[Nasional-e] GOLDMAN ON MARRIAGE AND LOVE

[Soebakat .]

The text is from my copy of Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays. 
Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing 
Association, 1911. pp. 233-245.
MARRIAGE AND LOVE
    THE popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, 
that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like 
most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on 
superstition.

    Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the 
poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages 
have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself 
only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely 
outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to 
whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of 
public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based 
on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in 
married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not 
because of it.

    On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. 
On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple 
falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found 
that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used 
to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of 
love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both 
the woman and the man.

    Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It 
differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more 
binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with 
the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in 
dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, how ever, 
woman's premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, 
her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part." Moreover, the 
marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to 
complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, 
but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He 
feels his chains more in an economic sense.

    Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: 
"Ye who enter here leave all hope behind."

    That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has 
but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure 
marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the 
laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the 
fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 
1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand 
population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has 
increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent.

    Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic 
and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in Together; 
Pinero, in Mid-Channel; Eugene Walter, in Paid in Full, and scores of other 
writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the 
inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding.

    The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular 
superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeper into 
the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous.

    Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long 
environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other 
that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable 
wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality 
of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every 
union is doomed to failure.

    Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to 
realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not---as the stupid 
critic would have it---because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels 
the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight 
years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be any 
thing more humiliating, more degrading than a life long proximity between 
two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his 
income. As to the knowledge of the woman---what is there to know except that 
she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth 
that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his 
rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was 
afraid of his own shadow.

    Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is 
responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul---what is 
there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her 
asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband. It 
is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that has kept the marriage 
institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming 
into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as a being 
outside of the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage is 
gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can 
stay it.

    From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her 
ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards 
that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for 
that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her 
function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is 
indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital 
relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the 
marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most 
sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly 
the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and 
mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive 
field---sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to 
find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural 
and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the 
unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to 
the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great 
virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home 
has been broken up because of this deplorable fact.



    If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex 
without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly 
unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness consisting of an 
empty head and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than 
the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny 
nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health 
and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and 
glory of sex experience until a "good" man comes along to take her unto 
himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an 
arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least 
important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love.

    Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath 
of their fathers for love when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her 
neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions young people allow 
themselves the luxury of romance they are taken in care by the elders, 
drilled and pounded until they become "sensible."

    The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has 
aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and only God 
of practical American life: Can the man make a living? Can he support a 
wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this 
saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight and 
kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain 
counters. This soul-poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the 
marriage institution. The State and the Church approve of no other ideal, 
simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control 
of men and women.

    Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars 
and cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economic necessity 
has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman's 
position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we 
reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial 
arena. Six million women wage-earners; six million women, who have the equal 
right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to 
starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million age-workers in every 
walk of life, from the highest brain work to the most difficult menial labor 
in the mines and on the railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. 
Surely the emancipation is complete.

    Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women 
wage-workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light as does 
man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be 
independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent 
in our economic tread mill; still, the poorest specimen of a man hates to be 
a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate.

    The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown 
aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize 
women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to 
have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her 
ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large 
a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so 
faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that 
the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task.

    According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on 
labor and wages, and congestion of Population," ten per cent. of the wage 
workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work 
at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the 
drudgery of house work, and what remains of the protection and glory of the 
home? As a matter of fact, even the middle class girl in marriage can not 
speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not 
important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove 
is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. 
There she moves about in his home, year after year until her aspect of life 
and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. 
Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, 
thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; 
there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of 
complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average 
woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in 
her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a 
weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully 
inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not?

    But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After 
all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy 
of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute 
and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and 
reformatories over crowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, 
to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of 
it!

    Marriage may have the power to "bring the horse to water," but has it 
ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him 
in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If 
the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do 
then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to put him safely 
behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the 
State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its father's stripes.

    As to the protection of the woman,---therein lies the curse of marriage. 
Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an 
outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever 
condemn this parasitic institution.

    It is like that other paternal arrangement ---capitalism. It robs man of 
his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, 
in poverty and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the 
last vestige of man's self-respect.

    The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute 
dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social 
consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious 
protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character.

    If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other 
protection does it need save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, 
outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when 
you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the 
block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to 
motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, 
even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of 
free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a 
crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the 
hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed 
for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the 
realm of love.

    Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of 
hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; 
love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such 
an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and 
Church-begotten weed, marriage?

    Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but 
all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued 
bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has 
conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has 
chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before 
love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, 
man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the 
poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the 
magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in 
no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, 
completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, 
cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the 
soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last 
desperate struggle of fleeting life against death.

    Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love 
begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of 
affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in 
freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the 
protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing.

    The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest 
it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create 
wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse 
the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the 
king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, 
though woman be degraded to a mere machine, --- and the marriage institution 
is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex-awakening of woman. But 
in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, 
the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of 
the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of 
sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the 
strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. 
Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love 
and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our 
pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward 
the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather 
would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an 
atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become 
a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can 
yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner 
alone call she help build true manhood and womanhood.



    Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master 
stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had 
outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, 
and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated 
and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy, her Oswald; but 
not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a 
beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears 
for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a 
shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of 
time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis 
for a new race, a new world.



    In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. 
Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon 
withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of 
the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof 
of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have 
need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love's summit.

    Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain 
peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, 
and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what 
poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a 
force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to 
true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent.


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