VMATRIMONY & CO.
Of all the acts which America has in solution, marriage is as yet the most unsatisfactory, the least organized. It is easy to dismiss it with a vague wave of the hand, and the slighting “Oh, yes—the divorce evil.” But really to understand the problem, with all its complex difficulties, one must go a great deal further—into the thought and simple animal feeling of the people who harbour the divorce evil.
Physiologically speaking, Americans are made up of nerves; psychologically they are made up of sentiment: a volatile combination, fatal to steadiness or logic of expression. We have spoken of the everyday habit of contact among them, the trifling touch that passes unheeded between young men and girls, from childhood into maturity. This is but a single phase of that diffuseness of sex energy, which being distributed through a variety of channels, with the American, nowhere is very profound or vital. The constant comradeship between the two sexes, from babyhood throughout all life, makes for many fine things; but it does not make for passion. And, as though dimly they realize this, Americans—both menand women—seem desperately bent on manufacturing it.
Hence their suggestive songs, their suggestive books, their crudely suggestive plays, and, above all, their recognized game of “teasing,” in which the young girl uses every device for plaguing the young man—to lead him on, but never to lead him too far. Always suggestion, never realization; as a nation they retain the adolescent point of view to the end, playing with sex, which they do not understand, but only vaguely feel, yet about which they have the typically adolescent curiosity.
So much for the physiological side. It is not hard to understand how under such conditions natural animal energy is dissipated along a hundred avenues of mere nerve excitement and satisfaction; so that when it comes to marriage the American man or woman can have no stored-up wealth of passion to bestow, but simply the usual comradeship, the usual contact intensified. This is all very well, to begin with, but it is too slender a bond to stand the strain of daily married life. Besides, there is the ingrained craving for novelty that has been fed and fostered by lifelong freedom of intercourse until it is become in itself a passion dangerously strong. A few misunderstandings, a serious quarrel or two, and the couple who a year ago swore to cleave to one another till death are eager to part with one another for life—and to pass on to something new.
But a formidable stumbling-block confronts them: their ideal of marriage. Sentiment comes tothe front, outraged and demanding appeasement. American life is grounded in sentiment. The idea of the American man concerning the American woman, the idea of the woman concerning the man, is a colossus of sentiment in itself. She is all-pure, he is all-chivalrous. She would not smoke a cigarette (in public) because he would be horrified; he would not confess to aliason(however many it might please him to enjoy), because she would perish with shame. Each has made it a life business to forget that the other is human, and to insist that both are impeccable. When, therefore, before the secret tribunal of matrimony, this illusion is condemned to death, what is to be done?
Nothing that could reflect on the innocence of the woman, or the blamelessness of the man. In other words, the public ideal still must be upheld. With which the public firmly agrees; and, always willing to be hoodwinked and to hoodwink itself, makes a neat series of laws whereby men and women may enjoy unlimited license and still remain irreproachable. Thus the difficulty is solved, sentiment is satisfied, and chaos mounts the throne.
I am always extremely interested in the American disgust at the Continental marriage system. Here the inveterate sentimentalism of the nation comes out most decided and clear. In the first place, they say, the European has no respect for women; he orders them about, or betrays them, with equal coolness and cruelty. He is mercenary to the last degree in the matter of thedot, but himself after marriage makesno effort to provide his wife with more than pin-money. After the honeymoon she becomes his housekeeper and the mother of his children; while he spends her dowry on a succession of mistresses and immoral amusements elsewhere.
All of which, as generalization, is true. The complementary series of facts, however, the American complacently ignores. He knows nothing, for instance, of the European attitude to the young girl—how could he? His own sisters and daughters are presented, even before they are in long skirts, as objects of intimacy and flirtation; harmless flirtation, admitted, yet scarcely the thing to produce reverence for the recipient. Instead she is given a free-and-easy consideration, which to the European is appalling. The latter may be a rake and adebauché, but he has one religion ingrained and unimpeachable: in the presence of a young girl he is before an altar. And throughout all European life the young girl is accorded a delicate dignity impossible to her less sheltered American cousin.
What good does that do her, asks the downright American, if the minute she marries she becomes a slave? On the contrary, she gains her liberty, where the American girl (in her own opinion at least) loses hers; but even if she did not it is a matter open to dispute as to which is better off in any case: the woman who is a slave, or the woman who is master? For contentment and serenity, one must give the palm to the European. She brings her husband money instead of marrying him for his; she standsover herself and her expenditure, rather than over him and his check-book; and she tends her house and bears children, rather than roams the world in search of pleasure. Yet she is happy.
She may be deceived by her husband; if so, she is deceived far without the confines of her own home. Within her home, as mother of her husband’s children, she is impregnable. She may be betrayed, but she is never vulgarized; her affairs are not dragged through the divorce court, or jaunted about the columns of a yellow press. Whatever she may not be to the man whom she has married, she is once and forever the woman with whom he shares his name, and to whom he must give his unconditional respect—or kill her. She has so much, sure and inviolate, to stand on.
The American woman has nothing sure. In a land where all things change with the sun, die and are shoved along breathlessly to make room for new, she is lost in the general confusion. Today she is Mrs. Smith, tomorrow—by her own wish, or Mr. Smith’s, or both—she is Mrs. Jones, six months later she is Mrs. Somebody Else; and the conversation, which includes “your children,” “my children,” and “our children,” is not a joke in America: it is an everyday fact—for the children themselves a tragedy.
Young people grow up among such conditions with a flippant—even a horrible—idea of marriage. They look upon it, naturally, as an expedient; something temporarily good, to be entered upon as such, and without any profound thought for the future.“She married very well,” means she married dollars, or position, or a title; in the person of what, it does not matter. If she is dissatisfied with her bargain, she always makes an exchange, and no one will think any the worse of her. For, while Americans are horror-stricken at the idea of a woman’s having a lover without the law, within the law she may have as many as she likes, and take public sympathy and approval along with her; so long as the farce of herpurityis carried out, these sentimentalists (whom Meredith calls, in general, “self-worshippers”) smile complaisance.
It is simply another light on the prevailing superficiality that controls them, for that a woman shall be faithful—where she has placed her affections of whatever sort—they neither demand nor appear to think of at all. She may ruin her husband buying chiffons, or maintaining an establishment beyond his means, and not a word of blame is attached to her; on the contrary, when the husband goes bankrupt, it is he who is outcast, while everyone speaks pitifully of “his poor wife.” The only allegiance expected of the woman is the mere allegiance of the body; and this in the American woman is no virtue, for she has little or no passion to tempt her to bodily sin.
Rather, as we have seen, she is a highly nervous organism, demanding nerve food in the shape of sensation—constant and varied. Emotionally, she is a sort of psychic vampire, always athirst for victims to her vanity; experience from which to gain new knowledge of herself. This is true not only of the idlewoman of society, but of the best and intentionally most sincere. They are wholly unconscious of it, they would indignantly refute it; yet their very system of living proves it: throughout all classes the American woman, in the majority, is sufficient unto herself, and—no matter in how noble a spirit—self-absorbed.
If she is happily married, she loves her husband; but why? Because he harmoniously complements the nature she is bent on developing. In like fashion she loves her children—do they not contribute a tremendous portion towards the perfect womanhood she ardently desires? And this is not saying that the finer type of American woman is not a devoted mother and wife; it is giving the deep, unconscious motive of her devotion.
But take the finer type that is not married, that remains unmarried voluntarily, and by the thousands. Take the Cynthia Brands, for example. Americans say they stay single because “they have too good a time,” and this is literally true. Why should they marry when they can compass of themselves the things women generally marry for—secure position and a comfortable home? Why, except for overpowering love of some particular man? This the Cynthia Brands—i. e., women independently successful—are seldom apt to experience. All their energy is trained upon themselves and their ambition; and that is never satisfied, but pushes on and on, absorbing emotion—every sort of force in the woman—till her passion becomes completely subjective, and marriage hasnothing to offer her save the children she willingly renounces.
Thus there is in America almost a third sex: a sex of superwomen, in whom mentality triumphs to the sacrifice of the normal female. One cannot say that this side of the generally admirable “self-made” woman is appealing. It is rather hard, and leads one to speculate as to whether the victorious bachelor girl of today is on the whole more attractive or better off than the despised spinster of yesterday. Of course, she has raised and strengthened the position of women, economically speaking; socially, too. But one cannot but think that she is after all only a partially finished superwoman, and that the ultimate creature will have more of sweetness and strong tenderness than one sees in the determined, rather rigid faces of the army of New York business women of the present.
As for the New York man (whom one is forever slighting because his rôle is so inconspicuous), we have a type much less complex—quite the simplest type of normal male, in fact. The average New Yorker (that is, the New Yorker of the upper middle class) is a hard-working, obvious soul, of obvious qualities and obvious flaws. Hisraison d’êtreis to provide prodigally for his wife and children; to which end he steals out of the house in the morning before the rest are awake, and returns late in the evening, hurriedly to dress and accompany Madame to some smart restaurant and the play.
Underwood & UnderwoodTHE TRIUMPHANT “THIRD SEX” TAKES WASHINGTON
Underwood & UnderwoodTHE TRIUMPHANT “THIRD SEX” TAKES WASHINGTON
Underwood & Underwood
THE TRIUMPHANT “THIRD SEX” TAKES WASHINGTON
Here, as at the opera or fashionable reception, hisduty is simply that of background to the elaborate gorgeousness and inveterate animation of his womenfolk. Indeed, throughout all their activities the American husband and wife seem curiously irrelevant to one another: they work as a tandem, not as a team. And there is no question as to who goes first. The wife indicates the route; the husband does his best to keep up to her. If he cannot do it, no matter what his other excellences, he is a failure. He himself is convinced of it, hence his tense expression of straining every nerve toward some gigantic end that usually he is just able to compass.
The man who cannot support a woman, not in reasonable comfort, but in the luxury she expects, thinks he has no right to her. The woman has taught him to think it. Thus a young friend of mine, who on twenty-five thousand a year had been engaged to a charming New York girl, told me, simply, that of course when his income was reduced to five thousand he could not marry her.
I asked what the girl thought about it. “Oh, she’s a trump,” he said enthusiastically; “she wouldn’t throw me over because I’ve lost my money. But of course she sees it’s impossible. We couldn’t go the pace.”
From which ingenuous confession we rightly gather that “the pace” comes first with both husband and wife, in New York; the person of one another second, if it counts at all. Their great bond of union is the building up of certain material circumstances both covet; their home life, their friends, their instinctiveand lavish hospitality—everything is regulated according to this. Instead of a peaceful evening in their own drawing-room, after the man’s strenuous day at the office, the woman’s no less strenuous day at bridge and the dressmaker’s, they must rush into evening clothes and hasten to show themselves where they should be seen. Other people’s pleasures become to the American couple stern duties; to be feverishly followed, if it helps them in ever so little toward their goal.
Thus we hear Mrs. Grey say to George: “Don’t forget we’re dining with the Fred Baynes’ tonight. Be home early.”
“The deuce we are!” says George. “I wanted to go to the club. I detest Bayne, anyhow.”
“Yes, but he’s President of theSecurity Trust. If you want to get their new contract, you’d best dine, and get him to promise you. I’ve already lunched her, so the ground’s prepared.”
“Oh, very well,” growls George; “of course you’re right. I’ll be on hand.”
Result: They cement a friendship with two odious people whom they are afterward obliged to invite; but George gets the contract, and twenty thousand goes down to the family bank account. This spirit is by no means unknown in English and Continental life, but certainly it has its origin and prime exponents in America. No other people finds money sufficient exchange for perpetual boredom.
The European goes where he is amused, with friends who interest him. He dares. The Americandoes not; having always to prove that he can afford to be in certain places, that he is of sufficient importance to be with certain people. America is full of ruinously expensive resorts that have sprung up in response to this craving for self-advertisement on the part of her “rising” sons and daughters. Squads of newspaper reporters go with them, and the nation is kept accurately informed to the minute as to what Mrs. Spender wore this morning at Palm Beach, Mrs. Haveall at Newport, Mrs. Dash at Hot Springs; also how many horses, motor cars, yachts and petty paraphernalia Charles Spender, Jimmy Haveall, and Henry Dash are carrying about. The credit of these men, together often with the credit of large business firms, depends on the show they can afford to make, and the jewels their wives wear.
But I believe that no man has a duller life than the rich man—or the moderately rich man of New York. He is generally the victim of dyspepsia—from too rich food taken in too great a hurry; he is always the victim of the office. Not even after he has retired, to spend the remainder of his days in dreary luxury between his clubs and Continental watering places, does the office habit cease to torment him. Once and forever, it has murdered the enjoyment of leisure and annihilated pleasure in peace.
Being naturally heavy-minded on all subjects except business, the American man with time on his hands is in a pitiable plight. I have met some of these poor gentlemen, wandering helplessly about the world with their major-general wives, and I must say theyare among the most pathetic of married men. They hibernate in hotel lounges, smoking their enormous cigars and devouring their two-weeks-old New York newspapers; or, when they get the chance, monologuing by the hour on their past master strokes in the land where “things hum.” Sometimes in self-defence against the wife’s frocks and French hats, they have a hobby: ivories, or old silver—something eminently respectable. If so, they are apt to be laborious about it, as they are about all culture which they graft on themselves, or have grafted on them. Sometimes they turn their attention to sport; but the real sport of the American, man and woman, is climbing. It is born in them, and they never actually give it up until they die.
Meanwhile the couple who have resisted divorce and continued to climb together turn anxious eyes on the upward advance of their children. If the latter make a false step, mother with her trained wit must repair it; father must foot the bill. No more extravagantly indulgent parent exists than the American parent who himself has had to make his own way. His children are monarchs, weightedly crowned with luxuries they do not appreciate; and for them he slaves till death or nervous prostration lays him low. One wonders when the nation that has lost its head over the American girl will awake to the discovery of the American father. For the present he is a silent, deprecatory creature, toiling unceasingly six days of the week, and on the seventh to be found in some unfrequented corner of the house, inundated bynewspapers, or unobtrusively building blocks in the nursery—where there is one.
As a rule, American children own the house, monopolize the conversation at meals, which almost invariably they take with their elders—whether there are guests or not, and are generally as arrogant and precocious little tyrants as unlimited indulgence and admiration can make them. They have been allowed to see and read everything their parents see and read; they have been taken to the theatre and about the world, from the time they could walk; they have, many of them, travelled abroad, and are ready to discuss Paris or London with the languid nonchalance of little old men and women; on the whole, these poor spoiled little people, through no fault of their own, are about as unpleasant and unnatural a type as can be found.
Instead of being kept simple and unsophisticated they are early inculcated with the importance of money and the things it can buy. American boys, rather than vying with one another in tennis or swimming vie with one another in the number of motor cars they own or sail-boats or saddle-horses, as the case may be. They would scorn the pony that is the English boy’s delight, but it is true that many young Americans at the tender age of twelve own their own motors, which they drive and discuss with theblaséair of men of the world. In like fashion the little girls, from the time they can toddle, are consumed with the idea of outdressing one another; and even give box parties and luncheons—beginning, almost before theyare out of the cradle, to imitate their mothers in ambition and the consuming spirit of competition.
Naturally, one is speaking of the children of the wealthy, or at least well off; among the children of the working classes, whatever their grade of intelligence or education, we find the same sturdy independence and ability that characterizes their mothers and fathers. But all American children are sophisticated—one glance at a daily newspaper is enough to make them so; and they live in an atmosphere of worldly wisdom and knowledge of the sordid, which those of us who believe that childhood should be ingenuous and gay find rather sad. The little pitchers, in this case, have not only big ears but eyes and wits sharp to perceive the sorry things they would naturally learn soon enough.
They are allowed to wander, unshielded, among the perplexing mixed motives, the standards in disarray, of this theatre where life in its myriad relations is still in adjustment. Like small troubled gnomes seeking light, they flit across the hazardous stage; where their more experienced leaders have yet to extricate order out of a sea of sentimental hypocrisies, inflated ideals, and makeshift laws.
American men and women have been at great pains to construct “a world not better than the world it curtains, only foolisher.” They have obstinately refused to admit one another as they actually are—which, after all, is a remarkably fine race of beings; preferring the pretty flimsiness of a house of cards of their own making to the indestructible mansion ofhumanity. When their passion for inventing shall be converted into an equally ardent passion for reflecting—as it surely will be—they will see their mistake in a trice; and, from that time, they are destined to be not a collection of finely tuned nervous organisms, but a splendid race of thinking creatures.