CHAPTER V.DE GIRARDIN.
On page 42 of his pamphlet, "Liberty in Marriage," De Girardin says, with great reason: "Man is born of woman. Everything, therefore, that benefits woman will benefit man."
"To fight and conquer for her is to fight and conquer for himself."
Inspired by these excellent sentiments, the celebrated publicist has investigated the causes of the slavery and degradation of woman, and the means of paralyzing them.
Every child has for its father the husband of its mother: this, according to M. de Girardin, is the principle of two great wrongs: the servitude of the married woman; the inequality of children before the law, which classes them as legitimate and illegitimate.
That children may become equal, that woman may be affranchised from the yoke of man, it is necessary, says the author, to substitute the system of maternity for that of paternity; to modify Marriage, and to render woman independent through the institution and universalizing of the dower.
We will let M. de Girardin expound the rest of hisdoctrine himself. "We must choose," says he, "between these two systems:
"Between the system ofpresumedpaternity,which is the system of the law, and the system of maternity,bearing its proof within itself, which is the system of Nature; the latter is in conformity with incontestable truth, the former is condemned by undisputed statistics. The system of paternity isinequality of children before the mother and before the law; it is woman possessed and not possessing; ... it is no longer the legal slavery of woman,but is still conjugal servitude."—Liberty in Marriage.
"Without equality of children before the mother, equality of citizens before the lawis only an imposture, for evidently and incontestably, this equality does not exist for 2,800,000 children, who, arbitrarily entitled illegitimate, are placed outside of common right in violation of natural law."—Id.
According to De Girardin, the logical consequences of the system of maternity would be:
The abolition of civil marriage;
The mother's name alone given to the child;
The inheritance placed solely in the maternal line.
"Marriage," says he, "is a purely individual act, and, as regards its celebration, a purely religious act.—
"Marriage is an act of faith, not of law: it is for faith to govern it,not for law to make rules for it.
"As soon as the law intervenes, it interveneswithout right, without necessity,without utility.
"For one abuse that it pretends to avert, it gives rise to innumerable others which are worse, and from which society afterwards suffers seriously, without taking into account the cause that produced them.
"Legal liberty in marriage is durable love in the household; indissolubility of marriage is habitual love outside of the household."—Id.
With respect to inheritance and dowry, the author expresses himself thus:
"To inherit at the death of the mother, because maternity and certitude are two equipollent terms, and to receive a support from the father, because paternity and doubt are two inseparable terms; such is the true law of Nature."—Id.
In De Girardin's opinion, woman has the same rights as man to liberty and equality; the sexes are equal, not throughsimilitudebutequivalenceof faculties and functions; man produces, acquires, woman administers, economizes; it belongs therefore to man to provide for the expenses of the household. It is his duty, on uniting himself to a woman, to settle on her an inalienable dower that will permit her to perform her maternal functions properly, and to escape from the vices that frequently result from want and abandonment.
To the objection that the wages of the working people are insufficient to satisfy this duty, the generous publicist replies: Well, raise the rate of wages by excluding from industrial occupations the women and children that lower it by competition with men. And if this measure be not sufficient to balance receipts and expenses, increase the wages, for "there is no consideration weighty enough to make me admit that, in order not to diminish the profits of some men, others shall be eternally condemned to insufficient wages; and that to shelter some women from violation, others shall be necessarily devoted to prostitution."—Id.
In comparing the lot of the wife under the two systems, De Girardin expresses himself thus:
"Under the system of paternity, the wife, loaded with the gifts of fortune, sinks under the weight of an idleness which most frequently inflames and disorders her imagination. She does not know what to do to employ her time. Woman does nothing because man does everything.
"The wife who has brought no dowry and received no dower, sinks under the weight of a toil contrary to nature which obliges her, through economy, to separate herself from her child a few days after giving it birth, and to put it away from her to nurse, for the consideration of five or six francs a month; to go to work in one direction while her husband works in the other, and not to rejoin him till evening, when each returns from the workshop which has kept them absent from their household all day: if this is what is called the family,is it indeed worth all the stir that is made about it?
"Under the system of maternity, on the contrary, the richer a woman is, the further she is removed from idleness; for not only has she her children to nurse, to rear, to instruct, and to watch over, but she has also to administer her fortune which will one day be theirs.
"To preserve this fortune, to increase it still more: here is wherewith to occupy her leisure, to calm her imagination, to place her under curb. It is wrong to suppose women not qualified for the management of business; they excel in it, however little may have been their practice or application.
"Long enough has man been the personification of war, of slavery, of conquest; it is the turn of woman to be the personification of peace, of liberty, of civilization.
"In this new system (that of maternity), each of thetwo has his part: to man labor, the genius of enterprise; to woman economy and the spirit of foresight.
"Man speculates, woman administers;
"Man acquires, woman preserves;
"Man brings in, woman transmits;
"The dowry remains the attribute of the father, the inheritance becomes the privilege of the mother;
"Each of the two thus exercises the function that isnaturalto him, and in conformity with the essence of things."—Id.
A number of women have asked whether De Girardin recognizes political right for women. He says nothing about it, either in his work "Liberty in Marriage," or in his "Universal Politics." But when a man writes that:
"Woman, belonging to herself, and being dependent only on her reason, has the same rights as man to liberty and equality."
That "universal suffrage should beindividualanddirect."
That "every holder of a general insurance has a right to be a party to it."
It is evident that we may deduce, without any great stretch of logic, that, woman beingfree and equal to man,
Woman being comprised in universality,
Woman holding, like man, her policy of insurance, has a right, like man, to be elector, to be eligible to office, and to voteindividually and directly.
Now, as M. de Girardin is not one of those who recoil from the consequences of their principles, we are led to believe that he admits to woman the exercise of political right for woman.
I have been told that, in 1848, one of those pitiable individuals who have neither intellect enough to be logical, nor justice enough to comprehend the oppressed, was haranguing before M. de Girardin against the claims of certain women to enter political life. "Why not?" asked M. de Girardin. "Do you believe that Madame de Girardin would deposit a less intelligent vote in the electoral urn than that of her footman?"
If this anecdote be true, the opinion of the publicist concerning the political right of woman is not doubtful.
La liberté dans le mariagehas raised a tempest of indignation, to a greater or less degree feigned, among the prudes; and for some time it required courage openly to proclaim one's self the (feminine) champion of the author.
Abolish marriage! cry some, veiling their faces with an air of offended modesty.
Make a speculation of love! exclaim others who, apparently, have preserved their holy innocence and baptismal ignorance.
Come, ladies, we might say,—a truce to conventional delicacy and sentimentality. Let men suffer themselves to be deceived by our mask, nothing is more natural; but what is the use of playing the farce among women?
M. de Girardin does not really suppress marriage; he changes it in some respects, but leaves it intact in a religious point of view. If his system should be adopted, therefore, you might be married in the presence of the clergymen of your respective faiths, precisely as was done some seventy years ago, and you would have no fewer scruples than your grandmothers, who believed themselves then sufficiently married.
On the other hand, in suppressing civil marriage, the author does not interdict such and such particular stipulations; if therefore you hold in any degree to the religion of the Code, it will be lawful for you to stipulate in your notarial contract:
1. That you will be submissive to your husbands;
2. That you will permit them to manage your fortune, even contrary to your interests and to those of your children;
3. That without authority from them, you will neither go to law, nor undertake anything, nor sell anything, nor receive anything, nor give anything away;
4. That, so long as they shall live, you renounce all authority over your children; that they can, if they please, take them from you, banish you from them, have them reared by whoever they choose, even by their mistress, finally, give them in marriage contrary to your will;
5. That you recognise their right to carry elsewhere their love, their attentions, their fortune and your own; provided that this does not happen under your roof;
6. That, lastly, you grant their right, if, abandoned by them, you attach yourself to another, to drag you before the bar, to dishonor you, to imprison you with thieves and prostitutes; that even in such case you declare them excusable in killing you.
Yes, ladies, you might stipulate all this, for M. de Girardin disputes no one the rights of lacking dignity and being imbecile; of what then do you complain?
You reproach M. de Girardin with wishing to make a speculation of love! Be good enough to tell me what you call the greater part of the marriages of thepresent time, in which men have the heartlessness to speculate even on death!—in which they ask how much a young girl has, what are her expectations, andhow old are her parents.
Answer, women:
Is it true that the great majority of seduced women are incapacitated, through shame and poverty, from rearing their children?
That what you call a first fault, drives the greater part of them to make a traffic of their charms?
That the great majority of men forget, after satisfying their passion, both the woman whom they have led astray, and the innocent creature that owes its life to them?
Is it true that the horrible and cruel selfishness of men and the insane confidence of women produces annually a fearful number of so called illegitimate children, the greater part of which people the prisons, the galleys, and the public brothels?
Is it true, lastly, that this same selfishness and this same confidence are the cause of thousands of human lives being criminally sacrificed?
And if all this shame, all these griefs, all these crimes are true?
If there are so many women seduced and heartbroken;
If there are so many children abandoned;
If there are so many infanticides;
If the law does not protect the woman deceived and made a mother;
If this law does not compel the seducer to any reparation;
If public opinion leaves to the victim all the shame;
Why do you reproach a man for reminding a young girl that from love may proceed maternity?
For telling her that she ought to provide in advance for the child that may be born, in order that it may not be cast upon public charity, and that she herself may not risk falling into those sinks of impurity that are the shame and degradation of our sex?
Do you reproach a man then for taking our part against the selfish and animal passions of his sex, and against the impunity accorded them by the laws?
Do you reproach him for taking in hand the cause of morals and health, in opposition to the degradation of soul and body?
A young girl stipulate the sale of her person! say you? what essential difference do you find between this kind of contract, and those that are made to-day before the notary on the occasion of a marriage?
Did not most among you, ladies, purchase your husbands with so much dowry, so much income, so muchexpectations? And if these husbands of yours did not think it shameful to be sold, and if you do not esteem them less for it, be good enough to tell me from what principle you judge it shameful for a young girl to do the same in order to rear her children, and to live without prostituting herself?
For my part, I do not see.
Ladies, you are grown-up children: men feign to have contempt for the woman who thinks of her interests in love ... because they wish, if possible, to keep their money, that is all.
Is this to say that I admit all the ideas of M. de Girardin? No.
I admit with him, that woman can only be free andthe equal of man, in so far as she is a wife, through a change in marriage.
That, in the state of insecurity in which she is placed with respect to wages and to maternity outside of marriages, womandoes wellto take measures to prevent man from shifting the obligations of paternity from himself to her.
I would willingly admit that the child should bear the mother's name only, if men did not object so strongly to it. The child, belonging to both, should bear both names, and choose, at majority, the one that he preferred; or else the daughters should bear the name of the mother and the sons that of the father, from the time of majority.
I readily admit the equality of children before the mother and the law; for bastardy is meaningless in nature and is social iniquity. But what I do not admit, is the ideal M. de Girardin has formed with regard to the respective functions of each sex:
The exclusion of woman from active occupations;
The universalizing of the dower;
Lastly, family education.
To say that man represents labor, the genius of enterprise, that he speculates, acquires, brings in,—that woman represents economy, the spirit of foresight,—that she administers, preserves, transmits, is to establish a series which does not appear to me at all in conformity with the nature of things, since it is notorious that a great number of women do what M. de Girardin attributes to the other sex, andvice versâ.
Functions, to be properly performed, should be the result of aptitudes. Now Nature, except in what concerns the reproduction of the species, does not appear tohave classed these according to the sexes. Since the origin of society, we have attempted to do it, but history is at hand to reveal to us that, in acting thus, we have only succeeded in tyrannizing over the sturdy minorities that have given the lie to such pretensions. Now, M. de Girardin, admitting a false series,à priori, is led without perceiving it to forge chains for all women whom Nature has not made in conformity with the conventional order which he wishes to see realized.
To exclude woman from active occupations in order to confine her to the cares of the household is to attempt an impossibility, to close the way to progress, and to replace woman beneath the yoke of man. It is to attempt an impossibility, because there are branches of manufactures that can be executed only by women; because many women who would not marry, or who would be left portionless widows without resources, could only remain pure by devoting themselves to some active employment which, notwithstanding, would be interdicted to them. To see woman in the household alone, is to view her from a contracted stand point, which retards the advent of her liberty. It is to close the way to progress, because there are social functions which will never be well performed until woman shall participate in them, and social questions that will never be resolved until woman shall stand by the side of man to elucidate them. It is to replace woman beneath the yoke of man, because it is in human nature to rule and domineer over those whom we provide with their daily bread.
To wish to erect the dower into an institution, is to wish to restore one of the most lamentable phases of the Past at the moment when Humanity is marching towardsthe Future—that which shows us woman purchased by man. The universalizing of the dower would be therefore a criminal attempt on the liberty and moral dignity of woman. Lastly, to claim that every mother ought to educate her children herself appears to us to propose as great impossibility as social danger.
If every well constituted woman is fit to bring children into the world and to nourish them with her milk, very few are capable of developing their intellect and heart, for education is a special function, requiring a particular aptitude, with which all mothers cannot be endowed.
Next, family education perpetuates divergence of opinions and sentiments, maintains prejudices, favors the development of vanity and selfishness, and tends, by this means, to paralyze the most noble, the most civilizing sentiment—that of universal solidarity. Assuredly, at the present time, many motives may justify family education, but for the good of humanity it is to be desired that parents who sympathize in progressive ideas should assemble their children together to form them for social life, instead of rearing them each by himself.
I submit this critical sketch to M. de Girardin in the name of the principle that he has always defended:—individual dignity and human liberty.