But things are being changed, and a splendid sign of the times it is, too. Young Frenchmen now seek wives among the families of their own stations in life, court them, and make up their minds to marry them, and, what is best of all, parents begin to realize that, after all, it is their sons, and not themselves, who marry, and that it is they who should make their choices.
I believe that this new state of things, which I hope, for my country, will last, and even yet improve, is greatly due to the influence of the Anglo-Saxons, English and Americans, whose freedom in matrimonial matters is getting more and more familiar to the French through reading and travelling.
Like the Anglo-Saxons, they begin to see the practical side of matrimony. The young Frenchman says to himself: 'I do not send my father to my tailor to choose the clothes I am to wear, and I do not see why I should allow him to go and choose for me the girl I am to marry.'
There are other reasons which may also be due to the ever-increasing influence of Anglo-Saxon manners and customs on France. The French girl is every day getting freer. She is no longer cloistered, as it were, at home and at school. She now frequents the society of young men, gets better acquainted with them, and on more intimate terms than before. She is more independent, feels more confidence in herself, knows more of life than before, and the consequence is that she is better able to provoke the love which she desires to inspire in a man of her choice.
There may also be an economical reason which incites young Frenchmen to seek love in matrimony instead of outside of it. They have been observing their elders, and come to the right conclusion that real love and respectable women are much more within their means than sham love and disreputable women. A charming companion, who is at the same time a sweet mistress and counsellor, a careful housekeeper and a devoted wife, appears to them in her true light—the best article in the market. Besides, they realize that the man who is married has a social advantage over the one who is not. The man who marries a girl of his own society can now explain that he married her simply because he loved her, without thinking that he has to apologize for his action by mentioning what a good stroke of business he has made.
Most men of the preceding generation avoided matrimony as they would have avoided ridicule. The part of husband and father struck them as unpleasant and too petit bourgeois. Literature and the drama helped to fill them with this notion; but now literature and the drama are getting optimistic. We are getting over the period of problem novels and plays, in which all the morbid diseases of the heart were dissected. The heroes of novels and plays begin to get married without ceasing to be interesting, and the result is that the present generation of France is getting more healthy and more cheerful. This is most hopeful for France, for the regeneration seems to take place in every class of society. The friends of France will rejoice in this evolution. I have always maintained, and still maintain, that it is the educational system that explains the prosperity of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that absolute freedom for men to marry the women they love explains its strength and its marvellous vitality.