The Truth About Woman

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

It were well to remember this as we come to question the conditions of our law of divorce. There can be no possible doubt that if marriage is to remain and become moral there must be an easier dissolution of its bonds. The enforced continuance of an unreal marriage is really the grossest form of immorality, harmful not only to the individuals concerned, but to the children. The prejudices handed down to us by past tradition have twisted morals into an assertion that a husband or wife who have ceased to love must continue to share the rites of marriage in mutual repugnance, or live in an unnatural celibacy.

The question as to how this condition arose may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity. Adultery is, in fact, a State-endowed offence against morality, just as the indissolubility of marriage is a theological perversion of the plainest moral law, that the true relationship between the sexes is founded on love. This bastard-born morality of Church and State is as immoral in theory as it is evil in practice.

For if we look deeper it becomes clear that the test to be applied here is the same as in every relation between the sexes: the conditions of divorce, like the conditions of marriage, must be such as best serve the interests of the race. This means, in the first place, that both partners in a marriage must have the assurance that when the moral conditions of the contract are broken, or through any reason become inefficient, they can be liberated, without any shame or idea of delinquency being attached to the dissolution. "Divorce is relief from misfortune and not a crime," to quote from the admirable statute-book of Norway, a saying which should be one of universal application in divorce. This must be done not merely as an act of justice to the individual; it is called for equally in the interests of the race. The woman or man from whom a divorce ought to be obtained is in almost all cases the woman or man who ought not to be a parent. We may go further than this. Divorce cannot be considered on the physical side alone, there is a psychological divorce which is far deeper, and also far more frequent. The woman or man who for any reason is unhappy in marriage is unfitted to be a parent in that marriage, and the way should be opened to them, if they desire, to have other children born in love in a new marriage with a more fitting mate. Our eyes are shut to the damning facts which confront us on every side. Take, for instance, the case of the drunkard, the insane, the syphilitic, the consumptive, parent bound in marriage. On biological and economic grounds it is folly to leave in such hands the protection of the race. It is the business of the State, as I believe, to regulate the law to prevent, as far as possible, the birth of unfit children; at least we may demand that Church and State cease to grant their sanction to this flagrant sin.

It is of the utmost importance to realise that Divorce Law Reform is needed to bring our jurisprudence up to the level of the modern civilised State. Our law in this respect lags far behind that of other countries, and is only one example out of many of our hide-bound attachment to ancient abuses. The opposition shown against the splendid and fearless recommendations for the extension of the grounds of divorce, voiced by the Majority Report in the recent Divorce Law Commission, prove how far we are still from understanding the higher morality of marriage. The recent Commission and the strong movement in favour of reform will, without doubt, lead to a change in the glaring injustice and inconsistencies of our law. It is, however, certain that an enlightened divorce law must go much further than providing ways of escape from marriage. Such exits tend to destroy the true sanctity of marriage; also they are unable to meet the needs of all classes, no matter how wide and numerous they are. They can never form the ultimate solution. They tend to make marriage ridiculous, and there are real grounds in the objections raised against them. There must be no special exits; the door of marriage itself must be left open to go out of as it is open to enter. This will come. When personal responsibility in marriage is developed, when all the relationships of sexes are founded on the recognition of the equality of the mother with the father—the woman with the man, then will come divorce by mutual consent.

Whenever divorce is difficult, there woman's lot is hard and her position low. It is a part of the patriarchal custom which regards women as property. It would be easy to prove this by the history of marriage in the civilisations of the past, as also by an examination of the present divorce laws in civilised countries. I cannot do this, but I make the assertion without the least shadow of doubt. I would point back in proof to the Egyptian and Babylonian divorce law, and to the splendid development of Roman Law in this direction. Consent is accepted as necessary to marriage; it should be the condition of divorce. This, I believe, is the only solution which women will be content to accept, when once they are awakened to their responsibilities in marriage. And here I would quote the wise dictum of Mr. Cunninghame Graham: "Divorce is the charter of Woman's Freedom".

The condemnation of divorce and the pillorying of divorced persons are not really the outcome of any concern for true morality, though most people deceive themselves that they are. They are predominantly the outcome of ignorance, of prejudices and false values, based, on the one hand, on the primitive patriarchal view of the wife (hence the insistence on woman's chastity and the inequality of the law), and, on the other, on the ecclesiastical doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage and the sin of all relationships outside its bonds. It is only when we realise how deeply and terribly these worn-out views have saturated and falsified our judgments that we come to understand the barbarism of our present laws of divorce.

It is significant that those who talk most of the sanctity of marriage are the very people who fear most the extension of divorce, seeming to believe that any loosening of its chains would lead to a dissolution of the institution of marriage. One marvels at the weakness of faith shown in such a view. It is not possible to hold the argument both ways. If the partners in marriage are happy, why lock them in? if not, why pretend that they are? The best argument I ever heard for divorce was a remark made to me in a conversation with a working man. He said, "When two people are fighting it is not very safe to lock the door". After all, what you do is this: you give occasion for the locks to be broken.

I have already spoken of loyalty and duty in relation to marriage, and nothing that I say now must be thought to lessen at all my deep belief in the personal responsibility of the individual in every relationship of the sexes. Living together even after the death of love may, indeed, be right if this is done in the interests of the children. But it can never be right to compel such action by law. For then in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred what is regarded as duty is really a question of expediency. It is very easy to deceive ourselves. And it requires more courage than most people possess to face the fact that what has perhaps been a happy and fruitful marriage has died a slow and bitter death. But the higher morality claims that a child must be born in love and reared in love, or, at the lowest, in an atmosphere from which all enmity is absent. Only the parent who is strong enough to subordinate the individual right to the rights of the child can safely remain in a marriage without love.

One great advantage of free divorce is that the wife and husband would not part, as is almost inevitable under present conditions, in hatred, but in friendship. This would enable them to meet one another from time to time and unite together in care of any children of the marriage. If such reasonable conduct was for any reason impossible on the part of either or both parents, then the State must appoint a guardian to fill the place of one parent or both. No child should be brought up without a mother and a father. The adoption of children under the State might in this way open up fruitful opportunities whereby childless women and men might gain the joys of parenthood.

This condition of safety by free-divorce once established, would do much to mitigate the hostility against marriage which is so unfortunately prevalent among us to-day. Practical morality is teaching us the immorality of indissoluble marriage. In Spain, a country that I know well, where marriage is indissoluble, an increasing number of men—and these the best and most thoughtful—are refraining from marriage for this very reason. It follows, as a result, that in Spain the illegitimate birth-rate is very high. The difficulty of divorce is also a strong factor that upholds prostitution.