Chapter X: What Is Wrong with Marriage?

Pages have been, and always will be, written about love and marriage, or marriage without love, or even marriage as a profession. All the roads of romance lead that way, all sorrows spring from its wrong vibrations, or because it never came. Whatever may be written or thought to the contrary, marriage will always remain the woman’s vocation.

When one sees a worn-out, middle-aged, woman taking notes at some tiresome political meeting and knows that she still has to write her report before she can struggle home in the small hours of the morning, one asks: “What has she gained, morally or financially? Would she not be far better at the fireside mending stockings?”

We have set out, one by one, the disadvantages under which women labour in the different professions they have taken up. What, after all, is safer or better than matrimony?

Not, however, the matrimony of our grandparents, but matrimony on the basis of _moral partnership_.

In the past century, when the wife was a kind of head servant and obeyed the master without questioning his authority, matrimony ran on easy enough lines. Now, when modern woman has a distinct personality of her own, unless both husband and wife have a high sense of duty and a feeling of partnership in the family they have created, their home-life cannot be a success.

And yet, with all its imperfections, on what better arrangement can they co-operate?

We have admitted that exceptional women, with unusually good health, can succeed in the professions, but certainly the majority are, both physically and morally, best fitted for married life. All the emotional qualities of women, the worrying over details, the love of order, the forgive-and-forget process of training children, are home virtues. The qualifications for success in business are entirely different.

And, for our generation, noting the moral upheaval and depravity following the war, there was never a time when clear-thinking women of high principles were more needed in home-life. There was never a period when young men had more need of the one love that will never betray them—the mother love.

We in England have so much that could never be found in France, but we now need to learn a few lessons from France with regard to family life.

Most unfortunately, the literature of France seldom depicts French home-life. Frenchmen read novels that, in frank contrast to their lives, scoff at marriage and extol adultery. Are we not, alas, following in the same tragic footsteps? It is more tragic for us, for we have not the same critical balance. Sentimental natures like ours do not reflect, and thus easily digest the tainted food which the French are critical enough to analyse. Those who have lived in France know that the Frenchman loves his home. It is his one ambition to have a home and family, and for this ambition he can depend on encouragement and support from all.

The English marriage system may be idealistic, but is it practical? The French system, with the bride’s dowry, has often been criticised and condemned, but there can be no question that on the whole it is far better for the bride. It is said that in France a man marries a woman for her dowry; which is sometimes true. Here, however, he often cannot marry for lack of it, which is worse. Just one or two hundred pounds a year which the French mother begins to collect when the daughter is born, and scarcely misses herself, would hardly tempt mercenary suitors, yet it makes all the difference to the girl. The provision of a dowry is rightly considered a sacred duty. To allow a daughter to marry without something of her own is looked upon as a disgrace, and even the poorest _concierge_ finds the wherewithal for her girl’s dot.

But apart from the fact that this small standby is an encouragement to early marriage, it raises the wife to the position of a “partner,” and as a partner she naturally has a right to know exactly how the household works. “I haven’t the least idea what my husband’s position is,” English wives have said. “I spend my allowance, but perhaps I ought not—who knows?” Imagine her feelings if her husband should suddenly announce that he is a bankrupt. She has contributed without knowing to the general useless expenditure. That could never happen in France where the woman takes her full share of management.

The French system differs from ours because money is given at the time of the daughter’s marriage instead of at the parent’s death, when it is often only half as valuable as it would have been in early life. Either the couples have married and set up for themselves, struggling along in a crippled way for want of a little extra money, or the young man, not daring to risk life for two on his first earnings, has married less happily than he would have done in earlier manhood.

Above all, a sense of humiliation prevents many women from marrying. Rather than be utterly dependent on a man, they prefer to work for themselves. “You feel so cheap taking a salary as if you were a housekeeper.” In a struggling or unhappy marriage, where too often the man resents every penny he doles out, the position is heartrending for a woman. Some, ashamed of not contributing to the home and unable to make ends meet out of their small allowance, supplement it by adopting a profession. This may help, but as already suggested, it often leads to all sorts of complications.

Girls should be encouraged to marry young, though not too young. It is dangerous for them to have gone too far on the road of independence, for success may make them so “difficult” in their choice that they wait too long and do not bother to marry at all. The Turkish proverb: “Friendless still he remaineth who demands a perfect friend,” may prove a wise warning in the matter of choosing a husband.

In an Empire like ours, where many of our young men have to emigrate, and cannot afford to take a wife out with them, there would be many obvious advantages in some system of dowries.

No French mother would let her son go to the end of the earth without a wife to look after him. She knows, “it is not good for man to be alone.” Nor does she relish the idea of daughters left to “wither on the virgin thorn.” Perhaps, even, she considers the daughter’s case more seriously than the son’s. For she has made up her mind that matrimony is not only the most natural, but the only path for a woman, and she leaves no stone unturned to bring about a marriage. Friends help, the family confessor helps; the conspiracy is an open secret, and no one thinks any the worse of her for her scheming.

Perhaps the best and happiest marriages are those arranged by brothers. When a girl marries her loved brother’s best friend, it is the safest way of making assurance doubly sure.

Between the too cautious system of the French and our careless methods, there ought to be a happy mean. We have been arguing by extremes. Could we not compromise and secure the advantages of both methods?

We have advocated early marriage. We who love children know what it means for them to have young parents. Early marriage, however, is a danger, unless the family ties are tightened. Would Englishmen and women ever take their mothers into their confidence, and act on advice, as the French do? Yet every great virtue has its own defects, and very often the Frenchwoman’s great love for her son will tempt her to cripple his best interests both in marriage and in his career. She may spoil his career by keeping him in France where he does not obtain either experience or promotion. She may force him to marry “well” when his heart is elsewhere, though an understanding and unselfish mother generally chooses a better wife than he would have found for himself.

There was a time when every Englishman scorned the idea of a dowry. Now, though not actually applauding the system, they do fall in love more easily with the daughter of rich parents, and, in these hard times, who can blame them? A woman naturally resents being married for money; but we have never seen any signs of rejoicing in those who have been left penniless in the hands of the best husband. That is more humiliating, not less.

The greatest advantage of the French system, which provides something for both husband and wife, is that a young couple _can_ marry, and their children will have the immense advantage of young and healthy parents. How, in these hard times for professional men, can one of these afford to marry before he is nearly forty, and this often results in his wife being left a young widow with a family, the children without the moral and material support of the father when he is most needed.

It is only a small sacrifice that these French parents make in slowly and steadily saving money for their daughters, and it seems incredible that for want of similar unselfishness, this country should eventually abound, as it must, in destitute women.