up, had too many enemies, or followed perhaps too closely on the
deplorable times witnessed under the regency and under Louis XV, to
pay any attention to the position which women should occupy in the
social order.
The remarkable men who raised the immortal monument which our codes
present were almost all old-fashioned students of law deeply imbued
with a spirit of Roman jurisprudence; and moreover they were not the
founders of any political institutions. Sons of the Revolution, they
believed, in accordance with that movement, that the law of divorce
wisely restricted and the bond of dutiful submission were sufficient
ameliorations of the previous marriage law. When that former order of
things was remembered, the change made by the new legislation seemed
immense.
At the present day the question as to which of these two principles
shall triumph rests entirely in the hands of our wise legislators. The
past has teaching which should bear fruit in the future. Have we lost
all sense of the eloquence of fact?
The principles of the East resulted in the existence of eunuchs and
seraglios; the spurious social standing of France has brought in the
plague of courtesans and the more deadly plague of our marriage
system; and thus, to use the language of a contemporary, the East
sacrifices to paternity men and the principle of justice; France,
women and modesty. Neither the East nor France has attained the goal
which their institutions point to; for that is happiness. The man is
not more loved by the women of a harem than the husband is sure of
being in France, as the father of his children; and marrying is not
worth what it costs. It is time to offer no more sacrifice to this
institution, and to amass a larger sum of happiness in the social
state by making our manners and our institution conformable to our
climate.
Constitutional government, a happy mixture of two extreme political
systems, despotism and democracy, suggests by the necessity of
blending also the two principles of marriage, which so far clash
together in France. The liberty which we boldly claim for young people
is the only remedy for the host of evils whose source we have pointed
out, by exposing the inconsistencies resulting from the bondage in
which girls are kept. Let us give back to youth the indulgence of
those passions, those coquetries, love and its terrors, love and its
delights, and that fascinating company which followed the coming of
the Franks. At this vernal season of life no fault is irreparable, and
Hymen will come forth from the bosom of experiences, armed with
confidence, stripped of hatred, and love in marriage will be
justified, because it will have had the privilege of comparison.
In this change of manners the disgraceful plague of public
prostitution will perish of itself. It is especially at the time when
the man possesses the frankness and timidity of adolescence, that in
his pursuit of happiness he is competent to meet and struggle with
great and genuine passions of the heart. The soul is happy in making
great efforts of whatever kind; provided that it can act, that it can
stir and move, it makes little difference, even though it exercise its
power against itself. In this observation, the truth of which
everybody can see, there may be found one secret of successful
legislation, of tranquillity and happiness. And then, the pursuit of
learning has now become so highly developed that the most tempestuous
of our coming Mirabeaus can consume his energy either in the
indulgence of a passion or the study of a science. How many young
people have been saved from debauchery by self-chosen labors or the
persistent obstacles put in the way of a first love, a love that was
pure! And what young girl does not desire to prolong the delightful
childhood of sentiment, is not proud to have her nature known, and has
not felt the secret tremblings of timidity, the modesty of her secret
communings with herself, and wished to oppose them to the young
desires of a lover inexperienced as herself! The gallantry of the
Franks and the pleasures which attend it should then be the portion of
youth, and then would naturally result a union of soul, of mind, of
character, of habits, of temperament and of fortune, such as would
produce the happy equilibrium necessary for the felicity of the
married couple. This system would rest upon foundations wider and
freer, if girls were subjected to a carefully calculated system of
disinheritance; or if, in order to force men to choose only those who
promised happiness by their virtues, their character or their talents,
they married as in the United States without dowry.
In that case, the system adopted by the Romans could advantageously be
applied to the married women who when they were girls used their
liberty. Being exclusively engaged in the early education of their
children, which is the most important of all maternal obligations,
occupied in creating and maintaining the happiness of the household,
so admirably described in the fourth book of _Julie_, they would be in
their houses like the women of ancient Rome, living images of
Providence, which reigns over all, and yet is nowhere visible. In this
case, the laws covering the infidelity of the wife should be extremely
severe. They should make the penalty disgrace, rather than inflict
painful or coercive sentences. France has witnessed the spectacle of
women riding asses for the pretended crime of magic, and many an
innocent woman has died of shame. In this may be found the secret of
future marriage legislation. The young girls of Miletus delivered
themselves from marriage by voluntary death; the senate condemned the
suicides to be dragged naked on a hurdle, and the other virgins
condemned themselves for life.
Women and marriage will never be respected until we have that radical
change in manners which we are now begging for. This profound thought
is the ruling principle in the two finest productions of an immortal
genius. _Emile_ and _La Nouvelle Heloise_ are nothing more than two
eloquent pleas for the system. The voice there raised will resound
through the ages, because it points to the real motives of true
legislation, and the manners which will prevail in the future. By
placing children at the breast of their mothers, Jean-Jacques rendered
an immense service to the cause of virtue; but his age was too deeply
gangrened with abuses to understand the lofty lessons unfolded in
those two poems; it is right to add also that the philosopher was in
these works overmastered by the poet, and in leaving in the heart of
_Julie_ after her marriage some vestiges of her first love, he was led
astray by the attractiveness of a poetic situation, more touching
indeed, but less useful than the truth which he wished to display.
Nevertheless, if marriage in France is an unlimited contract to which
men agree with a silent understanding that they may thus give more
relish to passion, more curiosity, more mystery to love, more
fascination to women; if a woman is rather an ornament to the
drawing-room, a fashion-plate, a portmanteau, than a being whose
functions in the order politic are an essential part of the country's
prosperity and the nation's glory, a creature whose endeavors in life
vie in utility with those of men--I admit that all the above theory,
all these long considerations sink into nothingness at the prospect of
such an important destiny!----
But after having squeezed a pound of actualities in order to obtain
one drop of philosophy, having paid sufficient homage to that passion
for the historic, which is so dominant in our time, let us turn our
glance upon the manners of the present period. Let us take the cap and
bells and the coxcomb of which Rabelais once made a sceptre, and let
us pursue the course of this inquiry without giving to one joke more
seriousness than comports with it, and without giving to serious
things the jesting tone which ill befits them.