CHAPTER VII
WHOM SHALL I MARRY
"Whom shall I marry?" This question is a very personal one for both sexes. It is tremendously important. It is universal in its interest. It is a vital question.
But many people do not realize that girls and women are asking it for the first time in history. That may come as a surprise. Many have supposed that girls and women have always had somewhat to say as to whom they should marry; but historically it is not the case.
No doubt women through the ages have wondered whom they might marry, but it was idle for them to ask the question. Their consent has had little to do with the case. Their husband was provided for them. They had to accept whomever was offered. It was not even possible for them to refuse to be married. Willing or unwilling they had to undergo what the world has called marriage.
Some people may question my statement. Let us take China as an example. For 2,500 years a system of filial piety, emphasized by Confucius, has prevailed. Under this patriarchal system the father has had absolute power over all his children. The sons escape by entering upon their own lifework, but the daughters never escape. When they marry they pass under the control of their husband's family. This situation has existed from time immemorial.
China to-day has one-fourth of the population of the globe. Since the girls and women of that country have had to take what those in control of them gave them in the way of marriage, we see that in one single country one-fourth of the women of the world have never had anything to say about whom they should marry.
Japan offers no better condition for women. It has never done so.
In India the girls as a rule are married long before they are able to become mothers and have never had a ghost of a show to choose their own mate.
In other Asiatic countries women are helpless in the matter of choice.
The whole continent of Africa, as to its native born population, offers, if possible, worse conditions to women. In some places they keep them in cages until they are married.
As to Europe we know that girls and women have been given in marriage by parents, and usually without their consent. Willy-nilly they had to submit.
It is only in recent times that girls and women have been able to choose their own married partners, that is, to any large extent. Think what the girls and women of our day have to be congratulated upon. This new age in which we live has a meaning all its own to womankind.
Of course, we are sure that women in all countries have in the main submitted gracefully and carried out their part of the marriage contract; but the fact remains that no contract is properly a contract without the freely-given consent of both parties to it. While women have smiled, and even laughed, enjoyed their children and otherwise made the best of their virtual slavery, having as good a time as their spouses permitted, ideal marriage has been more rare than a perfect day in March.
Even in England and the United States, where we pride ourselves upon the freedom of the individual, the custom lingers here and there for the father of the bride, or someone who represents authority over the girl, to come forward at the wedding and give her to the groom. It is necessary, of course, for minors to be legally under the supervision of guardians, but our disappearing practice has in it the flavor of that time when the girl had no choice at all.
Have not our sighs gone out to Lucy of Lammermoor, immortalized by Scott, who is forced to give up the man of her choice to marry the man of her family's choice? Some of us are perhaps better acquainted with that tragedy through the music of Donizetti's opera of Lucia. In some respects it is the most tragic music of all operas. It carries with it the universal tragedy of all women who have been forced into a hateful marriage when loving another.
Yes, let us remember, that free-will is indispensable to perfect marriage. Of course, all men have not been free, as, for example, the sons of families in those countries where marriages have been matters of family arrangement. But in the main men have had a good deal to say in the matter of choice.
World civilization is seeing for the first time in any general way the need for freedom upon the part of girls and women to the marriage contract; not because men concede it, but because women demand it. It is in the nature of most of us to be a little bit tyrannical if we can get away with it. We give up our prerogatives, whether they are just or unjust, with as much reluctance as kingly tyrants have done.
But after all the important question is no longer that of girls and women being forced into marriage against their will. That is, not in modern countries.
Nor is the situation today always thought of in terms of "Whom shall I marry?" Too frequently it gets to be, "Whom can I marry?" That is, "Whom can I get?" "Who will marry me?" When girls get around twenty-six they are often ready to marry almost any man at all. They are very particular earlier in life, but as time goes on they begin to get desperate, frantic, in a state of panic.
Now that attitude is all wrong. It is always a matter of whom they should marry. In their impatience to get married, because of many considerations, they overlook the important thing, happiness. They ought not to worry about getting married to anyone whatsoever who comes along, but always about whom they should marry. They are not to be finicky and capricious as a fairy-story princess might be, but still they are to consider seriously whom to marry.
Marriage is too serious a relationship to be entered into simply for the sake of getting married.
For men the question is quite the same, "What woman is qualified by character and training to make me happy?" Men have better opportunities to get married than women, for there are many over-snxious women, but it is not always easy to find the right woman. Far from it.
Now let me state here with all the emphasis possible,—single-blessedness is better for both men and women alike than the hells into which some marriages plunge one. A wrong choice in marriage is not easily rectified, not even by divorce.
Marriage is ideally the happiest relationship in the world, in every way the most satisfying, enchantingly beautiful. It is heaven on earth when it is ideal. It is supreme over all others in the sense that it is the fountain from which all other relationships proceed. There is nothing else like it. In going out of the single life into a true marriage one goes out of earth into heaven.
The change from the single life to the married life is so complete that no one can realize it who has not had the experience of it. It makes no difference how keen one's imagination may be, however much of married life one may have witnessed from without, however well instructed one may be in all the elements that enter into marriage, one knows nothing about it in any real way until he or she has been married.
This statement applies to those who have tried to get the enjoyment of marriage without paying its price, as well as to those who know nothing of it in practice.
I will go further and say that no one knows anything about true marriage, even though he may have been married, until he comes into the realization of an ideal marriage.
So, if you are married, and think you know all about it, and at the same time you are skeptical about married happiness, it means that you have never been truly married.
Yet, even for you, skeptic that you are, your marriage experience may be the indispensable thing for your eventual happiness in marriage. It may be, in other words, a course of instruction, a necessary training, to fit you for real marriage. So take heart and go forward to the possible joy ahead.