The relation of man and woman in marriage is simply this: Man is power (le pouvoir), woman is duty (le devoir). Does not Holy Scripture itself call man woman's head (or reason), woman man's helpmeet (or minister), and signify that the child is the subject by perpetually inculcating obedience as its duty?
Woman resembles man as man resembles God. Man is created in the image of God, but is not because of this his equal. Woman is made of the flesh and blood of man, but is his inferior. Bonald's theory chimes in with Milton's: "He for God only, she for God in him." (Paradise Lost, Book IV.) He says: "The society of the family is a society to which the man contributes the protecting power of strength, the woman the necessities of weakness; he le pouvoir, she le devoir." Thus does the French philosopher caricature the doctrine of St. Paul, which, in its day, was a great and noble advance in the direction of the emancipation of woman.
What, then, is Bonald's definition of marriage? Marriage is the engagement entered into by two persons of opposite sexes to found a society—the society which is called a family. It is this engagement which distinguishes marriage from every other species of cohabitation of man and woman. Bonald refers with the utmost indignation to Condorcet's witty saying, that if men have any duty towards the beings who do not yet exist, it cannot be that of endowing them with existence. "Indeed it is!" he exclaims. "Marriage exists for the express purpose of continuing the race." But we are not therefore to conclude, maintains Bonald, that a childless marriage, that is to say, a marriage which appears to have failed in accomplishing its purpose, may be dissolved; for, by annulling the first marriage in order to legalise a second, the production of children in the first is made impossible, without their production in the second being positively ensured. Though a husband and wife have no children, there is always a possibility that children may come; and since marriage is only instituted for the sake of the possible children, the fact that they as yet have none is no reason for annulling it. To Bonald marriage is the possible society, to which the family, as the real society, corresponds. "The object of marriage" he teaches, "is not the happiness of the wedded pair." What, then, is its object? "Marriage" he answers, "exists for the sake of society." In marriage religion and the state see only the duties which it imposes.
But if marriage exists only for the sake of society, what, we eagerly ask, is the aim of society? True to his theological dogma, that society by preserving its tradition, i.e. itself, preserves nothing less than God, Bonald answers (as indeed he must) with the empty formula: The aim of society is its own preservation.[2]
Not a word does he waste upon the vain supposition that institutions exist for man's sake; not a thought does he bestow on human happiness, on the development of the race, or the evolution of human greatness.
The one and only vital consideration being the production and welfare of children, polygamy, the putting away of a wife, and divorce seem to Bonald all equally reprehensible. He remarks that the introduction of divorce and the introduction of polygamy seem to follow naturally one on the other, seeing that Luther (this story appears in every single book of our period), who permitted divorce, also, though in all secrecy, countenanced the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse. Bonald declares that he sees no difference between the polygamy which consists in having several wives at the same time and that which consists in having them one after the other; he forgets that he hereby pronounces a second marriage, after the death of husband or wife, to be as culpable as marriage after divorce. Everywhere, he declares, where divorce is legal, and where, consequently, a woman is entitled to see in every man a possible husband, the women are devoid of chastity, or at any rate of modesty. He instances England as an example—England. He compares the state of matters in that country, where in given cases divorce is permitted, with the conditions prevailing among certain savage races, where the husband obliges his wife's lover, when he catches him in flagranti delicto, to pay for a pig, which the three roast and eat in company. England, with its comparatively liberal institutions, is Bonald's and Lamennais' scapegoat. Lamennais says of England that nowhere else is there to be found a population as blunted, as destitute of the sense of morality, of higher ideas, of everything that elevates the mind and ennobles human life.[3]
All this is exaggeration, and of a most untruthful and illogical kind. But there is both logic and truth in what gives these details their significance, namely, Bonald's conception of the close connection between the question of divorce and the whole political question. He sees that a republic or democracy (the Republic is so obnoxious to him that he will not even use the word) inevitably leads to the loosening of the marriage tie.
He writes: "In 1792 divorce was legalised. No one was surprised, for this was one of the inevitable and long-foreseen consequences of the process of demolition carried on at that time with such ardour; but now, when our desire is to re-build, now, divorce entering as a principle into the edifice of society, shakes that edifice to its very foundations. Divorce was in harmony with the democracy which has too long ruled in France under different names and forms. In domestic as well as in public affairs power was delivered over to the passions of the subjects; there was disorder in the family and disorder in the state; there was similarity and harmony between the two disorders. But it is plain to every one that divorce is directly at variance with the spirit of the hereditary and indissoluble monarchy. If we retain divorce, we have order in the state and disorder in the family—indissolubility here, dissolubility there, hence no harmony. On that side to which man is inclined to bend, the law must prop him up; in our days it must forbid disorganised natures disorganisation, as in olden days it forbade half-savage barbarians cruel and bloody vengeance."
Thus Bonald succeeds in resting his theory of marriage upon his fundamental principle of sovereignty by the grace of God. The conclusion he arrives at is that divorce ought to be unconditionally prohibited, and that simple separation without permission to marry again is a sufficient remedy for the ills arising from unfortunate marriages. When his theories became laws, the marriage laws of France, they produced a state of matters in that country which excited the ridicule of the whole world—a state of matters which, for example, made it impossible for a young girl whose bridegroom ran off with her dowry on the wedding day ever to marry again or have lawful offspring. In the case of incendiaries and murderers the law permitted the plea of extenuating circumstances; they might be set at liberty after behaving well for a certain number of years; but, according to Bonald's doctrine and the laws of France, the deserted, victimised young girl had not the same hope of liberty that was extended to the girl who had burned a whole family in their beds or murdered her own father.
The scheme for a code of civil law prepared by the Convention contained the following clauses:—