Love and Marriage

by Ellen Key

The mother and child would, therefore, not have to look exclusively to the father for the necessaries of life, and they could not become entirely destitute through his incapacity or downfall. But he would, nevertheless, continue to bear his half of the responsibility and the family would still be dependent on the father and his voluntary contributions for a great part of the pleasures of life, while he would, moreover, be freed from the often unbearable burdens under which his spiritual worth as a father and his family joys now suffer to so great a degree. Far from its being the case—as one has heard certain women declare—that the majority of men are nothing but egoists, countless numbers of them have borne and still bear burdens of slavery, not only for wife and children but also for the support of other female relations. On the other hand, the prevailing system of society has prompted fathers still more to enslave themselves in order to create an advantageous position for their children. The existing rights and duties of a father stand in immediate connection with the right of inheritance, one of the greatest dangers of our system of society. For inheritance often keeps inefficiency in a leading position, but efficiency in a dependent one; it favours the possibility of the degenerate propagating the race, above all if the parents have died early, although—as it has been asserted—it is precisely such children that are the least apt to have offspring. It is unfavourable to the chances of the efficient in this as in every other direction, where birth in poor circumstances involves hindrances to education and the use of personal powers which wealth permits. On the other hand, poverty favours natural talent, in so far as it braces the capabilities, while it is often one of the misfortunes of heirs not to experience this inciting and pleasurable tension. It is only the strongest or the finest natures that become stronger and finer through the advantages and the sense of responsibility that inherited wealth brings with it. In the main, the productive sources of society would be multiplied upwards as well as downwards, if wealth became personal in the fullest sense of the word, depending on each person’s contribution of efficient force, but the goad of acquisitiveness would be broken, through the limited possibility of increasing one’s wealth and the needlessness of thereby securing the existence of one’s children. A new system would do away with the necessity of applying to the state for increase of salary for the education of children as befits their class. For if all children were placed in an equal position by the community providing everything—from school materials to travelling scholarships—for the complete education of the bodily and mental powers of individuals, an education in which a true circulation of the classes would take place by consideration being given only to ability; if each thus had the same position when all entered upon their different careers; if each had the same chances of there attaining to the right use of his special powers, since he had had every means of training them; if society gave—as a right, not as a charity—to every worker full care during sickness and full support in old age, then the desire to favour one’s own children at the cost of the rest would disappear. The father whose activity had procured him a position of power, which during his lifetime made his children’s circumstances more favourable than those of a number of others, would certainly thus be able—and to the advantage of the whole community—to allow his children to enjoy that differentiation and refinement which, for instance, the richer culture of their home might give. But when the right of inheritance disappeared—or at least was greatly limited and heavily taxed—he could not exempt them from permanently securing by the exercise of their own powers the advantages of a higher or lower kind that they had learned to value at home.

When the difference between legitimate and illegitimate children is abolished in every respect, the paternal home, as in classical and Scandinavian antiquity, may include more often than at present the children of more than one living mother; sometimes even a mother’s home may include children of more than one living father. In either case this would be a recognition of the children’s rights which would leave present day customs with respect to children born out of wedlock a long way behind.

No relation shows better than marriage how morals and emotions may be centuries in advance of the laws within whose limits they have been developed.

Many men now show their wives a delicacy of feeling and allow them a freedom of action which render these fortunate wives unconscious of the fact that—in the eyes of the law—they possess these only by the grace of their husbands. It is not until relations become unhappy that the wife discovers that all the legal power is placed in the hands of one, who thus has judicial support if he wishes to use his power alone, to the exclusion of his wife, or if he wishes to misuse it, to the detriment of her and the children.

That, in spite of these circumstances, married men so often voluntarily place themselves in a position of equality with their wives in regard to authority in the home and with the children is the best proof of the power of the feelings to protect essential values. And that men, in spite of these marriage laws, have become more and more considerate, redounds as much to their credit as their success in becoming human beings—in spite of all hindrances—redounds to that of royal personages. Just as the latter have more excuse than others when they abuse their position, so the same is true of the husband, who must be a very fair-minded person if an I will is not to be the conclusion of a difference of opinion between himself and his wife; for not even the tenderest love will hinder the sense of mastery from flaring up in the face of her obstinate resistance in one direction or another.

To the majority of men, however—and this is the more the case the lower they are in other respects—the present marriage law still forms the great hindrance in the way of their development to a higher humanity. To have wife and child in his power makes of the wicked man a torturer, of the low-minded a wretch. There is no exaggeration in Stuart Mill’s words, that so long as the family is based upon laws which are at variance with the first principles of social life in other things, the law will be favouring what education and civilisation are counteracting in other spheres, namely, the right of force instead of that of personality. Everywhere—in morals as in politics—it is now held that not what a man becomes through being born in a certain sex or class, but what he is personally worth determines the respect he should enjoy; that only his conduct and merits can be the source of his power and authority. But marriage reverses the whole of this principle of modern constitutional law and, therefore, the social application of the principle of personality has not yet gone beyond the surface.

That the law continues to sanction what reality has begun to transform is, as we have said, of comparatively little weight, since the law is—in the better sense of the words—a dead letter. But the immediate danger to the individual and the indirect danger to society become greater in proportion as the possessor of uncontrolled power is worse, or the life less ideal in which this authority is decisive. And even when circumstances are favourable, the authority of the husband is the more painful to the modern woman in proportion as she is more conscious of being able to attain only through perfect equality a satisfactory co-operation with her husband in every direction. It is this profound vexation of the modern woman with her dependence which, amongst other things, makes many women, even when they do not need it, wish to remain at least self-supporting after marriage.

The labour market has hitherto favoured this desire of theirs. It can, however, only be a question of time when the unmarried women will begin to thrust out the married ones—owing to the conditions of competition being more favourable to the former—when legislation has begun to deal with the present disproportionate state of things, where the wives lower the wages of the husbands, the children those of the parents, and the result is the neglect of the homes and the physical and moral degeneration of the children.

But when married women’s labour has been limited by legal “protection for mothers”—especially if this takes the form proposed above—and when, further, the married and the unmarried are protected by the fixing of a minimum wage, an eight hours’ day, and prohibition of working at night and in certain industries dangerous to health, then the mothers will still be able—when their children have passed the age of infancy—to take part in several occupations. This will be still more the case if a collective system of dwellings sets them free from the work of the kitchen and renders possible a good collective superintendence of the children while their mothers are absent.