Foreseeing Evil : Part 5

Women's Wild Oats: Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards
by C. Gasquoine Hartley

(Page 11 of 13)

VII

We come, then, to this: how can the way be made plainer for those women and also men who are unsuited for marriage and do not wish to devote their lives to its duties?

I believe that if there were some open recognition of honorable partnerships outside of marriage, not necessarily permanent, with proper provision for the future, guarding the woman, who, in my opinion, should be in all cases protected; a provision not dependent on the generosity of the man and made after the love which sanctioned the union has waned, but decided upon by the man and the woman in the form of a registered contract before the relationship was entered upon, then there would everywhere be women ready to undertake such unions gladly, there would, indeed, be many women, as well as men, who, for the reasons I have shown, would prefer them to marriage.

There is (I must again insist upon this), whether we like it or not, a new kind of woman about, who is to snatch from life the freedom that men have had, and to do this, she knows, if she thinks at all, that she must keep marriage at bay. For marriage binds the woman while it frees the man, and this injustice - if so you like to term it - is dependent on something fundamental; something that will not be changed by endowment of motherhood, an equal moral standard in the marriage laws, or any of the modern patent medicines for giving health to marriage and liberty to wives. There is an inescapable difference in the results of marriage on the two partners. I mean, marriage holds the woman bound through her emotions, while it liberates the man through what he receives from her. The woman gains her greatest liberation only from the child, but again that holds her bound. Perhaps this is the way nature will not let women get away from their service to life.

Sometimes there is the necessity of purifying by loss. I do not believe in changing the ideal of marriage so that its duties are less binding on women, already we have gone too far in that direction. Thus, I think it better to make provision for other partnerships to meet the sex-needs (for we can cause nothing but evil by failing to meet them) of those women who, desiring the same freedom as the man, would delegate the duties of wife and mother to the odd moments of life, and choose to pursue work or pleasure unvexed and unimpeded by the home duties and care of children. Marriage also is a trust; we are the trustees to the future for the most sacred institution of life.

VIII

A society parched for honesty cannot suffer the ignominious and chaotic conditions of our sexual lives to go on as they have been lately among us, for it is plain to me that our moral code - that marriage itself cannot stand, and, indeed, is not standing, the strain of our dishonesties. Our social life is worm-eaten and crumbling into rottenness with secret and scandalous hidden relationships; these dark and musty by-ways and corners of sexual conduct want to be spring-cleaned and made decent. Never before have we needed so urgently to put our house in order. We must begin to tidy up and begin soon. If we cut out some parts of the labyrinth, we shall give the young a surer chance of finding their way out of the rest of the labyrinth.

IX

An open recognition of unions outside of marriage would prevent the present easy escape on the part of so many men and women from responsible conduct in these unregulated relationships. It is because I believe this that I am advocating this course, which will not make immorality easier, but rather will impose definite obligations where now none exist.

This proposal is not made lightly. I am not advocating such a course as being in itself desirable or undesirable. I am attempting merely to estimate the drift and tendency of the times, considering those forces which for long have been in action and, as I think, must continue to act with even greater urgency in the difficult years that are before us.

I must affirm how necessary, in my opinion, is some kind of fixed recognition for every form of sexual relationship between a woman and a man, so that there may be an accepted standard of conduct for the partners entering into them. Regulation is more necessary in sex than in any other department of conduct, for the plain reason that we are dealing with a force that pierces the slashes through our conscious wills, holding us often helpless in its power; a force which often finds its momentum in atavisms stored up through countless ages before ever society began; a force merely glossed over, as it were, by a worn smudge of civilization. And to-day "the smudge" has grown more than ever ineffective.

May not something be done now, when we are being forced to consider these questions, to make some wider recognition possible. Partnerships other than marriage have had a place as a recognized and guarded institution in many older, and in some ways wiser, societies, and, it may be that the conditions brought upon us after the World War may act in forcing upon us a similar acceptance. I believe that, in face of much that is happening to-day - the terrible disorder, like spreading-sores, infesting our sexual lives - such a change would work for good, and not for evil, that it would not destroy marriage, but might re-establish its sanctity.

Copyright, 1920 by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
All Rights Reserved.