The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

And this brings us to the base counterfeit of monogamy that is accepted and practised by many among us to-day; base because it is a monogamy largely mitigated by clandestine transitory loves—tipplings with sensation and snackings at lust which betray passion. Facts of daily observation may not be shuffled out of consideration by any hypocrisy. They must be faced and dealt with. Our marriage system is buttressed with prostitution, which thus makes our moral attitude one of intolerable deception, and our efforts at reform not only ineffective, but absurd. Without the assistance of the prostitution of one class of women and the enforced celibacy of another class our marriage in its present form could not stand. It is no use shirking it; if marriage cannot be made more moral—and by this I mean more able to meet the sex needs of all men and all women—then we must accept prostitution. No sentimentalism can save us; we must give our consent to this sacrifice of women as necessary to the welfare and stability of society. But with this question I shall deal in a later section of this chapter. There is, however, more than this to be said. Marriage is itself in many cases a legalised form of prostitution. From the standpoint of morals, the woman who sells herself in marriage is on the same level as the one who sells herself for a night, the only difference is in the price paid and the duration of the contract. Nay, it is probably fair to say that at the lowest such sale-marriage results in the greater evil, for the prostitute does not bear children. If she has a child it has, as a rule, been born first; such is our morality that motherhood often drives her on to the streets!

Any woman who marries for money or position is departing from the biological and moral ends of marriage. A child can be born gladly only as the fruit of love. It is in this direction, rather than in maintaining a barren virginity, that woman's chastity should be guarded. We may excuse women on the grounds of possible ignorance, but, none the less, have the conditions of marriage been unfavourable to the development of a fine moral feeling in women or in men. No one can have failed to feel surprised at the men many girls are content to marry; it is one thing that must be set against the claim women make as the morally superior sex. Mr. Wells, whom I have already quoted in this matter, places in the mouth of one of his characters, in his recent book, Marriage, a true and terrible indictment of women.

"If there was one thing in which you might think woman would show a sense of some divine purpose in life it is in the matter of children, and they show about as much care in the matter—oh, as rabbits! Yes, rabbits. I stick to it. Look at the things a nice girl will marry; look at the men's children she'll submit to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly! For the sake of the home and the clothes!"

The fact is our marriage in its present legal form is primarily an arrangement for securing the rights of property. This in itself is not necessarily evil. Economic necessities cannot be ignored in any form of the sexual relationship; it is rather a readjustment that is called for here. We have seen how admirably a marriage system based upon property in the form of free contracts worked in Egypt, and how happy were the family relationships under this system of equal partnership between the wife and husband. I would again recommend the careful study of these marriage contracts to all those interested in marriage reform. The contracts were never fixed in one form; all that was required being that the interests of the woman and the children were in all cases protected. Take again the Roman marriage which, in its latest fine developments, has special interest, as the history of modern marriage systems may be traced back to it. The Romans came, like the Egyptians, to regard marriage as a contract rather than a legal form. In the custom of usus, which supplanted the earlier and sacred confarreatio, there was no ceremony at all. I would recall to the memory of my readers the significant fact that in both these great countries this freedom in marriage was associated with the freedom of woman. It must be recognised that these two forces act together.

Traditional customs in marriage, as in all other departments of life, tend to become worn out, and whenever any form presses too heavily on a sufficient number of individuals acting against, instead of for, the interests of those concerned, there arises a movement towards reform. This happened in Rome, and led to the establishment of marriage by usus, which was further modified by the practice known as conventio in manus, whereby the wife by passing three nights in the year from her husband was able to break through the terrible right of the husband's manus. It is possible that by some such simple way of escape we may come to change the pressure of our coercive marriage.

The briefest glance at our marriage system proves it to be founded on the patriarchal idea of woman as the property of man, which is sufficiently illustrated by the fact that a husband can claim sums of money as compensation from any man who sexually approaches his wife, while a woman, on her side, is granted compensation in the case of a breach of promise of marriage. If we seek to find how this condition has arisen we must look backwards into the past. To the fine legacy left by the Roman law (which, regarding marriage as a contract, placed the two sexes in a position of equal freedom) was added the customs of the barbarians and the base Jewish system, giving to the husband rights in marriage and divorce denied to the wife. Later, in the twelfth century, came the capture of marriage by the Church and the establishment of Canon law, whereby the property-value of marriage became inextricably mingled with the sanctification of marriage as a sacrament, which, strengthened by Christian asceticism and the glorification of virginity, involved a corresponding contempt cast on all love outside of legal marriage.[326] The action of this double standard of sexual morality has led on the one side to the setting-up of a theoretical ideal, which, as few are able to follow it, tends to become an empty form, and this, on the other side, leads to a hidden laxity that rushes to waste love out to a swift finish. The puritan view has left us an inheritance of denials. It is small wonder, under such circumstances, that marriage is often immoral, so often ending in repulsion and weariness. "Our sexual morality," it has been said with fine truth by Havelock Ellis, "is in reality a bastard born of the union of property-morality with primitive ascetic morality, neither in true relationship to the vital facts of life."

It may, indeed, be doubted if apart from property considerations we have left any sexual morality at all. How else were it possible for marriage (which, if it is to fulfil its moral biological ends, must be based on physical and mental affinity and fitness) to be contracted, as it often is, without knowledge or any true care of these essential factors, and, moreover, to guarantee a permanence of a relationship thus entered into blindly. At least it should be considered necessary that a certificate of the health of the partners be obtained before marriage. What is required to ensure our individual life ought to be demanded before we create new life. Here, as I believe, is one direction in which the State should take action. Parentage on the part of degenerate human beings is a crime, and as such it ought to be prevented. It may be, and is, argued that any action of the State in this direction entails an interference with the rights of the individual. Just the same may be said of all laws. The man who wishes to steal or to kill either another or himself may, with equal reason, hold that it is an interference of the law that he is not permitted to follow his inclinations in these matters. The sins that he may wish to commit are assuredly less evil in their results than the sin of irresponsible parentage. You see what I mean. For if this unceasing crime against the unborn could somehow be stopped there would be so great a reduction of all other sins that we might well be freed from many laws. As an example I would refer the reader back to the wise Spartans, to consider how great was the gain to them as individuals by their strict and unceasing care for the welfare of the race.

There are many who attribute to mammon-marriages all the terrible evils of our disordered love-life of to-day. It is, therefore, well to remember that such conditions are not really a new thing, and cannot be regarded as the result of our commercialised civilisation. The intrusion of economics into marriage is of very ancient origin, and may be found among peoples who are almost primitive. But there is this important difference. In earlier and more vigorous societies such property-based marriages occur side by side with other forms of sexual associations, on a more natural basis, which are openly accepted and honoured. Our marriage system by its rigorous exclusions closes this way of escape. Morality may be outraged to any extent provided that law and religion have been invoked in legal marriage.

Let me give my readers two cases from my own experience; facts speak more forcibly than any mere statements of opinion. In a village that I know well a woman, legally married, bore five idiot children one after the other; her husband was a confirmed drinker and a mental degenerate. One of the children fortunately died. The text that was chosen as fitting for his funeral card was, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." About the same time in the same village a girl gave birth to an illegitimate child. She was a beautiful girl; the father, who did not live in the village, was strong and young; probably the child would have been healthy. But the girl was sent from her situation and, later, was driven from her home by her father. At the last she sought refuge in a disused quarry, and she was there for two days without food. When we found her her child had been born and was dead. Afterwards the girl went mad. I will add no comment, except to record my belief that under a saner social organisation such crimes against love would be impossible.

As was said years ago by the wise Sénancour, "The human race would gain much if virtue were made less laborious." Let us view these large questions in the light of their results to the individual and the race. This practical morality will serve us better than any traditional code. So only shall we learn to see if we cannot rid love of stress and pain that is unendurable. We force women and men into rebellion, into fearing concealments, and the dark and furtive ways of vice. For this reason we must, I believe, make the regulations of law as wide as possible, taking care only that mothers and all children must be safeguarded, whether in legal marriage or outside. All of which forces the conclusion: the same act of love cannot be good or bad just because it is performed in or out of marriage. To hold such an opinion is really as absurd as saying that food is more or less digestible according to whether grace is, or is not, said before the meal. All marriage forms are only matters of custom and expediency.