Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

The dependence of woman can only be abolished through the economic appreciation of her domestic work. This appreciation is an easy matter when she has left a salaried employment for her domestic duties, for the performance of the latter must be regarded as worth at least as much as her occupation formerly brought her. Where there is no such measure of value, she ought to receive the same amount as a stranger in corresponding circumstances would receive in salary and cost of keep.

The wife would thus be able to meet her personal expenditure, her share in the joint housekeeping and in the maintenance of the children, when the subsidy for this purpose came to an end but the couple were agreed that the wife’s work at home was of such value that she ought rather to continue it than to try to earn money outside.

The carrying out of this arrangement need not cause any dislocation of existing conditions. The wife would continue to manage the domestic funds to which each would contribute according to agreement, but she would probably be better able to solve the problem of making them suffice for their joint expenses. She would be perfectly free to forego her allowance, as her husband would be to increase it according to need and ability. The direct economical appreciation of her domestic work would transform her own and her husband’s respect for it and thus give wives, on the one hand, a sense of independence which even the conscientious are now without, on the other, a sense of duty which in the case of the less conscientious is doubtless in need of strengthening; for the existing arrangement favours not only domestic tyranny on the part of the husbands, but also inefficiency on the part of certain wives. But the fact that a small number of women of the upper class now do no work at all in the home, or that a number of others do it badly, must not obscure the truth that innumerable women are constantly expending in their homes great sums of working power, without being able legally to claim any corresponding income of their own. This applies not only to the wives but also to the daughters of the house, who often work from morning till night, but are nevertheless obliged to accept as gifts from their parents all that they personally need, and thus also have to do without anything that their parents consider unnecessary. The same is true of the wife in relation to her husband. When unmarried—whether she was in private or public service, a factory hand or a clerk—she had the chance of in some measure providing for her own interests. When married, every present she gives, every contribution she makes for a public purpose, every book she buys, every amusement she allows herself, has to be taken from her husband’s money. The wife who, in a farmer’s home perhaps, saves thousands—both by economy and by the direct contribution of her labour—frequently has not a silver piece at her disposal.

This dependence, as we have said, now drives wives and daughters from their homes to earn a livelihood, which often does not by any means compensate economically for the loss of their work at home. But they simply cannot endure to be without the personal income, which to them has become a more and more important value, according as their general freedom of movement and their needs in other directions have increased—above all, through increase of education and social interests.

Woman’s present unpaid position in domestic work is an obsolete survival from earlier conditions of housekeeping and production, as from the ecclesiastical doctrine that woman was created to be man’s helpmate and he to be her head. Women have thus often received worse heads than nature gave them—and thereby man has had less valuable help than life intended for him.

Not until an incorruptible realism establishes the principle within the family as elsewhere, that each retains his own head and that every labourer is worthy of his hire, will idealism find there a full field for unforced generosity in the free will of mutual help.

While what is said above applies to all women who wish to work at home, it need not apply to those who are able through the fortune they brought with them to meet their household expenses and those of the children and who wish in return to be free from the trouble of domestic work.

Every attempt at mediation in the question of married women’s property—such as an obligatory marriage settlement and similar proposals—only introduces endless complications. It will be simple and clear only when—as in Russia even from the time of Catherine II—the woman simply retains her fortune. The law ought to express the great principle, that either party owns what is his or hers, while those, on the other hand, who desire to introduce another arrangement, must decide by contract how much of the property is to be held jointly.

Only a separation of property carried out as a principle will be able to form the new and clear ideas of justice that the present time demands. A separate estate places two individuals side by side, co-operating with the freedom that is enjoyed by a brother and sister or two friends. Both parties retain full right of decision and full responsibility. Either leaves transactions to the other only in that degree that the other’s qualities have won his confidence. Both show each other mutual consideration in the planning of joint undertakings and neither can be drawn into such without a personal examination. The rights of a third party are, in these circumstances, equally well protected as when brothers and sisters or friends work or live together. For the mutual transactions of married people must to this end have the same publicity as all other similar transactions between business partners.

Not only as regards her property, but also in her full civil rights and the disposition of her person, the married woman must be placed on an equal footing with the unmarried. It is true that the law is not so favourable as many people believe to “conjugal rights.” But this belief has survived for centuries and in turn influences morals; moreover, it is not without a certain legal support, in case such a question is brought into court. As a rule, of course, this does not happen, but, on the other hand, the idea of legality—which is further encouraged by the Bible—influences the husband’s sense of right and the wife’s sense of duty. So long as the law maintains even a shadow of “rights” in that relation which ought to be the most voluntary of all, it involves a gross violation of love’s freedom.