The Book of Life Part 27

and I can see the truth in what they say; but also I can see the deeper truth in the magic dreams of the young soul. Here is a youth who adores a girl, and you know the girl, and it is comical to you, because you know she is not any of the things the youth imagines. But who are you that claim to know the last thing about a human soul? Look into your own, and see how many different things you are! Look back, if you can, to the time when you were young, and remember the visions and the hopes.

They have lost all reality to you now; but who can say how many of them you might have made real if there had been one other person who believed in them, and loved them, and would not give them up?

I write this; and then I think of the other side--the fools that I have known in love! The trusting women, marrying rotten men to reform them!

The pitiful people who think that fine phrases and sentimentality can take the place of facts! I implore my young couples to sit down and face the realities of their own natures, to decide what they are, and what they want to be--and if there is going to be any change, let it be made and tried out before marriage! I implore them to begin now to control their desires by their reason and judgment; to begin, each of them at the very outset, to carry their share of the burdens and do their share of the hard work. I implore them to value independence and self-reliance in the other, and never above all things to marry from pity, which is a worthy emotion in its place, but has nothing to do with s.e.x, which should be an affair between equals, a matter of partnership and not of parasitism. I think that, on the whole, the most dreadful thing in love is the use of it for preying, for the securing of favors and advantages of any sort, whether by men or by women.

CHAPTER XLII

EDUCATION FOR MARRIAGE

(Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it.)

I a.s.sume now that our young couple have definitely made up their minds, and that the wedding day is near. They are therefore, both the man and the woman, in position to receive information as to the physical aspects of their future experience. This information is now for the most part possessed only by pathologists--who impart it too late, after people have blundered and wrecked their lives. The opponents of birth control ask in horror if you would teach it to the young; I am now able to answer just when I would teach it; I would teach it to these young couples about to marry. I would make it by law compulsory for every young couple to attend a school of marriage, and to learn, not merely the regulation of conception, but the whole art of health and happiness in s.e.x.

Perhaps the words, "a school of marriage," strike you as funny. When I was young I remember that Pulitzer founded a school of journalism, and all newspaper editors made merry--they knew that journalism could only be learned in practice. But nowadays every city editor gives preference to an applicant who has taken a college course in reporting; they have learned that journalism can be taught, just like engineering and accounting. In the same way I a.s.sert that marriage can be taught, and the art of love, physical, mental, moral, and even financial; I think that the day will come when enlightened parents would no more dream of trusting their tender young daughter to a man who had not taken a course in s.e.x, than they would go up in an aeroplane with a pilot who knew nothing about an engine.

The knowledge which I possess upon the art of love I would be glad to give you in this book; but unfortunately, if I were to do so, my book would be suppressed, and I should be sent to jail.

Some ten or twelve years ago I received a pitiful letter from a man who was in state's prison in Delaware, charged with having imparted information as to birth control. Under our amiable legal system, a perfectly innocent man may be thrown into jail, and kept there for a year or two before he is tried, and if he is without money or friends, he might as well be buried alive. I went to Wilmington to call on the United States attorney who had caused the indictment in this case, and had an illuminating conversation with him. The official was anxious to justify what he had done. He a.s.sured me that he was no bigot, but on the contrary an extremely liberal man, a Unitarian, a Progressive, etc. "But Mr. Sinclair," he said, "I a.s.sure you this prisoner is not a reformer or humanitarian or anything like that. He is a depraved person. Look, here is something we found in his trunk when we arrested him; a pamphlet, explaining about s.e.x relations. See this paragraph--it says that the pleasure of intercourse is increased if it is prolonged."

I looked at the pamphlet, and then I looked at the attorney. "Do you think you have stated the matter quite fairly?" I asked. "Apparently the purpose is to explain that the emotions of women are more slow to be aroused than those of men, and that husbands failing to realize this, often do not gratify their wives."

"Well," said the other, "do you consider that a subject to be discussed?"

"Pardon me if I discuss it just a moment," I replied. "Do you happen to know whether the statement is a fact?"

"No, I don't. It may be, I suppose."

"You have never investigated the matter?"

The legal representative of our government was evidently annoyed by my persistence. "I have not," he answered.

"But then, suppose I were to tell you that thousands of homes have been broken up for lack of just that bit of knowledge; that tens of thousands of marriages are miserable for lack of it."

"Surely, Mr. Sinclair, you exaggerate!"

"Not at all. I could prove to you by one medical authority after another, that if the desire of a woman in marriage is roused, and then left ungratified, the result is nervous strain, and in the long run it may be nervous breakdown."

The above covers only one detail of the pamphlet in question. I read some pages of it, and argued them out with the attorney. It was a perfectly simple, straightforward exposition of facts about the physiology of s.e.x; and one of the reasons a man was to be sent to jail for several years was--not that he had circulated such a pamphlet, not that he had showed it to young people, but merely that he had it in his trunk!

There is an honest and very useful book, written by an English physician, Dr. Marie C. Stopes, ent.i.tled "Married Love," published by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson of New York, a specialist of authority and integrity. The book deals with just such vital facts in a perfectly dignified and straightforward manner; yet Dr. Robinson has been hounded by the postoffice department because of it; he was convicted and forced to pay a fine of $250, and the book was barred from the mails!

I have so much else of importance to say in this Book of Love that it would not be sensible to jeopardize it by causing a controversy with our official censors of knowledge. Therefore I will merely say in general terms that men and women differ, not merely as a s.e.x, but as individuals, and every marriage is a separate problem. Every couple has to solve it in the intimacy of their love life, and for this there are needed, first of all, gentleness on the part of the man, especially in the first days of the honeymoon; and on the part of both at all times consideration for the other's welfare and enjoyment, and above all, frankness and honesty in talking out the subject. Reticence and shyness may be virtues elsewhere, but they have no place in the intimacies of the s.e.x life; if men and women will only ask and answer frankly, they can find out by experience what makes the other happy, and what causes pain.

We are dealing here with the most sacred intimacy of life, and one of the most vital of life's problems. It is here, in the marriage bed, that the divorce problem is to be settled, and likewise the problem of prost.i.tution; for it is when men and women fail to understand each other, and to gratify each other, that one or the other turns cold and indifferent, perhaps angry and hateful--and then we have pa.s.sions unsatisfied, and ranging the world, breaking up other homes and spreading disease. So I would say to every young couple, seek knowledge on this subject. Seek it without shame from others who have had a chance to acquire it. Seek it also from nature, our wise old mother, who knows so much about her children!

Be natural; be simple and straightforward; and beware of fool notions about s.e.x. If you will look in the code of Hammurabi, which is over four thousand years old, you will see the provision that a man who has intercourse with a menstruating woman shall be killed. In Leviticus you will read that both the man and the woman are to be cast out from their people. You will find that most people still have some such notion, which is without any basis whatever in health. And this is only one ill.u.s.tration of many I might give of ignorance and superst.i.tion in the s.e.x life. I would give this as one very good rule to bear in mind; your love life exists for the happiness and health of yourself and your partner, and not for Hammurabi, nor Moses, nor Jehovah, nor your mother-in-law, nor anybody else on the earth or above it.

Great numbers of people believe that women are naturally less pa.s.sionate than men, and that marital happiness depends upon men's recognizing this. Of course, there are defective individuals, both men and women; but the normal woman is every bit as pa.s.sionate as a man, if once she has been taught; and if love is given its proper place in life, and monkish notions not allowed to interfere, she will remain so all through life, in spite of child-bearing or anything else. I say to married couples that they should devote themselves to making and preserving pa.s.sionate gratification in love; because this is the bright jewel in the crown of marriage, and if lovers solve this problem, they will find other problems comparatively simple.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE MONEY SIDE OF MARRIAGE

(Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony.)

So far we have discussed marriage as if it consisted only of love. But it is manifest that this is not the case. Marriage is every-day companionship, and also it is partnership in a complicated business. In our school of marriage therefore we shall teach the rights and duties of both partners to the contract, and shall face frankly the money side of the enterprise.

One of the first facts we must get clear is that the economics of marriage are in most parts of the world still based upon the subjection of woman, and are therefore incompatible with the claims of woman as a partner and comrade. They will never be right until the social revolution has abolished privilege, and the state has granted to every woman a maternity endowment, with a mother's pension for every child during the entire period of the rearing and education of that child.

Until this is done, the average woman must look to some man for the support of her child, and that, by the automatic operation of economic force, makes her subject to the whims of the man. What women have to do is to agitate for a revision of the property laws of marriage; and meantime to see that in every marriage there is an extra-legal understanding, which grants to the woman the equality which laws and conventions deny her.

When I was a boy my mother had a woman friend who, if she wanted to go downtown, would borrow a quarter from my mother. This woman's husband was earning a generous salary, enough to enable him to buy the best cigars by the box, and to keep a supply of liquors always on hand; but he gave his wife no allowance, and if she wanted pocket money she had to ask him for it, each time a separate favor. Yet this woman was keeping a home, she was doing just as hard work and just as necessary work as the man. Manifestly, this was a preposterous arrangement. If a woman is going to be a home-maker for a husband, it is a simple, common-sense proposition that the salary of the husband shall be divided into three parts--first, the part which goes to the home, the benefit of which is shared in common; second, the part which the husband has for his own use; and third, the part which the wife has for hers. The second and third parts should be equal, and the wife should have hers, not as a favor, but as a right. If the two are making a homestead, or running a farm, or building up a business, then half the proceeds should be the woman's; and it should be legally in her name, and this as a matter of course, as any other business contract. If the woman does not make a home, but merely displays fine clothes at tea parties, that is of course another matter. Just what she is to do is something that had better be determined before marriage; and if a man wants a life-partner, to take an interest in his work, or to have a useful work of her own, he had better choose that kind of woman, and not merely one that has a pretty face and a trim ankle.

The business side of marriage is something that has to be talked out from time to time; there have to be meetings of the board of directors, and at these meetings there ought to be courtesy and kindness, but also plain facts and common sense, and no shirking of issues. Love is such a very precious thing that any man or woman ought to be willing to make money sacrifices to preserve it. But on the other hand, it is a fact that there are some people with whom you cannot be generous; the more you give them, the more they take, and with such people the only safe rule is exact justice. Let married couples decide exactly what contribution each makes to the family life, and what share of money and authority each is ent.i.tled to.

I might spend several chapters discussing the various rocks on which I have seen marriages go to wreck. For example, extravagance and worldly show; clothes for women. In Paris is a "demi-monde," a world of brutal l.u.s.t combined with riotous luxury. The women of this "half-world" are in touch with the world of art and fashion, and when the rich costumers and woman-decorators want what they call ideas, it is to these l.u.s.t-women they go. The fashions they design are always depraved, of course; always for the flaunting of s.e.x, never for the suggestion of dignity and grave intelligence. At several seasons of the year these l.u.s.t-women are decked out and paraded at the race-courses and other gathering places of the rich, and their pictures are published in the papers and spread over all the world. So forthwith it becomes necessary for your wife in Oshkosh or Kalamazoo to throw away all the perfectly good clothes she owns, and get a complete new outfit--because "they" are wearing something different. Of course the costume-makers have seen that it is extremely different, so as to make it impossible for your wife and children to be happy in their last season's clothes. I have a winter overcoat which I bought fourteen years ago, and as it is still as good as new I expect to use it another fourteen years, which will mean that it has cost me a dollar and a half per year. But think what it would have cost me if I had considered it necessary each year to have an overcoat cut as the keepers of French mistresses were cutting theirs!

But then, suppose you put it up to your wife and daughters to wear sensible clothes, and they do so, and then they observe that on the street your eyes turn to follow the ladies in the latest disappearing skirt? The point is, you perceive, that you yourself are partly to blame for the fashions. They appeal to a dirty little imp you have in your own heart, and when the decent women discover that, it makes them blazing hot, and that is one of the ways you may wreck your domestic happiness if you want to. Unless I am greatly mistaken, when the cla.s.s war is all over we are going to see in our world a s.e.x war; but it is not going to be between the men and the women, it is going to be between the mother women and the mistress women, and the mistress women are going to have their hides stripped off.

Men wreck marriage because they are promiscuous; and women wreck it because they are parasites. Woman has been for long centuries an economic inferior, and she has the vices of the subject peoples and tribes. Now there are some who want to keep these vices, while at the same time claiming the new privileges which go with equality. Such a woman picks out a man who is sensitive and chivalrous; who knows that women suffer handicaps, pains of childbirth, physical weakness, and who therefore feels impelled to bear more than his share of the burdens. She makes him her slave; and by and by she gets a child, and then she has him, because he is bowed down with awe and worship, he thinks that such a miracle has never happened in the world before, and he spends the rest of his life waiting on her whims and nursing her vanities. I note that at the recent convention of the Woman's Party they demanded their rights and agreed to surrender their privileges. There you have the final test by which you may know that women really want to be free, and are prepared to take the responsibilities of freedom.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE DEFENSE OF MONOGAMY

(Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it.)

So far in this discussion we have a.s.sumed that love means monogamous love. We did so, for the reason that we could not consider every question at once. But we have promised to deal with all the problems of s.e.x in the light of reason; and so we have now to take up the question, what are the sanctions of monogamy, and why do we refuse sanction to other kinds of love?

First, let us set aside several reasons with which we have nothing to do. For example, the reason of tradition. It is a fact that Anglo-Saxon civilization has always refused legal recognition to non-monogamous marriage. But then, Anglo-Saxon civilization has recognized war, and slavery, and speculation, and private property in land, and many other things which we presume to describe as crimes. If tradition cannot justify itself to our reason, we shall choose martyrdom.

Second, the religious reason. This is the one that most people give. It is convenient, because it saves the need of thinking. Suffice it here to say that we prefer to think. If we cannot justify monogamy by the facts of life, we shall declare ourselves for polygamy.

What are the scientific and rational reasons for monogamy? First among them is venereal disease. This may seem like a vulgar reason, but no one can deny that it is real. There was a time, apparently, when mankind did not suffer from these plagues, and we hope there may be such a time again. I shall not attempt to prescribe the marital customs for the people of that happy age; I suspect that they will be able to take care of themselves. Confining myself to my lifetime and yours, I say that the aim of every sensible man and woman must be to confine s.e.x relations to the smallest possible limits. I know, of course, that there are prophylactics, and the army and navy present statistics to show that they succeed in a great proportion of cases. But if you are one of those persons in whose case they don't succeed, you will find the statistics a cold source of comfort to you.

John and Mary go to the altar, or to the justice of the peace, and John says: "With all my worldly goods I thee endow." But the formula is incomplete; it ought to read: "And likewise with the fruits of my wild oats." Marriage is a contract wherein each of the contracting parties agrees to share whatever pathogenic bacteria the other party may have or acquire; surely, therefore, the contract involves a right of each party to have a say as to how many chances of infection the other shall incur.

John goes off on a business trip, and is lonesome, and meets an agreeable widow, and figures to himself that there is very little chance that so charming a person can be dangerous. But maybe Mary wouldn't agree with his calculations; maybe Mary would not consider it a part of the marriage bargain that she should take the diseases of the agreeable widow. What commonly happens is that Mary is not consulted; John revises the contract in secret, making it read that Mary shall take a chance at the diseases of the widow. How can any thinking person deny that John has thus committed an act of treason to Mary?