When a girl is guilty of a mésalliance, it is sometimes said in extenuation that “she has married a man of noble disposition; and it is better to marry a poor, ignorant man, with a noble disposition, than a rich man who is selfish and vicious.” If the alternative was a positive one, yes, but there is no need to make a choice between these characters. Men of refined habits and manners 118 and good education may also have noble dispositions; and poor, ill-bred men have not always noble ones; at any rate, a good woman will always find in her own class just as good men as she will find in a class below her own.
All this danger is evident to parents. They know how fleeting passion and fancy are; and they rightly conceive that it is their duty by all possible means to prevent their daughter making an unworthy marriage. How far parents may lawfully interfere is a question not yet decided, nor yet easy to decide. The American idea of marriage is, theoretically, that every soul finds its companion soul, and lives happily ever after; and in this romantic search for a companion soul, young girls are allowed to roam about society, just when their instincts are the strongest and their reason the weakest. The French theory—to which the English is akin somewhat—is that a mother’s knowledge is better than a girl’s fancy; and that the wisdom that has hitherto chosen her teachers, physicians, spiritual guides, and companions, that has guided her through sickness 119 and health, is not likely to fail in selecting the man most suitable for her husband.
This latter theory supposes women to love naturally any personable man who is their own, and who is kind to them; that is, if she has a virgin heart, and comes in this state from her lessons to her marriage duties. The American theory supposes girls to love by sympathy, and through soul attraction and personal attraction; consequently, our girls are let loose early—too early—to choose among a variety of Wills and Franks and Charlies; and the natural result is a great number of what are called “love matches” to which it must be acknowledged mésalliances are too often the corollary. Between these two theories, it is impossible to make a positive selection; for the bad of each is so bad, and the good of each so good that both alike are capable of the most unqualified praise and blame. It may, however, be safely asserted that the confidence every American girl has in her own power to choose her own husband helps to lessen the danger and to keep things right. For an honorable girl may be trusted with her own honor; and 120 a dishonorable one, amid a number to choose from, may peradventure fare better than she deserves; for Fortune does sometimes bring in the bark that is not steered.
Most girls make mésalliances in sheer thoughtlessness, or through self-will, or in that youthful passion for romance which thinks it fine to lose their world for love. Foolish novels are as often to blame for their social crime as foolish men,—novels which are an apotheosis of love at any cost! Love against every domestic and social obligation! Love in spite of all prudent thought of meat and money matters! Love in a cottage, and nightingales and honeysuckles to pay the rent! And if parents object to their daughter marrying ruin, then they are represented as monsters of cruelty; while the girl who flies stealthily to her misery, and breaks every moral tie to do so, is idealized into an angel of truth and suffering.
In real life what are parents to do with a daughter whose romantic folly has made her marry their groom or their footman? We have outlived the inexorable passions of 121 our ancestors, and their undying loves and hatreds, sacrifices and revenges. Our social code tolerates no passion swallowing up all the rest; and we must be content with a decent expression of feeling. What their daughter has done they cannot undo; nor can they relieve her from the social consequences of her act. She has chosen to put their servant above and before them, and to humiliate her whole family, that she may please her low-born lover and herself, and she has therefore no right to any more consideration than she has given. Her parents may not cease to love her, and they may spare her all reproaches, knowing that her punishment is certain; but they cannot, for the sake of their other children, treat her socially above the station she has chosen. She has become the wife of a servant, and they cannot accept her husband as their equal nor can they insult their friends by introducing him to them. How wretched is the position she has put herself in; for if the man she married be naturally a low man, he will probably drag her to his level by the “grossness of his nature.” If she 122 be a woman of strong character she may lift her husband upward, but she accepts such a labor at the peril of her own higher life. And if she finds it impossible either to lift him to her level or to sink herself to his level, what then remains? Life-long regrets, bitter shame and self-reproach, or else a forcible setting of herself free. But the latter remedy carries desperation instead of hope with it. Never can she quite regain her maiden place, and an aura of a doubtful kind influences every effort of her future life.
After all, though men have not the reputation of being romantic, it is certain that in the matter of unequal marriage, they are more frequently imprudent than women. There is some possibility of lifting a low-born woman to the level of a cultivated man, and men dare this possibility far more frequently than is generally supposed. Perhaps after a long season they find the fine ladies with whom they have flirted and danced a weariness; and in this mood they are suddenly taken with some simple, unfashionable girl, who does not know either 123 how to dress, or flirt, or dance. So they make the grave error of thinking that because fine ladies are insupportable, women who are not fine ladies will be sweet and companionable. But if the one be a blank, will that prove the other a prize? The dulness or folly of a polite woman is bad enough; but the dulness and folly of an uneducated woman is worse. Very soon they find this out, and then comes indifference, neglect, cruelty, and all the misery that attends two ruined lives.
The result of unequal marriage in both sexes is certain wretchedness, and this verdict is not to be altered by its exceptions, however brilliant they may seem to be. For when a man of means and education marries an uneducated girl of low birth, or a woman of apparent culture and high social position marries her servant, and the marriages are reasonably happy, then it may be positively said, “There has been no mésalliance.” The husband and wife were unequal only in their externals. The real characters of both must have been vulgar and naturally low and under-bred.
It is folly to talk of two beings unequally married “growing together,” or of “time welding their differences,” and making things comfortable. Habit indeed reconciles us to much suffering, and to many trials; but an unequal marriage is a trial no one has any business to have. It is without excuse, and therefore without comfort. When the Almighty decrees us a martyrdom he blends his peace and consolations therewith; but when we torture ourselves our sufferings rage like a conflagration. Perhaps the chain may be worn, as a tight shoe is worn into shape until it no longer lames; but oh, the misery in the process! And even in such case the resigned sufferer has no credit in his patience; quite the contrary, for he knows as well as others know, though submission to what God ordains is the very height of energy and nobility, submission to the mistakes we ourselves make is the very climax of cowardice and weakness.