CONJUGAL AFFECTION AND ROMANTIC LOVE
Perhaps the main reason why no one has anticipated me in writing a book showing that Love is an exclusively modern sentiment, and tracing its gradual development, is because no distinction has been commonly made between Romantic Love and Conjugal Affection, though they differ as widely as maternal love and friendship. The occurrence of noble examples of conjugal attachment as far back as Homer has obscured the fact that pre-nuptial or Romantic Love is almost as modern as the telegraph, the railway, and the electric light.
Two thousand and four hundred years ago the Greek philosopher Empedokles taught that there are four elements—fire, air, water, earth—which remain unchanged amid all combinations. Chemistry has long since shown that these supposed elements are compounds, and that the number of real elements is much larger.
In a similar way the tender or family emotions have been gradually distinguished from one another. Among the ancient Greeks φιλότης meant both friendship and sexual love, which, as we have seen, they strangely confounded, both in theory and in practice. To-day we distinguish not only between friendship and sexual love, but between the two phases of sexual love—Romantic and Conjugal Affection—the former of which was unknown to the Greeks. We do this not only because, as in the case of the chemical elements, our knowledge has become more precise and subtle, but because these emotions have been gradually developed, and have assumed different characteristics, so that it would be difficult at present to mistake one for the other.
As regards the difference between Conjugal and Romantic Love, however, the current conceptions are not yet so clear and definite; many good folks being, in fact, inclined to frown upon the suggestion that there is any such difference. Yet it is useless for them to endeavour, with well-meant hypocrisy, to impress upon the young the notion that Love is unchangeable, since no one who keeps his eyes open can help noticing how differently married couples behave from lovers. In marriage the dazzling blue flame of Romantic Love gradually grows smaller and dies away. But the coals may retain their glow and perchance keep the heart warmer than the former flickering flames of Love.
There is, indeed, a great moral advantage to be gained by frankly acknowledging that Love undergoes a metamorphosis in wedlock. It breaks the sting of cynicism. For if we are told that “marriage is the sunset of love,” or that “the only sure cure for love is marriage,” we may calmly retort, “What of it?” When the romantic passion subsides, its place is taken by another group of emotions, equally noble and conducive to the welfare of society. It is not an annihilation of anything, but simply a change: losing some pleasures, but gaining others in their place; getting rid of some pains to be burdened with others. Love’s metamorphosis into conjugal affection is like that of a wild rose into its red berry. Though less fragrant and lovely than the rose, the berry is almost as warm in colour, endures longer, and brings forth fresh plants to adorn future seasons.
Similes, however, are not arguments; and it behoves us therefore, for the benefit of bachelors and old maids, and of married folks who never were in love, to point out definitely wherein conjugal differs from Romantic Love; which at the same time will explain why conjugal affection was able to exist so many centuries before Romantic Love.
In preceding pages a fragmentary attempt has been made to characterise Love, and to show how its growth was impeded through the inferior social and intellectual status of women and the absolute chaperonage of the young. Maidens and youths had no opportunity to meet and become acquainted. Barter, and considerations of rank and expediency, took the place of affection, and parental authority that of individual choice. There was no prolonged courtship, hence no jealousy of rivals, no female coyness and coquetry, no alternating hopes and doubts, no monopoly of mutual admiration, no ecstatic adoration, sympathetic sharing of lovers’ joys and griefs, or pride of conquest and possession.
Conjugal affection, on the other hand, was much less retarded in its growth by such artificial arrangements, the outcome of strong man’s brutal selfishness. Polygamy was the chief impediment; but as soon as woman became sufficiently “emancipated” to claim a husband of her own, the soil was ready for the growth of conjugal affection. In its early stages this form of affection must have been much more crude and simple than it is in modern society. In most instances it was probably little more than a mere superficial attachment, growing out of the habit of living together for some time; the husband being attached to his wife on account of the domestic comforts and ease she provided for him, and the wife to the husband very much as a dog is to his master, who, though cruel, yet takes care of and feeds him.
How crudely utilitarian the conjugal bond is among primitive men may be inferred from Mr. Wallace’s remarks already quoted as to the motives which guide the maidens of certain Amazon-valley tribes in choosing their husbands. There is, he says, “a trial of skill at shooting with the bow and arrow, and if the young man does not show himself a good marksman, the girl refuses him, on the ground that he will not be able to shoot fish and game enough for the family.”
With the ancient “classical” nations there were, unless the poets have strongly idealised their characters, examples of conjugal affection hardly differing from the most refined modern instances. Owing to the then prevalent contempt for the female mind, however, such cases cannot be accepted as fair samples of the “general article”; and they only allow us to infer that, as with Love and with genius, so with conjugal affection, there were some early perfect instances anticipating by many centuries the general course of emotional evolution.
In the dark and warlike mediæval ages Conjugal Love, on the woman’s side, was apparently little more, as a rule, than a sense of devotion to her husband based on her need of protection against barbarous enemies; and what it was on the husband’s side may be inferred from his stern and often tyrannic rule in his own house, which was calculated to breed in his wife and children fear but neither conjugal nor filial affection.
In modern Conjugal Affection the elements are as diverse and as variously intermingled as in Love, if not more so; and it would be as difficult to find two cases of conjugal love exactly alike as two human faces, or two leaves in a forest. One man cherishes his wife chiefly on account of the home comfort she provides—the neat and tasteful domestic interior, the well-cooked dinners, the economic attention to household affairs, etc. Another man’s pride in his spouse is based on her conversational skill, her diplomatic art of asserting her place among the upper ten in society, and of adorning her drawing-rooms with the presence of prominent people of the day. A third husband loves his wife for her artistic accomplishments or her personal charms. Still another, an author, is devoted to his spouse because she cleverly assists his labours by criticism and suggestion, and still more because she takes such a sympathetic interest in his creations, and really thinks that no one since Shakspere has written like her own dear Adolphus.
These and a thousand like circumstances, with their attendant feelings, enter into the highly complex group of emotions subsumed under the name of Conjugal Love. Yet, since any one of these feelings may be absent without extinguishing Conjugal Affection, they cannot be regarded as its essentials or framework, but only as colouring material.
Nor is that which is commonly regarded as the strongest of all cements between husband and wife—the common love of their children—to be accepted as the essence of conjugal love. For childless couples present many of the most remarkable cases of devotion, while in many other cases the children not only fail to rekindle the torch of love, but even arouse jealousies and ill-feeling between their parents by showing a special preference for one or the other. Nevertheless, though not absolutely essential to conjugal love, the common parental feeling is one of its most important and constant ingredients; and there is none of its tributaries which adds more to the deep current of connubial bliss. It enables the parents to enjoy once more the simple pleasures of life, to which they had grown callous; it brings back the peculiarly delicious memories of their own childhood and youth; enables the father to discover his former sweetheart renewed in his daughter, and the mother her former lover in her son; while their common pride in the beauty or accomplishments of the children supplies them with a never-failing topic of conversation and source of sympathy.
And this suggests what must be regarded as the real kernel of conjugal attachment—a perennial mutual sympathy regarding not only the affairs of their children but every other domestic affair—in other words, a complete and necessary harmony of feelings and interests. The accent rests on the word necessary; for it is this feeling of necessary communion of interests that distinguishes conjugal affection from Love and from friendship, in both of which there is a mutual sympathy, but not so far-reaching and inevitable. A lover’s fame or disgrace may be keenly felt by his sweetheart or his friend, yet society does not associate them with the other’s reputation or disgrace; and if the infamy is too great, they can easily sever their bond, without leaving a spot on their own good name. Not so with husband and wife. His promotion is her honour, and his fall her humiliation; for they are inseparably associated in the public mind, and cannot be parted except through divorce, which is equivalent to social suicide. Therefore theirs is “one glory an’ one shame,” and their destiny to “share each other’s gladness and weep each other’s tears.”
To make this matrimonial harmony complete, it is necessary that there should be a real sense of companionship, i.e. common tastes and topics of conversation. “Unlikeness may attract,” says Mill, “but it is likeness which retains; and in proportion to the likeness is the suitability of the individuals to give each other a happy life.” The opposite qualities by which lovers are often attracted are chiefly of a physical nature. Where the mental differences are great—where he, for instance, is fond of books and music, while she wishes his books and his piano in Siberia; or she fond of parties, pictures, and theatres, and he bored to death by them: in such cases genuine Romantic Love cannot survive a few weeks of constant companionship, and hopes of nuptial bliss must end in disappointment.