2. CHAPTER II.
It will be well to commence the detailed discussion of the subject by
the particular branch of it to which the course of our observations has led
us: the conditions which the laws of this and all other countries annex to
the marriage contract. Marriage being the destination appointed by society
for women, the prospect they are brought up to, and the object which it is
intended should be sought by all of them, except those who are too little
attractive to be chosen by any man as his companion; one might have supposed
that everything would have been done to make this condition as eligible to
them as possible, that they might have no cause to regret being denied the
option of any other. Society, however, both in this, and, at first, in all
other cases, has preferred to attain its object by foul rather than fair
means: but this is the only case in which it has substantially persisted
in them even to the present day. Originally women were taken by force, or
regularly sold by their father to the husband. Until a late period in
European history, the father had the power to dispose of his daughter in marriage
at his own will and pleasure, without any regard to hers. The Church, indeed,
was so far faithful to a better morality as to require a formal "yes"
from the woman at the marriage ceremony; but there was nothing to show that
the consent was other than compulsory; and it was practically impossible
for the girl to refuse compliance if the father persevered, except perhaps
when she might obtain the protection of religion by a determined resolution
to take monastic vows. After marriage, the man had anciently (but this was
anterior to Christianity) the power of life and death over his wife. She
could invoke no law against him; he was her sole tribunal and law. For a
long time he could repudiate her, but she had no corresponding power in regard
to him. By the old laws of England, the husband was called the lord of the
wife; he was literally regarded as her sovereign, inasmuch that the murder
of a man by his wife was called treason (petty as distinguished from high
treason), and was more cruelly avenged than was usually the case with high
treason, for the penalty was burning to death. Because these various enormities
have fallen into disuse (for most of them were never formally abolished,
or not until they had long ceased to be practised) men suppose that all is
now as it
should be in regard to the marriage contract; and we are continually
told that civilisation and Christianity have restored to the woman her just
rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual bond servant of her husband: no
less so, as far as legal obligation goes, than slaves commonly so called.
She vows a livelong obedience to him at the altar, and is held to it all
through her life by law. Casuists may say that the obligation of obedience
stops short of participation in crime, but it certainly extends to everything
else. She can do no act whatever but by his permission, at least tacit. She
can acquire no property but for him; the instant it becomes hers, even if
by inheritance, it becomes ipso facto his. In this respect the wife's position
under the common law of England is worse than that-of slaves in the laws
of many countries: by the Roman law, for example, a slave might have his
peculium, which to a certain extent the law guaranteed to him for his exclusive
use. The higher classes in this country have given an analogous advantage
to their women, through special contracts setting aside the law, by conditions
of pin-money, etc. : since parental feeling being stronger with fathers than
the class feeling of their own sex, a father generally prefers his own daughter
to a son-in-law who is a stranger to him. By means of settlements, the rich
usually contrive to with-
draw the whole or part of the inherited property of the wife from the absolute control of the husband: but they do not succeed
in keeping it under her own control; the utmost they can do only prevents
the husband from squandering it, at the same time debarring the rightful
owner from its use. The property itself is out of the reach of both; and
as to the income derived from it, the form of settlement most favourable
to the wife (that called "to her separate use") only precludes
the husband from receiving it instead of her: it must pass through her hands,
but if he takes it from her by personal violence as soon as she receives
it, he can neither be punished, nor compelled to restitution. This is the
amount of the protection which, under the laws of this country, the most
powerful nobleman can give to his own daughter as respects her husband. In
the immense majority of cases there is no settlement: and the absorption
of all rights, all property, as well as all freedom of action, is complete.
The two are called "one person in law," for the purpose of inferring
that whatever is hers is his, but the parallel inference is never drawn that
whatever is his is hers; the maxim is not applied against the man, except
to make him responsible to third parties for her acts, as a master is for
the acts of his slaves or of his cattle. I am far from pretending that wives
are in
general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths, and in so full a sense of the word, as a wife is. Hardly
any slave, except one immediately attached to the master's person, is a slave
at all hours and all minutes; in general he has, like a soldier, his fixed
task, and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within certain
limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the master rarely
intrudes. "Uncle Tom" under his first master had his own life in
his "cabin," almost as much as any man whose work takes him away
from home, is able to have in his own family. But it cannot be so with the
wife. Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted
right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master
the last familiarity. Not so the wife: however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately
be chained to -- though she may know that he hates her, though it may be
his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible
not to loathe him -- he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation
of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function
contrary to her inclinations. While she is held in this worst description
of slavery as to her own person, what is her position in regard to the children
in whom she and her master have a joint interest?
They are by law his children. He alone has any legal rights over them. Not one act can she do towards or
in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is dead
she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. He could
even send them away from her, and deprive her of the means of seeing or corresponding
with them, until this power was in some degree restricted by Serjeant Talfourd's
Act. This is her legal state. And from this state she has no means of withdrawing
herself. If she leaves her husband, she can take nothing with her, neither
her children nor anything which is rightfully her own. If he chooses, he
can compel her to return, by law, or by physical force; or he may content
himself with seizing for his own use anything which she may earn, or which
may be given to her by her relations. It is only legal separation by a decree
of a court of justice, which entitles her to live apart, without being forced
back into the custody of an exasperated jailer -- or which empowers her to
apply any earnings to her own use, without fear that a man whom perhaps she
has not seen for twenty years will pounce upon her some day and carry all
off. This legal separation, until lately, the courts of justice would only
give at an expense which made it inaccessible to anyone out of the higher
ranks. Even now it is only given in cases of desertion, or of
the extreme of cruelty; and yet complaints are made every day that it is granted too
easily. Surely, if a woman is denied any lot in life but that of being the
personal body-servant of a despot, and is dependent for everything upon the
chance of finding one who may be disposed to make a favourite of her instead
of merely a drudge, it is a very cruel aggravation of her fate that she should
be allowed to try this chance only once. The natural sequel and corollary
from this state of things would be, that since her all in life depends upon
obtaining a good master, she should be allowed to change again and again
until she finds one. I am not saying that she ought to be allowed this privilege.
That is a totally different consideration. The question of divorce, in the
sense involving liberty of remarriage, is one into which it is foreign to
my purpose to enter. All I now say is, that to those to whom nothing but
servitude is allowed, the free choice of servitude is the only, though a
most insufficient, alleviation. Its refusal completes the assimilation of
the wife to the slave -- and the slave under not the mildest form of slavery:
for in some slave codes the slave could, under certain circumstances of ill
usage, legally compel the master to sell him. But no amount of ill usage,
without adultery superadded, will in England free a wife from her tormentor.
I have no desire to exaggerate, nor does the case stand in any need of
exaggeration. I have described the wife's legal position, not her actual
treatment. The laws of most countries are far worse than the people who execute
them, and many of them are only able to remain laws by being seldom or never
carried into effect. If married life were all that it might be expected to
be, looking to the laws alone, society would be a hell upon earth. Happily
there are both feelings and interests which in many men exclude, and in most,
greatly temper, the impulses and propensities which lead to tyranny: and
of those feelings, the tie which connects a man with his wife affords, in
a normal state of things, incomparably the strongest example. The only tie
which at all approaches to it, that between him and his children, tends,
in all save exceptional cases, to strengthen, instead of conflicting with,
the first. Because this is true; because men in general do not inflict, nor
women suffer, all the misery which could be inflicted and suffered if the
full power of tyranny with which the man is legally invested were acted on;
the defenders of the existing form of the institution think that all its
iniquity is justified, and that any complaint is merely quarrelling with
the evil which is the price paid for every great good. But the miti-
gations in practice, which are compatible with maintaining in full legal force this
or any other kind of tyranny, instead of being any apology for despotism,
only serve to prove what power human nature possesses of reacting against
the vilest institutions, and with what vitality the seeds of good as well
as those of evil in human character diffuse and propagate themselves. Not
a word can be said for despotism in the family which cannot be said for political
despotism. Every absolute king does not sit at his window to enjoy the groans
of his tortured subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns them
out to shiver in the road The despotism of Louis XVI was not the despotism
of Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enough
to justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If an
appeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and their
husbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite an
ordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torture
rather than betray their masters. In the proscriptions of the Roman civil
wars it was remarked that wives and slaves were heroically faithful, sons
very commonly treacherous. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated their
slaves. But in truth these intense in-
dividual feelings nowhere rise to such a luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions. It IS part of
the irony of life, that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which
human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards
those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily
refrain from using that power. How great a place in most men this sentiment
fills, even in religious devotion, it would be cruel to inquire. We daily
see how much their gratitude to Heaven appears to be stimulated by the contemplation
of fellow-creatures to whom God has not been so merciful as he has to themselves.
Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism,
or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judge
of it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of loving
exercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other --
superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependents,
and surrounded by their smiles and benedictions. All this would be very much
to the purpose if anyone pretended that there are no such things as good
men. Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, and
great affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile,
laws and institutions require to be
adapted, not to good men, but to bad. Marriage is not an institution designed fora select few. Men are not required,
as a preliminary to the marriage ceremony, to prove by testimonials that
they are fit to be trusted with the exercise of absolute power. The tie of
affection and obligation to a wife and children is very strong with those
whose general social feelings are strong, and with many who are little sensible
to any other social ties; but there are all degrees of sensibility and insensibility
to it, as there are all grades of goodness and wickedness in men, down to
those whom no ties will bind, and on whom society has no action but through
its ultima ratio, the penalties of the law. In every grade of this descending
scale are men to whom are committed all the legal powers of a husband. The
vilest malefactor has some wretched woman tied to him, against whom he can
commit any atrocity except killing her, and, if tolerably cautious, can do
that without much danger of the legal penalty. And how many thousands are
there among the lowest classes in every country, who, without being in a
legal sense malefactors in any other respect, because in every other quarter
their aggressions meet with resistance, indulge the utmost habitual excesses
of bodily violence towards the unhappy wife, who alone, at least of grown
persons, can neither repel nor escape from
their brutality; and towards whom the excess of dependence inspires their mean and savage natures, not with
a generous forbearance, and a point of honour to behave well to one whose
lot in life is trusted entirely to their kindness, but on the contrary with
a notion that the law has delivered her to them as their thing, to be used
at their pleasure, and that they are not expected to practise the consideration
towards her which is required from them towards everybody else. The law,
which till lately left even these atrocious extremes of domestic oppression
practically unpunished, has within these few years made some feeble attempts
to repress them. But its attempts have done little, and cannot be expected
to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience to suppose that
there can be any real check to brutality, consistent with leaving the victim
still in the power of the executioner. Until a conviction for personal violence,
or at all events a repetition of it after a first conviction, entitles the
woman ipso facto to a divorce, or at least to a judicial separation, the
attempt to repress these "aggravated assaults" by legal penalties
will break down for want of a prosecutor, or for want of a witness.
When we consider how vast is the number of men, in any great country,
who are little higher than brutes, and that this never prevents them
from being able, through the law of marriage, to obtain a victim, the breadth
and depth of human misery caused in this shape alone by the abuse of the
institution swells to something appalling. Yet these are only the extreme
cases. They are the lowest abysses, but there is a sad succession of depth
after depth before reaching them. In domestic as in political tyranny, the
case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing
that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot
pleases, and thus setting in a strong light what must be the terrible frequency
of things only a little less atrocious. Absolute fiends are as rare as angels,
perhaps rarer: ferocious savages, with occasional touches of humanity, are
however very frequent: and in the wide interval which separates these from
any worthy representatives of the human species, how many are the forms and
gradations of animalism and selfishness, often under an outward varnish of
civilisation and even cultivation, living at peace with the law, maintaining
a creditable appearance to all who are not under their power, yet sufficient
often to make the lives of all who are so, a torment and a burthen to them!
It would be tiresome to repeat the commonplaces about the unfitness of men
in general for power, which, after the political discussions of centuries,
every
one knows by heart, were it not that hardly anyone thinks of applying
these maxims to the case in which above all others they are applicable, that
of power, not placed in the hands of a man here and there, but offered to
every adult male, down to the basest and most ferocious. It is not because
a man is not known to have broken any of the Ten Commandments, or because
he maintains a respectable character in his dealings with those whom he cannot
compel to have intercourse with him, or because he does not fly out into
violent bursts of ill-temper against those who are not obliged to bear with
him, that it is possible to surmise of what sort his conduct will be in the
unrestraint of home. Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky,
the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power
to withstand it. The relation of superiors to dependents is the nursery of
these vices of character, which, wherever else they exist, are an overflowing
from that source. A man who is morose or violent to his equals, is sure to
be one who has lived among inferiors, whom he could frighten or worry into
submission. If the family in its best forms is, as it is often said to be,
a school of sympathy, tenderness, and loving forgetfulness of self, it is
still oftener, as respects its chief, a school of wilfulness, overbearingness,
unbounded selfish indulgence, and a
double-dyed and idealised selfishness, of which sacrifice itself is only a particular form: the care for the wife
and children being only care for them as parts of the man's own interests
and belongings, and their individual happiness being immolated in every shape
to his smallest preferences. What better is to be looked for under the existing
form of the institution? We know that the bad propensities of human nature
are only kept within bounds when they are allowed no scope for their indulgence.
We know that from impulse and habit, when not from deliberate purpose, almost
everyone to whom others yield, goes on encroaching upon them, until a point
is reached at which they are compelled to resist. Such being the common tendency
of human nature; the almost unlimited power which present social institutions
give to the man over at least one human being -- the one with whom he resides,
and whom he has always present -- this power seeks out and evokes the latent
germs of selfishness in the remotest corners of his nature -- fans its faintest
sparks and smouldering embers -- offers to him a licence for the indulgence
of those points of his original character which in all other relations he
would have found it necessary to repress and conceal, and the repression
of which would in time have become a second nature. I know that there is
another side to
the question. I grant that the wife, if she cannot effectually resist, can at least retaliate; she, too, can make the man's life extremely
uncomfortable, and by that power is able to carry many points which she ought,
and many which she ought not, to prevail in. But this instrument of self-protection
-- which may be called the power of the scold, or the shrewish sanction --
has the fatal defect, that it avails most against the least tyrannical superiors,
and in favour of the least deserving dependents. It is the weapon of irritable
and self-willed women; of those who would make the worst use of power if
they themselves had it, and who generally turn this power to a bad use. The
amiable cannot use such an instrument, the high minded disdain it. And on
the other hand, the husbands against whom it is used most effectively are
the gentler and more inoffensive; those who cannot be induced, even by provocation,
to resort to any very harsh exercise of authority. The wife's power of being
disagreeable generally only establishes a counter-tyranny, and makes victims
in their turn chiefly of those husbands who are least inclined to be tyrants.
What is it, then, which really tempers the corrupting effects of the power,
and makes it compatible with such amount of good as we actually see? Mere
feminine blandishments,
though of great effect in individual instances, have very little effect in modifying the general tendencies of the situation;
for their power only lasts while the woman is young and attractive, often
only while her charm is new, and not dimmed by familiarity; and on many men
they have not much influence at any time. The real mitigating causes are,
the personal affection which is the growth of time in so far as the man's
nature is susceptible of it and the woman's character sufficiently congenial
with his to excite it; their common interests as regards the children, and
their general community of interest as concerns third persons (to which however
there are very great limitations); the real importance of the wife to his
daily comforts and enjoyments, and the value he consequently attaches to
her on his personal account, which, in a man capable of feeling for others,
lays the foundation of caring for her on her own; and lastly, the influence
naturally acquired over almost all human beings by those near to their persons
(if not actually disagreeable to them): who, both by their direct entreaties,
and by the insensible contagion of their feelings and dispositions, are often
able, unless counteracted by some equally strong personal influence, to obtain
a degree of command over the conduct of the superior, altogether excessive
and unreasonable. Through these various means, the
wife frequently exercises even too much power over the man; she is able to affect his conduct in things
in which she may not be qualified to influence it for good -- in which her
influence may be not only unenlightened, but employed on the morally wrong
side; and in which he would act better if left to his own prompting. But
neither in the affairs of families nor in those of states is power a compensation
for the loss of freedom. Her power often gives her what she has no right
to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights. A Sultan's favourite
slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannises; but the desirable thing
would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave. By entirely
sinking her own existence in her husband; by having no will (or persuading
him that she has no will) but his, in anything which regards their joint
relation, and by making it the business of her life to work upon his sentiments,
a wife may gratify herself by influencing, and very probably perverting,
his conduct, in those of his external relations which she has never qualified
herself to judge of, or in which she is herself wholly influenced by some
personal or other partiality or prejudice. Accordingly, as things now are,
those who act most kindly to their wives, are quite as often made worse,
as better, by the wife's influence, in respect to all interests extending
beyond the family. She is taught that she has no business with things out
of that sphere; and accordingly she seldom has any honest and conscientious
opinion on them; and therefore hardly ever meddles with them for any legitimate
purpose, but generally for an interested one. She neither knows nor cares
which is the right side in politics, but she knows what will bring in money
or invitations, give her husband a title, her son a place, or her daughter
a good marriage.
But how, it will be asked, can any society exist without government? In
a family, as in a state, some one person must be the ultimate ruler. Who
shall decide when married people differ in opinion? Both cannot have their
way, yet a decision one way or the other must be come to.
It is not true that in all voluntary association between two people, one
of them must be absolute master: still less that the law must determine which
of them it shall be. The most frequent case of voluntary association, next
to marriage, is partnership in business: and it is not found or thought necessary
to enact that in every partnership, one partner shall have entire control
over the concern, and the others shall be bound to obey his orders. No one
would enter into partnership on terms which would subject him to the responsibilities
of a principal, with only the
powers and privileges of a clerk or agent. If the law dealt with other contracts as it does with marriage, it would
ordain that one partner should administer the common business as if it was
his private concern; that the others should have only delegated powers; and
that this one should be designated by some general presumption of law, for
example as being the eldest. The law never does this: nor does experience
show it to be necessary that any theoretical inequality of power should exist
between the partners, or that the partnership should have any other conditions
than what they may themselves appoint by their articles of agreement. Yet
it might seem that the exclusive power might be conceded with less danger
to the rights and interests of the inferior, in the case of partnership than
in that of marriage, since he is free to cancel the power by withdrawing
from the connexion. The wife has no such power, and even if she had, it is
almost always desirable that she should try all measures before resorting
to it.
It is quite true that things which have to be decided everyday, and cannot
adjust themselves gradually, or wait for a compromise, ought to depend on
one will; one person must have their sole control. But it does not follow
that this should always be the same person. The natural arrangement is a
division of powers
between the two; each being absolute in the executive
branch of their own department, and any change of system and principle requiring
the consent of both. The division neither can nor should be pre-established
by the law, since it must depend on individual capacities and suitabilities.
If the two persons chose, they might pre-appoint it by the marriage contract,
as pecuniary arrangements are now often pre-appointed. There would seldom
be any difficulty in deciding such things by mutual consent, unless the marriage
was one of those unhappy ones in which all other things, as well as this,
become subjects of bickering and dispute. The division of rights would naturally
follow the division of duties and functions; and that is already made by
consent, or at all events not by law, but by general custom, modified and
modifiable at the pleasure of the persons concerned.
The real practical decision of affairs, to whichever may be given the
legal authority, will greatly depend, as it even now does, upon comparative
qualifications. The mere fact that he is usually the eldest, will in most
cases give the preponderance to the man; at least until they both attain
a time of life at which the difference in their years is of no importance.
There will naturally also be a more potential voice on the side, whichever
it is, that brings the means of
support. Inequality from this source does not depend on the law of marriage, but on the general conditions of human
society, as now constituted. The influence of mental superiority, either
general or special, and of superior decision of character, will necessarily
tell for much. It always does so at present. And this fact shows how little
foundation there is for the apprehension that the powers and responsibilities
of partners in life (as of partners in business), cannot be satisfactorily
apportioned by agreement between themselves. They always are so apportioned,
except in cases in which the marriage institution is a failure. Things never
come to an issue of downright power on one side, and obedience on the other,
except where the connexion altogether has been a mistake, and it would be
a blessing to both parties to be relieved from it. Some may say that the
very thing by which an amicable settlement of differences becomes possible,
is the power of legal compulsion known to be in reserve; as people submit
to an arbitration because there is a court of law in the background, which
they know that they can be forced to obey. But to make the cases parallel,
we must suppose that the rule of the court of law was, not to try the cause,
but to give judgment always for the same side, suppose the defendant. If
so,
the amenability to it would be a motive with the plaintiff to agree to
almost any arbitration, but it would be just the reverse with the defendant.
The despotic power which the law gives to the husband may be a reason to
make the wife assent to any compromise by which power is practically shared
between the two, but it cannot be the reason why the husband does. That there
is always among decently conducted people a practical compromise, though
one of them at least is under no physical or moral necessity of making it,
shows that the natural motives which lead to a voluntary adjustment of the
united life of two persons in a manner acceptable to both, do on the whole,
excepting unfavourable cases, prevail. The matter is certainly not improved
by laying down as an ordinance of law, that the superstructure of free government
shall be raised upon a legal basis of despotism on one side and subjection
on the other, and that every concession which the despot makes may, at his
mere pleasure, and without any warning, be recalled. Besides that no freedom
is worth much when held on so precarious a tenure, its conditions are not
likely to be the most equitable when the law throws so prodigious a weight
into one scale; when the adjustment rests between two persons one of whom
is declared to be entitled to
everything, the other not only entitled to nothing except during the good pleasure of the first, but under the strongest
moral and religious obligation not to rebel under any excess of oppression.
A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that husbands
indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their
partners without being compelled to it, but that wives are not: that if allowed
any rights of their own, they will acknowledge no rights at all in anyone
else, and never will yield in anything, unless they can be compelled, by
the man's mere authority, to yield in everything. This would have been said
by many persons some generations ago, when satires on women were in vogue,
and men thought it a clever thing to insult women for being what men made
them. But it will be said by no one now who is worth replying to. It is not
the doctrine of the present day that women are less susceptible of good feeling,
and consideration for those with whom they are united by the strongest ties,
than men are. On the contrary, we are perpetually told that women are better
than men, by those who are totally opposed to treating them as if they were
as good; so that the saying has passed into a piece of tiresome cant, intended
to put a complimentary face upon an injury, and resembling
those celebrations of royal clemency which, according to Gulliver, the king of Lilliput always
prefixed to his most sanguinary decrees. If women are better than men in
anything, it surely is in individual self-sacrifice for those of their own
family. But I lay little stress on this, so long as they are universally
taught that they are born and created for self-sacrifice. I believe that
equality of rights would abate the exaggerated self-abnegation which is the
present artificial ideal of feminine character, and that a good woman would
not be more self-sacrificing than the best man: but on the other hand, men
would be much more unselfish and self-sacrificing than at present, because
they would no longer be taught to worship their own will as such a grand
thing that it is actually the law for another rational being. There is nothing
which men so easily learn as this self-worship: all privileged persons, and
all privileged classes, have had it. The more we descend in the scale of
humanity, the intenser it is; and most of all in those who are not, and can
never expect to be, raised above anyone except an unfortunate wife and children.
The honourable exceptions are proportionally fewer than in the case of almost
any other human infirmity. Philosophy and religion, instead of keeping it
in check, are generally suborned to defend it; and nothing controls it but
that
practical feeling of the equality of human beings, which is the theory
of Christianity, but which Christianity will never practically teach, while
it sanctions institutions grounded on an arbitrary preference of one human
being over another.
There are, no doubt, women, as there are men, whom equality of consideration
will not satisfy; with whom there is no peace while any will or wish is regarded
but their own. Such persons are a proper subject for the law of divorce.
They are only fit to live alone, and no human beings ought to be compelled
to associate their lives with them. But the legal subordination tends to
make such characters among women more, rather than less, frequent. If the
man exerts his whole power, the woman is of course crushed: but if she is
treated with indulgence, and permitted to assume power, there is no rule
to set limits to her encroachments. The law, not determining her rights,
but theoretically allowing her none at all, practically declares that the
measure of what she has a right to, is what she can contrive to get.
The equality of married persons before the law, is not only the sole mode
in which that particular relation can be made consistent with justice to
both sides, and conducive to the happiness of both, but it is the only means
of rendering the daily life of mankind, in any
high sense, a school of moral cultivation. Though the truth may not be felt or generally acknowledged for
generations to come, the only school of genuine moral sentiment is society
between equals. The moral education of mankind has hitherto emanated chiefly
from the law of force, and is adapted almost solely to the relations which
force creates. In the less advanced states of society, people hardly recognise
any relation with their equals. To be an equal is to be an enemy. Society,
from its highest place to its lowest, is one long chain, or rather ladder,
where every individual is either above or below his nearest neighbour, and
wherever he does not command he must obey. Existing moralities, accordingly,
are mainly fitted to a relation of command and obedience. Yet command and
obedience are but unfortunate necessities of human life: society in equality
is its normal state. Already in modern life, and more and more as it progressively
improves, command and obedience become exceptional facts in life, equal association
its general rule. The morality of the first ages rested on the obligation
to submit to power; that of the ages next following, on the right of the
weak to the forbearance and protection of the strong. How much longer is
one form of society and life to content itself with the morality made for
another? We have had
the morality of submission, and the morality of chivalry and generosity; the time is now come for the morality of justice. Whenever,
in former ages, any approach has been made to society in equality, Justice
has asserted its claims as the foundation of virtue. It was thus in the free
republics of antiquity. But even in the best of these, the equals were limited
to the free male citizens; slaves, women, and the unenfranchised residents
were under the law of force. The joint influence of Roman civilisation and
of Christianity obliterated these distinctions, and in theory (if only partially
in practice) declared the claims of the human being, as such, to be paramount
to those of sex, class, or social position. The barriers which had begun
to be levelled were raised again by the northern conquests; and the whole
of modern history consists of the slow process by which they have since been
wearing away. We are entering into an order of things in which justice will
again be the primary virtue; grounded as before on equal, but now also on
sympathetic association; having its root no longer in the instinct of equals
for self protection, but in a cultivated sympathy between them; and no one
being now left out, but an equal measure being extended to all. It is no
novelty that mankind do not distinctly foresee their own changes,
and that their sentiments are adapted to past, not to coming ages. To see the futurity
of the species has always been the privilege of the intellectual elite, or
of those who have learnt from them; to have the feelings of that futurity
has been the distinction, and usually the martyrdom, of a still rarer elite.
Institutions, books, education, society, all go on training human beings
for the old, long after the new has come; much more when it is only coming.
But the true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals;
claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone
else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all
cases a temporary one; and preferring, whenever possible, the society of
those with whom leading and following can be alternate and reciprocal. To
these virtues, nothing in life as at present constituted gives cultivation
by exercise. The family is a school of despotism, in which the virtues of
despotism, but also its vices, are largely nourished. Citizenship, in free
countries, is partly a school of society in equality; but citizenship fills
only a small place in modern life, and does not come near the daily habits
or inmost sentiments. The family, justly constituted, would be the real school
of the virtues of freedom. It is sure to be a sufficient one of everything
else. It will
always be a school of obedience for the children, of command
for the parents. What is needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy
in equality, of living together in love, without power on one side or obedience
on the other. This it ought to be between the parents. It would then be an
exercise of those virtues which each requires to fit them for all other association,
and a model to the children of the feelings and conduct which their temporary
training by means of obedience is designed to render habitual, and therefore
natural, to them. The moral training of mankind will never be adapted to
the conditions of the life for which all other human progress is a preparation,
until they practise in the family the same moral rule which is adapted to
the normal constitution of human society. Any sentiment of freedom which
can exist in a man whose nearest and dearest intimacies, are with those of
whom he is absolute master, is not the genuine or Christian love of freedom,
but, what the love of freedom generally was in the ancients and in the middle
ages -- an intense feeling of the dignity and importance of his own personality;
making him disdain a yoke for himself, of which he has no abhorrence whatever
in the abstract, but which he is abundantly ready to impose on others for
his own interest or glorification.
I readily admit (and it is the very foundation of my hopes) that numbers
of married people even under the present law (in the higher classes of England
probably a great majority), live in the spirit of a just law of equality.
Laws never would be improved, if there were not numerous persons whose moral
sentiments are better than the existing laws. Such persons ought to support
the principles here advocated; of which the only object is to make all other
married couples similar to what these are now. But persons even of considerable
moral worth, unless they are also thinkers, are very ready to believe that
laws or practices, the evils of which they have not personally experienced,
do not produce any evils, but (if seeming to be generally approved of) probably
do good, and that it is wrong to object to them. It would, however, be a
great mistake in such married people to suppose, because the legal conditions
of the tie which unites them do not occur to their thoughts once in a twelve
month, and because they live and feel in all respects as if they were legally
equals, that the same is the case with all other married couples, wherever
the husband is not a notorious ruffian. To suppose this, would be to show
equal ignorance of human nature and of fact. The less fit a man is for the
possession of power -- the less likely to be allowed to exercise
it over any person with that person's voluntary consent -- the more does he hug himself
in the consciousness of the power the law gives him, exact its legal rights
to the utmost point which custom (the custom of men like himself) will tolerate,
and take pleasure in using the power, merely to enliven the agreeable sense
of possessing it. What is more; in the most naturally brutal and morally
uneducated part of the lower classes, the legal slavery of the woman, and
something in the merely physical subjection to their will as an instrument,
causes them to feel a sort of disrespect and contempt towards their own wife
which they do not feel towards any other woman, or any other human being,
with whom they come in contact; and which makes her seem to them an appropriate
subject for any kind of indignity. Let an acute observer of the signs of
feeling, who has the requisite opportunities, judge for himself whether this
is not the case: and if he finds that it is, let him not wonder at any amount
of disgust and indignation that can be felt against institutions which lead
naturally to this depraved state of the human mind.
We shall be told, perhaps, that religion imposes the duty of obedience;
as every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence,
is always presented to us as an injunction of religion. The Church, it is
very true, enjoins it
in her formularies, but it would be difficult to derive any such injunction from Christianity. We are told that St. Paul said, "Wives,
obey your husbands": but he also said, "Slaves, obey your masters."
It was not St. Paul's business, nor was it consistent with his object, the
propagation of Christianity, to incite anyone to rebellion against existing
laws. The Apostle's acceptance of all social institutions as he found them,
is no more to be construed as a disapproval of attempts to improve them at
the proper time, than his declaration, "The powers that be are ordained
of God," gives his sanction to military despotism, and to that alone,
as the Christian form of political government, or commands passive obedience
to it. To pretend that Christianity was intended to stereotype existing forms
of government and society, and protect them against change, is to reduce
it to the level of Islamism or of Brahminism. It is precisely because Christianity
has not done this, that it has been the religion of the progressive portion
of mankind, and Islamism, Brahminism, etc. have been those of the stationary
portions; or rather (for there is no such thing as a really stationary society)
of the declining portions. There have been abundance of people, in all ages
of Christianity, who tried to make it something of the same kind; to convert
us into a sort of Christian
Mussulmans, with the Bible for a Koran, prohibiting all improvement: and great has been their power, and many have had to sacrifice
their lives in resisting them. But they have been resisted, and the resistance
has made us what we are, and will yet make us what we are to be.
After what has been said respecting the obligation of obedience, it is
almost superfluous to say anything concerning the more special point included
in the general one -- a woman's right to her own property; for I need not
hope that this treatise can make any impression upon those who need anything
to convince them that a woman's inheritance or gains ought to be as much
her own after marriage as before. The rule is simple: whatever would be the
husband's or wife's if they were not married, should be under their exclusive
control during marriage; which need not interfere with the power to tie up
property by settlement, in order to preserve it for children. Some people
are sentimentally shocked at the idea of a separate interest in money matters
as inconsistent with the ideal fusion of two lives into one. For my own part,
I am one of the strongest supporters of community of goods, when resulting
from an entire unity of feeling in the owners, which makes all things common
between them. But I have no relish for a community of goods resting on the
doc-
trine, that what is mine is yours, but what is yours is not mine; and
I should prefer to decline entering into such a compact with anyone, though
I were myself the person to profit by it.
This particular injustice and oppression to women, which is, to common
apprehensions, more obvious than all the rest, admits of remedy without interfering
with any other mischiefs: and there can belittle doubt that it will be one
of the earliest remedied. Already, in many of the new and several of the
old States of the American Confederation, provisions have been inserted even
in the written Constitutions, securing to women equality of rights in this
respect: and thereby improving materially the position, in the marriage relation,
of those women at least who have property, by leaving them one instrument
of power which they have not signed away; and preventing also the scandalous
abuse of the marriage institution, which is perpetrated when a man entraps
a girl into marrying him without a settlement, for the sole purpose of getting
possession of her money. When the support of the family depends, not on property,
but on earnings, the common arrangement, by which the man earns the income
and the wife superintends the domestic expenditure, seems to me in general
the most suitable division of
labour between the two persons. If, in addition to the physical suffering of bearing children, and the whole responsibility
of their care and education in early years, the wife undertakes the careful
and economical application of the husband's earnings to the general comfort
of the family; she takes not only her fair share, but usually the larger
share, of the bodily and mental exertion required by their joint existence.
If she undertakes any additional portion, it seldom relieves her from this,
but only prevents her from performing it properly. The care which she is
herself disabled from taking of the children and the household, nobody else
takes; those of the children who do not die, grow up as they best can, and
the management of the household is likely to be so bad, as even in point
of economy to be a great drawback from the value of the wife's earnings.
In another wise just state of things, it is not, therefore, I think, a desirable
custom, that the wife should contribute by her labour to the income of the
family. In an unjust state of things, her doing so may be useful to her,
by making her of more value in the eyes of the man who is legally her master;
but, on the other hand, it enables him still farther to abuse his power,
by forcing her to work, and leaving the support of the family to her exertions,
while he spends most of his time in drink-
ing and idleness. The power of earning is essential to the dignity of a woman, if she has not independent property.
But if marriage were an equal contract, not implying the obligation of obedience;
if the connexion were no longer enforced to the oppression of those to whom
it is purely a mischief, but a separation, on just terms (I do not now speak
of a divorce), could be obtained by any woman who was morally entitled to
it; and if she would then find all honourable employments as freely open
to her as to men; it would not be necessary for her protection, that during
marriage she should make this particular use of her faculties. Like a man
when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general
be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and
the bringing up of a family, as the first call upon her exertions, during
as many years of her life as may be required for the purpose; and that she
renounces, not all other objects and occupations, but all which are not consistent
with the requirements of this. The actual exercise, in a habitual or systematic
manner, of outdoor occupations, or such as cannot be carried on at home,
would by this principle be practically interdicted to the greater number
of married women. But the utmost latitude ought to exist for the adaptation
of
general rules to individual suitabilities; and there ought to be nothing
to prevent faculties exceptionally adapted to any other pursuit, from obeying
their vocation notwithstanding marriage: due provision being made for supplying
otherwise any falling-short which might become inevitable, in her full performance
of the ordinary functions of mistress of a family. These things, if once
opinion were rightly directed on the subject, might with perfect safety be
left to be regulated by opinion, without any interference of law.