Marriage market

“ Further, by making celibacy an honourable instead of a despised estate, it must have achieved an important result from an economic point of view; it must have lessened the congestion in the marriage market by lessening the number of women who regarded spinsterhood as the last word in failure. It enhanced the value of the wife and mother by making it not only possible, but easy, for her to become something else. It opened up a career to an ambitious woman ”

“ As only one-third of these unmarried women are domestic servants, even if we suppose that all the unmarried men belong to Classes G and H, there are obviously not enough men for all the women to be able to marry. Such being the case, we can afford to dispense with mutual recrimination. The women who find it less dishonouring to enter the labour market than an overstocked marriage market are taking the more womanly course in putting aside all thought of marriage. ”

“ While we are glad to see the position of woman improve, and the value of her labour in the markets of the world increase, we are perplexed as to the effect of this better condition of things on the position of men. The situation is full of perplexities, strained to the utmost.
There is no doubt whatever that this improvement in the position of woman, the increased opportunities afforded her of making a respectable livelihood, has had, and is having, its serious effect in the marriage market. ”

“ Success in the55 marriage-market demanded certain qualifications; and, as a matter of economic and social necessity, if those qualifications were lacking, their counterfeit presentment was assumed. When helplessness and fragility were the fashion amongst wives, the girl child who was naturally as plucky as her brothers was schooled into an affected and false timidity. Men were understood to admire and reverence the maternal instinct in women ”

“ In dealing with the training for marriage, I pointed out that the qualities which make for success in the matrimonial market have little or no connection with the qualities required for the efficient performance of what is supposed to be the life-work of woman—the care of home, of husband and of children. I pointed out that the characteristics which are likely to obtain for a girl a desirable husband are not the same characteristics which will have to be brought into play if the husband, when he is obtained, is to find in her a desirable wife from the domestic point of view ”

“ Therefore, like all other unstandardized callings, marriage, considered as an occupation, tends to lower the general market value of woman's work. Conversely, Cicely Hamilton in "Marriage as a Trade," points out that the improvements in the economic position of the married woman, which have come about in recent years, are partly at least due to the successful efforts of single women to make themselves independent and self-supporting. ”

“ There is one other disadvantage under which women's work in the paid labour market is apt to suffer—a disadvantage from which men's work is exempt, and which is directly traceable to the idea that marriage is woman's only trade. ”

“ IF what I have written has any truth in it, I have shown that we have good grounds for believing that the degradation of woman's position and the inferiority of woman's capacities are chiefly due to the compulsory restriction of her energies and ambitions to the uncertain livelihood and ill-paid trade of marriage. I have shown that the trade is ill paid simply because it is largely compulsory; that, in accordance with economic law, the wife and mother will be held cheap for just so long as she is a drug in the market. ”

“ There are several other respects in which the marriage tradition (by which I mean the practical identification during many generations of149 womanhood with wifehood and motherhood) acts as a drag and a hindrance to the woman who, married or unmarried and with or against her will, has been swept out of the sacred and narrow sphere of home to compete for a wage in the open market. ”

“ Technically, at least, the bride and sometimes the bridegroom have nothing to do with the transaction. We have seen incidentally that the purchase-contract tends to become a ceremonial conveyance, and the bride-price to disappear in the dower. This transition is a fact of great social and legal import, and must therefore receive further attention. But, first, another question of interest arises: What is the place of wife-purchase in the evolution of human sexual relations? If it was not preceded by wife-capture as a general phase, is it the primitive method of contracting marriage? ”

“ Having now considered its relation to capture, let us next notice the significance of wife-purchase as a social institution.
The custom of giving a compensation for a bride, though not universal, exists or has existed among a vast number of peoples in various stages of progress; and it often survives [185] as a mere symbol in the marriage ceremony. Kulischer, indeed, declares that actual wife-purchase can now be discovered only among a few savage races. ”

“ The Kafir maiden who brings a good price from her suitor is not therefore necessarily a "chattel" any more than is the daughter whose labor the civilized parent lets out for hire. [705] A high price may be looked upon also as a proper recognition of the rank or of the mental and physical attractions of the bride. [706] Furthermore, it is significant that actual bride-purchase may [217] coexist with advanced ethical and religious conceptions of the marriage state. ”

“ It is to be remembered that in nearly all phases of the relations between men and women, both are almost always at least partially unconscious of the economic basis of the bargain they make, although, legally, marriage is a contract. Here society and social institutions protect the possible future mothers of the race. ”

“ Altogether, the outlook matrimonial is not very bright. Now, while we deplore, as a serious evil, hasty, improvident, ill-considered marriages, and hold that their consequences are very sad, we would also, scarcely less seriously, deplore that over-cautiousness which is reducing the marriage rate in quarters where it ought not to be reduced,—our lower middle-class, which is the backbone of society. ”

“ Depressions in trade have had a tendency to decrease divorces as well as marriages;" whereas in England, while the marriage rate falls the divorce rate rises in hard times. But in that country divorce is notoriously very expensive and hence mainly a luxury for the rich. ”

“ Is marriage not now, at bottom, an establishment for the support of woman? Is not maintenance the price which the husband pays for the appendage to himself? And because the supply generally exceeds the demand—that is, the effective demand—has woman not often to accept the offer of the first man who seems able to perform this pecuniary obligation? ”

“ It is worth noting that in England it is usually the husband who petitions for a divorce, and almost always the wife who seeks a judicial separation." [759]
It has long been observed that in Europe the marriage rate falls in hard times and rises again on the return of prosperity. "According to all experience," declares Mill, "a great increase invariably takes place in the number of marriages in seasons of cheap food and full employment." ”

“ Of recent years it has become very difficult to estimate exactly what economic factors affect the marriage-rate. It is believed by some that the marriage-rate rises or falls with the value of exports. ”

“ Wealthy men then began to desire to leave their fortunes to their own children and so the marriage system, with theoretical monogamy for both sexes and practical monogamy for wives, arose. Men of property then felt tolerably certain that their wealth would descend to their own sons and to the sons of no others. ”

“ Women compete for jobs with men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. And yet we see $25.00 a week stenographers giving up their positions to barter themselves, presumably for life, to $35.00 a week clerks or salesmen, rarely because of the mating instinct, but usually because of the personal triumph [Pg 56] this means in the competition between members of the sex, and the social approbation which marriage brings. ”

“ The marriage, if it became an economic partnership, would be so by mutual consent and arrangement, and would thus no longer be a one-sided contract, legally defined, in which all the rights were on the side of the husband, but compensated in too many cases by unjust privileges on that of the wife. At the same time, the temptation to marry for economic security or ease would be lessened. ”

“ Working for the bride's father is simply his way (if he has no property to give) of paying for his wife—an illustration of the widespread custom of service. If polygamy and the custom of purchasing wives do not, as Chapman intimates, prevent love from entering into all Bushman marriages, then these aborigines must be constructed on an entirely different plan from other human beings, among whom we know that polygamy crushes monopoly of affection, while a marriage by purchase is a purse-affair, not a heart-affair—the girl going nearly always to the highest bidder. ”

“ Precisely the same is true, in a less degree, of wife-stealing, particularly of the systematic capture of women. It implies for one thing an appreciation of the economic value of woman's services which is wholly inconsistent with most [202] primitive conditions. There are strong indications that in the beginning of distinctly human history marriage arose in the mutual consent of the parties. Nay, to discover the prototype of the primitive matrimonial contract it may be necessary to cross the boundary-line which separates man from the lower animals. ”

“ Once it has gone, once it makes absolutely no difference to the esteem in which a woman is held, whether she is called Mrs. or whether she is called Miss, a new inducement will have to be found, at any rate for the woman who is not obliged to look upon marriage as a means of providing her with bread and butter. Such women will require some additional advantage to replace the social prestige to which they no longer attach any value—that is to say, as a condition of becoming wives and mothers, they will require their status to be raised ”

“ It may be doubted whether the ideas which actuate the modern plutocrat in such a transaction differ essentially from those of the rich savage or barbarian who succeeds in procuring a beautiful or high-born maiden in exchange for his flocks.
We have now traced the evolution of the marriage contract throughout its entire course, and are able to perceive in a measure its true place in the general history of the human family. Again the movement has been in a circle. As in the case of monogamy, the genesis of contract must be sought beyond the border-line between man and the lower animals. ”

“ With the rise of property, industry, and a more complex social organization, giving birth to new desires and ambitions, contract by the guardian in part supersedes self-betrothal. Purchase and its occasional alternative, capture, depriving woman of her natural right of assent, tend to reduce the wife to concubinage and domestic slavery. But fortunately the victory is not complete. Just as monogamy is never displaced by polygyny as the natural type of marriage, so the consent of woman as the normal condition of matrimonial union is never entirely destroyed by wife-purchase. ”

“ Thus, to summarize, it appears in general that the institution of dower takes its rise in two principal sources: either it is derived through the return gift from its exact opposite, the ancient purchase price of the bride; or, as a means of [222] providing in some way for the wife as a member of the new household, it has developed along with free marriage, and stands as an expression of the natural motives and desires upon which the human family rests. ”

“ If men are more timid than formerly in assuming matrimonial ties, or if women show as great a timidity in entering into a relation that promises hardships arising out of their complete economic dependence, the progress married women are making in the skilled industries and other lines of work compatible with their conception of their social status, will prove a large factor in restoring confidence in the mutual helpfulness made possible by marriage and tend to check the decrease of the marriage-rate. ”

“ As I have already pointed out, the trade of marriage is, by its very nature, an isolated trade, permitting of practically no organization or common action amongst the workers; and consequently the marriage-trained woman (and nearly all women are marriage-trained—or perhaps it would be more correct to say marriage expectant) enters industrial or commercial life with no tradition of such organization and common action behind her. ”

“ As the excessive sex-distinction and economic dependence of women increase, so do the risk and difficulty of marriage increase, so is marriage deferred and avoided, to the direct injury of both sexes and society at large. In simpler relations, in the country, wherever women have a personal value in economic relation as well 94as a feminine value in sex-relation, an early marriage is an advantage. The young farmer gets a profitable servant when he marries. ”

“ When the ordinary man and the ordinary wife no longer stand towards each other in the attitude of patron and patronized the virtues of both will need overhauling—that is all.
Nor does one see how the advancement of marriage to the position of a voluntary trade can work for anything but good upon the children born of marriage. Motherhood can be sacred only when it is voluntary, when the child is desired by a woman who feels herself fit to bear and to rear it ”