DE GIRARDIN.
On page 42 of his pamphlet, "Liberty in Marriage," De Girardin says, with
great reason: "Man is born of woman. Everything, therefore, that benefits
woman will benefit man."
"To fight and conquer for her is to fight and conquer for himself."
Inspired by these excellent sentiments, the celebrated publicist has
investigated the causes of the slavery and degradation of woman, and the
means of paralyzing them.
_Every child has for its father the husband of its mother_: this,
according to M. de Girardin, is the principle of two great wrongs: the
servitude of the married woman; the inequality of children before the
law, which classes them as legitimate and illegitimate.
That children may become equal, that woman may be affranchised from the
yoke of man, it is necessary, says the author, to substitute the system
of maternity for that of paternity; to modify Marriage, and to render
woman independent through the institution and universalizing of the
dower.
We will let M. de Girardin expound the rest of his doctrine himself. "We
must choose," says he, "between these two systems:
"Between the system of _presumed_ paternity, _which is the system of the
law_, and the system of maternity, _bearing its proof within itself,
which is the system of Nature_; the latter is in conformity with
incontestable truth, the former is condemned by undisputed statistics.
The system of paternity is _inequality of children before the mother and
before the law; it is woman possessed and not possessing_; ... it is no
longer the legal slavery of woman, _but is still conjugal
servitude_."--_Liberty in Marriage._
"Without equality of children before the mother, equality of citizens
before the law _is only an imposture_, for evidently and incontestably,
this equality does not exist for 2,800,000 children, who, arbitrarily
entitled illegitimate, are placed outside of common right in violation of
natural law."--_Id._
According to De Girardin, the logical consequences of the system of
maternity would be:
The abolition of civil marriage;
The mother's name alone given to the child;
The inheritance placed solely in the maternal line.
"Marriage," says he, "is a purely individual act, and, as regards its
celebration, a purely religious act.--
"Marriage is an act of faith, not of law: it is for faith to govern it,
_not for law to make rules for it_.
"As soon as the law intervenes, it intervenes _without right_, without
necessity, _without utility_.
"For one abuse that it pretends to avert, it gives rise to innumerable
others which are worse, and from which society afterwards suffers
seriously, without taking into account the cause that produced them.
"Legal liberty in marriage is durable love in the household;
indissolubility of marriage is habitual love outside of the
household."--_Id._
With respect to inheritance and dowry, the author expresses himself thus:
"To inherit at the death of the mother, because maternity and certitude
are two equipollent terms, and to receive a support from the father,
because paternity and doubt are two inseparable terms; such is the true
law of Nature."--_Id._
In De Girardin's opinion, woman has the same rights as man to liberty and
equality; the sexes are equal, not through _similitude_ but _equivalence_
of faculties and functions; man produces, acquires, woman administers,
economizes; it belongs therefore to man to provide for the expenses of
the household. It is his duty, on uniting himself to a woman, to settle
on her an inalienable dower that will permit her to perform her maternal
functions properly, and to escape from the vices that frequently result
from want and abandonment.
To the objection that the wages of the working people are insufficient to
satisfy this duty, the generous publicist replies: Well, raise the rate
of wages by excluding from industrial occupations the women and children
that lower it by competition with men. And if this measure be not
sufficient to balance receipts and expenses, increase the wages, for
"there is no consideration weighty enough to make me admit that, in order
not to diminish the profits of some men, others shall be eternally
condemned to insufficient wages; and that to shelter some women from
violation, others shall be necessarily devoted to prostitution."--_Id._
In comparing the lot of the wife under the two systems, De Girardin
expresses himself thus:
"Under the system of paternity, the wife, loaded with the gifts of
fortune, sinks under the weight of an idleness which most frequently
inflames and disorders her imagination. She does not know what to do to
employ her time. Woman does nothing because man does everything.
"The wife who has brought no dowry and received no dower, sinks under the
weight of a toil contrary to nature which obliges her, through economy,
to separate herself from her child a few days after giving it birth, and
to put it away from her to nurse, for the consideration of five or six
francs a month; to go to work in one direction while her husband works in
the other, and not to rejoin him till evening, when each returns from the
workshop which has kept them absent from their household all day: if this
is what is called the family, _is it indeed worth all the stir that is
made about it_?
"Under the system of maternity, on the contrary, the richer a woman is,
the further she is removed from idleness; for not only has she her
children to nurse, to rear, to instruct, and to watch over, but she has
also to administer her fortune which will one day be theirs.
"To preserve this fortune, to increase it still more: here is wherewith
to occupy her leisure, to calm her imagination, to place her under curb.
It is wrong to suppose women not qualified for the management of
business; they excel in it, however little may have been their practice
or application.
"Long enough has man been the personification of war, of slavery, of
conquest; it is the turn of woman to be the personification of peace, of
liberty, of civilization.
"In this new system (_that of maternity_), each of the two has his part:
to man labor, the genius of enterprise; to woman economy and the spirit
of foresight.
"Man speculates, woman administers;
"Man acquires, woman preserves;
"Man brings in, woman transmits;
"The dowry remains the attribute of the father, the inheritance becomes
the privilege of the mother;
"Each of the two thus exercises the function that is _natural_ to him,
and in conformity with the essence of things."--_Id._
A number of women have asked whether De Girardin recognizes political
right for women. He says nothing about it, either in his work "Liberty in
Marriage," or in his "Universal Politics." But when a man writes that:
"Woman, belonging to herself, and being dependent only on her reason, has
the same rights as man to liberty and equality."
That "universal suffrage should be _individual_ and _direct_."
That "every holder of a general insurance has a right to be a party to
it."
It is evident that we may deduce, without any great stretch of logic,
that, woman being _free and equal to man_,
Woman being comprised in universality,
Woman holding, like man, her policy of insurance, has a right, like man,
to be elector, to be eligible to office, and to vote _individually and
directly_.
Now, as M. de Girardin is not one of those who recoil from the
consequences of their principles, we are led to believe that he admits to
woman the exercise of political right for woman.
I have been told that, in 1848, one of those pitiable individuals who
have neither intellect enough to be logical, nor justice enough to
comprehend the oppressed, was haranguing before M. de Girardin against
the claims of certain women to enter political life. "Why not?" asked M.
de Girardin. "Do you believe that Madame de Girardin would deposit a less
intelligent vote in the electoral urn than that of her footman?"
If this anecdote be true, the opinion of the publicist concerning the
political right of woman is not doubtful.
_La liberté dans le mariage_ has raised a tempest of indignation, to a
greater or less degree feigned, among the prudes; and for some time it
required courage openly to proclaim one's self the (feminine) champion of
the author.
Abolish marriage! cry some, veiling their faces with an air of offended
modesty.
Make a speculation of love! exclaim others who, apparently, have
preserved their holy innocence and baptismal ignorance.
Come, ladies, we might say,--a truce to conventional delicacy and
sentimentality. Let men suffer themselves to be deceived by our mask,
nothing is more natural; but what is the use of playing the farce among
women?
M. de Girardin does not really suppress marriage; he changes it in some
respects, but leaves it intact in a religious point of view. If his
system should be adopted, therefore, you might be married in the presence
of the clergymen of your respective faiths, precisely as was done some
seventy years ago, and you would have no fewer scruples than your
grandmothers, who believed themselves then sufficiently married.
On the other hand, in suppressing civil marriage, the author does not
interdict such and such particular stipulations; if therefore you hold in
any degree to the religion of the Code, it will be lawful for you to
stipulate in your notarial contract:
1. That you will be submissive to your husbands;
2. That you will permit them to manage your fortune, even contrary to
your interests and to those of your children;
3. That without authority from them, you will neither go to law, nor
undertake anything, nor sell anything, nor receive anything, nor give
anything away;
4. That, so long as they shall live, you renounce all authority over your
children; that they can, if they please, take them from you, banish you
from them, have them reared by whoever they choose, even by their
mistress, finally, give them in marriage contrary to your will;
5. That you recognise their right to carry elsewhere their love, their
attentions, their fortune and your own; provided that this does not
happen under your roof;
6. That, lastly, you grant their right, if, abandoned by them, you attach
yourself to another, to drag you before the bar, to dishonor you, to
imprison you with thieves and prostitutes; that even in such case you
declare them excusable in killing you.
Yes, ladies, you might stipulate all this, for M. de Girardin disputes no
one the rights of lacking dignity and being imbecile; of what then do you
complain?
You reproach M. de Girardin with wishing to make a speculation of love!
Be good enough to tell me what you call the greater part of the marriages
of the present time, in which men have the heartlessness to speculate
even on death!--in which they ask how much a young girl has, what are her
expectations, and _how old are her parents_.
Answer, women:
Is it true that the great majority of seduced women are incapacitated,
through shame and poverty, from rearing their children?
That what you call a first fault, drives the greater part of them to make
a traffic of their charms?
That the great majority of men forget, after satisfying their passion,
both the woman whom they have led astray, and the innocent creature that
owes its life to them?
Is it true that the horrible and cruel selfishness of men and the insane
confidence of women produces annually a fearful number of so called
illegitimate children, the greater part of which people the prisons, the
galleys, and the public brothels?
Is it true, lastly, that this same selfishness and this same confidence
are the cause of thousands of human lives being criminally sacrificed?
And if all this shame, all these griefs, all these crimes are true?
If there are so many women seduced and heartbroken;
If there are so many children abandoned;
If there are so many infanticides;
If the law does not protect the woman deceived and made a mother;
If this law does not compel the seducer to any reparation;
If public opinion leaves to the victim all the shame;
Why do you reproach a man for reminding a young girl that from love may
proceed maternity?
For telling her that she ought to provide in advance for the child that
may be born, in order that it may not be cast upon public charity, and
that she herself may not risk falling into those sinks of impurity that
are the shame and degradation of our sex?
Do you reproach a man then for taking our part against the selfish and
animal passions of his sex, and against the impunity accorded them by the
laws?
Do you reproach him for taking in hand the cause of morals and health, in
opposition to the degradation of soul and body?
A young girl stipulate the sale of her person! say you? what essential
difference do you find between this kind of contract, and those that are
made to-day before the notary on the occasion of a marriage?
Did not most among you, ladies, purchase your husbands with so much
dowry, so much income, so much _expectations_? And if these husbands of
yours did not think it shameful to be sold, and if you do not esteem them
less for it, be good enough to tell me from what principle you judge it
shameful for a young girl to do the same in order to rear her children,
and to live without prostituting herself?
For my part, I do not see.
Ladies, you are grown-up children: men feign to have contempt for the
woman who thinks of her interests in love ... because they wish, if
possible, to keep their money, that is all.
Is this to say that I admit all the ideas of M. de Girardin? No.
I admit with him, that woman can only be free and the equal of man, in
so far as she is a wife, through a change in marriage.
That, in the state of insecurity in which she is placed with respect to
wages and to maternity outside of marriages, woman _does well_ to take
measures to prevent man from shifting the obligations of paternity from
himself to her.
I would willingly admit that the child should bear the mother's name
only, if men did not object so strongly to it. The child, belonging to
both, should bear both names, and choose, at majority, the one that he
preferred; or else the daughters should bear the name of the mother and
the sons that of the father, from the time of majority.
I readily admit the equality of children before the mother and the law;
for bastardy is meaningless in nature and is social iniquity. But what I
do not admit, is the ideal M. de Girardin has formed with regard to the
respective functions of each sex:
The exclusion of woman from active occupations;
The universalizing of the dower;
Lastly, family education.
To say that man represents labor, the genius of enterprise, that he
speculates, acquires, brings in,--that woman represents economy, the
spirit of foresight,--that she administers, preserves, transmits, is to
establish a series which does not appear to me at all in conformity with
the nature of things, since it is notorious that a great number of women
do what M. de Girardin attributes to the other sex, and _vice versâ_.
Functions, to be properly performed, should be the result of aptitudes.
Now Nature, except in what concerns the reproduction of the species, does
not appear to have classed these according to the sexes. Since the
origin of society, we have attempted to do it, but history is at hand to
reveal to us that, in acting thus, we have only succeeded in tyrannizing
over the sturdy minorities that have given the lie to such pretensions.
Now, M. de Girardin, admitting a false series, _à priori_, is led without
perceiving it to forge chains for all women whom Nature has not made in
conformity with the conventional order which he wishes to see realized.
To exclude woman from active occupations in order to confine her to the
cares of the household is to attempt an impossibility, to close the way
to progress, and to replace woman beneath the yoke of man. It is to
attempt an impossibility, because there are branches of manufactures that
can be executed only by women; because many women who would not marry, or
who would be left portionless widows without resources, could only remain
pure by devoting themselves to some active employment which,
notwithstanding, would be interdicted to them. To see woman in the
household alone, is to view her from a contracted stand point, which
retards the advent of her liberty. It is to close the way to progress,
because there are social functions which will never be well performed
until woman shall participate in them, and social questions that will
never be resolved until woman shall stand by the side of man to elucidate
them. It is to replace woman beneath the yoke of man, because it is in
human nature to rule and domineer over those whom we provide with their
daily bread.
To wish to erect the dower into an institution, is to wish to restore one
of the most lamentable phases of the Past at the moment when Humanity is
marching towards the Future--that which shows us woman purchased by man.
The universalizing of the dower would be therefore a criminal attempt on
the liberty and moral dignity of woman. Lastly, to claim that every
mother ought to educate her children herself appears to us to propose as
great impossibility as social danger.
If every well constituted woman is fit to bring children into the world
and to nourish them with her milk, very few are capable of developing
their intellect and heart, for education is a special function, requiring
a particular aptitude, with which all mothers cannot be endowed.
Next, family education perpetuates divergence of opinions and sentiments,
maintains prejudices, favors the development of vanity and selfishness,
and tends, by this means, to paralyze the most noble, the most civilizing
sentiment--that of universal solidarity. Assuredly, at the present time,
many motives may justify family education, but for the good of humanity
it is to be desired that parents who sympathize in progressive ideas
should assemble their children together to form them for social life,
instead of rearing them each by himself.
I submit this critical sketch to M. de Girardin in the name of the
principle that he has always defended:--_individual dignity and human
liberty_.