Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

Such passages extend in an unbroken series through all medieval Jewish literature. But if the Jewish wife was held in honor by the Jewish husband, it was because of the very practical virtues of the Jewish way of living. The home life was everywhere serene and lovely, and if the Jew retained any virtue at all, he displayed it in the home. The father was the religious teacher of his family, and this duty necessarily increased his domesticity. He took greater interest in his children because it was his task to teach them the law, and his devotion to his wife was directly dependent on his service to the family. One of the Rabbis, on this question of the Jewish husband ill-treating his wife, said in framing his regulations "This is a thing not done in Israel."

I would ask you to note that the woman does not become a nonentity by reason of her limitation to a definite sphere of action within the home. Such a view is entirely absent among the Jews. The rule over the home-life held through the centuries by the Jewish wife is far more real in its results of power than the so-called equality claimed by a modern woman, acting under the influence of industrial ideals. What is significant (and ought to teach us if we can be taught) is the fact that such power is held by women in right of their position as wives and mothers; it is never extended to young girls or to unmarried women on account of their attraction and sexual power over men, in the way to which we have become accustomed. That is unknown, at least, in connection with marriage. The Jew understands that there are other ways of loving than falling in love. Power is held universally by the house mistress—the mother, whose desires through life are a law unto her husband and her children.

All Jewish literature is filled with examples of reverence expressed towards mothers who are "the teachers of all virtue." In the moral law the command to fear the mother—that is to treat her with respect, is placed even before the duty of fearing the father (Lev. xix. 8). Enduring evidence remains of the spiritual status of mothers. When the Prophet of Exiles wishes to depict God as the Comforter of his people, he says "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you" (Is. lxvi. 13). When the Psalmist describes his utter woe, he laments, "As one mourning for his mother, I was bowed down with grief."

Perhaps, now as we see the mother taken as the one sufficient symbol of Jehovah's dealing with his people, the mourning for her presence being the completest expression of grief, we can come to understand something of the Jewish ideal of marriage and of the high honor, because of this ideal, in which women were held.

VII

It should be plain enough now why English marriages so often are unhappy. The immense failure of marriage to-day arises from the confusion of our minds and our chaotic desires so that we have no firm ideal, no fixed standard of conduct either for the wife or for the husband. Every couple starts anew and alone, and the way is too difficult for solitary experiments.

The existence of many standards, of what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, the liberty permitted to the husband, the liberty permitted to the wife, if the wife shall continue her work or profession or remain at home dependent on the husband's earnings, whether the marriage shall be fruitful or sterile—these are but a few of the questions left undecided. And thus to leave unguided each wife and each husband, with their own idea of what is good to do and what is evil, makes for narrowness and waste of effort; while further, our inability to set up a standard of right and wrong conduct—of ideals to strive after—leaves vacant room for false ideals of every kind. These empty places of the mind have been occupied by the ravings of advanced people. The harm has been incredibly active in the consciousness of the young. We have put before their imagination nothing worthy of contemplation, therefore they easily sink downward attracted by what is base.

Then we suggest economic changes. But the evil is not economic. No evils are fundamentally economic. The structure of society is the unforeseen result of the conflicting desires and capacities of the individuals who comprise the society. A false view of marriage, a false view of the relative values of life and money, of service and liberty, of happiness and duty, is not dependent on economic conditions. Yet, let us not forget that this is the age of the gadding mind and the grabbing hand. We tend to value everything by what it brings in to us, in feelings if not in more tangible results.

You will see what this must mean. I am brought back to our wrong ideals; I have no new remedy to give; I can only again insist upon this truth: A preoccupation with a desire for love does not, and never can, result in happiness. But the personal (or perhaps my meaning will be clearer by saying the egoistic) view of love has assumed such gigantic proportion in our minds to-day that we accept these selfish desires as a safe basis for permanent happiness. Marriage has ceased to be a discipline; it has become an experiment.