ROMANCE IN CONJUGAL LOVE
Horwicz places the essence of Conjugal Love in the feeling of being indissolubly united; and this agrees substantially with our conclusion that it lies in a necessary mutual Sympathy concerning every affair of vital interest. Now if this obligato Sympathy is facilitated by a communion of tastes, as just suggested, there is no reason why conjugal life should not retain some of the other elements which constitute the charm of Romantic Love. Novelists and dramatists will perhaps continue to avoid wedded life as a theme because it lacks the plot-interest, the uncertainty, and the consequent Mixed Moods of pre-nuptial Love. Emotional Hyperbole, too, will rarely survive the honeymoon, for, as Addison remarks, “When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.” Yet a woman, too, is not such a bad thing after all, if you know how to manage her. Jealousy is a trait of Romantic Love that is only too apt to survive in marriage. By a judicious use of its sting a neglected wife can bring her husband back to her feet. But it is a double-edged tool, dangerous to toy with. The Pride of Conquest becomes changed into Pride of Possession or a vain feeling of Proprietorship, which will continue so long as the husband or the wife retains those self-sacrificing qualities which distinguished them during Courtship—which, however, rarely happens. Where possession is assured and sanctioned by law, Coyness is of course out of the question; yet a clever woman can by a judicious adaptation of the arts of Flirtation do much to keep alive the glowing coals of former romantic passion. All she has to do is to devise some novel methods of fascinating the husband, and then keep him at a distance till he resumes the tricks of devoted Gallantry which had once made him such an acceptable lover.
It is the growing indifference to Gallantry, to the Desire to Please, active and passive, that is responsible for the usual absence of romance in conjugal life. And there seems to be a general ungallant consensus among writers, masculine and feminine, that women are more responsible for this state of affairs than men. “The reason,” says Swift, “why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.” Young ladies have, no doubt, greatly improved since the days of Swift; but in the vast majority of cases their device still is to learn a few superficial tricks of “culture,” and to practise the art of personal adornment, until they have caught a husband, and then to bid good-bye to all music, and art, and study, and improvement of the mind, as well as to the “bother” of attending to Personal Beauty while the husband only is about. As if it were not a thousand times more important to retain the husband’s romantic adoration and Gallantry, originally based on that beauty, than to enjoy the momentary admiration of a third person!
On this topic the German poet Bodenstedt has some remarks which show that, after all, the excessive Oriental Jealousy which forbids women to appear unveiled in public rests on a basis of common sense:—
“Just as it is possible to trace most absurdities to an originally quite reasonable idea, so not a few things may be said in favour of the Oriental custom which allows women to adorn themselves only for their husband, and to unveil their face only before him, while outside of the house it is their duty to appear veiled and in as unattractive a costume as possible. With us, it is well known, the opposite is true: at home the women devote little attention to their toilet, and only adorn themselves when they have company or go out visiting; in one word, they display their charms and their finery more to please others than their own husband,” etc.
Surely no one wishes our women to reserve their charms exclusively for their husbands. On the contrary, such a proceeding would be considered quite as unreasonable and selfish as to lock up a Titian or a Murillo in a room accessible to a single person only; but certainly the husband should not be entirely overlooked in his wife’s Desire to Please by her Personal Beauty. His Pride on seeing others admire her does not alone suffice to prolong his romantic adoration. Don’t be too sure, Amanda, that your husband is yours because you are married. He is yours in Law, but not in Love, unless you preserve your personal charms in his presence.
The fact that, whereas in Romantic Love men are superior to women; in conjugal life, on the other hand, woman’s love is commonly much deeper and more lasting than man’s, indicates in itself that marriages are made or marred by women. (For the sake of the lovely alliteration some writers would have said—against their conscience—that “marriages are made or marred by men;” but alliteration will have to be ignored in this place in favour of facts.) Before marriage, women are more beautiful and fascinating than men, wherefore men love them more ardently than they love the men. After marriage, it is the men who grow more beautiful, more manly, in body as well as in mind; hence it is but natural that their wives should love them more and more. So would wives be loved more and more if they did not so soon after thirty lose their physical charms, without trying, by reading books or at least the newspapers, to make themselves intellectual companions of their husbands, able to converse interestingly on various topics.
The old excuse that motherhood inevitably lessens woman’s charms is all nonsense. Married women at thirty are almost always handsomer than old maids of thirty. Women grow stout and clumsy, or thin and faded so soon, not because they are mothers, but because they are indifferent to the laws of health; because they refuse to go out to get fresh air and exercise, which would preserve the freshness of their complexion, the graceful contours of their bodies, and the elasticity of their gait. The morbid fondness for a hot-house atmosphere, and the horror of fresh air, draughts, and vigorous exercise, have done more to shorten man’s Love and woman’s Beauty than all other causes combined. The road to lasting Love is paved with lasting Beauty.
Inasmuch as Conjugal Affection was not—as might be naturally supposed—historically developed from Romantic Love, since it existed long before Romantic Love, the peculiarities of this later passion are not normally present in Conjugal Love. To what extent, however, they can be smuggled in, has just been shown; and it is one of the great social tasks of the future to make Conjugal and Romantic Love as much alike as possible: not by making the poetry of romance more prosaic, but by making the prose of conjugal life more poetic. But so long as Romantic Love is discouraged, Conjugal Affection, too, will of course be unable to borrow its unique charms. Hence an additional reason for facilitating the opportunities for Courtship and prolonging its duration.