Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

All these things, it is thought, are nothing but external necessities. And to these one always submits! Ought we not, nevertheless, to find room for the thought that there may also be necessities of the soul?

Our time, for instance, tends more and more to bring together artists who work at different, or, still more often, at the same art. The nerves of both are worn in the same way; both need the same freedom of movement and the same undisturbed quiet. But in the claims of everyday life for mutual sympathy and mutual consideration, nearly all their spiritual energy is used up. They see that, if they are not to consume one another’s mental resources, they must adopt a system of spiritual separation, which is possible only at a certain distance. The holiday happiness of these natures may be rapturous, the sympathetic union of their souls richer than any others. But each feels for the other what is expressed by one of Shakespeare’s joyous young women, when she calls a suitor “too costly for every day’s wear.” Each is tempted at times to exclaim, like another young woman in a modern book: “I want to be able to say, let me now for three weeks be altogether free from loving you”—since each knows that this freedom would only renew the feeling. But now married people are bound by custom to a common life, which often ends in their separating for ever, simply because conventional considerations prevented their living apart.

Natures of other types may also feel the constraint of narrow dependence, enforced association, the daily accommodations and constant considerations. More people ought, therefore, quietly to begin reforming matrimonial customs, so that they may more nearly correspond to the need of renewal just alluded to. Let each, for instance, travel separately, if he or she feels the desire of solitude; let one visit by himself the entertainment the other does not care for, but formerly either forced herself to, or kept the other from visiting. More and more married people have separate bedrooms. And in another generation perhaps separate dwellings will have ceased to attract attention.

Companionship on week-days as on holidays, co-operation in the satisfaction of everyday claims as well as of life’s highest purposes, will, nevertheless, continue to be the form of married life chosen by the majority, even when public opinion has left room for other systems of living. But full freedom for the latter will not be won till the law ceases to place any limit to the self-determination of each partner in marriage.

Another matter that ought to be left to personal decision is the degree of publicity that is to be given to a matrimonial union. An otherwise conservative father of a family once put forward the weighty reasons which might be in favour of keeping secret a marriage that was, nevertheless, intended to be fully legal. Amongst the reasons which now frequently cause the postponement of a marriage are, for instance, the necessity of completing studies, or reluctance to hasten, through sorrow, the death of parents or others. The possibility of not having to publish the union in these or similar cases would spare the lovers unnecessary waiting without in any way encroaching on the rights of others.

Further, to personal determination belong not only free divorce but also new forms of divorce. As divorce itself has been treated in the last chapter, we will speak here only of the method of it. The wife’s infidelity, as well as the husband’s right to refuse divorce, at present frequently affords an opportunity for blackmail on the part of the husband from his wife, who, in the latter case, has to buy her freedom, and in both cases often has to buy permission to keep her children. The husband, too, may be exposed to blackmailing by a wife who refuses divorce or who can prove his infidelity and tries to take from him the children, whom he knows to be exposed to corruption in her hands. But, since society and nature favour the man’s infidelity, while both are against that of the woman, it is in the nature of the case that the wife often has difficulty in proving the husband’s infidelity, while he can prove hers easily. His repeated acts of unfaithfulness have, perhaps, been the cause of her single one. But it is, nevertheless, he—since there is no valid evidence against him—who has the children assigned to him, or, it may be, sells them to his wife.

The same applies to divorce on account of “hatred and ill-will.” Before a court which cannot test the reasons that have most spiritual weight, but only the evidence that has most to say, all the details of married life have to be dragged forth, all its wounds inspected. The evidence which, as a rule, is decisive is that of servants! The profoundest spiritual concerns of educated people are thus made to depend upon the opinion of uneducated persons on all the complicated circumstances of an unhappy marriage. And not only this: the result in most cases is determined by the indelicacy with which the husband and wife have drawn their servants and their acquaintances into the conflict. If husband or wife has summoned the servants to witness violent behaviour, then that party is in a much better position in an action for divorce than the one who has sought to the utmost to preserve the dignity of their marriage. There are, moreover, some sufferings of which no proof can be produced. Such, for instance, is misuse of “conjugal rights”; another is the power of either party, under forms of outward politeness, to make life entirely worthless to the other; a third, the constant opposition of two conflicting views of life.

It is only in the case of the grossest and most palpable evils that it is now possible to furnish the necessary evidence without such difficulties as—both in the granting of divorce and in the disposal of the children—may give rise to the grossest injustice. And all this is only a part of the humiliations and sufferings which now—especially for the wife—attend a divorce. Finally, an action for divorce is sufficiently expensive to render it on this account alone a matter of great difficulty for many people in poor circumstances to obtain justice.

Such a system of divorce—which makes either partner dependent on the worst qualities of the other; which calls forth all that is indelicate in the nature of both; which drags their weaknesses and sufferings before the eyes of strangers, and which, nevertheless, provides no real protection for the children—such a system ought to give no thoughtful person peace until its degrading and deteriorating influence is abolished and a new system, which shall protect both personal dignity and the children, introduced.