Men, Women, and God Part 7

I

HOUSEHOLD HARMONY

I have the greatest sympathy with married couples who never read any books or pamphlets containing advice to married people, and are determined that they never will. Once a man and a woman have left their respective homes and set up in one of their own their common life is so entirely their own affair, and they have such a clear right to resent all intrusions into it, that the policy of rejecting all advice beforehand has clearly something to be said for it.

And yet, because no one need read this chapter unless he or she likes, I put it in; and if any wife or husband does read it, I hope that in that case both husband and wife will do so. I really write it not so much for those who are already married, as for those still unmarried.

It matters so much--so very very much--with what preconceptions and a.s.sumptions we approach wedded life.

Of course Mother Nature teaches the great art of living in the married state to thousands. Two sensible people endowed with some patience, some common sense, and a great deal of affection have every right to expect that without much difficulty they will find for themselves the right way in marriage. Uncounted couples who read no books and never heard of psychology have made a lifelong success of it simply by being natural, brave, unselfish, and really loving. Many such simply wonder when they hear others talk about the difficulties, dangers, and painful experiences connected with marriage. They never found these things in their marriages. The last thing I would like to suggest to the young is that they need be afraid. Personally I agree with the man who said that on his wedding day he had entered a new and splendid country for which he felt quite unworthy and that he had never since ceased to wonder and thank G.o.d for its beauties, its interests, and its delights.

Yet there are other couples--couples who have made mistakes, and now talk rather bitterly about marriage; and it is because I believe that even a little more knowledge and a little more patience might have prevented those mistakes that I offer the following pages with my congratulations and good wishes to all who are about to marry.

There are no absolute rules for the conduct of married life. There are only truths to be recognized. We are all apt at times to wish for absolute rules. We think they would make life easier. We even wish sometimes that Jesus had given us absolute rules and not simply principles. But in fact rules always turn out to be galling things.

They are not for free personalities who differ enormously in const.i.tution and temperament. The right way for A and B might prove to be just the wrong way for C and D. The problem is one which has to be worked out by each couple afresh. It is a problem of mutual accommodation between two persons each of whom is an original creation of G.o.d. It is the problem of taking two different life themes and working them into one harmony.

Nor do I think that we achieve much by thinking or speaking of "rights"

in this connection--about "his" right to rule here, and "her" right to be considered there. No doubt husbands and wives have rights-- inalienable and august rights. But married life is part of love's domain, and in that region the language of the law courts is out of place. When either of the two begins to think about enforcing or claiming rights something has already gone wrong.

And this I think is chiefly a point for men to consider. The conception of a husband as a sort of Czar within his own home still lingers, though it may not be openly proclaimed. Men still grow up with the idea that a wife should be a sort of submissive and very charming slave, honored by occasional demonstrations of affection, and that the whole household should be ordered to suit his lordship's convenience. Such men will protect their wives, give them money, make love to them, humor them, and honor them in public; and in return will expect something little short of sheer submission. Behind all this lurks the half-conscious idea that woman is man's inferior, and that idea really does remain hidden even in the minds of some who would repudiate it. The fact is that the ultimate value of marriage--the thing that makes it good fun, as well as a n.o.ble thing--lies in the fact that men and women are so different; that they have not the same powers, and can alternately take the lead in their common life. It is comradeship, and not mere occasional love-making, that they must achieve in order to be permanently happy, and comradeship is a relation in which each must be free to be his or her natural self.

Marriage _can_ be made a cramping thing, and then in time it becomes almost an insufferable thing. But if each will give the other room to grow it can be an enlarging experience. It may contain the sum of the interests of two different people. If mutual learning is brought into it, it dignifies the lives of both. I believe in obedient wives. But then I also believe in obedient husbands. If I did not follow my wife's lead in some departments of life, I should be neither more nor less than a fool. And I believe that she is quite wise to follow my lead in some other connections.

What all this really points to is that the element of liberty is worth conserving within marriage with very great care. When a wife has no private means it is an essential thing for the husband to give her regularly a stated allowance and to ask no questions as to how it is spent. It is a good thing--a very good thing--to make certain that, if possible, a wife has a holiday now and then from the heavy bondage of housekeeping. It is even a good thing that she should have a holiday now and then from the charms and joys of family life. For we men are very like children in the way we come to depend on our wives. All our little woes must be brought to them--from b.u.t.tonless shirts to the pitiful tale of our last defeat at golf. The children consult them daily about a hundred things as of right, and their husbands must often seem to them the biggest bairns of the lot. I quite see why women like it. But it must get very wearing at times. It surely is a good thing that now and then a wife should turn her back on it all, meet old friends, have days in which to enjoy herself without any bothers, and even for a few hours forget her exacting if charming dependents.

It is equally important not to forget a husband's liberty.

No doubt a great deal of cruelty lies to the charge of husbands who are out night after night, leaving their wives--already weary after a day's heavy work--to sit bored and alone, while they enjoy the company of their male friends, or hunt after their favorite pleasures. It is quite right that wives should refuse to tolerate such treatment. But the entire reversal of that policy is apt to work badly also. A husband should not drop all the masculine interests of his life, nor give up his old friends, nor resign from all the responsibilities that will take him sometimes out at nights. And a wise wife will not allow him to do it. Somewhere between the two extremes I have indicated lies the wise path in this connection.

Then is it not time that somebody boldly said that husbands ought to do some of the housework? I have no time to discuss the ethical problem raised by the households where paid servants do it all. They are a very small minority of modern households, and in all the rest the wives do a great deal of the housework--generally all of it. Some of it is heavy muscular work, such as carrying coals or moving furniture. The rest makes up an employment which is more constant, needs more brains, and calls for more administrative capacity than any man can imagine till he has tried to do it. Of course men say they cannot do such work. Which is plain rubbish. It only means that they do not like doing it. Neither do many women. And men can do most of it perfectly well if they will only take the trouble to learn how it is done. I do not mean that I propose for men such jobs as matching wools, or making babies' clothes, or arranging the drawing-room. There are limits to our powers. But I do seriously mean that setting fires, cleaning grates, carrying coals, making beds, washing dishes, cooking, scrubbing floors, cleaning bra.s.s and silver, etc., etc. are things which the average man can do quite as well as the average woman. Why then should they all be piled upon the weary back of the woman? Because, you probably say, the man must hurry off to business in the morning, and comes home too tired at night. Yes!

most of us really believed all that before the war, and then we began to make discoveries. One was that there can be a lot of time before a man goes off to business, and another was that the man is not more tired by 6.30 p.m. than the woman, and can do a lot of useful things if he has the will. And I urge this point not only because it is in the clearest sense only fair, but because until a man does in this way take his share of the home burden he cannot understand his wife's life, and cannot give her intelligent sympathy.

The instinctive male att.i.tude to household details is often expressed in the phrase that they are "bally nonsense," or something else equally picturesque. But when a little experience has taught a man how _very_ uncomfortable he would be if the details were not right, he is forthwith able to be a much more intelligent friend to his wife. I do not think fathers ever really know their little children till they have helped in looking after them at bedtime, in the early morning, and at meals. And I am sure that no man ever knows what a crowded and terrific thing life can be till he has been left at home alone for a whole evening to look after two or three. When he has undergone that searching experience he will forthwith respect his wife with a new sincerity.

It is extraordinary too what a jolly business housework can be when two people go at it together and get all the possible fun out of it. On the other hand, when it is all done by lonely people it can be vilely tedious. Thousands of husbands have no idea of this. If they searched their own minds they would find that their idea of their own homes is that they are places to be kept clean and comfortable for them, and their idea of their own wives is that they are women whose first duty is to minister to their comfort. Any suggestion that this may mean a very dull life for wives is met by a snort, and some muttered murmur about "poisonous modern nonsense." But in spite of that or any other more brilliant adjectives that may be employed the suggestion is unalterably true, and if, having made life as dull as that for their wives, such men find that marriage itself is not turning out well, it is high time they should wake up to the fact that they themselves are to blame.

And yet may some kindly Providence save us all from the women who never forget the house--whose domestic possessions seem to const.i.tute mere extensions of their nervous systems, so that if you kick the fender you give them the jumps--who cannot sit still once they have seen a speck of dust, and cannot turn with free minds to any wider interest. They help to fill clubs and pubs. But they ruin homes. I want husbands to share the housework chiefly because in that way it will get done the sooner, and give both husband and wife some free time. If they want really to live they must take care to get away at times from all such merely domestic concerns. If need be let the supper dishes lie dirty, but out of sight, until to-morrow--if need be, let your husband wear a sock with a hole in it--put off cutting out baby's trousers, and even let your new blouse go without that alteration in the meantime, but on most evenings at all costs get some time to read, or enjoy music, or go out, or talk, or dream, or do nothing. The problem of civilization is unsolved for those who let the house tyrannize over them, and the problem of marriage also. All of which may seem rather trivial and unimportant to some men, but in my belief it is connected in a strangely intimate way with the success of life.

Of course the converse to all this is that wives do well to enter into their husbands' interests. It is often done with amazing success. I can think at the moment of doctors, lawyers, engineers, shopkeepers, scholars, writers, financiers, teachers, and ministers whose wives have entered keenly and with intelligence into all their cares, plans, and labors. And in every such case the friendship between man and wife has been very close, and the marriage truly happy. When this is not done, I often wonder why. I suppose some wives do not understand their husbands' affairs at first, and cannot be bothered trying to understand. I suppose that some husbands are too impatient to explain, and that others really cannot. If so it is a pity. Possibly some would rather not explain. I have often wondered what the wives of many modern business men think of modern business methods; and I suspect that generally they simply do not know the truth. But I repeat it is a very great pity when a wife has no relation to her husband's business. It means that he has a life quite apart from her. And if it be said that many a man wants to forget his business and all its worries as soon as he gets inside his own front door, it is equally true that often such men have worries they cannot forget, and that they would be stronger and happier men if they only knew what a woman's sympathy is.

All of which seems to me so very important--so inevitably important-- that I cannot but think it should be remembered when young men and women are deciding about their marriages. Have you noticed the lines on the face of that greatest of men--Abraham Lincoln? They were there in large measure because he married a woman who could not or would not share his real life.

II

PHYSICAL HARMONY

It is beyond all question that in many cases where marriage is not turning out happily the real cause lies in some failure to achieve real and true adjustment of the s.e.xual relationship which marriage involves.

Here again there are no absolute rules. Miss Royden, for instance, has written a most notable chapter called "The Sin of the Bridegroom" in which with fine candor she points out how cruel it may be for a husband to suppose that on the first night of his marriage, and after a day of great fatigue, his wife will necessarily be emotionally attuned for her first experience of intimacy, and how fatal the results may be if he imposes himself upon her in an unresponsive hour. I am sure that every word in that chapter is true and important. I agree with the suggestion that every man should read it before he marries. But it is also true that many couples who did then experience intimacy can look back upon the first night of marriage as on a sacred occasion which they recall with wonder.

Yes, there are no absolute rules. But there are unalterable facts. And the supremely important one here is that s.e.xual intimacy is only a perfect experience when it is a mutual experience. I think the delusion is nearly dead that woman is a pa.s.sionless creature, who will never actively desire her husband but who ought to be willing to receive him whenever he desires. Happy marriages can only be built upon the grave of that misconception. It was held to be a view honoring to women. As a matter of fact it led to a great deal of cruelty. No doubt women differ greatly, but in every woman who truly loves there lies dormant the capacity to become vibrantly alive in response to her lover, and to meet him as a willing and active partic.i.p.ant in the sacrament of marriage. And till that dormant capacity has been stirred into life s.e.xual intimacy may be actually repulsive, with the result that children may be born who are not in the full sense the product of creative love, and that the relations of husband and wife may remain difficult and unsatisfying to both.

This is not what G.o.d ordained. There is an art of wooing which Nature teaches to many men, and would, I think, teach to all men if they were patient and willing to learn. It consists in a love-making that appeals to the mind, the heart, and ultimately the body, and through it alone can a woman be attuned for her natural part in marriage. It is her inalienable right thus to be wooed before s.e.xual intimacy is asked for, and husbands who are too impatient to offer such wooing do her a real wrong.

There are times when a woman cannot respond, and a true husband must learn to recognize such times. Some of them are perfectly obvious. When a woman is not well, or is fatigued--when pregnancy has advanced beyond its early stages--when full health has not been recovered after childbirth--at these and at other times the conditions are not present for a true s.e.xual experience, and in the name of his love a man must learn not to ask for what cannot be freely given.

None the less it is not always and only the husbands who make mistakes in this part of life. A woman must be at least willing to be awakened and made responsive, and many women have a strange power of controlling themselves in this matter. They can repress their natures even when desire has begun to stir. They can remain cold at will. And they do it for many and varied reasons. Sometimes their reasons are purely selfish--they cannot or will not be bothered. Sometimes they allow a sense of pique over some trifling grievance to inhibit their natural instincts. Sometimes because they shrink from the labors of motherhood they acquire a distaste for this whole side of married life. And meantime their husbands are men in whom ardent love naturally, inevitably, and rightly produces a desire for intimacy. They may be willing to be patient. They may study their wives' moods, and try to learn to be chivalrous lovers. But if day after day they meet with no response--if on the contrary they find their wives deliberately checking all response, is it not clear that a situation is created that cannot but threaten married happiness? Is it not inevitable that husbands so treated should begin to wonder whether their wives really love them? For love makes people unselfish, and equally it makes them understanding. On the other hand, when wives do understand, and learn in this respect to be generous, they bind their husbands to them in new chains of affection. In some husbands almost the strongest emotion they have towards their wives is a sense of profound grat.i.tude for a generosity that made those wives willing to meet them again and again in love's high places, and allow them that ultimate expression of their pa.s.sion through which nature is restored to balance and peace.

And surely it might help wives to attain to that generosity if they would but remember that it is love for them that kindles pa.s.sion, and that it is an ever-renewed sense of their lovableness that keeps their husbands so eager.

But there is another strange reason that keeps some wives physically unresponsive, and so prevents any perfect s.e.xual experience. It is a reason that only operates with refined and spiritually minded women, and though its results may be very serious it seems to them a right reason. What I am thinking of is a sense that it is not quite right or quite seemly or quite refined to allow the primitive instincts of the body to awaken. In other words, such women are afraid of pa.s.sion in themselves, and suspect that it is not quite consistent with their moral and religious ideals to allow it to have sway. And so they never frankly and openly accept their own s.e.xuality. It may be natural enough in view of the terrible ways in which men and women have misused and degraded pa.s.sion. It is almost inevitable when women have been brought up to believe that morality consists chiefly in self-suppression.

None the less it is a mistaken, and ultimately an irreverent as well as a fatal misconception. It was Jesus who said, "He which made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh." There is a place in the holy life for the free, happy, and full expression of the instincts and desires that are rooted in our s.e.x natures. The a.s.sumed inevitable opposition between bodily and spiritual functions has no real existence. We cannot spiritualize the body away. To neglect or simply to repress it is a course that comes to no good. What we can do is to accept, understand, and then use it rightly. And when we do so it turns out that the free and happy exercise of bodily function will harmonize with all the rest of our life till body, soul, and spirit attain to harmony and unity. I think this reluctance to accept our real natures is wrong and unreasonable, but my chief feeling about it is a sense of pity that women for reasons which seem to them good should none the less miss the joy and exaltation which might be theirs, and should compel their husbands to suffer also.

It is strange but it is true that the two commonest reasons for the failure of marriage in this aspect of it are a l.u.s.tful view of it and a mistakenly spiritual view of it. A l.u.s.tful view of it will lead people to be content with merely physical unity, though they are attaining to no union of their mental and spiritual lives. And that means that marriage is a very poor affair. But on the other hand this falsely spiritual view will lead to an attempt to leave the body out. And that is a course of folly for incarnate spirits. The real end of marriage is a unity in which body, soul, and spirit will all play a part, and nothing else really satisfies. It has been wisely said that "there are liberating and harmonizing influences which are imparted by s.e.xual union and which give wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism provided that union is the outcome of psychic as well as physical needs. . . . Through harmonious s.e.x relationships a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence either in or out of marriage."

The waiting-rooms of specialists in nervous disease are crowded by men and women suffering from nerve trouble through failure to attain harmonious s.e.xual relations in married life. But many of them might have escaped that fate had they only been able to take the simple Christian view of themselves and their natural functions. It was a G.o.d of love who made us as we are, and we only interfere with His plans for us when we try on this earth to live as if we were out of it, or call that unclean which in His wisdom He has set in the center of our life.

III

BIRTH CONTROL

Not only because the subject of Birth Control occupies a very great place in the public attention just now, but also because it does raise very important and real questions for married persons I wish to speak shortly of it here.

Some day, perhaps, the medical profession will do the public the great service of issuing some authoritative statement about the physical aspects of the matter, for there are issues with which only medical men can deal wisely.

And yet it is far from being only or even mainly a medical question.

The moral and social issues involved in it are of great importance.

It is now a matter of common knowledge that it is possible for two persons to live together in s.e.xual intimacy and yet avoid having children. And this has created new problems for the married and new dangers for the unmarried. Probably it has had a great deal to do with the recent increase of irregular s.e.xual relationships outside marriage.

The women whose sole motive for chast.i.ty was the fear of having children and so of being openly disgraced are now set free to sin against the truth without fear of that particular penalty.

I am not, however, in the meantime concerned with them. It is the problem raised for married persons that concerns me. About two main points I am quite clear.

In the first place, for two healthy young persons to marry with the definite intention of having no children is, I believe, an unchristian thing. If they cannot afford to have children they cannot afford to marry. If at the beginning they interfere with nature they spoil their first experiences of s.e.xual intimacy, which should be spontaneous and untrammelled. I even believe that artificial attempts to postpone the arrival of a first child are a deplorable mistake. The first consummation of love should be closely followed by parentage. Some couples having followed the plan of postponing parentage have, when it was too late, found that by this course they had forfeited the possibility of that great privilege. Of course children mean very hard work. Of course they restrict the freedom of parents to pursue their own pleasure, and use up a large proportion of the family income. But these things are a blessing in disguise. Comparative poverty for young couples is a bracing and a useful discipline. Probably the cream of the nation consists of men and women reared in families of four or five, where the parents gave much individual attention to each child, and by self-denial helped them to a good start in life. When birth control is resorted to in order to avoid the labors of family life it is a purely selfish and quite indefensible thing.

I am thinking of course of healthy parents. Unhealthy parents probably ought not to have children at all.

The second point I am clear about is that for most couples to have as many children as is possible is equally indefensible. Most healthy couples could have far more children than they can do justice to. In fact the plan of unrestricted families results in a threefold wrong. It is nothing less than cruel to women. The overburdened mothers who were confined once a year or once in eighteen months, never allowed to regain full strength between confinements, and made prematurely old, are, I hope, a thing of the past. Marriage on those terms did mean servitude. Further, the plan is cruel to children. They cannot on these terms receive sufficient attention. They are not given a fair start in life, and in many cases do not even receive sufficient healthy nourishment. These things are of course in part due to the artificial conditions of modern life. But the conditions are there and cannot be ignored. And thirdly, the plan involves a wrong to society. We have great need of healthy well-trained children, but society as a whole suffers when children are brought into the world who cannot be properly cared for.

About this point I conceive there really cannot be any doubt whatever.

And thus the problem of birth control forces itself upon our attention.

It is a duty to women, to children, and to the state. The really difficult question is, "How is it to be achieved?"