Marriage as a Trade/Chapter 19
XIX
IF what I have written has any truth in it, I have shown that we have good grounds for believing that the degradation of woman's position and the inferiority of woman's capacities are chiefly due to the compulsory restriction of her energies and ambitions to the uncertain livelihood and ill-paid trade of marriage. I have shown that the trade is ill paid simply because it is largely compulsory; that, in accordance with economic law, the wife and mother will be held cheap for just so long as she is a drug in the market. I have shown how the unsatisfactory position of the wife and mother, the unsatisfactory training to which she has been subjected from her childhood up, affects the earning and productive powers of woman in those other occupations which the change in social and industrial conditions has forced her to adopt; and I have shown how the new influences engendered by her new surroundings are gradually and inevitably counteracting the peculiar habit of mind acquired in the narrow precincts of the home. It remains to be considered how far these influences are reaching and affecting the life of the home itself—how far they are likely to improve the position not only of the woman who earns her own wage and directs her own life, but of the woman who has no means of augmenting the low remuneration which is at present considered sufficient for the duties of a wife and mother.
I suppose that in the recent history of woman nothing is more striking than the enormous improvement that has taken place in the social position of the spinster. In many ranks of life the lack of a husband is no longer a reproach; and some of us are even proud of the fact that we have fought our way in the world without aid from any man's arm. At any rate, we no longer feel it necessary to apologize for our existence; and when we are assured that we have lost the best that life has to offer us, we are not unduly cast down. (I am speaking, of course, of the independent woman with an interest in life and in herself; not of the poor, mateless product of tradition that we exist only to awaken desire in man. There are still many such, no doubt—the victims of a servile training. On whom may God have mercy—man having no use for them and they none for themselves!) By sheer force of self-assertion we have lifted ourselves from the dust where we once crawled as worms and no women; we no longer wither on the virgin thorn—we flourish on it; and ungarnished though we be with olive-boughs, we are not ashamed when we meet with our enemies in the gate.
So far as I can see, nothing like the same improvement has taken place in recent years in the position of the average married woman. So far as I can see, the average husband, actual or to be, still entertains the conviction that the word helpmeet, being interpreted, means second fiddle; and acts in accordance with that honest conviction. He still feels that it is the duty of his wife to respect him on the ground that he did not happen to be born a woman; he still considers it desirable that the mother of his children should not be over wise. He still clings to the idea that a wife is a creature to be patronized; with kindness, of course—patted on the head, not thumped—but still patronized. While he is yet unmated his dream of the coming affinity still takes the shape of some one smaller than himself who asks him questions while he strokes her hair. On the whole, therefore, he tends to avoid marriage with those women who are not fit subjects for patronage—who, be it noted, also tend to avoid marriage with him; and thus, in the natural order of things, the average wife is the person who is willing to submit to be patronized. I do not mean that there are not many exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions. And it is obvious that human beings, men, or women, who consider themselves fit subjects for patronage are not those who make for progress or possess any very great power of Improving their own status.
Myself I have not the least doubt that such improvement as has already been affected in the status of the wife and mother has originated outside herself, and is, to a great extent, the work of the formerly contemned spinster. I do not mean that the spinster has always laboured to that end intentionally; I mean, rather, that as she improves her own position, as she takes advantage of its greater freedom, its less restricted opportunities, its possibilities of pleasing herself and directing her own life, she inevitably, by awaking her envy, drags after her the married woman who once despised her and whose eyes she has opened to the disadvantages of her own dependent situation. It is the independent woman with an income, earned or unearned, at her own disposal, with the right to turn her energies into whatever channel may seem good to her, who is steadily destroying the prestige of marriage; and the prestige of marriage has hitherto been an important factor in the eagerness of women for matrimony. Once it has gone, once it makes absolutely no difference to the esteem in which a woman is held, whether she is called Mrs. or whether she is called Miss, a new inducement will have to be found, at any rate for the woman who is not obliged to look upon marriage as a means of providing her with bread and butter. Such women will require some additional advantage to replace the social prestige to which they no longer attach any value—that is to say, as a condition of becoming wives and mothers, they will require their status to be raised; and their action in raising their own status will tend to raise the status of married women in general.
Not very long ago, in one of the columns which a daily paper was devoting to animated correspondence dealing with the rights and wrongs of an agitation carried on by women, I came across a brief contribution to the discussion which furnished me with considerable food for thought. It was a letter written by a palpably infuriated gentleman, who denounced the agitation in question as the outcome of the unmarried woman's jealousy of the privileges of her married sister. This very masculine view of the controversy had never struck me before; and, being a new idea to me, I sat down to consider whether it was in any way justified by facts.
The first step, naturally, was to ascertain what were the special privileges which were supposed to arouse in those deprived of them a sense of maddened envy. On this point I did not rely solely on my own conclusions; I consulted, at various times, interested friends, married and unmarried; with the result that I have ascertained the privileges of the married woman to be, at the outside, three in number. (About two of them there is no doubt; the third is already being invaded, and can no longer be esteemed the exclusive property of the matron.) They are as follows—
1. The right to wear on the third finger of the left hand a gold ring of approved but somewhat monotonous pattern.
2. The right to walk in to dinner in advance of women unfurnished with a gold ring of the approved, monotonous pattern.
3. The right of the wife and mother to peruse openly and in the drawing-room certain forms of literature—such as French novels of an erotic type—which the ordinary unmarried woman is supposed to read only in the seclusion of her bedroom.
I cannot honestly say that any one of these blessings arouses in me a spasm of uncontrollable envy, a mad desire to share in it at any cost. As a matter of fact, I have—like many of my unmarried friends—annexed one of the above matrimonial privileges, if not in deed, at any rate potentially and in thought. I have never yet felt the desire to study French novels of an erotic type; but if I ever do feel it, I shall have no hesitation whatever in perusing them in public—even on the top of a 'bus.
One does not imagine that the mere wearing of a plain gold ring would in itself awaken perfervid enthusiasm in any woman of ordinary intelligence; nor does one imagine that any woman of ordinary intelligence would be greatly elated or abashed by entering a dining-room first or seventh—provided, of course, that the table was furnished with enough food to go round. One feels that these temptations are hardly glittering enough to entice reluctant woman into marriage. That there has been a social pressure which has impelled her into it I have not denied! on the contrary, I have affirmed it. But that social pressure has not taken the form of a passionate desire for one or two small and formal distinctions, but of a fear of spinsterhood with its accompaniments, scorn and confession of failure in your trade. And as spinsterhood grows more enviable, so does the fear of it grow less.
It may be objected that in my brief list of the matron's privileges I have omitted the most important of them all—motherhood. I have done so deliberately and for two reasons—because under any system of more or less compulsory marriage there must always be an appreciable number of wives who look upon motherhood rather as a burden than as a privilege; and because motherhood does not appertain exclusively to the married state. There is such a thing as an illegitimate birth-rate.
I myself am far from desiring that the wife and mother should not possess privileges; it seems to me that the work of a woman who brings up children decently, creditably, and honorably is of such immense importance that it might to be suitably rewarded. (That, of course, is a very different thing from admitting that a person who has gone through a ceremony which entitles her to hold sexual intercourse with another person is thereby entitled to consider herself my superior.) But I am very certain that it never will be suitably rewarded until it is undertaken freely and without pressure, and until the wife and mother herself summons up courage to insist on adequate payment for her services. It may not be necessary that that payment should be made in actual money; but, in whatever form it is made, it must be of a more satisfactory and substantial nature than the present so-called privileges of the married woman, involving an all-round improvement in her status. And that all-round improvement she will demand—and get—only when it is borne in upon her that her unmarried sisters have placed themselves in a position to get out of life a great deal more than she is permitted to get out of it. When she realizes that fact to the full she will go on strike—and good luck to her!
Meanwhile, it seems to me that there is something more than a little pathetic in the small airs of superiority which are still affected by the average unintelligent matron towards her husbandless sister. Personally I always feel tender towards these little manifestations of the right to look down on the "incomplete," the unconsciously servile imitation of the masculine attitude in this respect. You watch the dull lives that so many of these married women lead, you realize the artificial limitations placed upon their powers, you pity them for the sapping of individuality which is the inevitable result of repression of their own and unquestioning acceptance of other people's opinions, for the cramping of their interests, perhaps for the necessity of cultivating the animal side of their natures—and you do not grudge them such small compensations as comes their way. It will be better for them and for their children when they realize in what this fancied superiority of the married woman consists; but meanwhile let them enjoy it.
Only a little while past I met a perfect example of this tendency on the part of a married woman to plume herself on marriage as a virtue—or rather, I met her again. She had been my friend once—several years ago—and I had liked her for her intelligence, her humour, her individual outlook on life. We knew each other well for some months; then we were separated, and she wrote to me that she was getting married; and with her marriage she gave up professional work and passed out of my life. I heard little and saw nothing of her for years, until she wrote that she was staying near me and would like us to meet again. I went, and she told me what her life had been since she married. It was a story that I can only call foul—of insult, brutality, and degradation. What sickened me about it was the part that remained unspoken—the thought that the woman I once knew, clean, high-minded, and self-respecting, should have consented to stand for so long in the relation of wife to such a man as she described. One could see what contact with him had done for her; it had dragged her down morally and spiritually; the pitch had defiled her. She had, I knew, a small income of her own—sufficient to live upon without having recourse to her husband—so I urged her bluntly to leave him. She refused, crying feebly; made the usual rejoinder of weak-minded married women run into a corner—that I was not married myself and could not understand; and spent another hour bewailing her lot with tears. I saw that her courage and character had been sapped out of her, that it was no use appealing to what she no longer possessed, and that all she asked was sympathy of the type that listens with an occasional pat on the shoulder or soothing stroke on the arm; so I gave of it, in silence, as well as I could. At the end of a good hour she dried her tears, and declared that she was selfish to talk about nothing but herself, that she must hear my news and what I had been doing. I did not like to refuse, for I thought it better to turn her thoughts away from her troubles, if only for a little; besides, she had liked me genuinely once, and I think her interest in me was still genuine. But as I complied and talked to her about myself, I felt miserably ashamed. For, as it happened, I was very happy then—happier, in some ways, than I had ever been in my life, since, almost for the first time in my life, I had learned the meaning of good luck. I thought of all the kindness, the friendliness, the consideration that was being shown to me—I thought of my work and my pleasure in it—of my interest in work done with others and the sense of comradeship it brings. And I thought how the poor soul who had wept her handkerchief into a rag must realize the contrast of our two lives, must feel how unjust it was that one woman should have so little and another have so much. So, as I say, I felt ashamed, and talked on, conscious of mental discomfort, until I saw her looking at me thoughtfully, as if she were about to speak. I stopped to hear what she had to say; and it was this—
"I suppose you will never marry now?"
For a moment I did not see the real purport of the question, and I dare say I looked astonished as I answered that it was most unlikely, and I had no thought of it. She surveyed me steadily, to make sure that I was speaking the truth; then, having apparently convinced herself that I was, she sighed.
"It is a pity. Every woman ought to get married. Your life isn't complete without it. It is an experience. ..."
Those, as far as I remember, were the exact words she used. (There is no danger that she will ever read them.) They left me dumb; their unconscious irony was so pathetic and so dreadful. Marriage an experience—it had been one for her! And "your life isn't complete without it." This from a woman whose husband had threatened to knock pieces out of her with a poker! The situation seemed to me beyond tears and beyond laughter—the poor, insulted, bullied thing, finding her one source of pride in the fact that she had experienced sexual intercourse. If there had been a child I could have understood; but there had, I think, never been a child—at any rate, there was not one living. If there had been, I believe I should have said to her what was in my mind—for the child's sake; I should have hated to think of it growing up in that atmosphere, in its mother's squalid faith in the essential glory of animalism. But as there was no child, and as she was so dulled, so broken, I said nothing. It was all she had—the consciousness that she, from her vantage-ground of completeness and experience, had the right to look down on me—on one of the unmarried, a woman who "could not understand." It was her one ewe-lamb of petty consolation; and I had not the heart to try and take it from her.