THE “HOLY ESTATE”

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 December 1934, Page 10

THE “HOLY ESTATE”

MARRIAGE AS AN ART. My title —Marriage as an Artmeans that • success in marriage which is about the most important matter in life that we should succeed in, cannot be left to chance oi emotion, but, like all other kinds ot long term success, calls for thought, planning, and will power (writes Kenneth Henderson in the “Sydney Morning Herald”). In the reaction of today against yesterady, perhaps the ■most destructive factor is the fairly widespread revolt against what may b& called the Christian conception ot marriage. „ This revolt is an insurrection ot scepticism. The importance of physical fidelity- is questioned. That a “will to faithfulness” can control the ebb and flow and the shifting incitements of desire is doubted. Of course, it must be ' recognised that sexual passion, the cfrisliiial source from which develop the more complex filaments of love, is urgent and wayward in every man and woman ever born. That- most faithful marriages involve from time to time resistance to the strains and incitements which the allure of curiosity and novelty offer to passion—-that we have always known. The case for marriage rests on the tact —proved by millions —that in healthy human nature the will can create emotional powers of its own—that honour, loyalty, trust, respect, companionship, and affection are just as natural to man and woman as the fleeting impulses to fresh excitement; and this loyalty, confidence, and affection reacts upon, refreshes, and renews the desire for the most complete union of personalities in physical companionship. The relations of man and woman have naturally been the chief and most exciting topic of fiction. In one way the modern novelist is more realistic than his Victorian predecessor. The Victorian novelist stopped short of marriage, as a rule. He was satisfied that he had solved the main problem when he got his hero and heroine betrothed. That is only the beginning of their adventures for the novelist of our time, and in that he is right. A new adventure, full of difficulties and dangers, full of inevitable growth and change, but full of splendid possibilities subtly transfoiming themselves with the years, begins with the married life. The trouble is thut in reaction from Viefey'ian sentiment, and perhaps because “a happy ending” is harder to manage artistically than the more emotional tragic one, 'these novelists usually find it necessary to bring their characters to grief. As it was in the beginning, young people still fall in love and marry. The mating impulse in its freshness is attended by affection and companionship. But when the novelty wears away, they sometimes lack the faith for a fresh spring of endeavour in their partnership to replace novelty. And when this new inspiration of thought and care, this new exertion of mutual sympathy, fails, it is easy for pessimism to slip in. And yet there are thousands of quite ordinary people who have found mutual happiness quite normal. There are still multitudes of couples who can witness to the fact that marriage is per-, haps the only one of life’s hopes and ideals that cqme true. These have discovered the power within the sacramental union -of sex that works to its own They have hit

upon the art of making marriage the central unshakable fortress of happiness.

TRUSTFUL PARTNERSHIP. Nevertheless, the Victorians, for all their strongly religious conception of marriage, were troubled with certain sub-Christian ideas that called for removal. A very angry book has just been written by Mrs Naomi Mitchison, directed .against what she calls “male ownership” enforced by the power of the purse. It seems to me that her book is exaggerated and out of date, but her main contentions stand—that kindness must displace ownership, and that the financial relations between husband and wife must be a trustful partnership rather than an authority imposed by the earning husbands. I don’t think you can lay down any hard and fast rules, but, of course, it is supremely important that these financial relations should be as confident, loyal, and sensible as any other of their relationships, and we must recognise that the woman,

even if not getting a salary, is just as much an earner in the home and family as the, man. There is such a thing as financial fidelity on both sides. Then, in the days that are past, passion was often associated with shame. It was something that, as Maude Royden has said, marriage partly excused in the man, but it was not thought quite proper that woman should enter into the full joy of self-giving. This distorted idea of things was unhealthy, and, as that sensible writer has said, infinite harm has been done by the notion grafted into the minds of so many women that the physical fellowship of marriage was a concession to the socalled “lower nature.” of man, and that to enjoy her own natural instincts was somehow wrong. We have come to see that there should be an equal sharing in that which is the “very consecration of body and soul at once, the sacrament of union, one of the loveliest things in human nature.’’ This is certainly implied in the teaching of the Gospel itself. Any headmaster or headmistress wculd testify that in trying to help hoys or girls, who were unhappy, restless, rebellious, imperfectly developed morally and spiritually, it is very often found that they came from a home which is unhappy owing to the unsatisfactory, relations of father and mother, whether they had parted or not. The health of a child’s personality demands an atmosphere created by the love of father and mother for each toher, an atmosphere of mutual respect and courtesy, the daily sight of a thousand little acts of consideration and mutual service, taken for granted, the good humour and good temper that come from the untroubled faith of the man and woman in each other. When two people have entwined the roots of their nervous systems in each other’s lives, restlessness and rending apart is usually horribly cruel to one or other. That is the case against temporary unions. But there is another danger to marriage, which is the antithesis of restlessness. Husband and wife may lose the flavour, the stimulus of life together by taking each other as a matter of course. It does not do to be too tired ‘ for one’s home life. There must be 1 an ever-renewed alertness in sharing 1 of ideas, sympathies, and interests if 1 there is to be a constant freshness, 1 constant rejoicing in one another. G. K, Chesterton says that it takes a

man and woman a whole lifetime to do justice to each other. The art of marriage is a life’s work. Two perso'nalities changing with the years, how shall they keep together? First, I think each must allow the other a certian amount of’“soul-room - ' as it were. There are ideal marriages whire husbands and wives have scarcely an interest that is the same. Any two “live” personalities must have interests and abilities into which the other can enter only by sympathetic interest. ,The husband has his work, and he should have his own recreations also, and firm measures must be taken. I think, by the wife with the husband who spends his leisure pottering about the house when he should be playing golf or watching football. The wife also should normally have her own interests outside the house, if her mind and spirit are to keep fresh. Both need to feel free from constraint of each other for the full expression of personality.

THINGS THAT BIND. The daily circumstances of married ’ life do the actual work of marrying people. Those nights with the children, when the young temperature ’ shoots up and the hair seems to turn , grey at the roots as one waits to see whether one is watching a desperate illness or the beginning of measles—these are of the things that draw together. The spending of the common stock of money—and the deciding what to do with the little bit extra or the little bit less—the planning of holidays, the almost unconscious scheming to please one apother, the small surprises—these thousand things make up the underlying happiness won through life’s dusty arduousness. It is 'perhaps easier to share the sorrow than the joy, for sorrow is a cry for help. But it does not do to neglect the sharing of the joys also. Each married couple makes its own distinctive version of the pledge, “For.. better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.” It is, I think, all important to be agreed as to what are the things in lito best worth living for. If the young breathe in an atmosphere in which beauty, courage, faith, honour, generosity, service, are perhaps seldom spoken of, but quietly there all the time, they will grow all unconsciously with a sure sense of the ends worth living for, and care by instinct for what is holy, lovely, and of good report. But if the young breathe in an atmosphere of social climbing or concentrated money-making; these ends also become the only solid and real ends to them, and as they grow up they will not he shaken in that narrow creed by the influence of others from outside. The art of marriage, therefore, is that series of efforts ever renewed by which husband and wife make the best of each other—not in any fatalist sense, but by evoking from each other, in perfectly natural ways, inspiring and refreshing gifts of life. The conscious will can be continually disciplining and invigorating the energies Of feeling. In time’s changes, the man and woman are changed. But if every experience is made an occasion of : good faith, a means of helping each other with the best help that each can : give, the union will grow into something progressively finer, richer, and more profound. Life is a voyage of exploration, with always something better to find.