Mother's Voice No Nation can rise above the level of its womanhood. Edited by Maria Rose Ruth Hilton LAW AND DUTY LOVE, when felt at all deeply, has an element of transcendentalism in it which makes it the most natural thing in the world for the two lovers-even tho drawn together by a passing sex-attraction-to swear eternal truth to each other; but there is something quite diabolic and mephistophelean in the practice of the law, which creeping up behind, as it were, at this critical moment, and overhearing the two thus pledging themselves, claps its book together with a triumphant bang and exclaims: "There now you are married and done for, for the rest of your natural lives." What actual changes in law and custom the collective sense of society will bring about is a matter which in its detail we cannot, of course, foresee or determine. But that the drift will be, and must be, towards greater freedom, is pretty clear. Ideally speaking, it is plain that anything like a perfect union must have perfect freedom for its condition; and while it is quite supposable that a lover might, out of the fulness of his heart, make promises and give pledges, it is really almost inconceivable that anyone having that delicate and proud sense which marks deep feeling, could possibly demand a promise from his loved one. As there is undoubtedly a certain natural reticence in sex, so perhaps the most decent thing in true marriage would be to say nothing, make no promises-either for a year or a lifetime. Promises are bad at any time, and when the heart is full silence befits it best. Practically, however, since a love of this kind is slow to be realized, since social custom is slow to change, and since the partial dependence and slavery of woman must yet for a while continue, it is likely for such period that formal contracts of some kind will still be made; only these (it may be hoped) will lose their irrevocable and rigid character, and become in some degree adapted to the needs of the contracting parties. Such contracts might, of course, if adopted, vary in respect to conjugal rights, conditions of termination, division of property, responsibility for and rights over children, etc. In some cases possibly they might be looked upon as preliminary to a later and more permanent alliance; in others they would provide, for disastrous marriages, a remedy free from the inordinate scandals of the present divorce courts. It may, however, be said that rather than adopt any new system of contracts, public opinion in this country (Britain) would tend to a simple facilitation of divorce, and that if the latter were made (with due provision for the children) to depend on mutual consent, it would become little more than an affair of registration, and the scandals of the proceeding would be avoided. In any case we think that marriage-contracts, if existing at all, must tend more and more to become matters of private arrangement as far as the relations of husband and wife are concerned, and that this is likely to happen in proportion as woman becomes more free, and therefore, more competent to act in her own right. It would be felt intolerable, in a decently constituted society, that the old blunderbuss of the law should interfere in the delicate relations of wedded life. As it is today the situation is most absurd. On the one hand, having been constituted from times back in favor of the male, the law still gives to the husband barbarous rights over the person of his spouse; on the other hand, to compensate for this, it rushes in with the farcicalities of breach of promise; and in any case, having once pronounced its benediction over a pair-however hateful the alliance may turn out to be to both parties, and however obvious its failure to the whole world-the stupid old thing blinks owlishly on at its own work, and professes itself totally unable to undo the knot which once it tied. The only point where there is a permanent ground for state interference-and where indeed there is no doubt that the public authority should in some way make itself feltis in the matter of the children resulting from any alliance. Here the relation of the pair ceases to be private and becomes social; and the interests of the child itself, and of the nation whose future citizen the child is, have to be safe-guarded. Any contracts, or any proposals of divorce, before they could be sanctioned by the public authority, would have to contain satisfactory provisions for the care and maintenance of the children in such casualties as might ensue; nor ought there to be maintained any legal distinction between "natural" and "legitimate" children, since it is clear that whatever individuals or society at large may, in the former case, think of the conduct of the parents, no disability should on that account accrue to the child, nor should the parents (if identifiable) be able to escape their full responsibility for bringing it into the world. If those good people who make such a terrific outcry against folk entering into married life without going thru all the abracadabra of the law, on account of the children, would try and get the law altered so as to give illegitimate children the same status and claim on their parents as legitimate children, it would show more genuinely for their anxiety about the children, and would really be doing something in the interests of positive morality.Edward Carpenter. |