,
and ideal mode of loving.
But I add immediately:
Marry well; combine all the powers of your thought and feeling to
solve this most important problem of your life; add to them all
that is best in yourself; all that you find of the best among your
counsellors who are your friends.
And then follow the advice given us by that embodiment of good sense,
Benjamin Franklin: Take a sheet of paper, and after having folded it
in two, so as to have two distinct columns, write on one side all the
advantages the proposed marriage would bring you, and on the other all
the evils and dangers into which it might lead you. When you have
finished this piece of analysis work, try to measure the opposing
elements, cancelling alternately those that seem to balance each
other, as in algebra + 3 and - 3 is equal to zero, and you will see
what is left upon the page—that is, whether the good predominates, or
whether the evil has the upper hand.
I know well all the mistakes you may make. I know, too, that if you
love you will write in rose-coloured ink in the column of good, and in
that of evil you will use the blackest. But in any case this work of
analysis, this labour of detailed examination will, without your being
aware of it, oblige you to consider many elements which otherwise
you would have passed over, just as if you had had recourse to a
microscope of great power instead of to your eyes.
Matrimony must be studied with the eyes first; with the microscope
after; yes, even with the telescope. The eyes will enable us to see
the principal part of the problem; the microscope will show all the
ins and outs of our love; it will reveal all its cells and all its
fibres; and lastly, the telescope will give us the power of seeing,
prophetically, as it were, what will befall our passion and desire in
the evolution of time.
Then, if, after using eyes, microscope, and telescope, you also read
my book, you will find there the sincere and dispassionate words of a
man who became a physician that he might study mankind better; who
began by studying himself, as being the subject ever at hand; who to
this daily incessant study has devoted _forty-six_ large volumes not
yet printed.
Listen to the voice of a man who has made woman his principal study,
judging her to be the better part of humanity, and has loved her more
than all the creatures upon earth, believing her to be the first and
greatest source of happiness. I know perfectly that, even after having
applied Franklin’s method to the study of the problem of matrimony,
even after having used eyes, microscope, and telescope, and read my
book, you may yet make a mistake; but your conscience will always be
free from any remorse, in knowing that, as far as you were able, you
did all that was possible to secure happiness.
Vessels are sometimes wrecked under the command of able and brave
captains, and under the guidance of a sure compass. But for one of
these you find a hundred wrecks, to which there was no compass, or an
ignorant or drunken captain.
And all those who marry without reflecting deeply and long on the
abstruse problem are drunk and ignorant captains, who launch, without
a compass, upon the most tempestuous sea.
THE
ART OF TAKING A WIFE.
CHAPTER I.
MARRIAGE IN MODERN SOCIETY.
Of all paradoxes man is the cleverest and most untiring. He says he is
a worm of the earth, but believes himself to be a son of God; his own
person he clothes modestly, but revels in discovering the nakedness
of the greatest possible number of his sisters in Christ. The more
he humiliates himself, the prouder he is; the more he vaunts his
generosity, so much the more is he egotistical; an adorer of liberty
in theory, but in practice a daily contriver of tyrannies.
For the present I will confine myself to this last form of his
madness. If one only listens to him, he places liberty above all the
good things of the world. If Adam has lost the earthly paradise,
it is because he did not know how to tolerate the yoke of a divine
prohibition; if man has spattered his planet with blood, it is because
he preferred the hard bread of the free citizen to the golden chains
of despotism; if he has raised monuments to Spartacus, Bahilla,
Garibaldi, and Washington, it is because his first glory is to be
free; but the monuments forgotten, the tyrants killed, he raises new
ones on his own account; perhaps for the pleasure of destroying them
hereafter. If he does not seek some innocent and pleasant occupation,
what can he do after having slept and loved and eaten?
_Numbers_ must take the first place among the early tyrants of our own
making.
When God made the world, he entirely forgot to make numbers, and we
have corrected this fault of creation by making them ourselves. God
had not numbered the stars in heaven, or the drops of water in the
sea, the leaves on the trees or the ants on the ground. Infinity
above, infinity below, the ineffable and immeasurable everywhere.
Instead, we have repaired this great forgetfulness of the Creator, by
placing numbers above everything else, and making them our masters in
the world of living things and dead; we allow them to tyrannize over
us in every act of our humble daily life, as well as in the pages of
history and in dogmas of philosophy. If there have been sanguinary
revolutions in order to obtain the liberty of the press, why as yet
has no one rebelled against the tyranny of numbers?
_Quien sabe?_
Whoever would think of buying eleven or thirteen eggs?
No one, for 10 and 12 are our small tyrants.
Who would make a present of nine or ninety-nine francs to his own son?
No one, for 10 is a great tyrant, and 100 greater than 10.
Who has never felt the yoke of numbers one thousand and one hundred
thousand? who is never in subjection to the tyranny of the million,
both in language and mode of life?
And centuries, too, which are only so many figures, what a number
of theories they have evoked from the depths of history; how many
false names have they not written in the anagraphs of time; how
many revolutions have they not postponed; how many others have they
aroused, merely on account of the tyranny of a number?
For some years we have had before our eyes one of the most deplorably
humiliating examples of our view of this arithmetical incubus, the
decline of the nineteenth century to make room for the twentieth.
Six years are still wanting till this numerical cataclysm. Who knows
how many books will be written on the century dying out, how many
prophecies on the century following it; what torrents of philosophy
and ink to discuss the passing of the number 19 to that of 20?
Yet centuries only exist on paper, and after having made them
ourselves, we adore and freely elect them to be our tyrants; only to
deride the poor savages who, like us, make their own gods of wood and
stone, fall on their knees before them and fear them.
And we fear numbers—only another idol of thought, made for our
use and necessity, and in the similitude of our wretchedness and
intellectual weakness.
For my part I only see around me an infinite continuity of things and
of time, nor do I allow myself to be overawed by the cabal of numbers,
with which we ought to amuse ourselves as with a pack of cards,
esteeming them for what they are worth; a poor example of a thing yet
poorer!
The _dying century_, _fin de siècle_, and all such sensational
phrases, which are intended to express a great deal, because they mean
nothing—these exclamations, the eloquence of the non-eloquent, move me
little, if at all. I look back and see _a yesterday_; I look around
and see _a to-day_; forward and I see _a to-morrow_; the three tenses
of the _to become_, which have no numbers, nor will ever have. For they
succeed each other unceasingly, following the mighty strides of our
journey, not with the figures of a century, but with a _regret_ that
becomes a _hope_, and will be a _faith_; to be succeeded again and
forever by _regret_, _hope_, and _faith_—unceasingly.
I wished to write this in the first pages of my book to let you know
that if I attempt to delineate marriage in modern society I renounce
_the dying century_, the _fin de siècle_, and all such effective
phrases, which would give me, based on numbers, so many resources of
rhetoric and sentimentality. I have hated and always shall hate all
forms of tyranny, including that of numbers. I look around and say,
this is the way men marry _to-day_. They do so because they are sons
of a _yesterday_, which is the father of to-day; then I look forward
and hope that to-morrow will be better than yesterday or to-day, and
I endeavour to promote the good as quickly as possible and with a
minimum of pain, by my pen, my experience, and my studies, _cito tute
et jucunde_, as Celsus has it.
⁂
In our civilized society, marriage is _the least evil_ of all the
different modes of union between man and woman for the preservation of
the race. It is the result of many historic evolutions, many sensual,
moral, religious, and legislative elements, which have come into
conflict with each other in the course of time.
Remote atavism of the ravishment of the female, holy words of inspired
prophets, imperiousness of feudatories, avarice of usurers, transports
of love and heroism of hearts, have all left something of their own
upon the altar of matrimony. But before the sacrament was finished and
the priest sent up the fumes of his incense, animal man came leering
and saying:
“This is my affair. I am the sole and true priest of this rite. I am
the only minister of this religion.” And mixing the divine and human
vows on the altar with his hairy hands—perhaps, too, with his tail—he
formed a chaos of things most opposite, from the highest to the
lowest, from the most sublime to the most ignoble. And this, then, is
marriage.
To curse this love sanctified by vows is useless, to suppress it is
impossible, to substitute something better is absurd (at least for the
present), and nothing remains but to accept it as the least evil of
sexual unions, and to ameliorate it gradually, prudently, and wisely.
_By free choice on both sides, enlightened by reason._
_By the guarantee of divorce._
⁂
Neither the prince nor the proletariate needs this book of mine. The
first marries worse than any citizen in his kingdom, for dynastic
reasons, without love or sympathy. With him it is first the throne,
then the family; first the alliance of his colours, and then if there
is room, the kisses of love. It is true he may console himself with
the vulgar and easily won embraces of a pandering Venus; he may also
take advantage of one of the most ridiculous remnants of the Middle
Ages, the morganatic marriage. In all cases the ministers, deputies,
nay, even journalists provide him with a wife. The art of taking a
wife is for him, therefore, _nonsense_.
The proletariate, more fortunate than the prince, may choose the woman
it loves, and in its choice may take advantage of the counsels of
those who have loved and sinned much. But it does not read books, for
they cost too much; and when by law its individuality is cancelled
from the statistics of the illiterate, it has no time to read, for
the tyranny of bread oppresses it.
Therefore I write for neither prince nor proletariate, but for all
that human multitude who live and move between the extreme poles of
modern society and who constitute the true nerve of the nation.
In what way do all these millions of males and females combine?
In different ways, but amongst them marriage is the only legal
foundation of the family permitted by morality and approved by
religion. All others are contraband, moving on cross-roads either
alone or in company, but all, in one way or the other, defrauding
nature, with an eternal envy for those who have honestly paid custom
dues on entering the city.
Without fear of going far wrong, one may say that in whatever society
there are the greatest number of married people, there one will find
more morality and decorum, and consequently the number of those who
love and nourish their love by seduction, whether it be with the armed
hand on the public road, or clandestinely under the form of domestic
robbery, will be less.
Besides this, our modern society is suffering from _gold fever_; a
disease which is as old as man himself and has taken the form and
course of a real epidemic; this contributes more than any other
element to corrupt the roots of marriage.
Diffused instruction and the many social exigencies have increased
our needs beyond measure; more especially those which are more
costly, that is, those of the intellect and the higher æsthetic
emotions, without in any way enlarging the sources of production.
From birth to death, the balance of home life oppresses us, torments
us; its arithmetic pierces through the skin with the acute points of
its figures, reaches our very viscera and, alas, our hearts also;
poisoning every pleasure, spoiling all the holy and happy poetry of
life. Invited as all are to the genial table of modern civilization
which offers us so many new delights, we are like the poor government
official, who, for appearance’s sake, allows himself to be carried off
to a ball, and between the bars of music and the full glasses, feels
his pocket anxiously, wondering how and when he will be able to pay
the score.
With what difficulty some of the money is drawn from the poor purse of
a middle-class man! How many pangs has it not caused before it sees
the light of day, accompanied by the last caress of the convulsive
fingers! How unequal the comparison between those who live on an
income of one thousand and three thousand francs! And, from the ever
increasing fever of desires, the gnawing of all vanities, and the
vanity of the classes, how these figures increase daily until they
reach to ten, twenty, or thirty thousand francs!
And this is the reason that whilst love alone should prompt to
marriage, it is nearly always the last party in the contract, in which
money judges and directs according to the need of it, with all the
imperiousness of one who knows himself to be unconquerable.
Money, money, always money! It is the first and supreme arbiter of the
greater number of marriages.
To take a wife means to become poor, if the wife does not help to
build the new family nest; it means to walk with open eyes into a
bottomless and dark abyss; it signifies condemning one’s self to the
daily torture of poverty, and to dedicate the children yet unborn to
the same struggle.
Our dignity would demand that the wife’s dowry should not enter into
our choice at all. The true ideal would be the ability to offer to our
companion riches, or, at least, a competency with our heart and hand,
so that we could say:
“See, beloved; all that is mine is thine. However much I give you, I
shall always be your debtor, for you have given me your love.” All
this is noble and grand, and every man who is conscious of the power
of his own moral and physical manhood would wish to say so. But how
many really can?
Exceedingly few; hardly any.
And then the young man who would seek to love in the way of the Lord
is discouraged and renounces marriage, in which he only sees the
door to misery or cowardice. He renounces it frankly and forever. Are
celibates more honest, and how far does their honesty extend?
With the most honest, virtue extends to an unwillingness to betray
the purity of the maiden, or the faithfulness of other men’s wives;
extends or rather descends, to making the service of love a question
of periodical hygiene _regulated_ by the rubric of the calendar and
by that most imperative one of the lunar month. Poor love, poor
translation of the most epic poem of life! It is as though one were to
translate Homer into some Australian dialect!
These bachelor hygienists are however a small minority. Others pretend
to something more and better, and make love in the houses of others,
and live by abject and cowardly seduction, and perhaps usury.
This is the most sordid and cancerous sore in our modern marriage;
this is the gangrene of our society, which spreads an asphyxiating
fetor of domestic treachery, of moral infection, which contaminates
and infests everything. Woe to us if in every family the newly born
could proclaim aloud the name of their father! How many false,
living bills of exchange would be protested, what long faces amongst
biologists who ingeniously study the law of heredity; what a terrible
picture of treachery and dissembling! human and civilized society
would appear all at once like a band of false coiners, and the
woman’s womb nothing but a mint of false money.
But the newly born can only weep—the first salutation to life—and
the wombs of women are silent, and continue their business of false
coinage.
And yet I do not blame the woman more than the man, in this galley of
treachery, this wide-spread and clandestine manufactory of bastards.
If man assails the woman, and plots against her virtue, he avails
himself of the rights of life. If society does not permit him to
take a _wife_, why should he not share the bread of him who has
too much to eat? Do not the workmen of Europe declare daily, that
one of the first rights is that of work? And is not the right of
loving perhaps more sacred; the work of works; that for which nature
sacrifices the individual, and to which it consecrates the best of its
energies? Husbands defend these rights, we attack them. If they are
conquered—_tant pis pour eux_!
And the poor wives, why should they not brighten the ennui of the
nuptial bed with some little love affair? Were they not bound forever
to a man they had never loved, whom they had perhaps seen only once?
Were they not sold by their parents, guardians, and matrons, like
merchandise? Was not their dowry rated at the weight of a coat of
arms? and have not they also the right to love? And all the others
who have had the good fortune to love the man who has given them his
name, and have thrown themselves into his arms, giving him their whole
hearts, happy to be able to transform themselves in him and for him;
who dreamt of making marriage a synonym of love, and who instead found
the husband in a few months in the arms of an old love; have not all
these women the right of vengeance? This is matrimony as it is daily
represented in the many small theaters which we call men’s houses.
In these theaters, however (one must be just and not exaggerate),
there are more farces played than comedies, more comedies than dramas.
Tragedies are rare. For this high form of dramatic art heroes are
required, and they are very scarce in modern society. We have made
our houses, statues, pictures, and gardens smaller, and have been
compelled to reduce our feelings also.
The pistol and dagger, too, figure in the chronicles of matrimony, but
as phenomena. In the home-theater, on the contrary, the punishment of
retaliation, the little basenesses, the stirring of conscience, under
all forms and at all sorts of prices, are in common use. The _ménages
à trois_ (aye, even four) are pretty pictures in kind; and the
hypocrisy of husbands who will not see, because they detest scenes,
figure every day in the running account of modern matrimony.
Live and let live—to apply the noble modern institution of
co-operative societies to the family; and raise aloft the banner of
the association of forces. One for all, and all for one!
⁂
Infidelity and treachery are not the only moths which corrode
marriage. We have all the domestic discords which spring from the
inequality of the needs of intelligence, heart, and habits of thought;
we have the partisans of the wife and those of the husband, who
quarrel amongst themselves, complicating the problem, poisoning the
wounds, opening with every touch the cicatrices which time and love
were so pitifully healing.
If war is an exception in matrimony, peace is still more rare; and
one may safely say that in the greater number of cases it is an armed
peace, an atmosphere which relaxes the strength, dries up the purest
sources of tenderness, and destroys its happiness. In a word, as our
society is constituted in the present day, hell is not common in the
family circle, paradise exceedingly rare, but purgatory is almost
universal.
And yet marriage is still the _least evil_ amongst the unions of
the man and woman; it can and ought to grow continually better and
increase human happiness; which is for me the highest and truest end
of progress.
What is the use of being able to run through space at the velocity of
seventy kilometres an hour, or to go round the world in seventy days;
what the use of being able to talk through the telephone or see the
clouds in the sky of Mars; what the use of so great a fecundity of
books, of such a deluge of journals, if one is unable to increase the
patrimony of human happiness by even a farthing?
At the present day marriage _may_ be happy, just as one _may_ become
rich by playing in the lottery, but whilst one door opens to the
possibility of good, two open to that of evil. He who utters the fatal
_yes_ before the Syndic girded with the three national colors, lets
a grain fall in the scale that holds our happiness and two in the
scale that holds our misfortunes. It is his duty to do the opposite;
it is the duty of society to defend matrimony from the perils which
threaten it, by wise laws not inspired by the arcadian tendency of the
heart, nor by theocratical mysticism, but by a profound knowledge of
man.
⁂
About twenty years ago I broke a lance in favour of divorce in my
“Fisiologia dell’ amore,” and hoped at that time to have seen it by
now included in the laws of my country.
Twenty years ago I wrote:
“Divorce ought to be included among our laws as soon as possible:
happy couples solicit it to secure their dignity, wounded by a
tyrannical tie; the unhappy implore it on their bended knees, those
who by misfortune or fault are condemned to the most supreme of human
tortures: that of a slavery without redemption, of a yoke without
rest, of a scourge without balm, of a grief without hope.”[1] Even
to-day divorce is not made a law among us, but public opinion demands
and will have it. No one in the present day dare defend it with the
broken arms of the Church; but many defend it still in the name of the
children and of the sanctity of the family.
[1] “Fisiologia dell’ amore,” Milano, 1873, p. 338.
There are too many innocent victims of matrimony for their voices not
to be heard; and when the law-giver knows how to surround divorce with
all the most delicate guarantees, he will increase the sanctity of the
family and free the children from the cruelly abject spectacle of
their two parents living under the same roof hating each other, with
homicide in their thoughts, bearing the chains of convicts, without
the courage or the strength to break them.
⁂
Legislators must do this, the rest of the duty lies with those
directors of the mind who are called writers, masters, and educators.
They ought to teach the woman to know what love is, and what matrimony
is, so that she should not give herself, bound hand and foot, to a
contract which she knows by hearsay only, nor enter the dim future
guided by paternal, maternal, or religious authority alone.
The possibilities of misfortune are a hundred times greater for the
woman than for the man, for she is always more ignorant of things
genital than we are, and goes to the altar or municipality ignorant of
all, dragged like a lamb to the slaughter-house.
At the present day, under the customs to which our society conforms,
the only profession of woman is that of wife and mother; and to this
calling she is instructed from infancy, not to be an exemplary wife
or perfect mother, but, if possible, to find a husband, and that an
ideal one, one who is handsome, young, and above all rich. She is
secretly and cleverly instructed in the art of hunting that rare
game, a good husband; not in order to make him or herself happy,
but to increase her income and to rise a step or two in the social
scale. If in comfortable circumstances, she must become rich; if rich,
a millionaire; if civilian, a countess; if countess, marchioness
or princess. This is what she is to aim at; all her education has
been directed to this end. Now, marriage should rise from its lower
position of a business transaction to the higher one of a union of
hearts and thoughts, and neither of the two companions ought to be
able to look at each other with anger and think:
_You bought me._
_I sold myself._
Nothing can cleanse us from this original sin, which contaminates
matrimony. In vain do the comforts of riches, the pride of a high
position, the excitements of domestic sensuality, throw flowers over
the wound to hide it. At the least quibble, the least cloud that
covers the heaven of the double life, one hears the fatal words:
_You bought me,_
_I sold myself,_
arising from the depths of the troubled conscience like a voice evoked
by some evil spirit.
And when neither riches, sensuality, nor vanity have a rag wherewith
to cover the cancerous sore, the naked and dreadful spectre of an
unsuccessful speculation, of unsuccessful business—then bitterness
is added to bitterness, and the domestic warfare which has become
permanent, angry, and poisonous, developes into a chronic despair, the
most heart-rending form of human pain. Even this is not all; as in an
attack of neuralgia the deep-seated and continual pains become sharper
and more intolerable at certain moments, taking on a piercing and
stab-like character, so it is with the deep-seated and dumb despair of
those two unfortunate beings. Every now and then the inexorable cry
sounds, and thus it goes on until the last breath.
Let divorce come then, and quickly, to set all these slaves free; let
there be a wiser and more liberal education, to teach girls what they
do not know or know indifferently; so that they, like ourselves, can
freely say their _yes_ before the altar or the magistrate with perfect
knowledge and understanding.