III Marriage
29. Marriage and the Law
... No more than a century ago, even by
American law, the most sentimental in the world, the husband was
the head of the family firm, lordly and autonomous. He had
authority over the purse-strings, over the children, and even
over his wife. He could enforce his mandates by appropriate
punishment, including the corporal. His sovereignty and dignity
were carefully guarded by legislation, the product of thousands
of years of experience and ratiocination. He was safeguard in his
self-respect by the most elaborate and efficient devices, and
they had the support of public opinion.
Consider, now, the changes that a few short
years have wrought. Today, by the laws of most American
states--laws proposed, in most cases, by maudlin and often
notoriously extravagant agitators, and passed by sentimental
orgy--all of the old rights of the husband have been converted
into obligations. He no longer has any control over his wife's
property; she may devote its income to the family or she may
squander that income upon idle follies, and he can do nothing.
She has equal authority in regulating and disposing of the
children, and, in the case of infants, more than he. There is no
law compelling her to do her share of the family labour: she may
spend her whole time in cinema theatres or gadding about the
shops as she will. She cannot be forced to perpetuate the family
name if she does not want to. She cannot be attacked with
masculine weapons, e. g., fists and firearms, when she makes an
assault with feminine weapons, e. g., snuffling, invective and
sabotage. Finally, no lawful penalty can be visited upon her if
she fails absolutely, either deliberately or through mere
incapacity, to keep the family habitat clean, the children in
order, and the victuals eatable.
Now view the situation of the husband. The
instant he submits to marriage, his wife obtains a large and
inalienable share in his property, including all he may acquire
in future; in most American states the minimum is one-third, and,
failing children, one-half. He cannot dispose of his real estate
without her consent; he cannot even deprive her of it by will.
She may bring up his children carelessly and idiotically, cursing
them with abominable manners and poisoning their nascent
minds against him, and he has no redress. She may neglect her
home, gossip and lounge about all day, put impossible food upon
his table, steal his small change, pry into his private papers,
hand over his home to the Periplaneta americana, accuse
him falsely of preposterous adulteries, affront his friends, and
lie about him to the neighbours--and he can do nothing. She may
compromise his honour by indecent dressing, write letters
to moving-picture actors, and expose him to ridicule by going
into politics--and he is helpless.
Let him undertake the slightest
rebellion, over and beyond mere rhetorical protest, and the whole
force of the state comes down upon him. If he corrects her with
the bastinado or locks her up, he is good for six months in jail.
If he cuts off her revenues, he is incarcerated until he makes
them good. And if he seeks surcease in flight, taking the
children with him, he is pursued by the gendarmerie,
brought back to his duties, and depicted in the public press as a
scoundrelly kidnapper, fit only for the knout. In brief, she is
under no legal necessity whatsoever to carry out her part of the
compact at the altar of God, whereas he faces instant
disgrace and punishment for slightest failure to observe its last
letter. For a few grave crimes of commission, true enough, she
may be proceeded against. Open adultery is a recreation that is
denied to her. She cannot poison her husband. She must not
assault him with edged tools, or leave him altogether, or strip
off her few remaining garments and go naked. But for the vastly
more various and numerous crimes of omission--and in sum they are
more exasperating and intolerable than even oven overt
felony--she cannot be brought to book at all.
The scene I depict is American, but it will
soon extend its horrors to all Protestant countries. The
newly-enfranchised women of every one of them cherish long
programs of what they call social improvement, and practically
the whole of that improvement is based upon devices for
augmenting their own relative autonomy and power. The English
wife of tradition, so thoroughly a femme covert, is being
displaced by a gadabout, truculent, irresponsible creature, full
of strange new ideas about her rights, and strongly disinclined
to submit to her husband's authority, or to devote herself
honestly to the upkeep of his house, or to bear him a biological
sufficiency of heirs. And the German Hausfrau, once so
innocently consecrated to Kirche, Kuche und Kinder, is
going the same way.
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"In Defense Of Women" by H. L. Mencken, 1922