[Footnote 1: Augusta Webster.]
Both Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr George Moore have stated in print that women frequently propose to men, and several men have confided in me details of the proposals they have received from forward fair ones. I believe it is one of the tenets of advanced women that the s.e.x that bears the child has a right to choose the husband. Although unpleasantly revolutionary this seems eminently sane. That the right to choose a mate should be open to all adults, instead of being the sole privilege of the most selfish and least observant s.e.x, will possibly be acknowledged in the future, when the woman question shall be set at rest for ever.
In those far-off days there will, let us hope, be no more tragedy of the undesired. It seems almost indelicate to apply this phrase to the n.o.ble army of British spinsters, for the most part dignified, worthy women, comprising ratepayers, householders, philanthropists, mothers-in-all-but-fact--working parochially, among the poor, in hospitals, schools, homes, offices, and studios--on public bodies, on the staff of newspapers--generally cheerful and helpful, sometimes clever, often charming, occasionally a little narrow perhaps, but on the whole upholding the best traditions of their s.e.x, and of course _never_ admitting that they would like to have married. Deep in their own hearts, however, almost all of them must feel the sadness of their unfulfilment, comfort themselves how they may with other interests.
Those that have engrossing occupations should be thankful, for the woman whose whole heart is set on finding a husband and who fails to attain this object generally becomes fretful, bitter, disappointed and useless in every way. But women whose minds are sufficiently broad to hold other ideals than the matrimonial one find other work to do, and do it capably and faithfully. Loving and sympathetic women are always wanted. Marriage is not essential to such a woman"s life, though it may be to the highest development of her happiness.
Again, the large number of women who have had chances of marrying can comfort themselves that they chose to be single for their ideal"s sake--or for whatever the reason was. Larger still is the number of those possessing the non-marrying temperament of which Bernard Shaw has written: "Barren--the Life-Force pa.s.ses it by." This rarely troubles them; they have a host of minor pleasures and interests which suffice; no storms of feeling, no pangs of stifled mother-longing ruffle the placid surface of their lives. The real tragedy of the undesired does not touch either of these cla.s.ses; it is reserved in all its poignancy for those who belong to the type of the _grande amoureuse_, whom lack of opportunity generally, lack of attractiveness sometimes, has prevented from fulfilling the deepest need of their nature.
I once met at a hotel on the Riviera an elderly spinster who was always incredibly depressed. However bravely shone the sun, however fair seemed the world in that fairest spot, nothing had the power to cheer her.
I tried once to get her to join in an excursion which a party of us were going to make on donkey-back to a neighbouring village in the hills, but she refused. Another time I invited her to accompany me to the rooms at Monte Carlo, but she again refused, and after several well-meant efforts on my part to cheer her had led to the same result, the poor soul told me in hesitating words that she shunned gay places and lively gatherings. "They always make me discontented and remind me of what I might have had; it brings home to me the--what shall I call it?--the _tragedy of the might-have-been_." I understood what she meant, and no further words on the subject pa.s.sed between us, much to my relief, as confidences of this nature are very painful to both sides. My readers will probably despise this poor lady as morbid, selfish and unbalanced.
Possibly they are right, but the sadness of an empty heart, a lonely life, was the cause of her warped nature. Fortunately hers is an extreme case; the majority of spinsters I imagine can take a delight in seeing girls happy, and are generally deeply interested in the love affairs of others. I recall a beautiful line of Fiona Macleod"s to the effect that "a secret vision in the soul will hallow life." This will suffice to keep many spinsters happy--the memory of some love and tenderness, a romance of some kind to sweeten life; women need it.
To give another instance: a woman once asked me why men fell in love.
"I wonder if you can tell me what it is about women that makes men propose to them," she said. "I"ve known numbers of plain women married and numbers of penniless ones, and some quite horrid ones without a single quality likely to make a man happy, yet there must have been _something_ about them that attracted--some reason for it."
She went on to tell me in such a pathetic way how she longed to have a home and a "nice, kind man," to care for her, and yet no man had ever asked her; no man had ever desired her or looked on her with love; she had never known the clasp of a man"s pa.s.sionate arms, nor the ecstasy of a lover"s kiss. It seemed very strange to me, strangely painful and horribly humiliating. I could scarcely bear to look at her while she told me these things.
"I would make a man so happy," she said, and her mournful dark eyes filled with tears; she had rather fine eyes, and was quite a nice-looking woman with a most sweet and gentle manner. "I would be so good to him," she went on; "I"d simply live for him. I try to put it out of my mind, but as I grow older, and it"s more hopeless, I think of it more and more and sometimes I feel I shall go mad with the misery of it.
The future is so utterly grey and it"s all so unjust. I"m so fitted for love, and now my life"s going and I"ve had nothing, _nothing_!"
She wept bitterly and I wept too in sympathy with her. Curiously enough, this woman was not only attractive, as I have said, and anxious to please, and thoroughly feminine, but she had had ample opportunities of meeting men. I suppose she lacked what the Scotch peasant-woman called the "_come hither in the "ee_"--some subtle s.e.x-magnetism which had been possessed by those "plain, penniless, and horrid women" whom she talked about. Or perhaps it was that the "will to live" was absent and therefore no mate came to the woman.
There are thousands of women who feel the same, though in most cases they would scorn to own it. We hear a good deal of man"s right to live; what about woman"s right to love? Women are so const.i.tuted that the need for loving and being loved is the strongest factor of their being, the essential of their existence. All over the country there are lonely women of every cla.s.s, leisured and working women, pretty and plain, good and bad, who are hungering and thirsting for love, for a man to take care of them, for the right to wifehood and the thrice blessed right to motherhood. In the Press the parrot cry of men echoes ceaselessly: "Women shouldn"t meddle in politics; women shouldn"t do this or that--let them mind their homes and their children." But the restless women who do these things have generally no homes or children to mind; what is the use of preaching the sacredness of motherhood when you will not allow them to be mothers? To what end prate of the duties of wifehood when you do not ask them to be wives?
It is a well-known physiological fact that numbers of women become insane in middle life who would not have done so if they had enjoyed the ordinary duties, pleasures and preoccupations of matrimony--if their women"s natures had not been starved by an unnatural celibacy. This is not a suitable subject to go into here, but I recommend it to the attention of my more thoughtful readers and those who concern themselves with the amelioration of the wretched social conditions of our glorious twentieth-century civilisation.
Hardest of all is the case of the woman who longs not merely for wifehood and "a kind man," but more especially for motherhood, the bitter-sweet crown of the s.e.x that celibate priests preach ceaselessly as woman"s first duty and highest good, but which thousands of women in this country are debarred from fulfilling! Surely no bitterness must be so poignant as the bitterness of the woman who longs for motherhood--ceaselessly in her ears the Life Force is calling, and deep in her heart the dream children are stirring, crying, "Give us life!
give us life!" becoming more importunate every year, as each year finds the divine possibilities unrealised.
I often think how everything combines to torment a generous-hearted, full-blooded, mother-woman whose nature is starved thus. She has, of course, to suppress all emotion on the subject, to hold her head high, and endure with a smile the "experienced" airs of girls, much younger than herself, who happen to wear that magical golden ring that changes all life for a woman; to pretend generally that she has no wish to marry, never had, and could have if she chose, to laugh at this page if she should happen to read it, and call the writer a morbid idiot--in short, she always has to act a part before a world which professes to find exquisitely humorous the fact of a woman being cheated out of the birthright of her s.e.x. Every paper and book she picks up nowadays contains some reference to the glories of motherhood, the joys of love.
Music, pictures, novels and plays, all speak of s.e.x fulfilled and triumphant, not starved and denied like hers. The same principle is everywhere in Nature--the sky, the sea, the flowers, the green trees, the sound of summer rain--all beautiful sights and sounds have the same meaning, the same burden, the same sharp sting for her. If she is inclined to be morbid, every child"s face seen in the street turns the knife in the wound; every sweet baby"s cooing is another pang. "Not for me--not for me!" must be the perpetual refrain in her mind. Her arms are empty, her heart is cold; she belongs to the vast, sad army of the undesired.
_Do you wonder the madhouses are full of single women?_
NOTE.--A clever and delightful friend of mine, a spinster by choice, takes exception to my views on the single estate. I should be deeply grieved if any words of mine were to cause pain to other women. I have said before that some of the best women are spinsters, which is sad to a believer in marriage like myself. Two of the sweetest and n.o.blest women I know are unmarried; one of them especially seems absolutely without a thought of self, and has worked hard for others all her life, giving her powers of brain and body to their utmost limit, and the treasures of her beautiful heart generously and without stint. I beg my readers to note that I have tried to differentiate between those spinsters who do not want to marry and those who do; between the rich spinster who can command all the amenities of life, and the poor one compelled to a relentless and unceasing round of uncongenial toil. Still more do I wish to distinguish between the placid contented woman who can adapt herself to circ.u.mstances and find a quiet sort of happiness in any life--and the less well-balanced, more pa.s.sionate natures, with deeper desires and an imperious need of loving. It is this need of loving stifled, crushed and fought against that awakens my profound compa.s.sion--a compa.s.sion which my friend informs me is wasted and misplaced. My readers must judge.
PART II
CAUSES OF FAILURE
"For Marriage is like Life in this, that it is a field of battle, not a bed of roses." --R. L. STEVENSON.
"Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat."
--_Man and Superman._
"A wise man should avoid married life, as though it were a burning pit of live coals." --_Dhammika Sutta._
I
THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MARRIAGE
"Marriage is the great mistake that wipes out the smaller stupidities of Love." --SCHOPENHAUER.
In one of his essays Stevenson says: "I am so often filled with wonder that so many marriages are pa.s.sable successes, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on which people regulate their choice."
Out of the chaos which envelops this "principle" four special motives seem to stand out, and we can therefore roughly divide the marriages that take place into five sections thus--
1. The Marriage of Pa.s.sion.
2. The Marriage of Convenience.
3. Marriage for a Purpose.
4. Haphazard Marriage.
5. The Marriage of Affection.
_The Marriage of Pa.s.sion._--One of Mr Somerset Maugham"s characters in _The Merry-Go-Round_ says: "I"m convinced that marriage is the most terrible thing in the world, unless pa.s.sion makes it absolutely inevitable." Although a profound admirer of Mr Maugham"s work, here I find myself entirely at variance with him. Most of the mad, unreasonable matches are those which "pa.s.sion makes inevitable." Theoretically this is one of the most promising types of marriage--in practice it proves the most fatally unhappy of all. "They"re madly in love with each other, it"s an ideal match" is a comment one often hears expressed with much satisfaction, but it is a painful fact that these desperate loves lead very frequently to disaster and divorce. Most of the miserable married couples personally known to me were "madly in love" with each other at the start.
Is it to be wondered at when one considers the matter? Nature, who seldom makes a mistake where primitive mankind is concerned is by no means infallible when dealing with the artificial conditions of our Western civilisation. In the East where greater s.e.x licence is allowed, it seems quite safe to trust Nature and follow the instincts she implants. Not so in our hemisphere. The young man and maid who fall under pa.s.sion"s thrall are temporarily blind and mad; their judgment is obscured, their reasoning powers non-existent, nothing in the world seems of the slightest importance except the overwhelming necessity _to give_ themselves--_to possess_ the beloved, the being who has fired their blood.
If the Fates are cruel, these two are permitted to rush into matrimony.
Nature has worked her will and pays no more heed. She is well-satisfied: the children born of these unions of utter madness are generally the finest and strongest, and what else does Nature care about? But for the young couple? ... Gradually the roseate clouds lift, the intoxicating fumes are wafted away--the rapture subsides, and each awakes from the effects of the most potent drug in the universe to find a very ordinary young person at their side--and around them a chain which men name "Forever!"
Unhappy indeed are these two if, when they stand facing each other over pa.s.sion"s grave, there proves to be no link at all between them except the memory of the madness that has died. Fortunately this is by no means always the case, but when it is a very unhappy married life must inevitably follow. Schopenhauer gives as the reason for such matches proving unhappy the fact that their partic.i.p.ants look after "the welfare of the future generation at the expense of the present," and quotes the Spanish proverb, "He who marries for love must live in grief." From the point of view of the individual"s interest, and not that of the future generation, it certainly seems a mistake to wed the object of intense desire unless there is also spiritual harmony, community of tastes and interests, and many other points of union in common. But under the influence of suppressed pa.s.sion people lose their clearness of mental vision and are therefore more or less incapable of judging.
Let there be pa.s.sion in marriage by all means--so far I entirely agree with Mr Maugham--but let it be merely the outer covering of love--a garment of flame the embrace of which is ecstasy indeed, but which, when it has burnt itself away, still leaves love a solid form of joy and beauty, erect beneath its ashes. "Real friendship," founded on harmony of sentiment, does not exist until the instinct of s.e.x has been extinguished.[2]
[Footnote 2: Schopenhauer"s _Metaphysics of Love_.]
_Marriages of Convenience_ are of two kinds, the wholly sordid, when money, social position, or some personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt has been the motive on one or both sides, without any basis of affection; and the partially-sordid, when these reasons are modified by some existing affection or liking. In this category come the people who marry princ.i.p.ally in the interests of their business or profession, such as the barrister who weds the solicitor"s daughter, or the young doctor who marries into the old doctor"s family. In this connection one recalls the father who advised his sons not to marry for money, but to love where money was. No doubt the possession of a little money or "influence" is an added attraction to a maiden"s charm in the eyes of the go-ahead young man of to-day; and considering how hard it appears to be to earn a living nowadays one cannot altogether blame them--distressing as it seems from the sentimental point of view. I don"t believe, however, that there are so many wholly sordid marriages outside the confines of the set generally prefixed as "smart." People who are not members of this glittering circle are already sufficiently shy of matrimony nowadays, and are afraid of the enormous additional handicap such a match would carry. Of course these unions are almost inevitably miserable failures, and one wonders what else the victims could have expected.
We now come to the third division, _Marriage for a Purpose_. These matches are distantly allied with the partially-sordid, but there is nothing sordid about them, as they are frequently undertaken from the highest motives. In this cla.s.s are the widowers who wed for the sake of their children, the spinsters whose motive is their desire for motherhood, the men and women who marry to possess a home, or for the sake of companionship. All these reasons are justifiable enough, and people who embark on matrimony with a set purpose generally take it very seriously, and determine to make a success of it. Such marriages often prove extremely happy, perhaps for the very reason that so little is asked. The spirit of contentment is an excellent influence in married life, since love is often killed by its own excessive demands, as I shall endeavour to show later.