WHY DO MODERN GIRLS MARRY?

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 9, 2 March 1925, Page 12

WHY DO MODERN GIRLS MARRY?

TT would seem that most anyone could answer the question, "Why do girls marry?" Strangely, however, there appears to be much uncertainty about the matter. Ten young women, between 19 j and 25 years of age, were asked. [ None gave the same answer as an- I other. Recently an American paper conducted an inquiry amongst the muchmarried in search of a reasonable solution. :-~J Willard Mack, the actor, who has | had four wives, or were they five? j all girlish types, has been asked why j girls marry him. He professed never to have discovered and each one of the former Mrs. Macks, still girlish, all of them, promptly answered she couldn't tell for the life of her. De Wolf Hopper was questioned also, it having been a fashion among women to marry him. Ho replied that he often had asked the same question of the then current Mrs. Hopper, only to be told that "Only Heaven knows, I don't!" The present Mrs. Hopper, beautiful, happy, and herself one of the most charming of actresses, says she knows why girls married her husband, but she refuses to share the secret. She gives one the impression, though, that the secret would be complimentary to her husband. 'Varying Treasons f\F the young women questioned, all were asked if they believed girls married for a home? Protection ? Love ? Ambition ? To he-

come mothers? From curiosity? “No The chosen ten to a woman disclaimed every one of these reasons. Eight of them said that

all the novels of the Victorian period had not convinced them that the women of that period of dangling curl and drooping shoulder and

'DOES MARRIAGE STILL PLAY THE SAME PART IN THE LIFE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE MODERN GIRL AS IT DID IN VICTORIAN DAYS: OR DO WE TO-DAY GET MARRIED JUST BECAUSE ITS "DONE?" HERE ARE THE OPINIONS OF SOME MODERN MARRIED GIRLS

Book of Beauty married invariably for love or for ambition. Said one of the examination class: "The attraction of love has existed

of herself, she always had an additional motive for marrying one man." "What was that addition?" asked her eager questioner. But he was disappointed, for the young woman shook her bobbed head and replied: "How can I tell? It varies with the individual." Three of the women consulted are married; they are the ciders of the group; one only has a little son and she is the woman who seems to have made the acquaintance of the Sphinx. She induced one of the trio to marry by saying to her when a middle-aged man afforded the opportunity : "Take him. Don't be silly. You're over twenty-five and may never have another offer." "I'm not so keen about him; why must I marry at all?" "Why? Because you want to know everything." That docs not seem to be the best reason for "changing one's state," but tin's marriage turned out very happily. Cfo-Day and Yesterday r PHE first young matron made this distinction between marriage reasons of yesterday and today, saying: "Yesterday woman married to find a home; to-day she marries to lose the one she had. Yesterday she married a man because he asked her to; to-day he asks her—if she

from the days of the Sabine women and before that in the cave man days. But as long as a woman had . a ghost of a chance in disposing \

waits for that—because she has made up her mind to marry." One of the married group frankly admits that she made a mistake and is unhappy in consequence. She is the only daughter of a very rich man and the grand-daughter of a richer. She ' chose for herself a stalwart, handsome young fellow without any particular family or money. He is willing to be comfortable on hers. Perhaps this easygoing disposition of his accounts for the little rift that is bound to grow larger. In fact, the wife of a little

over a year tells her friends that she is going to divorce him next fall. Like giving up the family dentist, it's as easy as that. One can always find a more up-to-date dentist; the town is full of them. Not that Lydia is already thinking of a new husband; she isn't, and she says she's all through with matrimony. The third matron married a violinist for the reason that she adored his music. Hear what she says about her love story: "I called up Mamma and told her we were just about to be married, and what for. I said we'd put the wedding off for half an hour to give her time to send for the car and drive down there. She hung up the receiver. I've only seen her from a distance and I understand she goes about saying that I broke her heart. Did she expect to choose a husband for me? That is the absurd thought every woman has who forgets what she was like when she was a girl. "We've been ridiculously happy. Edouard is a dear. 1 arrange all his engagements and look out for publicity. It's given me something to do, real work, and I was perfectly useless before." No let us hear what the unmarried seven have to say about getting married. But one of them frankly confesses that she is going to as soon as a fairly decent man "in her own class," and not a "rotter," asks her to. As she is a pretty, red blonde, dimply and "cuddly," she will be sure to marry unless the men are men no longer. Louise, on the contrary, likes to be engaged, but balks at marriage. She has been "out" just a year and has been engaged three times, twice informally, but the third-time engagement was widely announced and celebrated with a great dinner and a ball. She broke this one when she discovered that her fiance had not bought the engagement ring for her, but borrowed one from his mother. "All the fun is in being made love to," said Louise, "and as ail the married women I know tell me their husbands stop love-making after a few months of married life. I shudder to think what might hap-

pen to me as a wife, and I decline to take the risk. I'm going to get engaged again as soon as a man I like comes along." - "But do you love these men. Louise?" Oh, yes, immensely. I was * crazy' about the last one, who spent every week end at our country place last summer. We got-to know each other very well and he always interested me. I like to be loved." Vera, a tall brunette, wants a career, and so does Mary. The latter has promised her father that she will go to Vassar next fall if he will let her go in for professional tennis afterward. The men she cares for are tennis players and she has no use for them off the courts. One girl of Huguenot descent seems to be a throw back. She hopes to marry "when her father has time from his business to choose an eligible parti." "Being a vieu.x femmc is inconceivable," said she, "and, say what they may, I think to live to be 22 unmarried is indecent. By then one wants to go to places one picks out for oneself and often one can't do this decently unless one has a husband to take along. "Now you may think I'm a kind of vampire or have certain strange longings that nice women don't have. It is far from being true. French people will know what I mean and sympathise with me in this environment of ' emancipated ' women, ' bachelor girls ' who have men pals, etc. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. Every woman can have men friends and remain perfectly true to her husband. But in all these delightful friendships there is the subtle aroma of sex, and you can't get away from it. "As soon as I shall be married

1 am going to make a nice masculine circle of mine own in which I shall rally all the fine, agreeable men I know. But I'm not going to " pal' with them. No, I'm never going to permit them to forget that I am a woman to be adored and to be desired. I will never let them forget that love is always a possibility, but I will always keep it an impossibility." Brave girl?—perhaps, or a very foolish one! On the question of men and women "pals" the seven damsels held modern notions. They truly believe that Plato made no mistake when he saidif he ever did —that a man and a woman could be good friends without either one wanting to be more to the other. They even go a step further and accept the new freedom that came with the

association of the sexes during the war. This new freedom is called "being pals." As soon as a girl selects a man "pal" she has a nice, quiet little talk with him to establish a complete understanding. She says "I'm not in love with you and you're not in love with me. Don't you agree with me that a sensible girl and a good fellow like you can be friends and interchange ideas without involving each other in a fool flirtation? Recollect that I do

not want you to become a tame cat or give up your masculine role any more than I mean to give up my femininity. I mean to marry some day somebody quite different from you, and when you meet the girl you want to marry I shall do all I can to help you win her." Isn't that a ■ sensible and justifiable league of two nations? Unfortunately it falls apart like more ambitious and inclusive leagues from its inner weakness. The girl's weakness exists in the fact that she chooses as a "pal" only the kind of man who appeals to her in some other than the intellectual way. and the man's comes from the fact that he is so chosen. He would have to keep his emotions under the control of a notable will, and he rarely does it for long. Then if the girl admits her own breakdown a marriage or some state like it is certain to follow, and if she doesn't break down but proves by their intimacy that he is not all she thought him she dismisses him as a "pal" and takes another one. The anger of "Pals " 'THE safest "palship," and that is not too safe, is entered into by a bachelor and a married woman. It was one of the three married women in the group of ten women who uttered this portentous truth. The married woman with a baby related her experience with a "pal"; it was unhappy. "I took him up primarily because I thought I could make something of him; I thought he had talents that only needed encouragement. I was mistaken. All he had was ' nerve.' He began making desperate love to me before I had time to explain my interest. When I told him he had mistaken my motive he just laughed. I asked him if he did not believe there were still some good women in the world. He. laughed louder and said: ' I suppose you are going to pull the old wheeze that I, too, once had a mother.' "The besetting want of men of to-day is their utter lack of reverence for women. Their prototype is

Alcibiades. And they are led to regard our sex in the brutal way of that ancient Greek soldier by the prevalence of this very 'palship.' I am against it, unless it deliberately leads to marriage. It will not lead there unless the woman was a hypocrite from the start." The woman, who was nearly thirty when she married a middleaged man, finds the kind of fiction popular to-day an obstacle to marriage. zAre (Dur<iAiithors to Blame ? ""OOMANCE. has not died out of life, but it has out ot our books. You don't call the modern novels love stories, do you? Love, that used to be the purpose of most novels, is practically not in our present-day books, though it does exist in magazine stories. Girls used to read the fervid kind and sigh and rejoice with the heroine and her young man. Now they read and pretend to like all kinds of written technics that have to do with psychology or some other ology that isn't love. "Men read the same books where the old-fashioned emotion is sneered at. Most young' folk of to-day hoot at books that deal with the grand passion and prefer the fluent obviousness of modern story writers, that are stripped as bare as possible of sex romance." "Still, we read of marriages in the society columns of the newspapers," said her interested listener: "so tell me why these girls marry." "Probably it is an instinct with us," she replied. "All the writers of all time cannot utterly destroy that in us. A genuine sympathy between a man and a maid reveals to either new shallows and new depths in the character of either. The girl becomes more feminine and the man more masculine. The Latin peoples recognise this instinctively, and they keep the sexes apart until the character of both is well under way. Then they meet and the subtle aroma of sex informs the whole relationship. I think the French manage these matters with consummate skill. What one Woman anted by Being a Cjood Cfellow "~jVTY own case is typical of many girls. I had friends of the other sex by the store. I went everywhere with them. I met them openly everywhere and smoked with them and drank . cocktails , right in front of everybody at the hotels frequented by the best people. I was a ' good fellow.'

"None of my men ever hinted at marriage. I think my very 'goodfellowship' put the notion out of their heads. And it was rapidly leaving mine. When my husband finally proposed I was aghast. Yes, truly, I was fool enough to feel almost as if he had insulted me, and my first idea was to refuse indignantly. By living four or five years a ' lone woman' I had grown to suit that state. But I married him, and have never regretted it, for I found out right away that single blessedness wasn't my forte. "All the same, I had learned something from the years I remained unmarried. I had learned that, though unsought, I personally had a right of choice; my ideals of marriage had grown higher than those I had when I left school. I realised by my friendly relations with men that there were very few I really could marry. I made distinctions. I used my intelligence. "That placed me at a disadvantage with most men. They sensed in a sort of instinctive way that I would be content only with the companionship suited to my own mental capacity. Of course they were oolite and I was . . . charming. Both of us wore our company manners, but they realised that 1 was not to be had for the picking, and they resented this. In order not to wound their amour proprc I had to be flippant, superficial. "This going against the gram had its effect on me, and ere long I found myself becoming a trifle cynical. If men only liked women for their personal charms and cared not at all for their mental traits, then it seemed to me that I could be happier without attaching one of them to me for life. I began to feel a constant contempt for men's attitude toward women, and I might have ended by hating them. "I married a fine man who was willing to admit that woman isn't necessarily a puppet, and since then, in my wider knowledge of the masculine sex, I have become less censorious. Yes, I can appreciate a fine man now, because I have learned to know one intimately." This witness does not think our modern education has really changed the attitude of woman toward man. And she thinks that as soon as society loses its present frivolity the woman will look for happiness and satisfaction in marriage, and this watchfulness of hers will bring about more numerous weddings. There is no doubt, she argues, that woman to-day is a different being from her grandmother. She has shared the liberal education formerly only granted to her grandfather. Her mind, alert and of a

different quality from man's, has been as highly trained as his. She leaves school school for life with ambitions for work or further study; she has dreams of carving her independent way. Then she meets the men of her set who like her if she plays a good bridge and permits them to lead when they dance together. They have no interest in her "mind." What is she going to do? Make her own life and meet them only on the same superficial terms, or choose one and marry him in spite of herself? Said the "late" married woman: "If the ' home " instinct is strong within her, resisting enticements of ambition, etc., she will choose the least crooked stick from among the group. But she overcomes obstacles to make this decision and her marriage is one of convenience, one of arrangement, as much as those which are frankly proclaimed so. Just as zMiic/i of a Woman "WfHAT does this girl look tor in marriage? Has her acceptance of a new standard of relationship with men deprived her of the womanliness her grandmother had? I'll answer these questions straight. A girl marries because nature tells her that is what she ought to do, and she is just as much of a woman under the skin as any of her female ancestors ever were. "But—and this is a real ' but'— not so many girls marry in their first youth as formerly. The young girls look for romance and modern men dislike it. Therefore they have to wait until they realise that there comes back to men who have had to learn life the genuine hunger for those old-fashioned things, love and happiness. "Although the youngest men, when they marry, usually choose girls somewhere near their own ace, and the older men marry women who are younger than themselves, yet in the critical years between thirty and forty the balance is changed, for the ages of bride and bridegroom become nearly identical. "Men are marrying later and middle-aged widowers are remarrying more frequently, and it follows that if a woman does not become a wife when she is in her twenties she has more than a good chance to find a husband when she has arrived at thirty. I have watched this in the marriages in my own set, and don't forget that I was myself nearly thirty when " I married " Statistics will not answer the question: Why do girls marry? Did the ten women who were interviewed answer it? » ■