“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.”
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 today 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, however, woman's premium is her 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.
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.
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.
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
Is that historically true, Mr. Learned Man, or is it
not?
_Cusins._ It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I
repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every
possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true.
_Undershaft._ Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to
spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn
your oughts into shells, man. Come and make explosives with me. The
history of the world is the history of those who had the courage to
embrace this truth.
"Major Barbara" is one of the most revolutionary plays. In any other but
dramatic form the sentiments uttered therein would have condemned the
author to long imprisonment for inciting to sedition and violence.
Shaw the Fabian would be the first to repudiate such utterances as rank
Anarchy, "impractical, brain cracked and criminal." But Shaw the
dramatist is closer to life--closer to reality, closer to the historic
truth that the people wrest only as much liberty as they have the
intelligence to want and the courage to take.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The power of the modern drama as an interpreter of the pressing
questions of our time is perhaps nowhere evident as clearly as it is in
England to-day.
Indeed, while other countries have come almost to a standstill in
dramatic art, England is the most productive at the present time. Nor
can it be said that quantity has been achieved at the expense of
quality, which is only too often the case.
The most prolific English dramatist, John Galsworthy, is at the same
time a great artist whose dramatic quality can be compared with that of
only one other living writer, namely, Gerhart Hauptmann. Galsworthy,
even as Hauptmann, is neither a propagandist nor a moralist. His
background is life, "that palpitating life," which is the root of all
sorrow and joy.
His attitude toward dramatic art is given in the following words:
"I look upon the stage as the great beacon light of civilization, but
the drama should lead the social thought of the time and not direct or
dictate it.
“No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution - Revolution is but thought carried into action”
“If voting changed anything, theyd make it illegal.”
“Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy ones self-respect. For jealous people, like dope-fiends, stoop to the lowest level and in the end inspire only disgust and loathing.”
“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.”
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”
“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.”
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black mans right to his body, or womans right to her soul.”
“Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.”
“Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.”
“The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being”
“It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality”
“Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”
“You dont stop dancing from growing old, you grow old from stopping to dance”
“Youve got to dance like nobodys watching and love like its never going to hurt.”
“When we cant dream any longer we die.”
“Id rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”
