No one can compel a man to live with a woman whom he has ceased to love; but he must be constrained to fulfill his duties with respect to the children born of this union, and to keep his business engagements: in wronging his companion and escaping from the burdens of paternity, he takes advantage of his liberty to the detriment of others: Society has a right to prevent this.
READER. So you do not grant to Society the right of binding souls or bodies; but that of guaranteeing the contract of Marriage, and the obligations of the spouses towards their future children; of forcing them, in case of separation, to fulfill this last obligation?
AUTHOR. Yes; thus in case of the rupture of the marriage tie, society has only to state publicly the responsibilities of the spouses, the number of children, and the name of the parent on whom their guardianship devolves, either by mutual consent or by social authority. And in confining itself to this part, Society would do more to prevent the separation of married couples than by all that it has hitherto foolishly invented for the purpose. The parties would be free to marry again; but what woman would be willing to unite herself to a man who was burdened with several children, or who had treated his first companion unkindly? What man would consent to wed a woman in the same position?
Do you not think that the difficulty that would be experienced in contracting a new marriage would be a curb on the inconstancy and bad conduct that lead to a rupture?
READER. I believe indeed that marriage, as you understand it, would have more chances of duration than ours: first, because it is our nature to cling most closely to that which we may lose. I have often asked myself why many men remain faithful to their mistresses and treat them kindly, while they are disrespectful and unfaithful to their wives; I have asked myself also why many couples who had long lived happily together when voluntarily united, were unhappy and often driven to a legal separation when they had finally married; and the only reason that I have been able to find is that we set the most value on that which we know may escape us. Man has more respect for a woman who is not his legal property, his inferior, than for her who is thus transformed by the law. Notwithstanding, it must be acknowledged that your ideas appear eccentric.
AUTHOR. Yet they are nothing more than an application of our laws; indeed, do they not decree that covenants can have things only, not persons for their object. That Society does not recognize vows, and that proceedings cannot be instituted against their violation?
Now the existing law of marriage alienates one of the partners in favor of the other; the wife belongs to the husband; she is in his power. What is such a contract, if not the violation of the principle which affirms that no covenant can be made involving persons? can it be more lawful to alienate one's person by a contract of slavery?
Some say that we are at liberty to dispose of our freedom as we choose, even though it be to renounce it. Indeed, we may do this, as we may commit suicide, but to make use of our liberty to renounce it or to commit suicide is much less to use aright than to violate the laws of moral or physical nature; these are acts of insanity which we should pity, but which we are not at liberty to erect into a law.
Why does Society refuse to recognize vows and to punish their violation, if not because it admits that it is forbidden to penetrate into the jurisdiction of the conscience? if not because it does not admit that an individual may alienate his moral and intellectual being any more than his body, and devote himself to immobility when it is his duty, on the contrary, to go forward?
I ask then if this same Society is not inconsistent in exacting perpetual vows from the husband and wife, in exacting from the wife a vow of obedience, a tacit vow to deliver up her person to the desires of the husband?