Woman and Womanhood: A Search for Principles

by C. W. Saleeby

On the whole, it is further true that the marriage age rises as we ascend from lower to higher classes within a given civilization, though a very select class among the wealthy offer an exception to this.

Now nothing is more familiar to us all than that there is a disharmony, as Professor Metchnikoff puts it, between these ages for marriage and the age at which the development of the racial instinct is unmistakable and parenthood is indeed possible. The tendency of civilization is to increase this disharmony, and it is impossible to believe that this tendency can be healthy either for the civilization or for the individual.

Still concerning ourselves with the more general aspects of the question, let it be observed that, as regards men, this unnatural delay of marriage very frequently brings consequences which, bearing hardly on themselves, later bear not less hardly on hapless womanhood. The later the age to which marriage is delayed, the more are men handicapped in their constant struggle to control the racial instinct under the unnatural conditions in which they find themselves. The great majority of men fail in this unequal fight, and of those who fail an enormous number become infected by disease, with which, when they marry, they infect their wives, sometimes killing them, often causing them lifelong illness, often destroying for ever their chances of motherhood, or making motherhood a horror by the production of children that are an offence against the sun. These are facts known to all who have looked into the matter, but there is no such thing as decent public opinion on the subject, and the author or speaker who dares to allude to them takes his means of living, if not his life, into his hands.

No doubt men are largely responsible themselves for the rising marriage age, but women are also responsible in some measure. This must mean on the whole an injury to themselves as individuals, to their sex, and to society. Both sexes demand a higher standard of living; the man spends enough in alcohol and tobacco, as a rule, to support one or two children, and then says he is too poor to marry. There is everything to be said for the doctrine that people should be provident, and should bring no more children into the world than they are able to support; but before we accept this plea in any particular case, we should first inquire how the available income is being spent. At present, every indication goes to show that we are following in the track of all our predecessors, spending upon individual indulgence that which ought to be dedicated to the future, and thereby compromising the worth or the possibility of any future at all.

In the light of these considerations and many more, some of which we shall later consider, I deplore and protest against with all my heart, as blind, ignorant, and destructive, the counsel of those women, some of them conspicuous advocates of the cause of woman's suffrage—in which I nevertheless believe—who advise women to delay in marriage, or who publish opinions throwing contempt upon marriage altogether. Later, we must deal in detail with marriage; here we are only concerned with the marriage age. It will then be argued that the conditions of marriage must sooner or later be modified in so far as they are at present inacceptable to a certain number of women of the highest type. This may be granted without in any degree accepting the deplorable teaching of such writers as Miss Cicely Hamilton, in her book entitled "Marriage as a Trade." Every individual case requires individual consideration, and no less than any individual case ever yet received. But in general those women who counsel the delay of the marriage age are opposing the facts of feminine development and psychology. They are indirectly encouraging male immorality and female prostitution, with their appalling consequences for those directly concerned, for hosts of absolutely innocent women, and for the unborn. Further, those who suppose that the granting of the vote is going to effect radical and fundamental changes in the facts of biology, the development of instinct, and its significance in human action, are fools of the very blindest kind. Some of us find that it needs constant self-chastening and bracing up of the judgment to retain our belief in the cause of woman's suffrage, of the justice and desirability of which we are convinced, assaulted as we almost daily are by the unnatural, unfeminine, almost inhuman blindness of many of its advocates.

We have constantly to remind ourselves that our immediate concern and duty are not with the world as it might be, or ought to be, or will be, but with the world as it is. There are many good arguments, admirably adapted to an imaginary world, why the marriage age should be increased. But these forget the possible, nay the inevitable, consequences, if such an increase show itself in one nation and not in another, in one class of society and not in another. It is a good thing, and it is the ideal of the eugenist, as I ventured to formulate some years ago, that every child who comes into the world should be desired, designed, and loved in anticipation. But if in France, shall we say, such a tendency begins to obtain a generation earlier than it does in Germany, there will come to be a disparity of population which, continuing, must inevitably mean sooner or later the disappearance of France.

Or again, difference in the marriage age in different classes within a given community has very notable consequences, as Sir Francis Galton showed in his book, "Hereditary Genius," and later, in more detail, in his "Inquiries into Human Faculty." He shows that, other things being equal, the earlier marrying class or group will in a few generations breed down the others and completely supplant them. If the natural quality of the one class differ from that of the other, the ultimate consequences will be tremendous. It has been proved up to the hilt that in Great Britain these differences in marriage in different classes exist, and that, on the whole, the marriage age varies directly as the means of support for the children, to say nothing of natural and transmissible differences in different classes. One can only, therefore, repeat what was said some time ago in contribution to a public discussion on this subject that, "considering the present distribution of the birth-rate, nothing strikes a more direct blow at the future of England than that which tends to increase the marriage age of the responsible, careful, and provident amongst us whilst the improvident and careless multiply as they do."

Let us now consider another possible factor in this question, and then we must proceed to look at the individual woman as the question of the marriage age affects her.

The Marriage Age and the Quality of the Children.—Both from the point of view of the race and from that of the individual who desires happy parenthood it is necessary to learn, if possible, how the age of the parents affects the quality of their offspring. If motherhood is to be a joy and a blessing, the children must be such as bring joy and blessing. My provisional judgment on this matter is that we are at present without anything like conclusive evidence proving that the age of the parents affects the quality of their children.

Let us look at some of the arguments which have been advanced. The school of biometricians, represented most conspicuously in latter years by Professor Karl Pearson, have desired us to accept certain conclusions which are singularly incompatible with the opinion of their illustrious founder, Sir Francis Galton, in favour of early marriages among those of sound stock. By their special procedure, as rigorously critical in the statistical treatment of data as it is sweetly simple in its innocent assumption that all data are of equal value, they have proposed to show that the elder members of a family are further removed from the normal, average, or mean type than the younger members. This, according to them, may sometimes work out in the production of great ability or genius in the eldest or elder members, but oftener still shows itself in highly undesirable characters, whether of mind or of body, the latter often leading to premature decease. There is hence inferred a powerful argument against the limitation of families, which means a disproportionate increase amongst the aberrant members of the population.