It is interesting to note that Ellen Key prophesies as the result of the progressive improvement of the species by love’s selection, the attainment of a state wherein every man and every woman will be suited for the reproduction of the species. Then would the ideal of monogamy, one husband for one wife, one wife for one husband, be for the first time realized.
Very beautifully, and with a prudent insight into the actual relationships, Ellen Key discusses the question of the “right to motherhood,” where she finds occasion to describe the new and very various types of women which the evolution of modern life has brought into being. She recognizes only with reservation the general right to motherhood, but she does not regard it as a desirable example to follow when a woman becomes a mother without love, either in marriage or out of it. It is not right to do what is generally done to-day by the man-haters—namely, to demand from the majority of unmarried women that they should produce a child without love. This should not even happen when love exists, but a permanent life-in-common with the father of the child is impossible. An unmarried woman who determines on motherhood should be fully mature, and already have behind her “the second springtime” of her life; she must “not only be pure as snow, pure as fire, but also must be possessed of the full conviction that with the child of her love she will produce a radiance in her own life and will endow humanity with new wealth.”
Such an unmarried woman really makes a present of her child to humanity, and is quite different from the unmarried woman who “has a child.”
Indeed, for the majority, the ideal always remains that of the ancient proverb, that man is only half a human being, woman only half; and only the father and the mother with their child become a whole one!
With regard to divorce, Ellen Key demands that it should be perfectly free, and should depend only upon the definite desire, held for a certain lapse of time, of either or both parties. The dissolution of marriage must be no less easy than the breaking off of an engagement.
“Whatever drawbacks,” she says, “free divorce may involve, they can hardly be worse than those which marriage has entailed, and still continues to entail. Marriage has been degraded to the coarsest sexual customs, the most shameless practices, the most distressing spiritual murders, the most cruel ill-treatment, and the grossest impairment of personal freedom, that any province of modern life has exhibited! One need not go back to the history of civilization; one need simply turn to the physician and magistrate, in order to learn for what purpose the ‘sacrament of marriage’ is employed, and frequently employed by the very same men and women who are professed enthusiasts as to its moral value!”
Just as little as the relations between friends, between parents and children, or between brothers and sisters, necessarily give rise to lasting sentiments of affection, is it possible to expect this of two lovers. The “marriage fetters,” described with such horrible truth by John Stuart Mill and Björnstjerne Björnsen, are to-day felt to be intolerable. The love of the modern man flourishes only in freedom.
“The delicate erotic sentiment of the present day shrinks from becoming a fetter; it shuns the possibility of becoming a hindrance.”
Free divorce, in a case of unhappy marriage, is no less necessary when there are children to the marriage. The duties of the parents to the children remain in such cases unaltered, without, however, thus rendering it necessary that the parents should continue to live together. For the sorrows of such a union, and the harm done thereby to the children, are greater than those that would result from divorce.
Human love has its phases of development. It does not remain for ever the same, but it alters pari passu with the evolution of the individual. Lifelong love is an ideal, but it is not a duty. Such a demand would as inevitably destroy personality as would the demand for the unconditional belief in a doctrine, or for the unconditional pursuit of a profession.