To many also the idea of “conjugal rights,” as established by law, appears a horrible compulsion, an assignment to physical and spiritual prostitution. The modern consciousness of free personality, in fact, no longer harmonizes with that stoical conception of duty in marriage such as, for example, is described by B. Chateaubriand in his memoirs, although, of course, every one who enters on marriage ought to be aware that by doing so he assigns to the other party certain rights, the non-fulfilment of which actually destroys the character and the idea of marriage. Thus, the conduct of a schoolmistress of Berlin, who persistently refused physical surrender to her husband, on the ground that she had wished merely to contract an “ideal” marriage (of the same kind as the mystical “reformed marriage” of the American woman Alice Stockham), demands emphatic condemnation. But an abominable misuse of “conjugal rights” is unquestionably made by inconsiderate husbands, who demand from their wives unlimited, excessively frequent, gratification of their sexual desire, without any regard to the wife’s physical and spiritual condition at the time. That in this respect the idea of “conjugal rights” is greatly in need of revision has been convincingly proved by Dorothee Goebeler in an essay entitled “Conjugal Rights,” published in the Welt am Montag of August 6, 1906.
Too frequently, also, it happens that the husband simply transfers into his married life previous customs of extra-conjugal sexual intercourse, and makes use in marriage of the experience he has gained in intercourse with prostitutes or with priestesses of the love of the moment; he treats his wife as an object of sensual lust, without paying any regard to her individuality and to her more delicate erotic needs.
This physical dissonance is not even the worst. Too often it is simply boredom which kills love in married life. Like Nora in “A Dolls’ House,” one waits for the “wonderful,” and the wonderful does not happen. Instead of this the years pass by; sexual passion, greatly influenced as it is by the spiritual environment, gradually disappears, and with it disappears also the last possibility of spiritual sympathy. Thus, the character of most marriages is solitude. They represent the tragedy of desolation, of the eternal self-seeking of husband and wife.
What disastrous consequences, finally, may result from the part played in marriage by disease, what tragic conflicts may here rise, can be studied in the great book “Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage and the Married State” (Rebman, 1906), an encyclopædic work edited by H. Senator and S. Kaminer, discussing in detail the relation between disorders of health and the married state.
The calamities of modern marriage are strikingly illuminated in the following psychologically interesting account given by the alienist Heinrich Laehr (“Concerning Insanity and Lunatic Asylums,” p. 44 et seq.; Halle, 1852):
“How, as a matter of fact, do marriages come about? In heaven certainly a very small number indeed, if by that phrase we understand marriages undertaken with the full understanding of the nature of the sacrifice involved, under the impulsion of an inner necessity, and based upon deep mutual inclination founded upon self-respect and respect for each other; in social circles, and not in heaven, on the other hand, the majority of marriages are made. The question upon which ultimately so many marriages depend is, what each will gain by it, whilst inner sensations and mutual liking are regarded as subordinate matters.... A man is fully informed about such matters in early years; a woman is full of dark perceptions, uncertain as to what she is to receive and what she is to give. She is naturally impelled by her sense of inward weakness to yield to anyone more powerful than herself, and, in the intoxication of sensual excitement, under conditions in which both, in order to please, tend to show the best side only to each other, she is far less able than man to weigh beforehand the significance of such a step. Later, indeed, when, in the trodden path of marriage, the current of love runs more slowly, her eyes are opened, naked reality takes the place of the pictures of imagination, which formerly caused self-deception, and what appeared to be love, but was not love, takes flight for ever. What has not been hidden under the name of love! It conceals the pretence of egoistic impulses, vanity it may be, the life of pleasure, avarice, indolence; and what a number of marriages are entered into on the part of the woman in order to escape from the oppression of repugnant domestic conditions, because the imagined future appears to them more pleasant in contrast with the actual present.
“There are in the course of marriage so many periods of misunderstood depression, sadness, trouble; and mankind so readily forgets the golden rule, that these periods have to be got through by means of mutual aid, and that in married life husband and wife should do all that is possible to help one another onwards, and not to thrust one another back—so easily is this forgotten, that only too readily the mirth and gladness with which married life was begun vanish away. The intense pain which attacks us with violence, but only at long intervals, has a far less depressing influence on our organism than much less severe, but frequently repeated, emotional disturbances, especially such as arise out of the wretchedness of life. They give rise in us to irritability of the nervous system, by which sensitiveness is increased; and repeated misunderstandings in married life soon make both husband and wife feel that marriage is rather a burden than a joy.”
That women as well as men recognize the danger to love entailed by marriage is shown by Frieda von Bülow in “Einsame Frauen,” pp. 93, 94 (1897):
“During this period I have often considered the question of such continued life in common. Is it not inevitable that this unceasing, intimate association must always give rise to mutual hatred? Husband and wife learn to know one another through and through. The veil of white lies which plays so important a part in ordinary social intercourse is here impossible. The characters are seen naked in all their weakness, all their incapacity for love, all their vanity, all their egoism. In such circumstances, phrases intended to conceal appear simply untruths, and instead of producing illusion they repel. Just as in the first awakening of love, all the powers of the soul are directed towards the discovery of the excellences of the beloved one, so here the soul is for ever upon a voyage of discovery seeking for faults. In both cases alike, a sufficiency of that which one seeks is found.”
The poets also give us an insight into the depths of the eternal contradiction between love and marriage. Who does not know the saying of the idealistic and optimistic Schiller: “Mit dem Gürtel, mit dem Schleier reisst der schöne Wahn entzwei”—“With the girdle, with the veil (of marriage), the beautiful illusion is torn to pieces”? Consider, also, the horribly clear characterization of the pessimistic Byron (in “Don Juan,” canto iii., stanzas 5-8):