excessively early excitement of the mind, in school and in society,
they rapidly press their mothers from the stage, and though
physically not giving earlier signs of being nubile than the
girls of other nations, they are far earlier in the market, as it
were, for the sale, as it too often is in fact, of their charms
and of their lives. No doubt this so early “coming out” from the
chrysalid of youth is detrimental to both man and woman. An early
bloom is too apt to presage an early decay; and though our mortuary
statistics, thanks to the advance of medical and sanitary science,
do undoubtedly show that the average duration of life is becoming
more and more extended, and that the Golden Age, in this respect,
is before us rather than in the past; yet, taking a given number of
persons exposed and not exposed to all the excitements of modern
American civilization, there can be no doubt that the unfashionable
live longer than the fashionable, the steady than the unsteady, the
slowly matured than the Pallas-like monstrosities of our own day and
generation. Whether or no the slow and sedate life is the happier of
the twain, and whether or no the life of threescore years and ten can
be compressed within the limits of two twenties, are questions beyond
the scope of the present inquiry. We all know that, at the best, life
is but a quickly passing dream.
Provided, then, there exist sufficient self-control to wait a while,
very early marriages are not so desirable as those where the ages
I have mentioned have been attained; that is to say, provided the
man has led a life of continence and purity, or has the strength
to do so. If he has not, it may become advisable for him, in case
circumstances otherwise favor, early to enter the married state;
awake, as he should be, to the responsibilities this brings with
it, to many of which I shall hereafter refer. And here let it be
understood that extremes are always, almost without exception, to
be condemned. The marriages of young children are very properly
forbidden by the law; those of older children too often become
necessary through their own indiscretion, and result in future as in
present unhappiness. The marriage of very old people, permissible on
platonic or economical grounds, is sanitarily to be disapproved, and
in many instances is but the folly of the second childhood. Great
disparities in age are almost always matches of interest rather
than affection: the selfish greediness, the shameless yet impotent
lechery, of old age joins itself well with that ambition or thirst
for wealth which sells the young girl to her worse than slavery—this
mating of youth to a virtual corpse.
I do not like to advise marriage to parties in ill health; and yet,
as a medical measure, this is often advisable. We have seen that
a single life is for men, and on sanitary grounds, not the best.
There are many cases where it is as unadvisable for women. As a
class they need marriage, for a different reason than ourselves.
Constructed as evidently for companionship, their yearnings are more
mental than physical. They are less conscious of any bodily needs,
that is, in their normal condition, but more craving of a spiritual
sympathy; more angelic than ourselves, we may truly call them. The
point to which I would now refer, however, is the fact that, in many
instances, women are deterred from consenting to marriage upon the
ground of their own ill health; and I merely shall say that, in very
many instances, far more than is usually supposed, marriage would
prove for such ill health the most certain cure. I do not make this
remark too sweepingly, for there are some affections under which
women suffer that would only be aggravated by the change; there
are certain bars, as that of cousinship, which, on some accounts,
ought never to be passed, and there are certain physical evils of
which marriage is only but too productive. Plainly I would avow my
conviction that just as marriage should be avoided among blood
relations, for the reason that any family taint, as scrofula,
deformity, or insanity, is thus rendered nearly certain to their
children, so should the same similarity of constitution be avoided,
so far as possible, by Cœlebs in search of a wife. If, selfishly,
he would avoid defects in her, is it not his duty also to see to it
that he brings to her a constitution of his own unmarred, so far as
he himself has been concerned? And when, as is too often the case,
men who carry with them a system infected by that terrible disease of
the licentious, marry pure and unsuspecting women, a great outrage is
committed upon society, which no penance and no individual suffering
can ever efface or atone for. One of the worst features of this
whole matter, as I shall hereafter point out, is as yet generally
unknown—that the most ineradicable form of the disease has its period
of incubation; the primary sign of it may escape notice, the virus
may lie latent, and when it does exhibit itself, the party really to
blame may throw the whole enormity of the trouble upon an innocent
person, and thus, on the wreck he has made of his home, immolate its
guardian.
But I have not time to pursue these collateral lines of thought,
manifold as they are, and as important as they are interesting. One
of the great rules of life being to try to have and to preserve a
sound mind in a sound body, and it being essential for this that the
conscience should be sound also, we are forced to admit that, all
things being equal, a comparatively early marriage is better for the
man than a late one; this on its medical grounds, and uninfluenced by
business, or other considerations. Were I to discuss these and push
them to their legitimate conclusions, I am afraid I might bring grief
to some of my readers—if, for instance, I should assert that it were
better for the wives of many seafaring men, especially those going
very long voyages, if their husbands had never married them at all,
or at least had waited till their days of absence, and peril, and
exposure, in foreign ports, to worse dangers than those of the sea,
were permanently over. By this remark I am reminded of the question
of long engagements—a very pertinent one to our present inquiry.
In presenting Mr. Acton’s opinion as to the advisability of early
marriage. I might have said that this very writer contradicts
himself, as must every one who undertakes to ignore the great
underlying and controlling passions of men. I have quoted some of
his remarks concerning continence. In another connection, however,
he says, “If an adult is in a position to marry, by all means let
him do so. If his sexual desires are strong, and his intellectual
powers not great, early marriage will keep him out of much mischief
and temptation.” He then goes on to say, what I myself hold, that
“for any one, especially a young man, to enter into a long engagement
without any immediate hope of fulfilling it, is physically an almost
unmitigated evil. It is bad for any one to have sexual ideas and
desires constantly before his mind, liable to be excited by every
interview with the lady. The frequent correspondence, further,
keeps up a morbid dwelling upon thoughts which it would be well to
banish altogether from the mind; and I have reason to know that this
condition of constant excitement has often caused most dangerous
and painful affections. These results, to an alarming extent,
often follow the progress of an ordinary courtship. The danger and
distress may be much more serious when the marriage is postponed
for years.”[30] The same evil results of hope deferred may also
be observed in the female. Physicians devoted to the study of her
diseases attribute the causation of some of them, or their increase,
to the same identical influences. Mental emotions, even in the purest
and chastest minded, are often reflected upon the reproductive
system, acting as excitants, even where the mind is unconscious of
anything like a bodily sensation; and, on the other hand, physical
excitement, which may exist unconsciously as it were, constantly
reflects itself back again upon the mind, increasing the force and
intensity of its emotions. “It is no whim,” remarks that close
student of minds, healthy and diseased, Dr. Isaac Ray, of Providence,
“but a suggestion of sound physiology, that the nervous erethism,
excited even by courtship, has a controlling influence over the
female will.”[31]
I should do wrong, moreover, did I not here allude to the dangers,
so often proved to exist by their results, of undue waiting, to the
moral as well as the physical health. When parties have plighted to
each other their faith, they often consider themselves as already
one, and demean themselves together too much as such,—forgetting for
the time that thus they are almost sure to lose their mutual and
self-respect,—they are more likely, for this very reason, to take
offence at some unintended trifle, or to become wearied of each other
and so to break their engagement, and that they run great risk, by
a forced and hasty marriage, of giving its tongue to scandal, and
confessing each other’s shame.
The length of a betrothal, just as the time of its inception, is too
often dependent upon circumstances of a trivial character. Where
these endanger the happiness of the man alone, he himself should
judge as to the propriety of allowing them undue weight. He has no
right, however, as so often occurs, to drag or to coax a young girl
to the altar, who is as yet but half matured, or to condemn her to
remain for years half-mated, through his selfish fears that unless
thus pledged she would elude his grasp. As I have said, too early
bloom is apt to presage too early decay; and even with the best of
care our American dames at fifty are prone to pass into the condition
called old, even while their husbands, more advanced in years, are
still in the very prime of life. A word to the wise should surely
be sufficient. Let us hope that Lord Bacon erred in declaring love
wholly inconsistent with wisdom, and now consider,—
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Loc. cit., p. 76.
[28] Loc. cit., p. 76.
[29] Loc. cit., p. 73.
[30] Loc. cit., p. 77.
[31] American Journal of Insanity, October, 1866, p. 267.
IV.—THE RIGHTS OF THE HUSBAND.
Most men would claim these to be absolute. In view of such claim,
which is constantly in practice enforced, married women are expected
to quietly yield themselves, often most unwilling victims. Have I any
ground for this last assertion? I have. Is it gained from observation
or from confession? It is gained from both. Is it a conclusion
hastily founded? On the contrary, it is the result of the daily study
and direct questionings of fifteen long years.
But it is evident that there are two very distinct sides to this
important inquiry; and it is requisite that they should both be
fairly presented before the balance can be struck between them. Are
these rights absolute, or are they the rather reciprocal with duties?
Should mere instinct, or reason, be the rule?
The rights of the husband regarding his wife, I have said, are
usually considered total and indisputable. Till now they have seldom
been challenged; certainly seldom of men by a man. In listening, as I
have done, to the plaints of women, I have neither eavesdropped nor
suggested. In presenting them now after these years of comparison and
cross-examination, it is with no quixotic feeling of championship,
but solely with the desire of an earnest physician to assuage
physical and mental pains, very real though often uncomplained of and
unappreciated, to carry comfort to hearts disappointed and well nigh
broken, to check abuses whose authors may not have recognized them as
such, and to evoke a higher manliness than is our usual wont, as men,
to exhibit.
What, then, do we usually claim? All that the law, and still more
tyrannical custom, grants to us, in our wives; all that they have,
and all that they are, in person and in very life. And here let
me say, that I intend taking no ultra ground; that I am neither a
fanatic nor professed philanthrope; and that in loosing, as I hope
to do, some of woman’s present chains, it is solely for professional
purposes, to increase her health, prolong her life, extend the
benefits she confers upon society—in a word, selfishly to enhance
her value to ourselves; and yet there is somewhat in this effort, as
I believe there is also in the hearts of all those who will peruse
it, of gratitude to her for the love with which she has solaced us,
as mother, and sister, and wife, and daughter,—all of which I have
myself possessed; unhappy he who has not. Give to her, then, the
serious consideration due from every man “born of woman’s agony,”
the depth and measure of which but few of us ever really know. I am
no advocate for unwomanly women; I would not transplant them, from
their proper and God-given sphere, to the pulpit, the forum, or the
cares of state, nor would I repeat the experiment, so patiently
tried by myself, and at last so emphatically condemned[32]—of
females attempting the practice of the medical profession. I would
undoubtedly open to single women every legitimate avenue to an
honorable self-support, and thus keep them from many of the pitfalls
which so closely environ them, and by causing for the married woman
more or greater occasion to respect her husband, I would redouble for
him her affection. These are some of my claims to be heard, and they
are weighty ones in truth.
In the early history of nations, woman has always been the slave.
She is still such, confessed, in all barbarous or but partially
civilized tribes. Condemned, by custom or her lord’s caprice, to
menial offices, she has pandered to his transient emotion, suffered
its hardest consequences, and still drudged on. Save in name, in what
does this description differ from that of thousands of our own women?
They do not, in their best estate, it is true, bear the nominal
burdens of life, the hoe and the venison meat, the tent pole and the
paddle; but a queen’s finery, to the higher natures of our time, may
be far heavier than these.
In former days, or in distant lands, husbands have held for their
wives the tenure of life or death; were they disobedient, or their
fidelity even questioned, the bowstring or sack of the Bosphorus, or
being built aside by masonry while still alive, in countries perhaps
nominally Christian, are but a portion of the penalties that were
meted them. In what, save in being easier to bear, do these differ
from enforced seclusion, as in private lunatic asylums not so very
many years ago, or the still more dreadful divorce, where not desired
and not deserved, with all its attendant publicity?
In by-gone times, and among heathen, as at present in a remote valley
of our own great land, so jealous of the honor of its people, and
so lenient towards their crimes, women have been openly held as
concubines, to possess an abundance of whom were as worthy as to
number one’s children. What variance in this from the secret amours
and liaisons of our own time, so easy to indulge in, so difficult to
detect, in consequence of the almost universal knowledge of the means
of preventing or escaping the natural consequences of illicit sexual
indulgence?
In days long past, and in tribes far down in ignorance and
superstition, it has been the custom to slaughter new-born infants,
to avoid the trouble of their support, or to appease the gods. In
Sparta, it was alleged that such destruction of the puny or deformed
was justified for the sake of preserving the race in all its pristine
beauty and vigor. Is such a deed, at the hands of even a heathen
Greek, to be compared for wickedness with the pre-natal murders of
the present day, daily in occurrence, fashionable even, and bepraised
by professing Christians, repeated over and over again by the same
married woman and mother? You will exclaim with horror that it is
not! And yet, in a very large proportion of instances, this shocking
and atrocious act is advised and abetted, if not compelled, by the
husband—by us men. Who enjoys asking now, “Is it I?”
For the woman, enfeebled perhaps by too excessive child-bearing, for
which her husband is generally wholly responsible, for few of our
wives do not become, sooner or later, virtually apathetic; for the
woman, timid, easily alarmed, prone to mental depression or other
disturbance, and dreading the yet safe and preferable labor that
awaits her, and withal under that strange and mastering thraldom of
fashion, there is a certain measure of excuse. For her husband, none.
This is a matter concerning which the public mind is now undergoing
a radical change. Slow to set in motion, but every day gaining more
rapidly in force, the world’s revival proceeds. In “Why Not?” or “Why
should women not commit this crime?” I have sounded almost a trump
to awake the dead. Would, indeed, that it might arouse a better life
in every man who reads these words: “Of the mother, by consent or by
her own hand, imbrued with her infant’s blood; of the more guilty
father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches who, by
their wholesale murders, far out-Herod Burke and Hare; of the public
sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this, so
common, violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, all
reason, all pity, all mercy, all love, we leave those to speak who
can.”[33]
What, then, I repeat, do husbands usually claim? The right to their
wives’ persons, to use or abuse at their pleasure; the right to their
wives’ happiness, and to endanger or destroy it, as they may choose;
the right to their wives’ lives and those of their offspring, and to
destroy these also, the latter directly, the former thus indirectly,
and at times also, by their physical violence or their persistent
though petty cruelties, very directly too.
Formerly men had control, exclusive and entire, of any possessions
their wives might bring them. Now, and with us at least, the law has
very materially curtailed the husband’s power in this respect, save
it be granted him by the wife’s consent. Will the time come, think
ye, when husbands can no longer, as they now frequently do, commit
the crime of rape upon their unwilling wives, and persuade them or
compel them to allow a still more dreadful violence to be wreaked
upon the children nestling within them—children fully alive from the
very moment of conception, that have already been fully detached from
all organic connection with their parent, and only re-attached to her
for the purposes of nutriment and growth, and to destroy whom “is a
crime of the same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to
destroy an infant, a child, or a man”?[34]
I cannot be too emphatic upon these points. It is of no use to
say that I am straining them to conclusions that are forced and
unwarranted. That these are in accordance with fact must be allowed
by every medical man at all familiar with the practice of his
profession, and indeed by every layman who will for a moment think
of the matter. It is one of the simplest common sense, as well as in
unison with the teachings of the purest science, and its results are
already showing themselves in the ill health of our women and in the
gradual dying out of our native population, just as some of the means
for preventing pregnancy are evincing themselves to the practised
eye in the dyspepsias, the unsteady step, gray hairs, and premature
decrepitude of many of our men.
In pointing out the physical diseases resulting to woman from
intentional abortion, I instanced insanity, of which at that time
several cases, thus occasioned, had come under my observation. To
this, as to some other of my views concerning the causation of
insanity in women, many psychologists have been inclined to take
exception. One of the most influential asylum superintendents in the
country (I refer to Dr. John P. Gray, of the New York State Asylum at
Utica), has lately given most emphatic approval of my views. In his
Report for the present year, just published, Dr. Gray devotes several
pages to this special question, taking occasion to speak very kindly
of “Why Not?” and using the following impressive language: “All
must admit the corrupting tendency of vice in any of its shades,
and especially when in intent or fact it seeks to thwart, by actual
violence, the beneficent laws of our being, and turn the purposes
of God, in ordering the ‘holy estate of matrimony,’ into the basest
species of prostitution. The existence of this horrid, unnatural,
secret crime, carried out, often, by the mutual consent and
connivance of husbands and wives, is not new. Its terrible prevalence
has steadily increased. I have for many years received and treated
patients whose insanity was directly traceable to this crime, through
its moral and physical effects.” And again: “I need not here discuss
at length the disorders consequent on this crime, in any and all of
its shades, but I deem it no less than my duty to declare, as already
stated, that it is, directly and indirectly, one of the causes of
insanity.”[35] This being the case, well might I preface one of my
earlier works by the following quotation from Granville’s Treatise
on Sudden Death: “Let the legislator and moralist look to it, for as
sure as there is in any nation a hidden tampering with infant life,
whether frequent or occasional, systematic or accidental, so sure
will the chastisement of the Almighty fall on such a nation.”[36]
I pass now to discuss these rights of the husband still further, and
to see whether they are unaccompanied, or not, by obligations which
should control them.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, September, 1866, p. 191.
New York Monthly Medical Journal, November, 1866, p. 156.
[33] Prize Essay of the American Medical Association, p. 79.
[34] Percival. Medical Ethics, p. 79.
[35] Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Managers of the New York
State Lunatic Asylum, pp. 33 to 37. Legislative Document. Albany,
1867.
[36] Criminal Abortion in America. Philadelphia, 1860. Title-page.
V. ARE THESE RIGHTS ABSOLUTE, OR RECIPROCAL, WITH DUTIES?
In the first place, let us see under what circumstances the rights I
have now described were assumed, and whether it was by the power of
the strong over the weak, or from a belief that woman was in reality
inferior to man, as well as physically not as fully developed, or
whether it was from a belief that such assumption was intended by the
Creator, and inculcated both by natural and revealed religion, and in
the latter instance by both the old and the newer Scripture.
Probably all these arguments have weighed, but stronger than these
even has been possession, that nine points of the law. Custom, handed
down from father to son, from time immemorial, has sanctioned what
so often results in tyranny. Appeals are made to Genesis, to the
Proverbs, and to the Acts of the Apostles, and it is asserted that
the inferiority of woman is thus proved to a demonstration, just as
the Bible has been made to evidence the divinity of the institution
of slavery, and to disprove—for some still assert this—the truths
of geology, astronomy, and all other natural science. If no man
should put asunder those whom God has joined, we must confess, in all
conjugal matters at least, their full equality; and in relinquishing
the title of lord and master, we must also waive the point of
unreasoning and blind obedience, and so shall we gain the more
complete obedience where such is really to be desired.