Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

Since, as already pointed out, society is the organisation which results when human beings set themselves in motion to satisfy their needs and exercise their powers in common, it must also be in a condition of uninterrupted transformation according as new needs arise and new powers are developed. This has now taken place in the erotic sphere, especially since those emotional needs and powers of the soul, which formerly were nourished by and directed towards religion, have been nourished by and directed towards love. Love itself is thus becoming more and more a religion, and one which demands new forms for its practice.

But while the individualist can only be satisfied with the full freedom of love, he is compelled by the sense of solidarity, at least for the present, to demand a new law for marriage, since the majority is not yet ready for perfect freedom.

The sense of solidarity and individualism have equally weighty reasons for condemning the existing institution of marriage. It forces upon human beings, who are seldom ideal, a unity which only an ideal happiness renders them capable of supporting. It fulfils one of its missions—that of protecting the woman—in a way that is now humiliating to her human dignity. It performs its second function—that of protecting the children—in an extremely imperfect fashion. Its third—that of setting up an ideal of the morality of sexual relations—it performs in such a way that this ideal is now a hindrance to the further development of morality.

From a realistic point of view, what is the value of matrimony to a woman? That the present law compels the husband to provide for his wife and for the children born in wedlock, and that at the death of the husband it secures to her the widow’s share in his estate and to the legitimate children their inheritance. But she pays for these economical advantages by resigning the right over her children, her property, her work, her person, which she possessed when unmarried. Even when there is a marriage settlement the husband—as guardian and administrator of his wife’s property—may squander this, as well as the proceeds of her work; he can forbid her exercise of a calling or sell the implements of its exercise. In the eyes of the law, she is placed on a footing with her children who are under age: her husband has to sue and to answer for her, and there are certain functions of a citizen which she cannot perform at all, while others, which she could perform if unmarried, she can fulfil only with her husband’s consent.

As concerns the children, the law leaves those born outside wedlock entirely without rights, except for an insufficient contribution to their bringing-up, if the father does not free himself from this by oath. The law provides very imperfectly for the welfare of the new generation by limiting the right of marriage to certain degrees of affinity, refusing it in the case of certain diseases, and fixing the age for lawful marriage at fifteen to seventeen for the woman and twenty-one years for the man.[8]

Finally, marriage binds the wife to the husband and him to her, by the fact that neither can obtain a divorce without the other’s consent unless certain acts of ill-treatment or misconduct can be proved. Even when married people agree to a divorce, it entails a painful procedure for both of them and poor guarantees for the children’s welfare. If the man refuses a divorce, the woman—owing to the above-mentioned obligation of proof, frequently impossible—is forced to remain with a man she despises, since only thus can she keep her children and receive support. If the husband is no longer capable of providing this; if, perhaps, he has squandered means belonging to her which would have provided it; nay, if the wife, by her own work, is keeping him, herself, and the children, he still retains the same authority over her and them.

The unmarried woman, on the other hand, who has given her love “freely”—that is, without legal compensation in the form of a right of maintenance—retains full authority over her children, as well as personal liberty, responsibility, and civil rights. In other words, she retains all that gives her a dignified position as a human being in society—but loses the respect of society and economic security. The married woman, on the other hand, loses all that is important to a member of society of full age, but retains the respect of society, her right of inheritance, and her support.

Truly, society has not made it easy for woman to fulfil her “natural mission”! That she nevertheless—under one or other of these two alternatives—still gladly performs it, is strong evidence that it must be the most powerful demand of her nature. If other needs become stronger—as is already the case with some women—then the conditions of either alternative will be unacceptable. And as the new women are still less likely to content themselves with the two other extremes—lifelong asceticism or prostitution—a new marriage has become for them a condition of life.

The marriage law now in force is a geological formation, with stratifications belonging to various phases of culture now concluded. Our own phase alone has left few and unimportant traces in it.

It has been perceived in our time that love ought to be the moral ground of marriage. And love rests upon equality. But the law of marriage dates from a time when the importance of love was not yet recognised. It, therefore, rests upon the inequality between a lord and his dependent.