FullReads

Finding her responsible, amusing, capable of looking after herself, man is developing a still stranger liberalism; he has recognized that he may not be enough to fill a woman’s life, that she may care for pleasures other than his society, and indeed for that of other men. He has not abandoned his physical jealousy and will not so long as he is a man, but he is slowly beginning to view without dismay his wife’s companionship with other men. She may be seen with them; she may lunch with them; she may not, as a rule, dine with them, but that is an evolution to come. This springs from the deep realization that there are between men and women relations other than the passionate. It is still true that between every man and every woman there is a flicker of love, just a shadow, perhaps; but not so long ago between men and women there was only “yes” or “no,” and to-day there are also common tastes and common interests. This is fine, this is necessary, but it is not good for the old British household where husband and wife must cleave unto each other alone; where, as in the story books, they lived happy ever after. As with the home, so with the family; neither can survive when it suffers comparison, for it derives all its strength from its exclusivism. As soon as a woman begins to realize that there is charm in the society of men other than her uncles, her brothers, and her cousins, the solid, four-square attitude of the family is menaced. Welcome the stranger, and legal hymen is abashed.

All this springs from woman’s new estate–that of human being. She must be considered almost as much as a man. Where there is wealth her tastes must be consulted, and more than one man has been sentenced by a tyrannous wife to wear blue coats and blue ties all his life. She is coming to consider that the husband who dresses in his wife’s bedroom should be flogged, while the one who shaves there should be electrocuted. And she defends her view with entirely one-sided logic and an extended vocabulary. Here again is a good, a necessary thing; but where is the old family where a husband could in safety, when slightly overcome, retire to bed with his boots on? He is no longer king of the castle, but a menaced viceroy in an insurgent land.

All through society this loosening of the marriage bond is operative. By being freer within matrimony men and women view more tolerantly breaches of the matrimonial code. There was a time when a male co-respondent was not received: that is over. In those days a divorcee was not received either, even when the divorce was pronounced in her favor. Nowadays, in most social circles, the decree absolute is coming to be looked upon as an absolution. I do not refer to the United States, where (I judge only from your novels) divorce outlaws nobody, but to steady old England, who still pretends that she frowns on the rebels and finally takes them back with a sigh and wonders what she is coming to. What England is coming to is to a lesser regard for the marriage bond, to a recognition that people have the right to rebel against their yoke. There totters the family–for marriage is its base, and the more English society receives in its ranks those who have flouted it, the more it will be shaken by the new spirit which bids human creatures live together, but also with the rest of the world. Woman was kept within the family by threats, by banishment, by ostracism, but now she easily earns forgiveness. At least English society is deciding to forget if it cannot forgive the guilt–a truly British expedient. At the root is a decaying respect for the marriage bond, a growing respect for rebellion. That tendency is everywhere, and it is becoming more and more common for husband and wife to take separate holidays; there are even some who leave behind them merely a slip: “Gone away, address unknown.” They are cutting the wire entanglements behind which lie dangers and freedoms. All this again comes from mutual respect with mutual realization, from education, and especially from late marriages. Late marriages are one of the most potent causes of the break-up of the family, for now women are no longer caught and crushed young; they are no longer burdened matrons at thirty. The whole point of view has changed. I remember reading in an early-Victorian novel this phrase: “She was past the first bloom of her youth; she was twenty-three.” The phrase is not without its meaning; it meant that the male was seeking not a wife, but a courtesan who, her courtesanship done, could become a perfect housekeeper. Now men prefer women of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, forsake the backfisch for her mother, because the mother has personality, experience, can stimulate, amuse, and accompany. Only the older and more formed woman is no longer willing to enter the family as a jail; she will enter it only as a hotel.