Part 6

It may be hoped that when divorce is more easily obtainable, the majority of marriages will be far happier than they are now. Half the unhappiness of married life arises from the too great feeling of security which grows out of the indissoluble character of the tie. The husband is very different from the lover; the wife from the betrothed; the ready attention, the desire to please, the eager courtesy, which characterised the lover disappear when possession has become certain; the daintiness, the gaiety, the attractiveness which marked the betrothed, are no longer to be seen in the wife whose position is secure; in society a lover may be known by his attention to his betrothed, a husband by his indifference to his wife. If divorce were the result of jarring at home, married life would very rapidly change; hard words, harshness, petulance, would be checked where those who had won the love desired to keep it, and attractiveness would no longer be dropped on the threshold of the home. Here, too, Shelley's words are well worth weighing: "The present system of restraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner, or the welfare of their mutual offspring; those of less generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of the children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery: they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble, holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse; they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this conviction were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity" (Notes on "Queen Mab"). To those who had thought over the subject carefully, it was no surprise to hear Mr. Moncure Conway say--in a debate on marriage at the Dialectical Society--that in Illinois, U.S.A., where there is great facility of divorce, the marriages were exceptionally happy. The reason was not far to seek.

Dealing elsewhere with this same injurious effect of overcertainty on the relations of married people to each other, Mr. Moncure Conway writes as follows:--"In England we smilingly walk our halls of Eblis, covering the fatal wound; but our neighbours across the Channel are frank. Their moralists cannot blot out the proverb that 'Marriage is the suicide of love.' Is it any truer here than there that, as a general thing, the courtesies of the courtship survive in the marriage? 'Who is that domino walking with George?' asks Grisette No. 1, as, reported by _Charivari_. 'Why,' returns Grisette No. 2, 'do you not walk behind them, and listen to what they say?' 'I have done so, and they do not say a word.' 'Ah, it is his wife.' But what might be George's feeling if he knew his wife might leave him some morning? 'If conserve of roses be frequently eaten.' they say in Persia, 'it will produce a surfeit.' The thousands of husbands and wives yawning in each other's faces at this moment need not go so far for their proverb. If it be well, as it seems to me to be, that this most intimate relation between man and woman should be made as durable as the object for which it is formed will admit, surely the bond should be real to the last, a bond of kindliness, thoughtfulness, actual helpfulness. So long as the strength of the bond lies simply in the disagreeable concomitants of breaking it, so long as it is protected by the very iron hardness which makes it gall and oppress, what need is there of the reinforcement of it by the cultivation of minds, the preservation of good temper, and considerate behaviour? Love is not quite willing to accept the judge's mace for his arrow. When the law no longer supplies husband or wife with a cage, each must look to find and make available what resources he or she has for holding what has been won. We may then look for sober second thoughts both before and after marriage. Love, from so long having bandaged eyes, will be all eye. Every real attraction will be stimulated when all depends upon real attraction. When the conserve becomes fatiguing, it will be refreshed by a new flavour, not by a certificate. From the hour when a thought of obligation influences either party to it, the marriage becomes a prostitution." ("The Earthward Pilgrimage," pp. 289, 290, 291).

A remarkable instance of the permanence of unions dissoluble at pleasure is to be found related by Robert Dale Owen, in an article entitled "Marriage and Placement," which appeared in the _Free Inquirer_ of May 28, 1831. It deals with the unions between the sexes in the Haytian Republic, and the facts therein related are well worthy of serious attention. Mr. Owen writes:--

"Legal marriage is common in St. Domingo as elsewhere. Prostitution, too, exists there as in other countries. But this institution of _placement_ is found nowhere, that I know of, but among the Haytians.

"Those who choose to marry, are united, as in other countries, by a priest or magistrate. Those who do not choose to marry, and who equally shrink from the mercenary embrace of prostitution, are (in the phraseology of the island) _placés_: that is, literally translated, _placed._

"The difference between _placement_ and marriage is, that the former is entered into without any prescribed form, the latter with the usual ceremonies: the former is dissoluble at a day's warning, the latter is indissoluble except by the vexatious and degrading formalities of divorce; the former is a tacit social compact, the latter a legal compulsory one; in the former the woman gives up her name and her property; in the latter, she retains both.

"Marriage and placement are, in Hayti, equally respectable, or, if there be a difference, it is in favour of placement; and in effect ten placements take place in the island for one marriage. _Pétion_, the Jefferson of Hayti, * sanctioned the custom by his approval and example. _Boyer_, his successor, the president, did the same; ** and by far the largest portion of the respectable inhabitants have imitated their presidents, and are _placed_, not married. The children of the placed have, in every particular, the same legal rights and the same standing as those born in wedlock.

* "It may suffice, in illustration of Pétion's character, to quote the touching inscription found on his tomb--'Here lies Pétion, who enjoyed for twelve years absolute power, and during that period never caused one tear to flow.'"

** "Boyer's resolution in this matter is the more remarkable, as he has been urged and pestered to submit to the forms of marriage. Grégoire, archbishop of Blois, and who is well known for the perseverance and benevolence with which he has, for a long series of years, advocated the cause of the African race, wrote to the president of Hayti in the most urgent terms, pressing upon him the virtue--the necessity, for his salvation--of conforming to the sacrament of marriage. To such a degree did the good old archbishop carry his intermeddling officiousness, that when Boyer mildly but firmly declined availing himself of his grace's advice, a rupture was the consequence, greatly to the sorrow of the president, who had ever entertained the greatest respect and affection for his ecclesiastical friend."

"I imagine I hear from the clerical supporters of orthodoxy one general burst of indignation at this sample of national profligacy; at this contemning of the laws of God and man; at this escape from the Church's ceremonies and the ecclesiastical blessing. I imagine I hear the question sneeringly put, how long these same _respectable_ connections commonly last, and how many dozen times they are changed in the course of a year.

"Gently, my reverend friends! it is natural you should find it wrong that men and women dispense with your services and curtail your fees in this matter. But it is neither just nor proper, that because no prayers are said, and no fees paid, you should denounce the custom as a profligate one. Learn (as I did the other day from an intelligent French gentleman who had remained some time on the island)--learn, that _although there are ten times as many placed as married, yet there are actually fewer separations among the former than divorces among the latter_. If constancy, then, is to be the criterion of morality, these same profligate unions--that is, unions unprayed-for by the priest and unpaid for to him--are ten times as moral as the religion-sanctioned institution of marriage.

"But this is not all. It is a fact notorious in Hayti, that libertinism is far more common among the married than among the placed. The explanatory cause is easily found. A placement secures to the consenting couple no _legal_ right over one another. They remain together, as it were, on good behaviour. Not only positive tyranny or downright viragoism, but petulant peevishness or selfish ill humour, are sufficient causes of separation. As such, they are avoided with sedulous care. The natural consequence is, that the unions are usually happy, and that each being comfortable at home, is not on the search for excitement abroad. In indissoluble marriage, on the contrary, if the parties should happen to disagree, their first jarrings are unchecked by considerations of consequences. A husband may be as tyrannical as to him seems good; he remains a lord and master still; a wife may be as pettish as she pleases; she does not thereby forfeit the rights and privileges of a wife. Thus, ill humour is encouraged by being legalized, and the natural results ensue, alienation of the heart, and sundering of the affections. The wife seeks relief in fashionable dissipation; the husband, perhaps, in the brutalities of a brothel.

"But, aside from all explanatory theories, the fact is, as I have stated it, viz.: that (taking the proportion of each into account) _there are ten legal separations of the married, for one voluntary separation of the placed_. If anyone doubts it, let him inquire for himself, and he will doubt no longer.

"What say you to that fact, my reverend friends? How consorts it with your favourite theory, that man is a profligate animal, a desperately wicked creature? that, but for your prayers and blessings, the earth would be a scene of licentiousness and excess? that human beings remain together, only because you have helped to tie them? that there is no medium between priestly marriage and unseemly prostitution?

"Does this fact open your eyes a little on the real state of things to which we heterodox spirits venture to look forward? Does it assist in explaining to you how it is that we are so much more willing than you to entrust the most sacred duties to moral rather than legal keeping?

"You cannot imagine that a man and a woman, finding themselves suited to each other, should agree, without your interference, to become companions; that he should remove to her plantation, or she to his, as they found it most convenient; that the connection should become known to their friends without the agency of banns, and be respected, even though not ostentatiously announced in a newspaper. Yet all this happens in Hayti, without any breach of propriety, without any increase of vice; but, on the contrary, much to the benefit of morality, and the discouragement of prostitution. It happens among the white as well as the coloured population; and the president of the country gives it his sanction, in his own person.

"Do you still ask me--accustomed as you are to consider virtue the offspring of restrictions--do you still ask me, what the checks are that produce and preserve such a state of things? I reply, good feeling and public opinion. Continual change is held to be disreputable; where sincere and well-founded affection exists, it is not desired; and as there is no pecuniary inducement in forming a placement, these voluntary unions are seldom ill-assorted."

Where social anarchy is feared, facts like these are worth pages of argument. If the Haytians are civilised enough for this more moral kind of marriage, why should Europeans be on a lower level? For it should not be forgotten that the experiment was tried in St. Domingo under great disadvantages, and these unlegalised unions have yet proved more permanent than those tied with all due formality and tightness.

It may be urged: if divorce is to be so easily attainable, why should there be a marriage contract at all? Both as regards the pair immediately concerned, and as regards the children who may result from the union, a clear and definite contract seems to me to be eminently desirable. It is not to be wished that the union of those on whom depends the next generation should be carelessly and lightly entered into; the dignity and self-recollection which a definite compact implies are by no means to be despised, when it is remembered how grave and weighty are the responsibilities assumed by those who are to give to the State new citizens, and to Humanity new lives, which must be either a blessing or a curse. But the dignity of such a course is not its only, nor, indeed, its main, recommendation. More important is the absolute necessity that the conditions of the union of the two adult lives should be clearly and thoroughly understood between them. No wise people enter into engagements of an important and durable character without a written agreement; a definite contract excludes all chance of disagreement as to the arrangements made, and prevents misunderstandings from arising. A verbal contract may be misunderstood by either party; lapse of time may bring about partial forgetfulness; slight disagreements may result in grave quarrels. If the contract be a written one, it speaks for itself, and no doubt can arise which cannot be reasonably settled. All this is readily seen where ordinary business partnerships are concerned, but some--unconsciously rebounding from the present immoral system, and plunging into the opposite extreme--consider that the union in marriage of man and woman is too tender and sacred a thing to be thus dealt with as from a business point of view. But it must be remembered that while love is essential to true and holy marriage, marriage implies more than love; it implies also a number of new relations to the outside world which--while men and women live in the world--cannot be wholly disregarded. Questions of house, of money, of credit, &c., necessarily arise in connection with the dual home, and these cannot be ignored by sensible men and women. The contract does not touch with rude hands the sensitive plant of love; it concerns itself only with the garden in which the plant grows, and two people can no more live on love alone than a plant can grow without earth around its roots. A contract which removes occasions of disagreement in business matters shelters and protects the love from receiving many a rude shock. "Society will ere long," said Mr. Conway, "be glad enough to assimilate contracts between man and woman to contracts between partners in business. Then love will dispense alike with the bandage on its eyes and the constable's aid." Some pre-nuptial arrangement seems necessary which shall decide as to the right of inheritance of the survivor of the married pair. As common property will grow up during the union, such property should pass to the survivor and the children, and until some law be made which shall prevent parents from alienating from their children the whole of their property, a provision guarding their inheritance should find its place in the proposed deed. A definite marriage contract is also desirable for the sake of the children who may proceed from the union. Society has a right to demand from those who bring new members into it, some contract which shall enable it to compel them to discharge their responsibilities, if they endeavour to avoid them. If all men and women were perfect, no contract would be necessary, any more than it would be necessary to have laws against murder and theft; but while men and women are as they are, some compulsive power against evil-doers must be held in reserve by the law. Society is bound to guard the interests of the helpless children, and this can only be done by a clear and definite arrangement which makes both father and mother responsible for the lives they have brought into existence, and which shows the parentage in a fashion which could go into a law-court should any dispute arise. Again, if there were no contract, in whom would the guardianship of the children be vested, in case of wrongdoing of either parent, of death, or of separation? Suppose a brutal father: his wife leaves him and takes the children with her; how is she to keep them if he claims and takes them? If she has the legal remedy of divorce, the Court awards her the guardianship and she is safe from molestation. If a wife elope, taking the children with her, is the father to have no right to the guardianship of his sons and daughters, but to remain passive while they pass under the authority of another man? Application for divorce would guard him from such a wrong. If the parents separate, and both desire to have the children, how can such contest be decided, save by appeal to an impartial law? Marriage, as before urged, is a partnership, and where common duties, common interests, and common responsibilities grow up, there it is necessary that either party shall have some legal means of redress in case of the wrongdoing of the other.

To those who, on the other hand, object to facility of divorce being granted at all, it may fairly be asked that they should not forget that to place divorce within the reach of people, is not the same as compelling them to submit to it. Those who prefer to regard marriage as indissoluble could as readily maintain the indissolubility of their own wedded tie under a law which permitted divorce, as they can do at the present time. But those who think otherwise, and are unhappy in their marriages, would then be able to set themselves free. No happy marriage would be affected by the change, for the attainability of divorce would only be welcomed by those whose marriage was a source of misery and of discord; the contented would be no less content, while the unhappy would be relieved of their unhappiness; thus the change would injure no one, while it would benefit many.

It is a pity that there is no way of obtaining the general feminine view of the subject of marriage and divorce; women who study, who form independent opinions are--so far as my experience goes--unanimous in their desire to see the English laws altered; advanced thinkers of both sexes are generally, one might say universally, in favour of change. To those who think that women, if polled to-morrow, would vote for a continuance of the present state of things, may be recommended the following passage from Mrs. Mill: "Women, it is said, do not desire, do not seek what is called their emancipation. On the contrary, they generally disown such claims when made in their behalf, and fall with _acharnement_ upon any one of themselves who identifies herself with their common cause. Supposing the fact to be true in the fullest extent ever asserted, if it proves that European women ought to remain as they are, it proves exactly the same with respect to Asiatic women; for they too, instead of murmuring at their seclusion, and at the restraint imposed upon them, pride themselves on it, and are astonished at the effrontery of women who receive visits from male acquaintances, and are seen in the streets unveiled. Habits of submission make men as well as women servile-minded. The vast population of Asia do not desire or value, probably would not accept, political liberty, nor the savages of the forest, civilization; which does not prove that either of those things is undesirable for them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of degradation, by deadening the part of their nature which would resist it. And the case of women is, in this respect, even a peculiar one, for no other inferior caste that we have heard of have been taught to regard their degradation as their honour." Mr. Conway considers that changed circumstances would rapidly cause women to be favourable to the proposed alteration: "Am I told," he remarks, "that woman dreads the easy divorce? Naturally, for the prejudices and arrangements of society have not been adapted to the easy divorce. Let her know that, under the changed sentiment which shall follow changed law, she will meet with sympathy where now she would encounter suspicion; let her know that she will, if divorced from one she loves not, have only her fair share of the burdens entailed by the original mistake; and she who of all persons suffers most if the home be false will welcome the freer marriage" ("The Earthward Pilgrimage," p. 289).

Both in theory and in practice advanced thinkers have claimed facility of divorce. John Milton, in his essay on "Divorce," complains that "the misinterpreting of Scripture... hath changed the blessing of matrimony not seldom into a familiar and co-inhabiting mischiefe; at least into a drooping and disconsolate household captivitie, without refuge or redemption" (p. 2), and in his Puritan fashion he remarks that because of this "doubtles by the policy of the devill that gracious ordinance becomes insupportable," so that men avoid it and plunge into debauchery. Arguing that marriage is not to be regarded merely as a legitimate kind of sexual intercourse, but rather as a union of mind and feeling, Milton says: "That indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangable, hindring and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugall society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent" (p. 5). Luther, before Milton, held the same liberal views. Mary Wolstonecraft acted on the same theory in her own life, and her daughter was united to the poet Shelley while Shelley's first wife was living, no legal divorce having severed the original marriage. Richard Carlile's second marriage was equally illegal. In our own days the union of George Henry Lewes and George Eliot has struck the key-note of the really moral marriage. Mary Wolstonecraft was unhappy in her choice, but in all the other cases the happiest results accrued. It needs considerable assurance to brand these great names with immorality, as all those must do who denounce as immoral unions which are at present illegal.