Women's Wild Oats Part 5

VI

As soon as we begin to consider the reform of the law, we come at once to such a tangle of questions that I have the greatest difficulty in finding the right end to unwind the skein. For the trouble with this matter of our divorce laws, as with most other reforms, is to decide just what ought to be done, how far are we prepared to go? where must the marriage bond be held tight? where may it be loosened? These are but examples of the questions that have to be answered. Hence the wrangling and the failure in establis.h.i.+ng any kind of united will, which prevents anything at all being done. No one, for instance, can decide the causes for which it would be right to extend the grounds of divorce. Almost every individual interested, and every group of individuals, appears to have a different opinion and offers opposing suggestions. And the issues are further confused because any change that concerns marriage touches us all so intimately, so that the att.i.tude that we take up must be strongly affected by our deepest emotions, which against our knowledge are directed by our unconscious wills. This explains much apparently unwise conduct, as well as persistent opposition to reform on the part of many humane people, that otherwise would be difficult to understand.

There is much too great a timidity shown even by those who recognize most the evil done by our existing laws and work for their reform. They fear to ask too much, always the sure way to get nothing done.

This question of the causes for which divorce should be allowed is one that is very unlikely to be settled. I doubt if it can be settled wisely. In my opinion, an enlightened reform of our law must go much further than the providing of ways of escape from marriage. Such exits tend to destroy the happy working of marriage and open a direct way to abuses; also they are unable to meet the needs of all cla.s.ses, no matter how wide and numerous they are, while directly they are numerous they become ridiculous. They can never form the ultimate solution of what ought to be done. They tend to make marriage contemptible, and there are real grounds in the objections raised against them. There must be no special exits; the door of marriage must be left open to go out of as it is open to enter.

Nor do I believe there need be cause for fear in this idea of divorce by mutual consent. It is not nearly so easy to break a marriage that has lasted for any time as is usually thought by those who have never tried to do it. The habit of living together forges bonds you do not feel until you try to break them. The intimacy of marriage creates a thousand and one little every-day interests and ties, habits, preoccupations and memories in common; when they are torn it is like tearing thousands of little nerves that are far more painful than the one big hurt that caused them to be broken. That is why most marriages are dissolved through anger, in jealous pa.s.sion, and because lovers are found out. It needs immense courage to sever a marriage if you have time to think what you are doing.

VII

About no subject, perhaps, are prejudices so rampant as they are about this question of changing the marriage laws. I am, however, very certain that I am right here. Nothing but good would follow from this introduction of plain simple honesty. There would be fewer divorces, and not more, if our laws were freed from their obsession with s.e.xual offenses, and divorce was made a question of quiet and careful consideration, and mutual thought and decision.

There ought certainly to be a period of waiting after the application for divorce, which should be signed by both the partners of the marriage. I would suggest that the first application should be made to lapse of itself unless a further application for its enforcement was made after a period of--say, two years. Many people will go on with what they have begun, even if they don't want to do so, because they are not brave enough publicly to say they have made a mistake. After the second application a further period of waiting, not less than a year, might be required before the decree for dissolution of the marriage was made absolute.

I cannot understand how any honest mind can fail to see the advantages of this or some similar plan of divorce by mutual desire and arrangement, over the present law which forces the committal of perjury and requires adultery; nor can I find any reason why freedom should not be granted, when the marriage is childless and both partners, after sufficient deliberation, desire its dissolution. Probably it would be wiser, as a further necessary safeguard against too hasty parting, to require the marriage to have lasted for five years, before application for its dissolution could be made. I think, however, in urgent cases, and wherever it could be shown that the marriage had been entered into under a mistake and had been continuously unhappy, it should be possible to remit this requirement.

The case where one partner only of the marriage desires its dissolution is much more difficult, and cannot, I think, be settled with the same justice. I would, however, point out that the same situation is common before marriage, when an engagement is broken by one or other of the lovers, though, of course, the pain and injury (if such words can be used in this connection) must be much greater after marriage. The law allows in these cases compensation to be claimed by the injured partner for the harm suffered, and, though no one can uphold these breach of promise cases (which have increased so unfortunately in the war-period) it should be possible to avoid a similar sordidness. The establishment of right to compensation is not a new thing in divorce; used in the way I suggest it would serve as a safeguard against a too hasty escape from marriage, as well as being an act of justice for the partner who wished for the divorce to compensate, as fully as his or her means or working capacity permitted, the one who desired the continuance of the marriage.

The amount of compensation offered, as well as the amount claimed, if there was not an agreement between the partners, should be stated when application for the divorce is made; and this question should be settled before any further proceedings are allowed. The required periods of waiting would, of course, be enforced.

It may be interesting to my readers to learn that this principle of compensation, given by the partner who claims divorce to the one who does not desire it, is one that is common among many primitive peoples, especially wherever customs of maternal descent prevail.[106:1] It is practiced, to give one instance, by the Khasis, a maternal people of the hill tribes of East India; it affords an example of how much more wisely, because more simply, these matters are sometimes arranged, before civilization destroys our common sense.

VIII

So far, I have ignored the real difficulty of divorce--the child or children. At once the situation alters; when children are born both the practical needs and moral values are different. A marriage that becomes creative cannot be broken without grave disaster; for all creative things are eternal. What, then, must be done? Frankly, I know of no one workable plan, and I can suggest nothing except that in all cases the welfare of the children should be taken as the standard to which the desire of the parents should be subordinate.

You see, if we accept this standard of the child's good as the one thing of importance, we shall have great changes to make in our thought and in our action. I must follow this a little, though it takes me away from the main line of my argument, but I want to make quite plain the failure in our att.i.tude. Perhaps on no other aspect of this question is greater nonsense talked than on this one of the effect of divorce on children. It is said so universally that it is better for the marriage to be broken than for children to live in a home in which the parents have ceased to love each other. I am not sure that this is true, the child's values are often very different from our adult values. Only just now I am reading "Joan and Peter," by Mr. Wells, and I am amazed at the levity with which he makes his characters treat this serious subject.

You will remember the situation, almost at the opening of the book.

Dolly, Peter's mother and the adopted-mother of Joan, has discovered that Arthur, her husband, has been unfaithful to their marriage. She is considering whether she will remain or will go to Africa with her cousin, Oswald Sydenham, who has for long loved her. These are the pa.s.sages of which I wish to speak: "Then, least personal and selfish thought of all, was the question of Joan and Peter. What would happen to them?" Dolly goes over the details of the situation, her certainty that Arthur would allow her the custody of the children, then the pa.s.sage ends with this remarkable statement: _Oswald would be as good a father as Arthur. The children weighed on neither side._ A little later Oswald speaks on the same matter of the children's future. Dolly has asked him, "But what of Peter and Joan?" He answers, _Leave them to nurses for a year or so, and then bring them out to the sun._

Now, to some people that sort of talk sounds all very well on paper, but as Mr. Wells and everyone ought to know, it is d.a.m.nably different in practice. Shaw, Wells, Cannan, Beresford, and other writers have, in my opinion, done immense evil. They will present situations and treat them intellectually, without any honest facing of the facts. Children cannot be left for a few years and then picked up again like a bag or a trunk.

The change of a father or a mother is a tremendous fact to a child, quite independent of whether the new parent is better or worse than the parent who has left. We know, as yet, very little of the results probable upon such a change, but we do know that confusion and jealousy are very likely to be stirred in the childish soul, and that these may work tremendous and lasting harm.

It has seemed worth while to bring this forward to show a little more clearly the complications which are set like a thick hedge around this problem. There is no easy way out, and the protection of the child's interests mean much more than provision for its bringing up and the satisfying of its physical needs. Only the parents who are sure that they are not claiming their individual right to freedom at the expense of the stronger home rights of their child or children can be held blameless in dissolving their marriage. We talk a great deal to-day about children and their welfare, but very few of us realize at all practically the change of att.i.tude, the restrictions of the adult liberty and sacrifice that are likely to be necessary, if, under all circ.u.mstances, our theories are to be expressed in our daily conduct.

And this brings us straight back to the question we are considering at the very point at which we left it. For, if we place first the child's rights, we see at once that our existing divorce law does already in this matter fail, and fail very seriously.[110:1] A parent, either the father or the mother, may by neglect and many unkindnesses do far more injury to a child than by an act of unfaithfulness. I need not wait to prove this perfectly obvious fact. It seems to me, however, that these home-destroying acts, the result of any sort of daily indecency of living, which brings suffering, with lasting injury, to little children, are the one condition that makes divorce necessary and also right in a marriage where there are children.

I admit the difficulties of framing a law sufficiently elastic to meet this need. I do not, however, see that it would be impossible. The one who claimed the divorce--the father or the mother--or both if the dissolution of the marriage was desired by both parents, could be desired to state in the application for the divorce full answers to the following questions:--

(1) The reason or reasons on which the divorce was sought.

(2) The arrangements one or both parents propose to make for the after care of the child or children.

(3) The guarantees offered that these arrangements would be honorably fulfilled.

(4) Proof to be given by one or both parents that the continuance of the marriage would be harmful to the welfare of the children.

Perhaps you will object that such a law would limit too much the liberty of the parents. I acknowledge this, and I think such limitation is right. You see, I do not believe in the kind of liberty that makes it easy for anyone to do wrong to helpless children.

Science has now shown us how terribly the future of the child depends on its early relations.h.i.+ps in the home: its relation to its mother, its relation to its father, to its brothers and sisters. These early home relations.h.i.+ps a.s.sume a much deeper aspect, and are, indeed, the most important influence in the life of every human being. Parenthood is far more nearly eternal than we knew. It is this tremendous fact, from which there can be no kind of escape, that ought to decide our att.i.tude and direct us in framing an honest and clean divorce law. This protection of those who cannot protect themselves is the one essential and right consideration. The law must take action to guard all children that the failure or folly of their parents do not fall too heavily upon them.

There is little more that I need to say. A hard and fast divorce law cannot, I am sure, meet the needs of the young people of the new generation; moreover, it cannot but act to degrade marriage. Marriage is too difficult--the needs of children, as well as the needs of men and women are too complicated for the old standards of punishments. Divorce as it exists at present is a revenge, it ought to be a help to honorable conduct; it depends now upon a committal of perjury and adultery, it ought to depend on honesty and on a right fulfilling of responsibilities.

FOOTNOTES:

[99:1] Since writing this essay the admirably courageous and honest letter of Commander Josiah Wedgewood has appeared, in which he gives the details of his own divorce suit.

[106:1] See for other examples "The Position of Women in Primitive Society."

[110:1] In this connection see the admirable essay on Divorce by Mr. H.

G. Wells, in "An Englishman Looks at the World."

_Fourth Essay_

"GIVE, GIVE!"

SOME REMARKS ON PROSt.i.tUTION, AND AN INQUIRY AS TO THE BEST MEANS OF PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF VENEREAL DISEASES.

"The horse-leach hath two daughters, crying, Give, Give!"--Pro. x.x.x. 15.

I

Many observers point out an increase in loose conduct during the war. In that period there were established large camps of soldiers in lonely places, who were freed from the neighbor's eye: women also were withdrawn in large numbers from the influences of the home. The war lessened restraints and increased temptation.

I will refer to two out of many newspaper cuttings which dwell on the consequent evils:--

WOMEN, WAR, AND MORALS

_Mr. Justice Darling's View_

_Mr. Justice Darling, in a case at the Old Bailey yesterday, said the harm the war had done to the morals of the people of this country was far beyond the material damage._

_In nothing had it done more harm than in the relaxation on the part of the women of this country. This had now reached a point that it could be seen in a walk along the street. Women differed by the width of Heaven from what their mothers were._

This is quite the hardest thing that has been said about women, the hardest comparison that could be made; but unhappily it cannot he denied. And a second paragraph, taken from the _Daily Telegraph_, carries us a stage further, from cause to effect. The looseness of morals has increased alarmingly the spread of venereal diseases.

"_Giving evidence before the National Birth Rate Commission in London, Dr. E. B. Turner, after advocating early marriage and urging the necessity for a higher moral standard, without which venereal diseases would never be kept down, made this statement:_

"_These diseases were now being spread not only by professional prost.i.tutes. People had gone wrong through the wave of sentimental patriotism which had swept over the country. Out of 112 soldiers taken to the Rochester Road Inst.i.tution, only fourteen had contracted disease from professionals. The others had contracted it from flappers._"