Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

For the present it can be only by an altered criterion of morality that these losses can be avoided, at least so long as there is not one man for every woman. For we can look only for a very slow operation of the measures which may restore the balance that nature seems to intend by an actual excess in the birth-rate of boys over girls; measures, that is, for the better protection of the lives of male children and men. A proposal which was put forward a few years ago in one of the leading civilised countries undoubtedly deserves consideration as an incidental remedy; namely, to arrange an organised and well-supervised emigration of capable women from the countries where they are in excess to others where the reverse is the case; for while their proficiency in work would make these women independent of marriage, they would thus be afforded increased possibilities of marrying, as would the surplus men—at present, in the countries referred to, left to the alternatives of celibacy or prostitution.

In the main it is, however, only the awakening of the consciousness of society that can provide a remedy. But until youth itself awakens the conscience of the time with the tocsin of action, that remedy is likely to be long in coming.

In one respect young working men and women might take their destiny in their own hands, namely, in the purely external point of providing themselves with the opportunities they lack—which in the case of young people of the student class now form the foundation of many a life’s happiness—opportunities of getting to know each other under pleasant and worthy conditions of comradeship.

In those cases again where a woman’s destiny from one cause or another has rendered the realisation of love impossible, she ought—like the wife in a childless marriage—oftener than at present to enrich her life and partly satisfy her motherly feeling by choosing one among the destitute children, who are unfortunately still to be found in abundance, to provide for and love. Such grafts upon one’s own stem often give splendid fruit. The lonely woman thereby avoids falling a victim to that hardness and bitterness, which are not necessary consequences of a checked sexual life, but are all the more so of a frozen life of the heart.

In those cases where a woman suffers a lasting and unendurable clogging of her life through the want of motherhood, she must choose the lesser evil, that of becoming a mother even without love, in or out of wedlock. Necessity is its own law—and he who steals to save his life ought to go free. But she must not be made an example for others who are not placed in the same necessity.

The solution of the right of motherhood, therefore, ought not to be the encouragement of the majority of unmarried women to provide themselves with children without love; not even the encouragement of the majority to obtain them through love when they know in advance that a continued community of life with the child’s father is impossible.

But, on the other hand, the unmarried woman, from her own point of view as well as from that of the race, has a right to motherhood, when she possesses so rich a human soul, so great a mother’s heart, and so manly a courage that she can bear an exceptional lot. She has all the riches of her own and her lover’s nature to leave through the child as a heritage to the race; she has the whole development of her personality, her mental and bodily vital force, her independence won through labour, to give to the child’s bringing-up. In her occupation she has had use only for a part of her being: she desires to manifest it fully and wholly, before she resigns the gift of life. She therefore becomes a mother with the full approval of her conscience.

All this, however, seldom applies to a woman before she has reached or exceeded the limit of la seconda primavera; not till then will she feel fully sure of her longing and her courage, nor will she have reason to know that life has no higher destiny for her. And even she must not be taken as an example of a final solution of the problem. But in times like ours, when the hindrances to life in this direction have become unendurable, bold experiments are justified—when they are successful.

In order that such an experiment shall succeed, the woman must be not merely as pure as snow, she must be as pure as fire in her certainty of giving her own life a bright enhancement and a new treasure to the race in the child of her love.

If she is this—then indeed there is a gulf, deep as the centre of the earth, fixed between this unmarried woman, who presents her child to the race, and the unmarried woman, who “has a child.”