THE TRUTH ABOUT MARRIAGE
dians, 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
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