Personally, I believe that with all its faults, with its crudity, its stupidity shot with pain, marriage responds to a human need to live together and to foster the species, and that though we will make it easier and approach free union, we shall always have something of the sort. And so, because I believe it eternal, I think it necessary.
But why does it fare so ill? Why is it that when we see in a restaurant a middle-aged couple, mutually interested and gay, we say: "I wonder if they are married?" Why do so many marriages persist when the love knot slips, and bandages fall away from the eyes? Strange cases come to my mind: M 6 and M 22, always apart, except to quarrel, meanly jealous, jealously mean, yet full of affability—to strangers; M 4 and many others, all poor, where at once the wife has decayed; when you see youth struggling in vain on the features under the cheap hat, you need not look at the left hand: she is married. It is true that however much they may decay in pride of body and pride of life, when all allowances are made for outer gaiety and grace, the married of forty are a sounder, deeper folk than their celibate contemporaries. Often bled white by self-sacrifice, they have always learnt a little of the world's lesson, which is to know how to live without happiness. They may have been vampires, but they have not gone to sleep in the cotton wool of their celibacy. Even hateful, the other sex has meant something to them. It has meant that the woman must hush the children because father has come home, but it has also meant that she must change her frock, because even father is a man. It has taught the man that there are flowers in the world, which so few bachelors know; it has taught the woman to interest herself in something more than a fried egg, if only to win the favor of her lord. Marriage may not teach the wish to please, but it teaches the avoidance of offence, which, in a civilization governed by negative commandments, is the root of private citizenship.
2
For the closer examination of the marriage problem, I am considering altogether one hundred and fifty cases; my acquaintance with them varies between intimate and slight. I have thrown out one hundred and sixteen cases where the evidence is inadequate: the following are therefore not loose generalizations, but one thing I assert: those one hundred and sixteen cases do not contain a successful marriage. Out of the remaining thirty-four, the following results arise:
| Apparently successful | 9 |
| Husband unfaithful | 5 |
| Wife unfaithful | 10 |
| Husband dislikes wife | 3 |
| Wife dislikes husband | 7 |
Success is a vague word, and I attempt no definition, but we know a happy marriage when we see it, as we do a work of art.
It should be observed that when one or both parties are unfaithful, the marriage is not always unsuccessful, but it generally is; moreover, there are difficulties in establishing proportion, for women are infinitely more confidential on this subject than are men; they also frequently exaggerate dislike, which men cloak in indifference. Still, making all these allowances, I am unable to find more than nine cases of success, say six per cent. This percentage gives rise to platitudinous thoughts on the horrid gamble of life.
Two main conclusions appear to follow: that more wives than husbands break their marriage vows, and (this may be a cause as well as an effect) that more wives than husbands are disappointed in their hopes. This is natural enough, as nearly all women come ignorant to a state requiring cool knowledge and armored only with illusion against truth, while men enter it with experience, if not with tolerance born of disappointment. I realize that these two conclusions are opposed to the popular belief that a good home and a child or two are enough to make a woman content. (A bad home and a child or nine is not considered by the popular mind.)
There is no male clamor against marriage, from which one might conclude that man is fairly well served. No doubt he attaches less weight to the link; even love matters to him less than to women. I do not want to exaggerate, for Romeo is a peer to Juliet, but it is possible to conceive Romeo on the Stock Exchange, very busy in pursuit of money and rank, while Juliet would remain merely Juliet. Juliet is not on the Stock Exchange. If business is good, she has nothing to do, and if Satan does not turn her hands to evil works, he may turn them to good ones, which will not improve matters very much. Juliet, idle, can do nothing but seek a deep and satisfying love: mostly it is a lifelong occupation. All this makes Juliet very difficult, and no astronomer will give her the moon.
Romeo is in better plight, for he makes less demands. Let Juliet be a good housekeeper, fairly good looking and good tempered; not too stupid, so as to understand him; not too clever, so that he may understand her; such that he may think her as good as other men's wives, and he is satisfied. The sentimental business is done; it is "Farewell! Farewell! ye lovely young girls, we're off to Rio Bay." So to work—to money—to ambition—to sport—to anything—but Juliet. While he forgets her, the modern woman grows every day more attractive, more intellectually vivid. She demands of her partner that he should give her stimulants, and he gives her soporifics. She asks him for far too much; she is cruel, she is unjust, and she is magnificent. She has not the many children on whom in simpler days her mother used to vent an exacting affection, so she vents it on her husband.