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Together, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Part Seven - Chapter 67 |
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_ PART SEVEN CHAPTER LXVII What is marriage? At least in these United States where men once dreamed they would create a new society of ideal form based on that poetic illusion, "All men"--presumably women, too!--"are born free and equal!" Yes, what has marriage been,--first among the pioneers pushing their way to new land through the forest, their women at their sides, or in the ox-cart behind them with the implements of conquest,--pushing out together into the wide wilderness, there to fight side by side, to tame Nature and win from her a small circle of economic order for their support? Together these two cut the trees, build the cabin, clear the land and sow it, thus making shelter and food. And then the Woman draws apart to bring _her_ increment, the children, to fight with them, to follow in their steps. In that warfare against stubborn Nature and Chaos, against the Brute, against the Enemy in whatever form, the Man and the Woman are free and equal,--they stand together and win or lose together, live or die in the life-long battle. And the end? If they triumph in this primitive struggle for existence, they have won a few acres of cleared land for the harvest, a habitation, and food, and children who will take up from their hands the warfare for life, to win further concessions from Nature, a wider circle of order from chaos. This is the marriage type of the pioneer,--a primitive, body-wracking struggle of two against all, a perfect type, elemental but whole,--and this remains the large pattern of marriage to-day wherever sound. Two bodies, two souls are united for the life struggle to wring order out of chaos,--physical and spiritual. Generations are born and die. The circles grow wider, more diversified, overlap, intersect. But the type remains of that primitive wilderness struggle of the family. Then comes to this breeding society the Crisis. There came to us the great War,--the conflict of ideals. Now Man leaves behind in the home the Woman and her children, and goes forth alone to fight for the unseen,--the Idea that is in him, that is stronger than woman or child, greater than life itself. Giving over the selfish struggle with the Brute, he battles against articulate voices. And the Woman is left to keep warm the forsaken nest, to nurse the brood there, to wait and want, perchance to follow after her man to the battle-field and pick out her dead and bear it back to burial. She, too, has her part in the struggle; not merely the patient, economic part, but the cherishing and the shaping of man's impulse,--the stuff of his soul that sends him into the battle-field. Alone she cannot fight; her Man is her weapon. He makes to prevail those Ideals which she has given him with her embraces. This also is the perfect type of Marriage,--comradeship, togethership,--and yet larger than before because the two share sacrifice and sorrow and truth,--things of the spirit. Together they wage War for others. And there follows a third condition of Marriage. The wilderness reduced, society organized, wars fought, there is the time of peace. Now Man, free to choose his task, goes down into the market-place to sell his force, and here he fights with new weapons a harder fight; while his Woman waits behind the firing line to care for him,--to equip him and to hoard his pelf. On the strength and wisdom of her commissariatship the fate of this battle in good part depends. Of such a nature was Colonel Price's marriage. "He made the money, I saved it," Harmony Price proudly repeated in the after-time. "We lived our lives together, your mother and I," her husband said to their daughter. It was _his_ force that won the dollars, made the economic position, and _her_ thrift and willingness to forego present ease that created future plenty. Living thus together for an economic end, saving the surplus of their energies, they were prosperous--and they were happy. The generation of money-earners after the War, when the country already largely reclaimed began to bear fruit abundantly, were happy, if in no greatly idealistic manner, yet peacefully, contentedly happy, and usefully preparing the way for the upward step of humanity to a little nearer realization of that poetic illusion,--the brotherhood of man. In all these three stages of the marriage state, the union of Man and Woman is based on effort in common, together; not on sentiment, not on emotion, not on passion, not on individual gratification of sense or soul. The two are partners in living, and the fruit of their bodies is but another proof of partnership.... And now emerges another economic condition, the inexorable successor of the previous one, and another kind of Marriage. Society is complexly organized, minutely interrelated; great power here and great weakness there, vast accumulations of surplus energies, hoarded goods, many possessions,--oh, a long gamut up and down the human scale! And the CHANCE, the great gamble, always dangles before Man's eyes; not the hope of a hard-won existence for woman and children, not a few acres of cleared wilderness, but a dream of the Aladdin lamp of human desires,--excitements, emotions, ecstasies,--all the world of the mind and the body. So Woman, no longer the Pioneer, no longer the defender of the house, no longer the economist, blossoms--as what? The Spender! She is the fine flower of the modern game, of the barbaric gamble. At last she is Queen and will rule. The Man has the money, and the Woman has--herself, her body and her charm. She traffics with man for what he will give, and she pays with her soul.... To her the man comes from the market-place soiled and worn, and lays at her feet his gain, and in return she gives him of her wit, of her handsome person, gowned and jewelled, of her beauty, of her body itself. She is Queen! She amuses her lord, she beguiles him, she whets his appetite and pushes him forth to the morrow's fight, to bring back to her more pelf, to make her greater yet. She sits idle in her cabin-palace, attended by servants, or goes forth on her errands to show herself before the world as her man's Queen. So long as she may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold him by her mind or her body, she will be Queen. She has found something softer than labor with her hands, easier than the pains of childbirth,--she has found the secret of rule,--mastery over her former master, the slave ruling the lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian king she is heaped with jewels and served with fine wines and foods and lives in the palace,--the favorite. And Woman, now the mistress rather than the wife, has longings for Love. She listens to her heart, and it whispers strange fancies. "I cannot love this man whom I have married, though he feeds me and gives me of his best. My soul will have none of him,--I will not consent to live with him and bear children for him and thus be a slave. Lo, am I not a Queen, to give and take back, to swear and then swear again? I will divorce this man who can no longer thrill me, and I will take another dearer to my heart,--and thus I shall be nobler than I was. I shall be a person with a soul of my own. To have me man must win me not once, but daily. For marriage without the love of my soul is beastly." So she cheats herself with fine phrases and shirks. Small comradeship here! Marriage to this woman is a state of personal gratification, the best bargain she can make with man.... To this state has come the honorable condition of marriage in a country where "men"--and surely women!--"are born free and equal." The flower of successful womanhood--those who have bargained shrewdly--are to be found overfed, overdressed, sensualized, in great hotels, on mammoth steamers and luxurious trains, rushing hither and thither on idle errands. They have lost their prime function: they will not or they cannot get children. They are free! As never women were before. And these wives are the custodians of men, not merely of their purses but of their souls. They whisper to them the Ideals of their hearts: "Come bring me money, and I will kiss you. Make me a name before the world, and I will noise it abroad. Build me a house more splendid than other houses, set me above my sisters, and I will reflect honor on you among men for the clothes I wear and the excellent shape of my figure." And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the revolution of the ages what she was at first, the female creature, the possession, the thing for lust and for amusement,--the cherished slave. For the death of woman's soul follows when she pays with her body,--a simple, immutable law.... Woman in America, splendidly free and Queen! What have you done with the men who were given into your charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant,--our most shining prize,--but what have you done for the souls of the men given into your keeping? ... The answer roars up from the city streets,--the most material age and the most material men and the least lovely civilization on God's earth. No longer the fighting companion at man's side, but reaching out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have become the slave of the Brute as you were before. And a neurotic slave. For when Woman is no longer comrade of man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a--but blot the word! * * * * * Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civilization of eighty millions, requires many shades. The darker shades are true only of the rotting refuse, the scum of the whole. Among the married millions most are, fortunately, still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea beyond. From the prairie village to the city tenement, the American woman sees in marriage the fulfilment of her heart's desire,--to be Queen, to rule and not work. Thus for emancipated Woman. And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? A trained energy, a vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, dreaming great truths and seeing little ends,--Man is still abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up, "playing the game." There are moments when his sleep is troubled with feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs,--"The body is more than raiment," and "The soul is more than the body"; "There are other hunting-grounds, another warfare." But roused from these idle fancies he sallies forth from his cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his steam-heated and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and bring it home.... We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, unmindful that in the dumb animal hordes, who labor and breed children, lies the future. For Theirs Will Be The Land, when the blond hunter of the market and his pampered female are swept into the dust heap. _ |
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