Although it is the little things that spoil conjugal happiness, it is the big things which separate husband and wife, and of these undoubtedly infidelity is the most frequent cause. It might truly be called the crux of marriage. Personally I think only three faults are bad enough to make it socially worth while for a woman to leave her husband: drunkenness with violence; misconduct with members of the household, temporary or permanent; and introducing a mistress under a wife’s roof. In the case of a woman with children, even these are not enough if she cannot take the children with her. For the last-named act alone a wife could obtain a divorce under the code of Justinian.
Lapses from the marriage vow on the part of one’s spouse are best treated, like all other troubles, in a philosophical spirit. It is, however, ‘easy to talk!’—one often hears that sexual jealousy is the most frightful of mental tortures: Men are more keenly affected by it than women, and the man whose wife has been unfaithful seems to suffer more acutely, even when he does not care for her, than the woman in the reverse circumstances. That is because his passions are stronger, a man will tell you, or because he looks up to the mother of his children as a being above the sins of the flesh. Probably the real reason is that man has generally had his own way since the ménage in Eden, and he resents having his belongings taken from him. Woman, however, can bear this deprivation better, being more accustomed to share her lord from the time when her sex began to multiply in excess of his—or is it that women have no instinctive antagonism to polygamy?
The world has become well accustomed to man’s polygamous instinct by now, and even its laws are framed accordingly. In novels, the discovery of a husband’s infidelity always causes a perfect cataclysm; the reader is treated to page after page of frenzied scenes; the wife almost loses her reason; her friends and relatives sit in gloomy council deciding ‘what is to be done’; the news is shouted from the housetops; and everybody cuts the man dead.
But in real life, women keep these tragedies to themselves, sometimes bearing them with a strange calmness and philosophy. Fortunately a man is seldom so lacking in worldly wisdom as to let his wife discover his misconduct, and, as a rule, a woman would rather die than reveal such a wound to the world. The burden of a husband’s infidelity is borne for years in silence with smiling face and head held high, by many a wife too proud to own herself incapable of keeping a man faithful. Only when years have accustomed her to the humiliation, and dulled the sharp edge of her grief, does she permit herself the relief of confidences.
Few women can understand why a husband, though fond of and devoted to his wife, should nevertheless seek elsewhere that which she has ceased to possess for him. She whose knowledge of the springs of life is deep enough to enable her to understand this, knows also that hers is the better part, that she represents to her husband the centre and mainspring of his existence, which remains steadfast long after his temporary amorous madnesses have burned away to ashes.
Nevertheless, after ‘Alone’—‘Unfaithful’ is perhaps the saddest and most awful word in human speech. One can imagine it written innumerable times, in flaming letters, across the confines of Hell. . . . Unfaithful!
[ PART III]
SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES
‘For me the only remedy to the mortal injustices, to the endless miseries, to the often incurable passions which disturb the union of the sexes, is the liberty of breaking up conjugal ties and forming them again.’ —George Sand.
‘Until the marriage tie is made more flexible, marriage will always be a risk, which men particularly will undertake with misgiving.’ —H. B. Marriott-Watson.