CHAPTER LVI
(Part II)
ON MARRIAGE
The fidelity of married women, where love is absent, is probably something contrary to nature.[1]
Men have attempted to obtain this unnatural result by the fear of hell and sentiments of religion; the example of Spain and Italy shows how far they have succeeded.
In France they have attempted to obtain it by public opinion—the one dyke capable of resistance, yet it has been badly built. It is absurd to tell a young girl: "You must be faithful to the husband of your choice," and then to marry her by force to a boring old dotard.[2]
"But girls are pleased to get married." Because, under the narrow system of present-day education, the slavery that they undergo in their mother's house is intolerably tedious; further, they lack enlightenment; and, lastly, there are the demands of nature. There is but one way to obtain more fidelity among married women: it is to give freedom to girls and divorce to married people.
A woman always loses the fairest days of her youth in her first marriage, and by divorce she gives fools the chance of talking against her.
Young women who have plenty of lovers have nothing to get from divorce, and women of a certain age, who have already had them, hope to repair their reputation—in France they always succeed in doing so—by showing themselves extremely severe against the errors which have left them behind. It is generally some wretched young woman, virtuous and desperately in love, who seeks a divorce, and gets her good name blackened at the hands of women who have had fifty different men.
[1] Not probably—but certainly. With love there, one has no taste for any water but that of the beloved fount. So far fidelity is natural.
In the case of marriage without love, in less than two years the water of this fountain becomes bitter. Now the desire for water always exists in nature. Habits may conquer nature, but only when it can be conquered in an instant: the Indian wife who burns herself (October 21st, 1821), after the death of the old husband whom she hated; the European girl who barbarously murders the innocent child to whom she has just given life. But for a very high wall the monks would soon leave the monastery.
[2] Even down to details, with us everything that regards the education of women is comic. For example, in 1820, under the rule of these very nobles who have proscribed divorce, the Home Office sends to the town of Lâon a bust and a statue of Gabrielle d'Estrées. The statue is to be set up in the public square, apparently to spread love of the Bourbons among the young girls and to exhort them, in case of need, not to be cruel to amorous kings and to give scions to this illustrious family.