Uncertificated Sexual Unions

NZ Truth, Issue 1017, 23 May 1925, Page 8

Uncertificated Sexual Unions

Should DiVorce Be Easier?

Deserted Wives Who Do Not Wait for Three Years

Should a Wronged Woman, Living m Non-Legal Union be Entitled to Divorce from, Deserting Husband?

Once upon a time, society and the law insisted that a deserted wife must remain sexually alone. . , Later the law climbed down to the extent of granting her divorce' in seven years. More recently the law has reduced the period to three years, v "And even that is too long," says the writer of the appended article; "besides which, the cost is too high." ''Truth" publishes his view without comment—other than that all the old familiar arguments for and against easy divorce are at once called into hew vitality by his strenuous apoeal.

"No Stone-thrower" writes to "Truth": Commenting on the sad matter of; desented wives recently, a writer m an Auckland newspaper referred regretfully to "the ethics of social convention" which were so often broken by\ these unfortunate victims of circumstance. He /referred, of course, to those deserted wive&- (of ten saddled with children) who," weary of the struggle unaided, ; went to . live with other men- ajpvtheir wives. •"■■; This is a,' condition, of "married life" more pro.yaj[ent than many people suppose' m our /cities. Very many women are • living! with their children sometimes, as "the wives of men to whom 'they are not legally married. It of ten happens that they make none the less good wives, for all that,, and that the men make -none the less good husbands— and very • often infinitely better fathers to the children than the real fathers who fled and. left them at the mercy, of the world, ever were or! ever could have been m the nature of things. For some men are not natural. They desert their responsibilities with the same readiness as they beget them. ; '-■ •■ . . A Thousand Days Too Long. Deserted by a husband, left with a couple of children to support, and befriended by another man of whom she naturally and necessarily grows fond, who is entitled to throw a stone at the woman if she goes to live with that man? There are; those who declare that the woman should wait three years arid ,then secure divorce, but divorce is:, costly— and, three years (1095 days) ,is a long time to wait There is, apart from other considerations, the human factor to be reckoned with^-that human aspect which is at the ! root of all things,, the desire for mateship-^and one which cannot be blinked at or ignored. That desire for mateship is the reason for marriage— or 1 for all natural marriage: — and that mateship is a particular necessity m the lives of young women, even though they have been bereft of a husband by death or desertion. v After the shock of loss, nature asserts itself again, and the natural yearning of sex for mateship re- .'.'. turns, sometimes with redoubled • "force, since it is now'a missed'experience. This natural phenomena , explains the readiness of the wi^ow, after the lapse of a decent period, to wed again, and it is no less true • that the developed sex-attraction of the widow wins her husbands with far greater ease than do the immature .charms of the virgin :/ or the sex- dormant flapper. With 'the deserted wife, the impulse is '•: the same.: But death is less cruel than desertion m early married life. The. widow may contract a legal union; the deserted wife may not. Should she contract an "illegal" union, and should "conventional society" discover it, "conventional society" will ostracise her. "'; So much for the purity and charity of society! ' But society need not con^ cern its shpcked self about the morals of deserted .wives if it saw to it that divorce was a less tardy and expensive path to respectability. The cost

of divorce (even if the deserted woman was to wait for the statutory period of three years) is prohibitive to the poor— not less than £40, and perhaps more. The first thing that a ' Society for the Preservation of the Morals of Mistreated Married Women would Vdo would be to strive for cheap and easy divorce from deserting husbands. This available, deserted wives would be able to enjoy the comfort and protection of the essential male mate without suffering from the cruel darts of scandal with which "conventional society 1 ' is so well armed— and which i the said C.S. is so ever ready to hurl. Sins Within the Law. And, boiled down to common-sense, who is it that has the right to throw the "first stone" at the woman of a non-legal (I will not call it illegal) marital union? Is it the woman who has married (legally) for place and position— who has sold her body to the highest bidder 'in 1 the matrimonial mart? Is it the sort of, divorcee who throws the cloak of avsecond (legal) marriage oyer the shame of the first? Is it the woman whom death has rid (happily or otherwise) of her first mate to make way for a (legal) second? Or is it the law which refuses to give her early and easily obta.'ned liberty from the bonds which a runaway husband- has broken by his a.»t of desertion? None of these may point the finger of scorn, wilh any justice, at the victim of circumstance who has taken the path dictated by her heart and her ' need— who has boldly, and non-legally taken w.'iat she is legally and hypocritically— and wrongfully— denied. This is another instance m which the law of convention, so-called, invites itself to be broken, .so as to shock itself with scandal. There are very many less j excusable (if less permanent and open) unions indulged m than those of the women who are the subjects' of . this article. There are many 'affairs" m the lives of the members of "conventional society" not onehalf as respectable as the nonlegal unions of men and women under the circumstances quoted; there are married men and women who secretly break their vows and contracts with one another every week of their preciously "respectable" lives, who moved . m "conventional society" with all the airs of pretended virtue which is the chief ingredient of their make-up, when the only tag of "respectability" they wear is that of the marriage certificate which they have shamo- . lessly smudged at every secret op- . portunity. ' Recently we have had several samples of the "respectability" of "conventional society" exhibited m our courts of law. There are thousands more which smother beneath the cloaks of false pretence. These may the Lord preserve us from knowing. \ "Conventional society" is welcome to keep its own secrets of- this sort— but m the name of justice, charity and common humanity, let its members refrain from throwing at the merely unfortunate the darts tha\ should be reserved for the vicious m its own, ranks.