MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN
Some men and women unfitted for faithful mating—The enforced continuance of an unreal marriage—This leads to immorality—The real controlling power in marriage is our desire—The need for honourable divorce—The immorality present in many marriages—We accept monogamy but tolerate hidden extra-conjugal relationships—This worse than regulated polygamy—The necessity of distinguishing between sex passion and the desire for a child—All women do not want to be mothers—The sins that follow the binding of such women in the bonds of monogamous marriage—The child born against the will of its mother—A contrast between two types of women—The siren woman and the maternal woman—An attempt to explain such difference—The pleasure factor in sex—Our ignorance in all matters relating to sex—An instance of the siren type of woman as a mother.
MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE AND WOMAN: A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF WOMAN
“That the first decade of the child life of all mankind age after age passes continuously through the hands of woman seemed to him one of the most significant facts in the whole range of human affairs.”—_Life and Letters of Edward Thring._
I trust from what I have said already on marriage in the previous chapter that two things have been made plain: on the one side, my own strong faith in monogamous marriage as the most practical and happiest form of association for the great majority of women and men; and my further opinion that sexual relationships must be regulated by law. I am, however, deeply conscious of the ignominious conditions of many marriages, and thus, on the other side, I am forced to the opinion that for the whole of sexual conduct there cannot safely be one only rule. I know well there will always be exceptions: men and also women who are unfitted for faithful mating. It is this fact we do not face that makes the problem so difficult to solve at all and to solve completely impossible.
Regarding companionship as essential in any true union, the reform most likely to produce a balance of good in marriage is such an alteration in the basis of marriage and increased spirituality in the way of conceiving it as will make incompatibility of temperament, resulting in inability to maintain companionship, justify honourable divorce. To consider sexual infidelity as the only valid ground for divorce is to take a limited and wrong view of marriage. Spiritual unfaithfulness may be a far greater sin, and one bringing much deeper unhappiness in marriage, than sexual unfaithfulness.