Underwood & Underwood
AMERICAN WOMAN GOES TO WAR!
(MARCH OF THE SUFFRAGISTS ON WASHINGTON)
V
MATRIMONY & CO.
Of all the acts which America has in solution, marriage is as yet the most unsatisfactory, the least organized. It is easy to dismiss it with a vague wave of the hand, and the slighting “Oh, yes—the divorce evil.” But really to understand the problem, with all its complex difficulties, one must go a great deal further—into the thought and simple animal feeling of the people who harbour the divorce evil.
Physiologically speaking, Americans are made up of nerves; psychologically they are made up of sentiment: a volatile combination, fatal to steadiness or logic of expression. We have spoken of the everyday habit of contact among them, the trifling touch that passes unheeded between young men and girls, from childhood into maturity. This is but a single phase of that diffuseness of sex energy, which being distributed through a variety of channels, with the American, nowhere is very profound or vital. The constant comradeship between the two sexes, from babyhood throughout all life, makes for many fine things; but it does not make for passion. And, as though dimly they realize this, Americans—both men and women—seem desperately bent on manufacturing it.
Hence their suggestive songs, their suggestive books, their crudely suggestive plays, and, above all, their recognized game of “teasing,” in which the young girl uses every device for plaguing the young man—to lead him on, but never to lead him too far. Always suggestion, never realization; as a nation they retain the adolescent point of view to the end, playing with sex, which they do not understand, but only vaguely feel, yet about which they have the typically adolescent curiosity.
So much for the physiological side. It is not hard to understand how under such conditions natural animal energy is dissipated along a hundred avenues of mere nerve excitement and satisfaction; so that when it comes to marriage the American man or woman can have no stored-up wealth of passion to bestow, but simply the usual comradeship, the usual contact intensified. This is all very well, to begin with, but it is too slender a bond to stand the strain of daily married life. Besides, there is the ingrained craving for novelty that has been fed and fostered by lifelong freedom of intercourse until it is become in itself a passion dangerously strong. A few misunderstandings, a serious quarrel or two, and the couple who a year ago swore to cleave to one another till death are eager to part with one another for life—and to pass on to something new.
But a formidable stumbling-block confronts them: their ideal of marriage. Sentiment comes to the front, outraged and demanding appeasement. American life is grounded in sentiment. The idea of the American man concerning the American woman, the idea of the woman concerning the man, is a colossus of sentiment in itself. She is all-pure, he is all-chivalrous. She would not smoke a cigarette (in public) because he would be horrified; he would not confess to a liason (however many it might please him to enjoy), because she would perish with shame. Each has made it a life business to forget that the other is human, and to insist that both are impeccable. When, therefore, before the secret tribunal of matrimony, this illusion is condemned to death, what is to be done?
Nothing that could reflect on the innocence of the woman, or the blamelessness of the man. In other words, the public ideal still must be upheld. With which the public firmly agrees; and, always willing to be hoodwinked and to hoodwink itself, makes a neat series of laws whereby men and women may enjoy unlimited license and still remain irreproachable. Thus the difficulty is solved, sentiment is satisfied, and chaos mounts the throne.