MODERN MARRIAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20477, 1 December 1934, Page 29 (Supplement)

MODERN MARRIAGE.

No Longer Regarded as a Sacrament. ONE-TIME DIGNITY LOST. (Bj- LILIAN’ M. SMITH.) Only the blind, the frightened, and the angry can shut their eyea to the changes in the moral landscape. Religion and morality are two quite different impulses of the human spirit, but what affects one inevitably affects the other. The modern man’s attitude to religion is not the same as his grandfather’s, the empty churches arc witness enough to the change. In the same way, the modern man’s attitude to his grandfather's morality has changed. There is no doubt that our attitude to marriage has changed. We divorce with fewer qualms—disliking the publicity of divorce but not much concerned with its morality. Where we used to discuss the circumstances of marriage we now discuss its failure. We never speak of the “sanctity” of marriage unless we say that it has been attacked or murdered. If marriage is not a sacrament, what is it? Anything you like to make it. A pleasant arrangement between a man and woman to share everything for so long as it suits them to do so. A bargain? Some people keep their bargains and some don’t. The old idea that marriage is a sacrament and an unbreakable bargain is vanishing from the world, also the sense of sin. People to-dav do not sin. .They are merely unfortunate or need medical attention —but not sinners. Even religious people are not so sure about the nature and consequences of sin as they used to be. It is considered bad taste for clergymen to believe in hell. So if marriage is not a sacrament and you are only answerable to yourself for your acts, why, then, you can do exactly as you like. If you think it is the *thing to try an experimental marriage, then it is the thing. Possibilities. When a Victorian wife found herself falling in love she knew at once that if she yielded she was committing a sin. Her granddaughter haa no such awareness of sin. We are all infected with the desire, and consciousness of “freedom.” We talk of living our own lives. We resent being asked to suppress what we call “personality.” We feel a duty to ourselves where our grandmothers felt a duty only to their husbands and children. And yet, though a woman decide that there is no reason on earth why she should feel bound by her grandmother’s cotie of honour (in which honour spelt chastity) she cannot always contrive to feel that the bonds are loosed. Her reason justifies her, but her feelings do not. She has a lurking sense that she may have “spoiled” something in herself? in her marriage? lost an irrecoverable integrity. How oldfashioned! But our emotions draw their strength from older and deeper sources than our reason. There are things in life—ideas, spiritual needs, for which men are prepared to make sacrifices. Is marriage one of these things? One thing is certnin. Marriage yields up few of its possibilities to the dabbler. It is therefore clear that the richest and finest possibilities of marriage, in itself the most profound of human relationships, can only be achieved by sacrifice. Decency. There was at least one quality which the old-time sacrament marriage had (and which the modern marriage has not), and that was dignity. You cannot keep your dignity after an experimental marriage. Devotees of very modern marriage do not appear to mind being undignified or breaking a bargain. Is there anything they do mind, from leaving their babies about for someone else to neglect or spending a week-end with another man? It i* hard to know where moderns draw the line. Are thev really happy? M e all know that the Victorian woman when she was married was married till death or worse. She had to live with the same man all her life, cherjsli him, and look after his children. What did she get in return? Why, no more than love, friendship, and support, fhe poor soul, what a dull life. Rut are women any happier now that they can leave their husbands or be left? I* marriage any better now that women need not put up with it five minutes after the first boredom? If the moderns i are no happier for turning marriage inside out, in what way are they better off? I mean from the point of view of this world, as naturally they have abolished the next with the idea of anything in this life having any consequences beyond it. Punishment for sin? Nonsense. The moderns do not seem any happier with wives who do not cherish them and who may leave them next week or with husbands whose •notions of decency are advanced. They are far less comfortable. far less pleasant to live with, and far lesa use in the world than those wives ’ and husbands whom a dull decency discourages from following in their footsteps.