Marriage and Love BY EMMA GOLDMAN Price Ten Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK 1911 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER BERKMAN _A Unique Contribution to Socio-Psychological Literature_ THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY REPRESENTS THREE PHASES: I) The Revolutionary Awakening and its Toll--The _Attentat_ II) The Allegheny Penitentiary: Fourteen Years in Purgatory III) The Resurrection and After _Price One Dollar Fifty_ Send Advance Subscription to MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST THIRTEENTH STREET NEW YORK THE BOOK IS NEARING COMPLETION AND WILL BE ISSUED IN THE EARLY SPRING Marriage and Love BY EMMA GOLDMAN Price Ten Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK 1911 MARRIAGE AND LOVE The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but onsuperstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as thepoles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriageshave been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assertitself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people cancompletely outgrow a convention. There are today large numbers of menand women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to itfor the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that somemarriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in somecases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does soregardless of marriage, and not because of it. On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couplefalling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will befound that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly thegrowing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, theintensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriagemust prove degrading to both the woman and the man. Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. Itdiffers from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it ismore binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly smallcompared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy onepays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinuepayments. If, however, woman's premium is a husband, she pays for itwith her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "untildeath doth part. " Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her tolife-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individualas well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains morein an economic sense. Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind. " That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One hasbut to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter afailure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argumentthat the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of womanaccount for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends indivorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270. 8 per cent. ; fourth, thatdesertion increased 369. 8 per cent. Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramaticand literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in_Together_; Pinero, in _Mid-Channel_; Eugene Walter, in _Paid in Full_, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony andunderstanding. The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popularsuperficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeperinto the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves sodisastrous. Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-longenvironment of the two sexes; an environment so different from eachother that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by aninsurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has notthe potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, eachother, without which every union is doomed to failure. Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first torealize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupidcritic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities orfeels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know thatfor eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-longproximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anythingof the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman--what isthere to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yetoutgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mereappendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of thegentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow. Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes isresponsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul--what isthere to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greaterher asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in herhusband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that haskept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Nowthat woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growingaware of herself as a being outside of the master's grace, the sacredinstitution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount ofsentimental lamentation can stay it. From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is herultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directedtowards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she isprepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much lessabout her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of histrade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anythingof the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into thepurest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of heronly asset in the competitive field--sex. Thus she enters into life-longrelations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outragedbeyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safeto say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, andphysical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sexmatters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all anexaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken upbecause of this deplorable fact. If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sexwithout the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned asutterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodnessconsisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anythingmore outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of lifeand passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intensecraving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt hervision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a"good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That isprecisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except infailure? This is one, though not the least important, factor ofmarriage, which differentiates it from love. Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrathof their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossipof her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, youngpeople allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care bythe elders, drilled and pounded until they become "sensible. " The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man hasaroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and onlyGod of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can hesupport a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are notof moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shoppingtours and bargain counters. This soul poverty and sordidness are theelements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and the Churchapprove of no other ideal, simply because it is the one thatnecessitates the State and Church control of men and women. Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollarsand cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economicnecessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change inwoman's position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenalwhen we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered theindustrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, whohave the equal right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go onstrike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six millionwage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to themines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surelythe emancipation is complete. Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of womenwage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light asdoes man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to beindependent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is reallyindependent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of aman hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate. The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrownaside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder toorganize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to getmarried, to have a home. " Has she not been taught from infancy to lookupon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors andbars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The mosttragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wageslavery; it only increases her task. According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "onlabor and wages, and congestion of population, " ten per cent. Of thewage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continueto work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horribleaspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the protection andglory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl inmarriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates hersphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or adarling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a homeonly by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in _his_ home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes asflat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomesa nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the manfrom the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place togo. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender ofall faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for theoutside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in hermovements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, aweight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfullyinspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not? But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? Afterall, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, thehypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands ofchildren destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yetorphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for thePrevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the littlevictims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, theGerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it! Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it evermade him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put himin convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child?If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what doesmarriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice, " toput him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to thechild, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of itsfather's stripes. As to the protection of the woman, --therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, suchan outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as toforever condemn this parasitic institution. It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man ofhis birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him inignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charitiesthat thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect. The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolutedependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates hersocial consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes itsgracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on humancharacter. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what otherprotection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Onlywhen you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn herto the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buyher right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage onlysanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion?Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiantpassion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head andcarve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage tocontain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhoodwould exclude it forever from the realm of love. Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger ofhope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of allconventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of humandestiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with thatpoor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, butall the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subduedbodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Manhas conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterlyhelpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomphis gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes himby. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with lifeand color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom itgives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on thestatutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how canmarriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle offleeting life against death. Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as lovebegets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want ofaffection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers infreedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing. The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lestit will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would createwealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were torefuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race!shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The racemust be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine, --and themarriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sexawakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain astate of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the madattacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longerwants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moralcourage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead shedesires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love andthrough free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Ourpseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibilitytoward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast ofwoman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood thanbring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction anddeath. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child thedeepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is hermotto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build truemanhood and womanhood. Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a masterstroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because shehad outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken herchains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the onlycondition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paidwith blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriageas an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love lastbut one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world. In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soonwithers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress andstrain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself tothe slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers withthose who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love'ssummit. Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountainpeak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, topartake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, whatimagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately thepotentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If theworld is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, notmarriage, but love will be the parent. THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY IN AMERICA MOTHER EARTH ĥA revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life. ĥArticles by leading Anarchists and radical thinkers. --International Notes giving a summary of the revolutionary activities in various countries. --Reviews of modern books and the drama. TEN CENTS A COPY ONE DOLLAR A YEAR EMMA GOLDMAN Publisher ALEXANDER BERKMAN Editor 210 EAST THIRTEENTH STREET NEW YORK Bound Volumes 1906-1911, Two Dollars per Volume MOTHER EARTH SERIES Patriotism Emma Goldman 5c. What I Believe Emma Goldman 5c. Psychology of Political Violence Emma Goldman 10c. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For. Emma Goldman 10c. Marriage and Love Emma Goldman 10c. Anarchy Versus Socialism William C. Owen 5c. What Is Worth While? Adeline Champney 5c. The Right to Disbelieve Edwin Kuh 5c. Anarchism and American Traditions Voltairine de Cleyre 5c. The Dominant Idea Voltairine de Cleyre 5c. Anarchism and Malthus C. L. James 5c. The Modern School Francisco Ferrer 5c. NOW READY! Anarchism and Other Essays EMMA GOLDMAN'S BOOK A series of essays comprising a thorough critique of existing social institutions and conditions, and giving a comprehensive view of the author's opinions on matters educational, sexual, economic, political, and social. CONTENTS 1. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For. 2. Minorities versus Majorities. 3. The Psychology of Political Violence. 4. Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure. 5. Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty. 6. Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School. 7. The Hypocrisy of Puritanism. 8. The Traffic in Women. 9. Woman Suffrage. 10. The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation. 11. Marriage and Love. 12. The Modern Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought. A biographic sketch of Emma Goldman's interesting career, with splendid portrait, is included in the book. Orders are to be sent, with cash, to MOTHER EARTH, 210 E. 13th St. , New York, N. Y. Price, $1. 00. By Mail, $1. 10