THE FIFTH CHAPTER continued...
English translation copyrighted 2nd April 2023.
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Part E.
THE YOUNG LADY. For a long time yet, perhaps, collective reason will not understand freedom in the union of the sexes as you do, and people will believe they have the right, not only to bind the interests but the soul and the body of the spouses.
THE AUTHOR. As far as we can be permitted to foresee, Society, in order to realize our conception, must first provide two stages: it must first decree the reasoned divorce; later, it will decree the divorce pronounced behind closed doors, at the request of the spouses or one of them. We will not concern ourselves with this last form of rupture of the conjugal bond, but with that which is closest to us: justified divorce.
For you, young woman, what would be the valid reasons for a request for divorce?
THE YOUNG LADY. First of all, those which, today, give rise to the separation of body and property: adultery of the wife, abuse, serious insults, condemnation of a husband to an afflictive or infamous sentence, bad management of the husband as regards property; moreover, the husband's infidelity, qualified as adultery, incompatibility of temperament, notable vices, such as drunkenness, gambling, etc.
THE AUTHOR. Alright; these reasons suffice.
THE YOUNG WOMAN. During the Divorce proceeding, the woman should be as free as the man. The child born to her, after more than ten months of separation, would be deemed natural, even if the divorce was not pronounced; he would bear her name and inherit her as one of her legitimate children.
THE AUTHOR. Who will administer the children and property during the proceedings?
THE YOUNG LADY. The court must decide who will administer the children based on the grounds for the Divorce petition and the testimony of relatives, friends, and neighbors.
THE AUTHOR. But if the spouses ask for a divorce only for incompatibility of temper and are both honorable?
THE YOUNG LADY. They will be invited to agree to share the children, entrust them to one of them, or give the very young girls and boys to the mother, leaving the boys over the age of fifteen to the father. The court, moreover, would appoint in the maternal family a subrogated tutor for the children left to the father; and in the paternal family, a substitute tutor for the children remaining with the mother. This subrogated guardianship, wholly moral, would not cease until the majority of the children.
THE AUTHOR. What if the parents are also unworthy?
THE YOUNG LADY. In this rare case, the President, on behalf of the Society, would take away the administration of the children from them and entrust them to the guardianship of one of the members of a family, placing the subrogated guardianship in the other.
THE AUTHOR. Alright; I see with pleasure that you have cured yourself of this false belief that children belong to parents, and that you understand the high function of society as a protector of minors.
During the divorce trial, who will administer the property?
THE YOUNG LADY. If the contract is made under the regime of separation of property, and paraphernalia, there is no need to ask the question: each administers its own.
But I would be rather embarrassed to answer you for the case of community, for the case where the funds are engaged in a common business, administered by only one of the spouses. Today's law does not seem to me to sufficiently safeguard the interests of women in cases of separation.
THE AUTHOR. Without getting bogged down in a host of particular cases which modify or contradict each other, let us establish that in cases of community, the administration of property will be taken away from the spouse if the petition for divorce is based on his bad management, his dissipating habits or on his condemnation to an afflictive and infamous punishment; that, in any other case, an inventory of the property and the state of affairs will be made, and that a substitute guardian of the family of the spouse ousted from the administration will be appointed to oversee the management of the appointed spouse administrator who will be required to pay alimony to the other until the Divorce is pronounced.
THE YOUNG LADY. And if there is no fortune, Madame?
THE AUTHOR. Until the spouses are strangers, they owe each other assistance: the court will therefore be able to force the spouse who earns the most to come to the aid of the spouse who earns the least.
THE YOUNG LADY. How long should elapse between the filing of the application and the decree of divorce?
THE AUTHOR. A year, so that the spouses have time to reflect.
THE YOUNG LADY. The divorce is pronounced, and each of the ex-spouses has returned to their freedom, will we allow them to marry others?
THE AUTHOR. But certainly, Madame; what would our critique of separation mean otherwise?
THE YOUNG LADY. What! The adulterous, brutal spouse, the one who would have caused his spouse to suffer, who would have had all the wrongs, would enjoy like the other the privilege of being able to remarry? I confess that this shocks me.
THE AUTHOR. Because you are not sufficiently imbued with the doctrines of freedom and the feeling of Right: Marriage is a natural right for any adult; society, therefore, has no right to forbid it or to make it a privilege; on the other hand, in any divorce, on both sides, there are faults or inadequacy of one in relation to the other; he or she who commits adultery will perhaps be a model of fidelity with a spouse who will respond better to his temperament and mood; he who has been brutal, violent, will perhaps be completely different with a woman having a different character; finally, let us repeat it, to prohibit marriage is to want licentiousness, and society has no interest in perverting itself. So the two ex-spouses have the right to marry, but the law must ensure that all are warned of the charges which weigh on them as a consequence of their first marriage, and know that they are divorced. Consequently, the Company has the right to publish the act of divorce, and to require that the divorced provide for the needs of their minor children and that the act of divorce, joined to that which establishes this obligation, accompanies the publication of the bans from a new marriage: in this, there is no injustice or abuse of power: for each will suffer the consequence of the actions he has made in perfect freedom.
THE YOUNG LADY. And we wouldn't fix the number of times a divorced person could marry?
THE AUTHOR. To do what? do you fix the number of times that a widower and a widower can marry?
THE YOUNG LADY. But a libertine, a wicked man could marry ten times and thus make ten women unhappy...
THE AUTHOR. What are you saying there, Madame? You seriously believe that there will be a woman foolish enough to marry a man nine times divorced, a man obliged to accompany the publication of his banns with nine acts of divorce, with nine judgments condemning him to pay so much maintenance for seven, eight, and more children! You seriously believe that a woman consents to become the companion of a similar man! This man could well marry twice, but three, do you think it is possible?
THE YOUNG LADY. You are right, and, on reflection, the measures you indicate may seem severe.
THE AUTHOR. I know it, but our goal is not to promote divorce or subsequent unions; it is, on the contrary, to prevent, as much as possible, one by the difficulty of forming the others. Now, for that, there is no need to hamper individual freedom, but to make it responsible for its acts, and to rivet it so much to the chain that it has forged itself, that it can neither reject it nor cause it to be worn by others without their being duly informed and consenting to it.
Part F.
THE YOUNG LADY. Should society allow disproportionate marriages based on age? Is it not exposing a woman to adultery to make her marry at seventeen or eighteen a man of thirty, forty, or even fifty? What relationship of feelings and way of seeing can then exist between the spouses? The woman sees in her husband a sort of father whom she cannot however Love or respect as a father, and she remains a minor all her life.
THE AUTHOR. These unions are very unfortunate for women and for the generation, and they would for the most part be avoided if the law fixed the age of marriage for both sexes at twenty-four or twenty-five years. At seventeen, we marry to be called Madame, to wear a magnificent dress and a crown of orange blossoms; certainly, we would not do it at twenty-five.
If the flower is called upon to form its fruit only when it is perfect, it must be the same for man and woman: now, in our climates, the organization of both is not complete until the age of twenty-four or twenty-five.
Woman gives more and tires more in the great work of reproduction; to put her in the position of being a premature mother is therefore to expose her to greater evils.
First, she is forced to share between herself and her fruit the elements that are necessary for her own nutrition, which weakens her and the child.
We arrest its development, we alter its constitution, we predispose it to uterine affections, and we expose it to becoming valetudinary at the age when it should enjoy vigorous health.
Physical weakening leads to that of character: the woman becomes nervous, irritable, and often whimsical; she could not feed her children; she will not be able to raise them; she will make dolls of them, and will favor the development of faults which, later, becoming vices, will desolate the family and society.
This woman, a mother before the age, not only will not be the serious companion, the adviser of her husband who, being much older than her, will amuse him like a little girl but all her life she will be his ward and will trick to do his own will.
Thus, to weaken a woman in all respects, to shorten her life, to place her in guardianship, to prepare etiolated and ill-bred generations, such are the clearest results of the early marriage of women.
It would suffice, to keep women in voluntary serfdom and to organize the harem among us, to take advantage of the permission of the law which authorizes their marriage at fifteen.
So that a woman is not a slave, can be a mother without damage to her health, and for the benefit of the good organization of the children; for her to be a worthy and serious wife, ready to fulfill all her duties, I repeat, she must not be married before the age of twenty-four or twenty-five; she must not be made to marry a man older than herself.
THE YOUNG LADY. But it is said that the husband must be ten years older than the wife because the latter ages faster: he needs the experience of life to appreciate his wife and make her happy.
THE AUTHOR. Errors and prejudices that all that, Madam. Woman only ages more than man through premature marriage and childbearing: a well-preserved man and woman are not older than each other at same age. Only the woman consents to grow old, the man consents much less, since he does not blush when he has gray hair, to marry a young girl and display the ridiculous pretension of being loved by her. Love. We must get men out of the habit of believing themselves perpetually in the fine age of pleasing; to imagine that they are just as pleasant in our eyes when they are old or ugly as if they were Adonis. We must constantly tell them that what is unseemly for us is for them; and that an old woman would not be more ridiculous to seek the Love of a young man, than an old man to aspire to that of a young woman.
Husband and wife should be about the same age; first to treat each other more easily as equals, then because there is more harmony in the way of feeling and seeing and in the temperament, all things very necessary for the organization of the children.
It is still necessary so that the woman is not tempted to infidelity: you know that disorders are born from disproportionate unions in relation to age.
It is said that man must have lived; it is the opinion of people who allow their sons to cast heart strangles; who believe that man can wallow in the mire of bad places and that there are two morals. Now, Madame, we are not one of those people. You will not give your daughter a man who has lived, because he would be jaded, would pervert her, or expose her, through disillusion, to seek in another what her husband does not give her.
What we have said for your daughter, we will say for your son: he must not marry a woman younger than him; for you should no more want a disadvantageous situation for your daughter-in-law than for your daughter: both are dear to you and respectable before the solidarity of the sex.
THE YOUNG LADY. I will bring up my son, Madame, in such a way that he will understand that the form of marriage prescribed by the Code is only a remnant of barbarism; that his wife owes obedience only to Duty; that she is a free being, his equal; that he has no rights over his person except those which she herself grants him. I will tell her that Love is a delicate plant that must be cultivated so that it does not die; that lack of embarrassment and uncleanliness wither it; that he must therefore take care of his person, being married, as he did to be pleasing in the eyes of his fiancée. I will say to him: ask nothing but the Love of your wife; remember that more than one husband has aroused revulsion by the brutality of a first wedding night.
Marriage, my son, is a serious and holy thing: purity is its most beautiful ornament; know that many men have owed the adultery of their wives to the sad care they have taken to deprave their imagination. Far from using your influence on the one who will be half of yourself, to make her docile to your wishes, to echo them, develop in her Reason, character: by raising her, you will improve yourself and prepare advice and support for you. I married you under the regime of separation of the property so that your wife is armed against you if you fail in your principles; and if you ever give me the pain of missing it, your wife will become my daughter doubly; I will be his companion, his consoler, and I will close my arms and my home to you.
THE AUTHOR. Very well, Madam and you will do well to add: interest your wife in your work; make her always want to be busy, because work is the preserver of chastity.
THE YOUNG LADY. To my daughter, I will say: the social order in which we live requires, my child, that you administer your household; it is a function from which our sex will only be relieved in an order of things still far from us. Do not forget that the prosperity of the family depends on the spirit of order and the economy of the wife. What your fortune or your special work exempts you from doing, regulates, and watches over. Today, the luxury of the toilet and the furnishing goes beyond all bounds. Luxury is not evil, but, currently, it is a great relative evil, because we have not yet solved the problem of increasing, or varying the products, without at the same time increasing misery. and the brutalization of the workers. So be simple: that doesn't exclude elegance, but only those heaps of silk, of lace lying around in the dust of the tarmac; but these diamonds, these precious stones which make the fortune of some at the expense of the morality of many others, and which are only buried capital, the mobilization of which would do great good. Don't let yourself be taken in by this sophism: honest women must adorn themselves to prevent men from spending their time with prostitutes. Wouldn't you be ashamed to struggle in the toilet with women you don't esteem; and the man who would be restrained by such means, would he be worth the trouble?
I have instructed you in your legal status as wife, mother, and landlord; I marry you under the regime of separation of property to spare your husband the temptation to consider himself your master; so that he is obliged to take your advice, and to see in you his partner. Despite these precautions, you will be minor, since the law so requires it. But our law is not Reason: never forget that you are a human creature, that is to say, a being endowed, like your husband, with intelligence, feelings, free will, will; that you owe submission only to Reason and your conscience; that if it is your duty to make sacrifices for peace in small things, and to tolerate your husband's faults, as he must tolerate yours, it is no less your duty to resist resolutely a brutal: I want it!
You will be a mother, I hope; feed your children yourself; educate them in the principles of Right and Duty that I have placed in your intelligence and in your heart, in order to make them not only just, good, chaste women and men but workers in the great work of Progress.
You know the great Destiny of our species; you know your Rights and your Duties: I, therefore, do not have to repeat to you that the woman is no more made for the man than the man for that one; that consequently, a woman cannot, without failing in her duty, lose herself and become absorbed in man: for she must Love with him her children, the fatherland, humanity; she owes more to her children than to himself; and, between the selfishness of the family and the general feelings of a higher order, the woman should not hesitate more than the man to sacrifice the first to Justice.
THE AUTHOR. It will be said, Madame, that you teach your daughter very manly.
THE YOUNG LADY. Since nowadays men play the mandolin, shouldn't women talk seriously?
Since men, in the name of their naive selfishness, claim to confiscate women for their own profit, extol to her the charms of the gynoecium, suppress her rights, and preach to her the sweetness of absorption, must women not react against these soporific doctrines, and remind their daughters to a sense of dignity and personality?
THE AUTHOR. I approve of you with all my heart:
Now that we are in agreement on almost all the points, we only have to sum up and give the outline of the main reforms necessary to operate so that woman is placed in a situation more in conformity with their Right. and to Justice.
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English translation copyrighted 2nd April 2023.
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The Book of Women’s Rights. 1860.