CHAPTER III
ALLIANCES
Marriage as an Alliance.
The French Ideal.
The English Ideal.
The notion of marriage as an alliance is more generally prevalent in France than in England, where it belongs only to the upper, or at least the wealthier classes. The ideal of a French marriage is the practice of princes in the middle ages and at the Renaissance, when they were affianced to ladies whom they had never seen, merely on the ground that their social position was suitable. The ideal of an English marriage is that the social position of both parties must be suitable, but that they ought previously to have some acquaintance with each other and some appearance of affection. There are, however, many exceptions in the practice of both countries. In both, there is a strong disapproval of the mésalliance, which goes so far that even in England it is said that society will condone a seduction more willingly.
Definition of Mésalliance.
Mésalliances in England.
Ideas of Class in France.
Preservation of the Wife’s Surname in France.
The dictionaries say that mésalliance signifies marriage with an inferior, but they fail to explain the kind of inferiority indicated. Would moral or intellectual inferiority in one of the parties constitute a mésalliance for the other? It would most assuredly in reality, and bring its own daily and hourly punishment; but opinion overlooks these trifles, which only concern the parties directly interested. Does a mésalliance result from a difference of rank? English opinion is very elastic about rank; we see marriages between titled and untitled people every day. Does it result from inequality of wealth? That inequality is far more frequent between married people in England, an aristocratic country, than under the French Republic. The rule against mésalliances in England amounts to no more than this, that the parties to the marriage ought to belong to the same monde, that is, they ought to have been seen in the same houses. In France it is a mésalliance for a noble to marry a commoner, and this certainly marks a more trenchant line than any that exists in England, where a commoner may belong to the aristocracy, which he cannot do in France, unless he succeeds in making himself a false noble. Marriages with rich commoners are not infrequent in France, but they are always confessedly mésalliances. On the whole, I should say that so far as marriage is concerned, ideas of class are decidedly more rigorous in France than in England. The woman’s name and condition survive more after the marriage in France. Great numbers of French people put their wife’s surname after their own, and even if this is not done formally, the linen and silver may be marked with the two initials. A Frenchman will sometimes use his mother’s surname instead of his father’s, if it seems to him more euphonious. In formal announcements of deaths and marriages the wife’s surname is frequently preserved. The habit of saying Madame de B. née de C. is a French habit, and she may be called in legal documents Jeanne de C., wife of Gaston de B., as if her name survived after marriage, which it really does in the French conception of marriage.