Proposal of marriage

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The primary marriage is negotiated between the mothers of the would-be groom and the prospective bride; if the mother and daughter in the latter family look with favor on the proposal, the candidate is subjected to rigorous tests of material and moral character ”

“ True, in this State, and in nearly all the States, the idea of marriage is that of subjection, in all respects, of the wife to the husband—personal subjection, subjection in the rights over their children and over their property; but this is a false relation. Marriage is a union of equals—equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake ”

“ But the marriage law dates from a time when women had none of these things. The married woman, thus, under this law, now occupies a position in sharp contrast to the independence of the unmarried, which has been acquired since that time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There's no talking to a young woman now about marriage, but she is all in a blaze about hearts, and darts, and—and—But hark ye, child, I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth—that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence—for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 old manus-marriage certainly supposes great confidence of the wife and her parents in the fidelity of the husband, while the marriage law of the time of the emperors relating to estates never lost sight of the possibility of divorce. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reason demands the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical pressure. It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual love, esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same time be counted a social contract, and be protected, as civil marriage, by proper legislation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, regarding marriage, which is a human institution, who shall presume to sit in judgment, to say which marriages are unions that might be approved by the universe supervisors in contrast with those which are purely human in nature and origin?
Nevertheless, there is an ideal of marriage on the spheres on high. On the capital of each local system the Material Sons and Daughters of God do portray the height of the ideals of the union of man and woman in the bonds of marriage and for the purpose of procreating and rearing offspring. After all, the ideal mortal marriage is humanly sacred. ”

“ But perhaps most persons, especially when young and looking forward to a long future of connubial happiness, consider the act of marriage more as a religious rite than a civil contract, and hence the forms and ceremonies of the Church accord more agreeably with the sentiment of love and affection than the business-like and informal words of the magistrate, who, in response to their acknowledgment of intention to marry, simply pronounces them man and wife. ”

“ No doubt marriage has been modified, but to modify is not to overthrow, and its fundamental principle remains intact.
The fundamental principle of the institution of marriage is the natural subordination of the woman—a principle which has reappeared under all forms of marriage. ”

“ But yet to say divorce was granted for relief of wives, rather than for husbands, is but weakly conjectured, and is manifest the extreme shift of a huddled exposition ... Palpably uxorious! Who can be ignorant that woman was created for man, and not man for woman, and that a husband may be injured as insufferably in marriage as a wife. ”

“ Matrimony is a solemn Work, 'tis proposed as a sacred Institution, and the conjugal State is, upon all Occasions, look'd upon, by those that confider and understand it, as a kind of Civil Establishment in life; to engage in it Rashly, and without Consideration, is perfectly inconsistent with the Nature of the Thing, and with all that is proposed in it, or expected from it, at least by wife and sober People. ”

“ The people are very anxious that their children should be legitimate, and that their marriages should be so solemnized that God will recognize them in the eternal worlds; and hence we say to all the thousands and scores of thousands who come here from foreign lands—"Come forward and be married according to divine appointment, that you may be legally husband and wife in the sight of heaven." ”

“ As there should be no partial divorce, which leaves the parties in the condition aptly described by an eminent jurist as 'a wife without a husband and a husband without a wife,' so, as a matter of public expediency, and in the interest of public morals, whenever and however the marriage is dissolved, both parties should be left free to remarry. ”

“ In the latter view, the wives are even more benefitted, if possible, than the husband physically. But, indeed, the benefits naturally accruing to both sexes, and particularly to their offspring, in time, say nothing of eternity, are immensely greater in the righteous practice of patriarchal marriage than in monogamy, even admitting the eternity of the monogamic marriage covenant. ”

“ 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 claims of the new sexual morality show curious similarities and dissimilarities to those to which the age of chivalry gave rise in the same sphere. Thus the Courts of Love held the principle that marriage and love are mutually exclusive. On the other hand, the conception of personality has given rise to a desire for unity which makes it repulsive to many people to live in matrimony unless there is a longing of the soul and of the senses for one’s partner in marriage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had often thought of love and marriage before--who is it does not think of these things?--but she had never thought of them so surrounded by awe before. Most people treated love with levity, and marriage as a matter of legal contract, to be embodied in documents and secured by stamps. Now this man whom she had agreed to accept as a husband was taking precautions, not only for their earthly happiness, but for their eternal union also. ”

“ When a woman marries, we call her condition coverture, and speak of her as a femme covert. The old writers call the husband baron, and sometimes in plain English, lord.... The merging of her name in that of her husband is emblematic of the fate of all her legal rights. The torch of Hymen serves but to light the pile on which these rights are offered up. The legal theory is, that marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband. On this subject, reform is loudly called for. ”

“ There were two lower grades of civil marriage, but each gave a man supreme control of his wife, without the dignity of consecration. Whatever cruelty and suffering might result from this one-sided relation,—and the possibilities were enormous,—a woman was expected to love the husband chosen by her friends, for himself alone, and a bridegroom’s presents were limited by custom, so that she might not be tempted to love him for what he could give her. ”

“ A woman with one husband can fulfil this command, with greater facilities, than if she had a plurality; indeed, this would, in all probability, frustrate the great design of marriage, and prevent her from raising up a family. ”

“ I return to the Principle, which is the Proposition in this Chapter, That there is a needful Modesty and Decency requisite even between a Man and his Wife after Marriage, and not destroyed by their Matrimony. Certainly People do not by Matrimony cease to be Men and Women, nor do the Man and Woman cease to be rational Creatures, much less do they cease to be Christians: let every marry'd Couple remember those three Things, and I am fully assured they will take care not to deserve the Reproof of this Chapter. ”

“ The man has been allowed to take unto himself as many wives as he could support without asking the consent of former wives—a practice which seems strange to those who have been brought up to regard the marriage vows as mutually binding and to consider man and woman as standing upon an equal plane when entering upon the relation of husband and wife. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In a word, the Man and the Woman remains, but the Husband and Wife are loft; the Conjunction holds, but the Union is lost; the Marriage is fixed and fast, but the Matrimony is gone, in a word, there's the Whoredom without the Matrimony, the vitious Part without the virtuous, the humid without the sublime; there's the married Couple without their Souls; their Affections are no more united than the Poles, and like the living and the dead Body I mentioned just now, they are only Bound to one another, that at last they may Rot together. ”