The fate of those who are tied for life to lunatics, criminals, and drunkards is pitiable indeed, but an extension of the laws of divorce would meet their exceptional case, without disturbing the marriage bond of normal people. I have endeavoured to indicate some of the many difficulties of leasehold marriage in the following dialogue.
LEASEHOLD MARRIAGE IN PRACTICE A DIALOGUE IN 1999
'There is one thing that women dread more than celibacy--it is repudiation.' --MARCEL PRÉVOST.
_Katharine and Margaret, both attractive women on the borderland of forty, are lunching together. They are old friends and have not met for years._
_Margaret._ 'How nice it is to be together again, but I'm sorry to find you so changed; you don't look happy, what is the trouble?'
_Katharine._ 'I ought to look happy, I've had wonderful luck, but the truth is, I'm utterly tired. The conditions of marriage nowadays are horribly wearing, don't you think?'
_M._ 'Well, of course, we miss that feeling of peace and security that our mothers talked of, but then we also miss that ghastly monotony. Think of living year after year, thirty, forty, fifty years, with the same man! How tired one would get of his tempers.'
_K._ 'I'm not so sure of that. Monotony of tempers is better than variety. All people have them, anyway. Besides, I've a notion that our fathers were nothing like so difficult to live with as our husbands are. You see, in the old days they knew they were fixed up for life, and that acted as a curb. We seem to miss that curb nowadays.'
_M._ 'Yes, there's something in that. I remember my grandmother, who was married at the end of the last century, used to say that her husband was her Sheet Anchor, and he called her his Haven of Rest.'
_K._ 'Oh, I envy them! That's what I want so badly--a haven, an anchor! How peaceful life must have been then before this horrible new system came in.'
_M._ 'People evidently didn't seem to think so, or why should they have altered it? But what's your quarrel with the system? You've had four husbands and changed the first two almost as quickly as the law allowed.'
_K._ 'Yes, and I'm only forty-one. I began too young--at eighteen--but one naturally takes marriage lightly when one knows it's only for five years. One enters upon it as thoughtlessly as our happy mothers used to start their flirtations.'
