Thoughts on South Africa

by Olive Schreiner

When the maiden is fourteen or fifteen, and the youth sixteen or seventeen, they turn their thoughts towards union. Social and family feeling ordains that with puberty the married life should shortly begin; and this, under the circumstances, perhaps wisely—certainly inevitably.

For while, where the intellect is highly cultured, and the cerebral life composes the major activity of the individual, early marriage becomes generally the most dangerous of all experiments, and the fruitful cause of human anguish, or the yet more disastrous cause of human atrophy and non-development, it may, on the other hand, lose all its danger where the intellectual faculties are more or less dormant through non-cultivation, and where the action of the physical functions form the major activity of the individual concerned. For, while the brain, in the mentally labouring individual often continues to grow and modify itself till forty, or in exceptional cases till much later, and while the psychic condition in the case of such persons tends completely to modify and change itself between the age of adolescence and the ripe adult maturity of thirty or thirty-five—so that the man or woman of thirty-three has often little or nothing in common with the youth or maiden of eighteen, or even of twenty-one, out of whose crude substance they have developed; and who therefore may have little or nothing in common with the individual whom that youth or maiden selected as a companion, and may therefore find, long before middle life, the continual union with that individual a moral deformity and a mental death—it is, on the other hand, probable that where the brain is not highly active, and under conditions of life in which (however great the natural intelligence) the intellectual faculties are kept more or less quiescent, where little mental stimulation is brought to bear on the individual between the ages of puberty and ripe adulthood, that little or no change or development takes place; and that therefore the person who is selected as an appropriate companion at eighteen or twenty-one will probably be quite as harmonious a companion at thirty or forty; and the danger of early marriage is non-existent.

The continuance of the power of mental growth and expansion, even to extreme old age, in such men as Michael Angelo, Goethe, Victor Hugo, and other men of genius, exemplifies the enormous power of persistent mental growth which is possible where the intellect is keenly active throughout life. The man of unusual mental force and activity is often merely in his psychic adolescence at thirty or thirty-five, when his physical growth has already ceased, and when the mental expansion of even the ordinarily cultured and mentally active individual is generally complete. And this fact, perhaps, largely accounts for the phenomenon, often remarked, of the evil almost always resulting from the very early marriages of men of genius, and the often exceeding happy results of their sex relations and companionships when formed more maturely. And it may perhaps be set down as an axiom, that the greater the mental power and activity, the later should be the riveting of a life-long relationship; and the smaller the mental activity, as opposed to physical, the earlier may it safely be accomplished.

An analogous condition exists with regard to physical development. The average man or woman, and more especially those leading sedentary lives and using the muscles little, develop little or not at all in muscularity after the ages of eighteen or twenty, while the dancer, the labouring man, or the athlete, who continually cultivates his muscles by use, continues to develop enormously; so that an iron band riveted round the arm of the blacksmith at eighteen would have eaten its way into the flesh almost to the bone by the time the man were thirty (if, indeed, it has not arrested all growth); while on the arm of the student it might still hang loose; and the athlete who at thirty should be compelled to use the dumb-bells he had used at eighteen would find them worse than useless.

Those who unqualifiedly condemn early marriage under all conditions, and those who fail to recognize the atrophy and evil caused by it under others, have probably failed to look at the matter from both sides.

There is little or no mental suffering or moral evil caused by the early unions among simple up-country folk, far removed from the stir of cities, and whose monotonous and unstimulating surroundings give scope for little intellectual activity, however great may be their natural mental powers and strength of will. As to the material utility, under their social conditions, of these early marriages, there is no doubt.

Prevented by their isolated position from any companionship with those of their own age beyond the limits of their family, and shut off from those sports and amusements which in cities and even small societies draw the young of different sexes together in light social intercourse, and which satisfy the needs of youth as the games of childhood satisfied the child, and render the celibacy of early youth not only endurable, but often make those years the most joyful of life:—and shut out entirely as they are, in their really primitive condition, from all those intellectual enjoyments which are independent of actual society, and which, perhaps, are to be tasted to the full by the man or woman who lives alone with the immortally embalmed dead in books—a delight which, until under the pressure of overpowering personal affection, renders some men and women unwilling to give up their celibate life, fearing they shall be robbed of it!—devoid of all this, the life of the young African Boer, whether man or woman, who has attained puberty, becomes inexpressibly empty, and probably physically and mentally unhealthy, if they remain single.

There is, further, an economic reason for these early unions: the Boer does not seek to make money that he may marry; he marries that he may make a start in life. Not only is it impossible for the young man to trek away to some solitary farm without a companion who may cook his food, make his clothing, and attend to him when ill, but if he remain on his father's homestead it is impossible for him to start his own little household, and he remains merely a child in his father's house while he remains single; therefore, when he desires to attain to full manhood and begin life, he of necessity looks round for a partner in his wife. And the maiden's life is equally barren of aim till she finds a husband.

It might seem that with his solitary environment this matter of finding a wife might be one of difficulty and almost of impossibility. But the skill of the fore-trekker in accommodating himself to the conditions of his solitary South African life has invented an institution which does away with all difficulty.

When the youth arrives at the age of seventeen or eighteen, certain mysterious phenomena begin to take place. When a "smous" comes round he barters the sheepskins his mother has given him for a pair of brass studs which the "smous" sells him for gold, or, with a certain part of his carefully saved small hoard, buys a white handkerchief and silk necktie; and when his father goes to sell the wool the youth buys for himself a pair of shop-made boots and a white shirt; and if his father has given him no horse he exchanges one of his cows for a stallion; or if he be in a condition of too great shortness of cash, and his father has no horse suitable, he may even borrow one from a distant neighbour; but it is a point of pride under the circumstances to have one of his own. His elder sister or his younger brother are usually his confidants, and he talks over with them his plans. From ten to fifteen, or thirty or even forty miles off, there are various homesteads scattered about the country-side, and desolate indeed must that country be in which in some of them there are not marriageable girls. He may have seen none of them face to face, but he has probably seen them at a distance when he went to church at Nachtmaal[56] with his parents, and may have even shaken hands with some of them; or he may have seen them when his father sent him to the neighbouring farms to seek for strayed cattle; or at some rare wedding dance or New Year's party two years before he may have seen and spoken to them; and even though he should never have met them, he is not wholly without knowledge of them. From his mother and grandmother he has learnt all their descent and family history; his grandmother's brother was probably married to their grandfather's cousin, and the family diseases, failures, characteristics, and virtues are all known to him. Further, he generally has a good idea of their worldly possessions, of the nature of their father's farms, of how much wool is sold at each shearing, and what horses and cattle their parents possess; and he is generally able to calculate what, considering the number of the children, the portion of each daughter will be. He has also heard from young men whom he has met what is the appearance of certain maidens whom he has never seen; which are fair and which dark; which fat and which thin, which have the reputation of being sharp-tempered and which mild. News of this kind circulates freely over the whole country-side. He has long conversations with his sister, whose advice, however, he often neglects; and she irons up his white shirt and collar carefully for him in the back-room one night after the rest of the family have gone to bed, just "to prevent foolish remarks being made!" There is a curious reticence preserved by the whole household on the entire matter as a rule. He may discuss his plans with sister or brother, but is seldom questioned directly, nor are his plans publicly referred to in the household circle: though his mother takes many an opportunity of allowing him to know her view of all the girls on the country-side. If a son of hers were to be married to such and such an one, she should never set her foot within her doors, and such an one she knows to be a lazy slut, her mother was so before her, and the daughter was sure to resemble the mother. As to such and such an one, she would rather see her son dead than married into that family; they have all bad tempers. With regard to another family, they are so poor that they don't see a piece of fat meat twice in three years' time. Now so-and-so, she has never seen her, but should not object to such a girl in her family; her father was a third cousin, they may be considered near relations, and all the family know how to conduct themselves with dignity. On another occasion, when the family are seated at table, she breaks out suddenly with regard to the daughter of a neighbour some fifty miles off, an only child. She has seen her once in church, she says; she may not be very beautiful, but what of that?—beauty fades. Her father is an elder in the church, and her family have always been respectable; she has got her mother's portion already, and when her father dies she will have the farm. She may not be very young, she is nearly nineteen, but when a girl has property she knows her own value too well to take the first young man who may come round just wishing to go through her things. If she (the mother) were a young man going out to court, that is the direction she would look in; but young men must and always will run after the eye, they never know their own good! She addresses these remarks to the father, who eats his dinner and quietly assents. And the young man looks down intently at his plate, and the other members of the family exchange glances. He knows accurately long before the time of his actual setting out what view is taken by his parents of his prospects, and who will and who will not be welcomed.