Marriage proposal

“ Such a contract has nothing in the least to do with the real marriage; on the contrary, it appertains to a time when the marriage has ceased, and regulates in that case the external affairs of the once-married couple. But as long as the marriage continues, it has as little efficacy as there is need for it; for marriage is love in action, and that presupposes complete harmony in all dispositions, and complete community of all interests. ”

“ I am ashamed that not one of the States yet has blotted from its statute books the old law of marriage, which, summed up in the fewest words possible, is in effect "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband." ”

“ Are not the very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue—her sole protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing at this hour but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she must demand her rights to person, children, property, wages, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ The agreement of the lovers and a notice concerning their union must suffice for the forming of marriage. The priest does not make marriage, the law does not make marriage, the parents do not make marriage, the magistrate does not make marriage, but love and the agreement of the lovers make it. Let marriage, therefore, be made dependent on nothing save the conditions for its existence. ”

“ CXLII. The essence of Marriage is consent. Ceremonials merely publish the fact; wherefore it should be the law of every land that he who finds a woman worth seducing, and does it, should, by that act alone, he compelled to maintain and acknowledge her as a lawful wife, unless she sees fit to waive her undoubted right to claim and hold him as a husband. ”

“ And to-day, Ellen Key, the distinguished prophet of marriage reform, declares at the end of her Liebe und Ehe that the true marriage law contains only the paragraph: "They who love each other are husband and wife."
The establishment of marriage on this sound and naturalistic basis had the further excellent result that it placed the man and the woman, who could thus constitute marriage by their consent in entire disregard of the wishes of their parents or families, on the same moral level. ”

“ Then, is she not injured by the legislative removal of the sanctity of marriage, by which the man is less bound to her—thinks less of the bond—the vinculum matrimoniæ being, in his mind, one of straw, to her one of iron. ”

“ In view of the rigidities and injustices of the law, many couples nowadays dispense with legal marriage, and form their own private contract; that method has sometimes proved more favourable to the fidelity and permanence of love than external compulsion; it assists the husband to remain the lover, and it is often the lover more than the husband that the modern woman needs ”

“ None of these reforms, however, need in any way debar the formation of voluntary marriage contracts. Such contracts are, indeed, distinctly advisable, for the voluntary resolve of two people to remain faithful to one another, and to build up a permanent home for their children, is at once the best, truest, and most natural foundation of marriage. ”

“ Your marriage contract, like our own laws, appears to favour the weaker sex more than strict theoretical equality would permit. This is quite right and practically inevitable; but it hardly agrees with the theory which supposes bride and bridegroom, husband and wife, to enter on and maintain a coequal voluntary partnership. ”

“ Of all the revolutionary suggestions for improving the present marriage system, the most sensible and feasible seems to me marriage ‘on approval’—in other words, a ‘preliminary canter.’ The procedure would be somewhat as follows: a couple on deciding to marry would go through a legal form of contract, agreeing to take each other as husband and wife for a limited term of years—say three. ”

“ The very fact that any plan was devised to afford a legal and decent mode of entering into the marriage contract, certainly implies that the moral sense of the community revolted at general concubinage. ”

“ What right has the law to intrust the interest and happiness of one being into the hands of another? And if the merging of the interest of one being into the other is a necessary consequence on marriage, why should woman always remain on the losing side? Turn the tables. Let the identity and interest of the husband be merged in the wife. ”

“ Resuming the support of the principle of divorce, and opposing certain restrictions, he continued; "Marriage is not always, as is supposed, the result of affection. A young female consents to marry for the sake of conforming to the fashion, and obtaining independence and an establishment of her own. She accepts a husband of a disproportionate age, and whose tastes and habits do not accord with hers. ”

“ A marriage, so free, so spontaneous, that it would allow of wide excursions of the pair from each other, in common or even in separate objects of work and interest, and yet would hold them all the time in the bond of absolute sympathy, would by its very freedom be all the more poignantly attractive, and by its very scope and breadth all the richer and more vital—would be in a sense indestructible; ”

“ There should be some uniformity of law, as to marriage contract and its dissolution by divorce, in the different States. Another practical consideration is this: women must be prepared to assume personal responsibilities as they attain personal rights. No State Legislature has said "Go to, let us make the married woman the legal equal of her husband," but legislation has pointed in that direction more and more during these last years, so pregnant of changes in her position. ”

“ On the other hand, the compulsory marriage laws of to-day, as well in relation to divorce as to the guardianship given the man, have become obstacles to the higher development of the common life of man and woman. ”

“ In the presence of a just and pure God, and before the laws of Nature that are designed to govern all conjugal relations, does marriage give to the husband any right over the person of the wife, or to the wife any rights over the person of the husband, which neither had before? Has a husband any more right to demand of his wife the surrender of her person to his passion, than he 104has to demand that surrender of any other woman? True marriage creates necessities in each, and gives vitality and intensity to wants in each, which the presence, the love and companionship of the other can supply ”

“ Now, when once we do accept this, admit the principle of divorce and acknowledge that in certain circumstances the bond of marriage may be severed, at once the aspect of the question changes: it becomes a matter of practical adjustment, so that what is needed is decision and regulation of the conditions under which divorce should be allowed, so that they may meet best the needs of men and women in the society and, at the time, in which they live. ”

“ When woman shall stand before the law equal with man in all her personal, property, and political rights, then indeed will marriage be a contract sanctioned by nature and approved by God. All the instincts of nature favor marriage, all the passions, desires, and affections of the human heart enter into it, and the highest development of the human race depends upon it. Yet, as a part of the contract, the law of divorce enters in ”

“ That marriage has hitherto been considered as a relation of contract indicates nothing but a want of confidence in marriage. The consciousness that under present perverse conditions true marriages are a rarity dictated the equally perverse precautionary measure of putting marriage into a strait-jacket, so that where love is wanting, its apparent result, the union, can at least be insisted upon. ”

“ Many have suggested that marriages be made harder and divorces easier. But how revolutionary would seem a suggestion that marriage contracts be made in advance, conforming to the teachings of experience, providing for maintenance and custody of children and limited by the understanding of the parties; that those who, for religious or ethical reasons, wished to enter into a life contract be permitted to do so; that those who wished to enter into a contract to terminate by joint consent or at the option of either party likewise be permitted to do so? ”

“ This, too, must loosen the family link, to-day still strong because people know that it is so hard to break it. It will be a conditional link when it can easily be done away with, a link that will be maintained only on terms of good behavior on both sides. The marriage service will need a new clause; we shall have to swear to be agreeable. The relation between husband and wife must change more. ”

“ It was most unfortunate for civilization that the Christian conception of the nature of marriage should have sprung from asceticism, and that the verbal subtlety of the schoolmen should have produced the cardinal definitions upon which the validity of marriage contracts, and therefore the practical administration of matrimonial law, were made to depend. ”

“ A study of the marriage laws of the world has also brought the happy conviction that the wholesome view of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life, to the exclusion of all others, is the one triumphant fact of human history which can never lose its prestige. ”

“ But even if we one day come so far that early love-matches are the rule, we shall still be faced, as regards them, by the system which at present obtains among the upper classes: that marriage is binding upon the lovers before love is consummated. There is therefore a truth worthy of consideration in the words of the brothers Margueritte, in their contribution to the question of free divorce; that as the young girl has not experienced what she binds herself to at marriage, the majority of divorces begin on the wedding night. ”

“ She explained that marriage is "a couple's choice to live with each other, to remain committed to one another, and to form a household based on their own feelings about one another, and their agreement to join in an economic partnership and support one another in terms of the material needs of life." ”

“ No marriage contract should be recognised by the law which is entered into by minors; in this, as in other legal deeds, there should be no capability to contract until the contracting parties are of full age. A marriage is a partnership, and should be so regarded by the law, and it should be the aim of those who are endeavouring to reform marriage, to substitute for the present semi-barbarous laws a scheme which shall be sober, dignified, and practicable, and which shall recognise the vital interest of the community in the union of those who are to be the parents of the next generation. ”

“ The term "pair marriage" is needed as a technical term for the form of marriage which is as exclusive and permanent for the man as for the woman, which one enters on the same plane of free agreement as the other, and in which all the rights and duties are mutual. ”

“ Tendencies.—There can be no question that the present tendency is in the direction of greater freedom in the marriage relation. Society will not continue to sanction inhumanity and immorality in the relations of man to woman. Marriage is ideally a sacred relation, but when it is not so treated, when love is dead and repulsion has taken its place, and especially when physical contact brings disease and suffering, public opinion is likely to consider that marriage is thereby virtually annulled, and to permit ratification of the fact by a decree of divorce. ”

“ Thus, for any radical improvement in the system of matrimonial connections, we must look to a corresponding improvement in the spirit of the age, and the first step in advance will have been taken when marriage ceases to be the only legal contract which is enforced notwithstanding the ignorance of a contracting party as to the engagement entered into. ”

“ For the marriage of other people is an agreement for indulgence; but that of philosophers leads to that agreement which is in accordance with reason, bidding wives adorn themselves not in outward appearance, but in character; and enjoining husbands not to treat their wedded wives as mistresses, making corporeal wantonness their aim; but to take advantage of marriage for help in the whole of life, and for the best self-restraint. ”

“ The matrimonial conventions of the parties must be made before marriage; but the husband, during marriage, may convey to the wife property to replace that which may have been alienated by him, as was done in this case. ”

“ And it was a fact that in the higher ranks of society,—the only ones with which we are concerned,—a marriage was nothing but a contract made for political and economical reasons. The baron desired to enlarge his estate, obtain a dowry, or marry into an influential family; no one dreamed of consulting the future bride, whom marriage alone could bring into contact with people outside her own family. ”

“ People would believe more simply in His ordinance, instituted “from the beginning”—not the mere outward ceremony of a wedding; but the love which draws together man and woman, until it makes them complete in one another, in the mystical marriage union, which, once perfect, should never he disannulled. ”

“ Obligations of Marriage.—The parties to a marriage are bound to mutual fidelity, protection and assistance.
The husband owes protection to his wife and a wife obedience to her husband.
A wife is obliged to live with her husband at whatever residence he may judge to be proper. The husband is obliged to receive his wife and to furnish her with the necessaries of life, according to his ability and social condition.
A husband and wife contract together by the fact of marriage itself to nourish, educate and properly care for their children. ”