(1) Because it makes the idea and pursuit of marriage too hedonistic. Young people know that the state of mutual desire in which they find themselves before the union, is one of exquisite pleasure. As we have pointed out in Chapter V, it is probably the richest experience, as spirito-physiological sensations go, that anyone can have. They also know that the happy and masterly consummation of this desire is a source of enormous spiritual and physical well-being and delight. The parties to be united, therefore, can easily be persuaded, both immediately before consummation and for a brief period afterwards, that this exquisite pleasure and delight will be secured them permanently by a permanent contract, and marriage is pursued as a source of happiness. People are even in the habit of asking of a married couple, not “Are they successful?” not, “Are they breasting their difficulties satisfactorily?”; but always, “Are they happy?”—as if for all the world one were necessarily happy in fulfilling a difficult and vastly complicated contract.
It is necessary for the positive young girl to find her physical adaptation. Only the negative girl can be content without it. It is also necessary for the positive young man to find his. But surely it is not necessary to lead either of them to suppose that in doing this by means of legal marriage they will find anything more in the long run than the most moderate well-being, disturbed by the most tremendous responsibilities and difficulties.
The way in which girls and young men are led to look forward to the married state as if it were a kind of fairy transformation, summed up in the formula “and they were happy ever afterwards,” vitiates the whole value of the contract; for while it lays all emphasis on the contentment that naturally comes with proper physical adaptation, it passes over the enormous difficulties which any such permanent contract between sensitive and intelligent beings must entail.
(2) It is harmful, secondly, because by leading both young people to expect too much from marriage, it expedites the period of disillusionment, which is bound ultimately to supervene in the great majority of such unions. If the State solution of the sex problem, known as monogamic marriage, be really a good institution, then surely everything should be done to make it tolerable for as long as possible to those who are parties to it. Since disillusionment must come, it is obviously the duty of teachers and elders to endeavour to postpone it as long as possible. And the way to do this is certainly not by emphasizing the “happiness” of marriage to the exclusion of all thought about its enormous and almost insuperable difficulties. A salutary reform in this respect would consist in leading young people to accept the State’s solution of the sex problem in a more sober mood, with a more grave concern about the future, with a greater insight into the utility of marriage, and with less precipitancy than is shown at present. They would realize that while union was what they desired, legal marriage was the least unsatisfactory way for all concerned of meeting that desire for union; but that it was only a clumsy way of securing their sexual adaptation, and held no necessary promise of any greater happiness than they could expect from any other system of constraints.
It might be objected that, in this case, young people would not marry. The reply to this objection is that they would if their desire for normal adult adaptation were strong enough, but that they would be likely to fulfil the contract all the more satisfactorily by realizing from the start its utility, its limitations, its very doubtful promise, and its artificial nature.
(3) It is harmful, thirdly, because, by confusing marriage with the pursuit of happiness, grave considerations are likely to be overlooked. Let me give a concrete instance:—
It may be in the best interests of a farmer’s son, who intends to adopt his parent’s calling, to marry a rural maiden, accustomed to the problems of a farm, and familiar with all the valuable traditions of the countryside. In fact, from the standpoint of the State also, it may be best for him to select his bride from among the female population of his village or locality; for by so doing, in addition to acquiring a useful mate, his children will inherit rural virtues from both sides, and are more likely to become good and efficient farmers in their turn. But if, by a false association of happiness with marriage, he fancies that he will have what is known as a “better time” with an urban typist of smart appearance, with small bird’s-claw hands and expensive tastes, he is likely to overlook the gravity of the purpose of marriage in order to gratify his hedonistic lust. This accounts also for the destruction of many of our aristocratic houses by mésalliances with chorus-girls and American and Jewish heiresses. If the utterly hedonistic bias were only removed from marriage, such stupid and wanton outrages against good blood might be prevented. For since the alleged “happiness” of a permanent association like legal marriage is in nine cases out of ten pure illusion, it should not be allowed to override a man’s duty to himself and to his children. One of the principal rewards of the legal marriage is the means it gives a man of preserving his family virtues and tradition, and since this is best achieved by choosing a girl from his own kind and set, the supposed pursuit of happiness can only act as a disturbing element, which could be condoned only if it were not so entirely illusory.
Of course the mésalliance as a social evil has a Puritanical root as well, which ought perhaps to be mentioned here. The Puritans were not so utterly and incurably stupid as to deny the existence of bodily pleasure. They knew perfectly well that the joys of sex were very real joys. By insisting, however, upon these joys being sought only in fast wedlock, they threw a burden upon marriage which it was hardly designed to bear. They converted it by one stroke into a source of joy—that is to say, into the unique source for a certain kind of joy, into a symbol of pleasure and happiness of a certain kind. By so doing, however, a false association grew up in the minds of men regarding marriage, which has resulted in the scions of some of our best houses seeking happiness and pleasure in matrimony by marrying women whose blood necessarily diluted or destroyed their stock qualities. Had the stupid Puritan prejudice not existed, they might have found pleasure with these inferior females without marrying them, and thereby saved their family line with some one who, though perhaps less garish and less vulgarly amusing, was at least capable of giving them children true to their traditional stock quality.
The advantages of the legal monogamic match are chiefly social. They have very little to do with happiness, and most of them redound to the benefit of law and order. They are:—
(a) The creation of a compact unit known and recognized as the family, in which responsibility for the fruits of the union fall on the two parents, and in which the financial responsibility in the great majority of families falls upon the more free (physically) of the two parents—the male. The State is by this means secured against the obligation of having to rear the innumerable host of children that would result from promiscuous parenthood where the father could not be traced.