MARRIAGES OF REASON OR LOVE-MATCHES?
The number of parents who believe that their infallible wisdom is a better guide matrimonial than their daughters’ choice inspired by Love, is still so large that it is worth while to add a few words in the hope of removing this obstacle to the universal rule of Cupid. Let Mrs. Lynn-Linton be their spokeswoman. “If it seems a horrible thing,” she says, in The Girl of the Period, “to marry a young girl without her consent, or without any more knowledge of the man with whom she is to pass her life than can be got by seeing him once or twice in formal family conclave, it seems quite as bad to let our women roam about the world at the age when their instincts are strongest and their reason weakest—open to the flatteries of fools and fops—the prey of professed lady-killers—objects of loverlike attentions by men who mean absolutely nothing but the amusement of making love—the subjects for erotic anatomists to study at their pleasure. Who among our girls after twenty carries an absolutely untouched heart to the man she marries?”
No doubt there is force in these remarks: but they do not apply to the Girl of the Period. They apply only to the girl brought up on the old system of being left in complete ignorance regarding man and his wicked ways of heartless and meaningless flattery. But modern girls are not such fools as some people would think them. Tell them that men are only amusing themselves; a hint will suffice: and the man who imagines himself a “lady-killer” will suddenly find himself a victim of counter-flirtation and a butt of feminine sarcasm.
Tell girls, furthermore, not that every man loves his wife, but that many hate and maltreat their unfortunate spouse. This will make them cautious. Tell them that Love is not an absolute but a tentative passion, and that they must not yield to the first apparent symptoms and throw their hearts away frivolously. Tell them, above all, that men who are extremely gallant and complimentary, without being in the least embarrassed, are always insincere and sometimes dangerous: because a man who is truly in Love is always embarrassed. Tell them a few more such pessimistic truths about men, instead of allowing them to perish through optimistic ignorance, and the objections against free choice urged by Mrs. Lynn-Linton will vanish like vapour in sunlight. English and American girls are quite able to take care of themselves, because they are allowed to read all sorts of books, and therefore to know the world as it is. And if any one says that such knowledge has rendered English and American girls less delicate, less sweet and pure, than French and German hothouse buds, he utters an unmitigated falsehood.
Advocates of so-called “wisdom” marriages are fond of pointing out cases of unhappy married life, based originally on free Choice. But free Choice by no means always implies Love. Its motives are often pecuniary, or social; and in these cases the marriage actually comes under the head of “wisdom marriages,” whose champions are thus boxing their own ears. Besides, we must remember Byron’s words, that “many a man thinks he marries by choice who only marries by accident.” If a man marries his Rosaline before he has met his Juliet, he has only himself or his bad luck to blame, not Love.
The frequency with which runaway “love-matches” end unhappily, is adduced as another argument in favour of wisdom marriages. Two things are here forgotten: that in nineteen runaway matches out of twenty, the predominant passion is frivolity, not Love; and that quite a considerable proportion of unions not preceded by an elopement end unhappily; but being less romantic they are not so much talked about.
“Wisdom” marriages based on parental choice are those which have prevailed in the past: and we have seen how beautifully they coincided with woman’s degradation, ignorance, and social debasement.
Wisdom marriages are incompatible with Courtship, which becomes a superfluous preliminary to marriage. Modern methods of Courtship and engagement ordinarily prolong this period to about a year or two. This is the honeymoon, not of marriage, but of life itself, the time when earth is a paradise. During these two years the soul makes more progress in refinement, maturity, and insight than during any other decade of life. Shall all this happiness, all this refining influence, be thrown away with Love?
Compatibility of temper is the most important of all prerequisites to a happy marriage. Should Love be allowed to find out during Courtship if there is such a compatibility, before it is too late, or shall the inadequate judgment of parents unite two souls with as much mutual affinity as oil and water?
Self-sacrifice for their children is considered the noblest of parental traits. Were Schopenhauer right in claiming that in Love-matches the parents sacrifice their individual happiness to the wellbeing of their children—would not this be an additional motive for abhorring wisdom marriages, in which the interests of the parents alone are consulted?