MODERN MARRIAGES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3035, 15 May 1912, Page 65

MODERN MARRIAGES.

Marriage must always be a topic of supreme importance to women. True, it is no longer the sole career open to her—a score of fields of labour or distinction are free to her enterprise,—but marriage remains the career in which woman can secure the greatest happiness or the most complete misery, and as such it appeals at once to her imagination and her practicality. For women are really immensely practical. That is an exploded theory which labels them as visionary and unpractical. Their love of and capacity for detail—that quality which in the old dark days, before women came into their kingdom, was called their "narrow-mindedness,"—renders them practical. Two articles—both written by women—on two very different aspects of the marriage question have struck me very much lately. One is concerning the question of a celibrate clergy, is written by ivirs Huth Jackson, and appeared in the Nineteenth Century; the other is entitled "What I went Through as a Divorced Woman," and came out in that excellent American paper the Ladies' Home Journal. There can be no comparison between the two articles in point of style and literary merit, and, of course, the field of observation traversed by each is very widely divergent from the other. Both, however, are equally interesting, as showing something of the courageous honesty with which such issues of the marriage question are discussed in these days, without offence. First 'let us glance at Mrs Huth Jackson's article, " The Church and Celibacy)." Beginning with the miserable stipends on whieh so many English clergymen exist, she mentioned that there are 4704 beneficed clergymen whose income is under £155 per annum, and 7000 curates whose incomes do not average £l3O per annum. How can men marry and bring up families with any comfort or propriety on such stipends as these? There are certain appearances to be kept up, certain claims of hospitality and refinement, to be met out of that wretched income, certain standards of living which the parson and the parson's wife must maintain, whatever pinching and scraping goes on behind the scenes. Is this state of things, in which the material worries and difficulties of the mere fact of decent existence must bulk so largely, likely to maintain an earnest, vital, spiritually-minded clergy? Poor parsons! Sworn to the service of God and the Spiritual side of life, yet harassed by the daily, hourly difficulties of an insufficient income, what saints of everyday life they would need to be! To adequately rise above the earthly needs and anxieties—not for himself, mark you, but for wife and children —a man placed in such a position must be more—or less—than human.

Contrasting such a life with that of the celibate priest, free from earthly loves and their accompanying ties, anxieties and distractions, Mrs Jackson continues: " There are signs in the air that in England the need for priests, as opposed to clergymen (unmarried men, that is, instead of married) is more general than is popularly supposed. I think the Church has come to the parting of the ways." Now, just here I would say that the writer of the article emphatically denies any leaning to the Roman Catholic Church, and throughout proclaims her entire loyalty to the Anglican Church. " We are beginning," says Mrs Jackson, "to take our priest seriously. The demand for spiritual leaders and teachers is upon us. It is being met, and nobly met, by the few. . . . Are the bulk of the English clergy going to answer the call, or are they not? It lies in their hands to prevent the indifference of the laity to the Church. Below that apparent indifference there is a very real hunger for help. ... If the demand is to be met, it must be by the realisation, once for all, that the man who wishes to become a priest should become one indeed, recognising that if he is to do all a priest claims to do he cannot be as other men, bound by the ties of home and kindred, wife and child."

Finally, Mrs Jackson urges that the spiritual needs of those who really desire spiritual help and comfort might be met by a celibate priesthood sure and certain of its vocation, for " no man should be ordained before he is twenty-five. By that time he knows if he is' fit for the priesthood. And even then, let him wait till he is thirty before, taking the final orders." These men, free from the binding of earthlv ties, surrendered to the direct service of Goi, would be the celebrants of the Church's sacraments. The married clergy, on the other hand, would carry out the social side of the parson's duties, and be of much practical aid and possiblv much excellent influence in the affairs of Church and parish. But. according to Mrs Jackson's theory, "They should not. be allowed to celebrate the sacraments. It is cheapening the sacraments to allow anyone to administer them save those who, for so great a privilege. have renounced all." We may agree partly, or not at all, with Mrs Jackson's views, but at any rate there is much food for thought in this article on "The Church and Celibacv." " What I Went Through as a Divorced Woman" is a sidelight on the marriage question from a very different point of

view. It reads like truth, but one wonders if any woman could so bare her soul to the definiteness of print—only the initial truth is always true. We can, wrapped in anonymity, confide to the world at large what we could not breathe to our nearest and dearest.

But this woman who tells her story speaks of marrying at eighteen a man of thirty. "A robust, matter-of-fact, selfmade man, without imagination. She had no near relatives, this slight, fair, unusually timid girl, and most of her life had been passed at boarding-school. It was not so much love that induced her to say ' Yes' to the eager wooer, as it was the unconscious craving for the joys and cares of home and maternity. Her first disappointment was her husband's decision to put off taking up housekeeping until some faint, far-off day in the future. Fred wanted her with him, and, as he was a traveller, that meant that she, too, must be a traveller, spending her life in hotels and boarding-houses. But the home-making instinct was strong in this girl wife. " I could not help turning in imagination to my home—arranging the furniture, handling the china, making wonderful dishes, training roses and planting pansies." Then comes the day when she knows that at last Fred must give her the home she longs for, and it will be a home for three, not two. How she longs for Fred's return, that she may tell him this divine secret. He takes the news with overwhelming sympathy—but no joy. Caressing her tenderly he bids her "Don't you worry, child; leave it all to me.' A doctor is brought, and under his treatment she recovers from a severe illness, only to realise that all her beautiful dream of maternity is destroyed—her little babe will never be anything but a dreamchild ; but the true tragedy of it all lies in the brief sentence : " Later on I discovered that my husbasd and the physician were responsible." She decides on a divorce—nothing less can cure her desperate hurt. In vain her husband writes again and again. His letters are returned unopened. She returns to her native town, and gets a billet as a teacher, supporting herself with difficulty, and soul-sick with thwarted mother-love. " Often," she says, " I drew the children round me, just to feel their small, warm fingers on my hands and face. Gradually, as she gains courage, she made an effort to emerge from her seclusion —"trying in every way to fit my life into the normal woman's routine . . . it could not be done. I was not a married woman. I was out of place among matrons. I was not a maid. Young women I had known as a girl shrank from me; not intentionally, but instinctively. Thev tried to be kind, but I felt the conscious effort."

Then came friendships with men. Perfectly innocent, just the natural tendency for a young woman of twenty-two to enjoy the pleasant friendship of those about her. First it was a young doctor, who boarded in the same house ; but that was dispelled. Then it was the old lawyer who had arranged her divorce, a man of fifty, and one to whom she felt a sense of security and homelike friendliness. But that illusion was dispelled! " A realisation was driven into my understanding that I was merely suffering the results of being a divorced woman ; that all men protect the innocent girl; that the husband protects the wife ; but that nobody protects the divorced woman —she is the legal prey of man." Then this lonely woman, sick at heart, leaves the lfttle corner where she had tried to make home and friends and forget the gnawing ache for a woman's natural place, a woman's natural duties, and goes to New York. Here she takes again her maiden name, and goes into a new field of occupation. As a single woman, she receives an offer of marriage from a mail of whom she says : "Personally I felt he was the finest man I had even known." But when she tells him that she is a divorced woman—well, that dream is over.

Last of all, in one of her friendships with a young man whose frank acceptance of her as kindly elder sister soothes and pleases her, she gets- a new light on what might have been her husband's motive on that far-back day, when he wrecked her life and hopes. Full of this new inward light, she set off to the place where she believes Fred lives, and finds him.

He is at the station, waiting to welcome someone. He does not see her. His whole attention is directed to the pretty, eager schoolgirl who hurries to his arms —his daughter, whom he hurried awav to the carriage where her mother waited. "And I heard the eager greetings and saw the proud looks between the parents —she had grown so, they said." "And I went on into the evening country—alone."

A cruite unfamiliar picture of the Ameri can divorced woman.