It is the growing indifference to Gallantry, to the Desire to Please, active and passive, that is responsible for the usual absence of romance in conjugal life. And there seems to be a general ungallant consensus among writers, masculine and feminine, that women are more responsible for this state of affairs than men. “The reason,” says Swift, “why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.” Young ladies have, no doubt, greatly improved since the days of Swift; but in the vast majority of cases their device still is to learn a few superficial tricks of “culture,” and to practise the art of personal adornment, until they have caught a husband, and then to bid good-bye to all music, and art, and study, and improvement of the mind, as well as to the “bother” of attending to Personal Beauty while the husband only is about. As if it were not a thousand times more important to retain the husband’s romantic adoration and Gallantry, originally based on that beauty, than to enjoy the momentary admiration of a third person!
On this topic the German poet Bodenstedt has some remarks which show that, after all, the excessive Oriental Jealousy which forbids women to appear unveiled in public rests on a basis of common sense:—
“Just as it is possible to trace most absurdities to an originally quite reasonable idea, so not a few things may be said in favour of the Oriental custom which allows women to adorn themselves only for their husband, and to unveil their face only before him, while outside of the house it is their duty to appear veiled and in as unattractive a costume as possible. With us, it is well known, the opposite is true: at home the women devote little attention to their toilet, and only adorn themselves when they have company or go out visiting; in one word, they display their charms and their finery more to please others than their own husband,” etc.
Surely no one wishes our women to reserve their charms exclusively for their husbands. On the contrary, such a proceeding would be considered quite as unreasonable and selfish as to lock up a Titian or a Murillo in a room accessible to a single person only; but certainly the husband should not be entirely overlooked in his wife’s Desire to Please by her Personal Beauty. His Pride on seeing others admire her does not alone suffice to prolong his romantic adoration. Don’t be too sure, Amanda, that your husband is yours because you are married. He is yours in Law, but not in Love, unless you preserve your personal charms in his presence.
The fact that, whereas in Romantic Love men are superior to women; in conjugal life, on the other hand, woman’s love is commonly much deeper and more lasting than man’s, indicates in itself that marriages are made or marred by women. (For the sake of the lovely alliteration some writers would have said—against their conscience—that “marriages are made or marred by men;” but alliteration will have to be ignored in this place in favour of facts.) Before marriage, women are more beautiful and fascinating than men, wherefore men love them more ardently than they love the men. After marriage, it is the men who grow more beautiful, more manly, in body as well as in mind; hence it is but natural that their wives should love them more and more. So would wives be loved more and more if they did not so soon after thirty lose their physical charms, without trying, by reading books or at least the newspapers, to make themselves intellectual companions of their husbands, able to converse interestingly on various topics.
The old excuse that motherhood inevitably lessens woman’s charms is all nonsense. Married women at thirty are almost always handsomer than old maids of thirty. Women grow stout and clumsy, or thin and faded so soon, not because they are mothers, but because they are indifferent to the laws of health; because they refuse to go out to get fresh air and exercise, which would preserve the freshness of their complexion, the graceful contours of their bodies, and the elasticity of their gait. The morbid fondness for a hot-house atmosphere, and the horror of fresh air, draughts, and vigorous exercise, have done more to shorten man’s Love and woman’s Beauty than all other causes combined. The road to lasting Love is paved with lasting Beauty.
Inasmuch as Conjugal Affection was not—as might be naturally supposed—historically developed from Romantic Love, since it existed long before Romantic Love, the peculiarities of this later passion are not normally present in Conjugal Love. To what extent, however, they can be smuggled in, has just been shown; and it is one of the great social tasks of the future to make Conjugal and Romantic Love as much alike as possible: not by making the poetry of romance more prosaic, but by making the prose of conjugal life more poetic. But so long as Romantic Love is discouraged, Conjugal Affection, too, will of course be unable to borrow its unique charms. Hence an additional reason for facilitating the opportunities for Courtship and prolonging its duration.
MARRIAGES OF REASON OR LOVE-MATCHES?
The number of parents who believe that their infallible wisdom is a better guide matrimonial than their daughters’ choice inspired by Love, is still so large that it is worth while to add a few words in the hope of removing this obstacle to the universal rule of Cupid. Let Mrs. Lynn-Linton be their spokeswoman. “If it seems a horrible thing,” she says, in The Girl of the Period, “to marry a young girl without her consent, or without any more knowledge of the man with whom she is to pass her life than can be got by seeing him once or twice in formal family conclave, it seems quite as bad to let our women roam about the world at the age when their instincts are strongest and their reason weakest—open to the flatteries of fools and fops—the prey of professed lady-killers—objects of loverlike attentions by men who mean absolutely nothing but the amusement of making love—the subjects for erotic anatomists to study at their pleasure. Who among our girls after twenty carries an absolutely untouched heart to the man she marries?”
No doubt there is force in these remarks: but they do not apply to the Girl of the Period. They apply only to the girl brought up on the old system of being left in complete ignorance regarding man and his wicked ways of heartless and meaningless flattery. But modern girls are not such fools as some people would think them. Tell them that men are only amusing themselves; a hint will suffice: and the man who imagines himself a “lady-killer” will suddenly find himself a victim of counter-flirtation and a butt of feminine sarcasm.