[I]
A FEW SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM
Within the last twenty-five years the worst injustices of our marriage laws have been rectified, and compared with them the remaining grievances appear relatively mild. It is scarcely credible in these days of advanced women that only a few years ago a husband could take possession of his wife’s property and spend it as he liked, or, what is still more monstrous, could appoint a stranger as sole guardian to his children after his death, entirely ignoring the natural rights of the mother.
The most serious injustice remaining is that the relief of divorce is more accessible to men than to women. This obviously is a law made by men for their own advantage, but its existence is a blot on the fair fame of English justice, and also of English morality, that a husband’s infidelity should be so lightly regarded. Let us hope the day is not far off when the conditions of divorce will be exactly the same for both parties.
The opinion is almost universally held nowadays that a dissolution of marriage should be obtainable if either party be a confirmed drunkard, or a lunatic, or be sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. How degrading it is to the best instincts of our sex that a woman can get a decree of nullity of marriage by proving certain physical disabilities on the part of the husband, which in no way affect her happiness, health, or self-respect, yet can only obtain the partial relief of separation if her husband be a drunkard, an adulterer, and a criminal—so long as she cannot additionally prove cruelty or desertion! It is also an injustice that divorce should be so expensive that only people with money or the very poor (by means of proceedings in forma pauperis) can afford it.
Perhaps the most necessary reform of all is that the marriage of the mentally and physically unfit be legally prevented, or rather that they should be prevented from having children, which is all that really matters. It would be perfectly feasible to ensure the sterilisation of the unfit, though a law to this effect would require the most delicate handling, and one can hardly imagine a parliament of men blundering through it with any degree of success. Perhaps it may come to pass in the day when we have the ideal Government that represents both sexes and all classes. A health certificate signed by doctors in the service of the State should certainly be compulsory before any marriage could be ratified. When cancer, tubercle, insanity, and all the attendant ills of alcoholism and of riotous living have infected every family in the land, our far-seeing lawgivers may begin to realise the necessity for some restriction of this kind. At present, the liberty of the subject is preserved at too heavy a cost to the race.
Another much-needed reform is that children born out of wedlock should be legitimised by subsequent marriage of the parents, as in many other countries. This would hurt no one, could not possibly encourage vice, and would enable many grievous wrongs to be righted. The present regulation is unreasonable in the extreme.
England is almost the only European country where no attempt is made to provide a dowry for the daughters, except among the wealthy classes. Quite well-to-do Englishmen think it unnecessary to give their daughters anything during their lifetime, though they are willing to seriously inconvenience themselves to start their sons well in life. English fathers give everything to their sons; in many of the Continental countries the daughters are rightly considered first, and among all classes, rich and poor alike, the parents strive to provide some kind of a dowry for them, beginning to save from the day of the child’s birth.
I feel sure that if dots for daughters became the custom in this country an enormous impetus would be given to marriage, and much trouble between husband and wife would be avoided if the woman had some means of her own, however small. It is surely most humiliating and unpleasant for a well-bred woman to be dependent on her husband for every omnibus fare and packet of hairpins!
English people, however, are apt to pride themselves on their faults, and are moreover so incurably sentimental that they take credit to themselves for being the exception in this respect to other countries, and boast that there is no inducement but love for them to marry. In the same absurd and improvident spirit is the customary disinclination to ask for settlements on our daughters. Only of very rich men is this expected, whereas it is but right that every man should make a settlement on his wife, if only of the furniture and the policy of life insurance.
A chapter on marriage reforms would not be complete without some reference to our barbarous marriage service. Is it any good complaining about it, though? Ever since I learnt to read I have been reading attacks on it; apparently no one has a good word to say for it, not even clergymen, yet still it remains in use, unamended, just as it was written in the days of James I. If ever a man-made religious formula required revising to suit the progress of ideas it is this one. How can the Church expect us to regard marriage as a sacrament when its conditions are expressed in such coarse language and from so false a standpoint. Is it not false to glorify by inference those persons who have ‘the gift of continency,’ a ‘gift’ which, if common to the majority, would soon result in the extinction of the human race? This special clause is a horrible insult to a pure-minded, innocent bride, and is wholly unnecessary. Surely if no other improvement is made, this opening explanation of the ‘causes’ for which marriage was ordained might well be omitted, if only for the fact that it places last the principal reason for marrying—i.e. ‘for the mutual society, help and comfort.’ The Church of England might well take a lesson from the Quakers or from the New Jerusalem Church, a religious community founded on the writings of that great mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg. In the case of the Society of Friends, the procedure is simple in the extreme. After a time spent in silent prayer, the parties stand and, holding hands, say solemnly in turn: ‘Friends, I take this my friend, A. B., to be my wife, promising, through divine assistance, to be unto her a loving and faithful husband, until it shall please the Lord by death to separate us.’ The New Church formula is longer, but equally beautiful and free from objectionable matter.