Part 9 (1/2)
All this springs from woman's new estate--that of human being. She must be considered almost as much as a man. Where there is wealth her tastes must be consulted, and more than one man has been sentenced by a tyrannous wife to wear blue coats and blue ties all his life. She is coming to consider that the husband who dresses in his wife's bedroom should be flogged, while the one who shaves there should be electrocuted. And she defends her view with entirely one-sided logic and an extended vocabulary. Here again is a good, a necessary thing; but where is the old family where a husband could in safety, when slightly overcome, retire to bed with his boots on? He is no longer king of the castle, but a menaced viceroy in an insurgent land.
All through society this loosening of the marriage bond is operative. By being freer within matrimony men and women view more tolerantly breaches of the matrimonial code. There was a time when a male co-respondent was not received: that is over. In those days a divorcee was not received either, even when the divorce was p.r.o.nounced in her favor. Nowadays, in most social circles, the decree absolute is coming to be looked upon as an absolution. I do not refer to the United States, where (I judge only from your novels) divorce outlaws n.o.body, but to steady old England, who still pretends that she frowns on the rebels and finally takes them back with a sigh and wonders what she is coming to. What England is coming to is to a lesser regard for the marriage bond, to a recognition that people have the right to rebel against their yoke. There totters the family--for marriage is its base, and the more English society receives in its ranks those who have flouted it, the more it will be shaken by the new spirit which bids human creatures live together, but also with the rest of the world. Woman was kept within the family by threats, by banishment, by ostracism, but now she easily earns forgiveness. At least English society is deciding to forget if it cannot forgive the guilt--a truly British expedient. At the root is a decaying respect for the marriage bond, a growing respect for rebellion. That tendency is everywhere, and it is becoming more and more common for husband and wife to take separate holidays; there are even some who leave behind them merely a slip: ”Gone away, address unknown.” They are cutting the wire entanglements behind which lie dangers and freedoms. All this again comes from mutual respect with mutual realization, from education, and especially from late marriages. Late marriages are one of the most potent causes of the break-up of the family, for now women are no longer caught and crushed young; they are no longer burdened matrons at thirty.
The whole point of view has changed. I remember reading in an early-Victorian novel this phrase: ”She was past the first bloom of her youth; she was twenty-three.” The phrase is not without its meaning; it meant that the male was seeking not a wife, but a courtesan who, her courtesans.h.i.+p done, could become a perfect housekeeper. Now men prefer women of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, forsake the _backfisch_ for her mother, because the mother has personality, experience, can stimulate, amuse, and accompany. Only the older and more formed woman is no longer willing to enter the family as a jail; she will enter it only as a hotel.
Meanwhile, from child to parent erosion also operates. I do not think that the modern child honors its father and its mother unless it thinks them worthy of honor. There is a slump in respect, as outside the family there is a slump in reverence. As in the outer world a man began by being a worthy, then a member of Parliament, then a minister, finally was granted a pension and later a statue; and as now a man is first a journalist, then a member of Parliament, a minister, and in due course a scoundrel, so inside the family does a father become an equal instead of a tyrant, and a good sort instead of an old fogy. For respect, I believe, was mainly fear and greed. The respect of the child for its father was very like the respect that Riquet, the little dog, felt for Monsieur Bergeret. Anatole France has expressed it ideally:
”Oh, my master, Bergeret, G.o.d of Slaughter, I wors.h.i.+p thee! Hail, oh G.o.d of wrath! Hail, oh bountiful G.o.d! I lie at thy feet, I lick thy hand.
Thou art great and beautiful when at the laden board thou devourest abundant meats. Thou art great and beautiful when, from a thin strip of wood causing flame to spring, thou dost of night make day....”
That was a little the child's cosmogony. Then the child became educated, capable of argument. In contact with more reasonable parents it grew more reasonable. The parent, confronted with the question, ”Why must I do what you order?” ceased to say, ”Because I say so.” That reply did not seem good enough to the parent, and it ceased to be good enough for the child. If the child rebelled, the only thing to do was to strike it, and striking is no longer done; the parent prefers argument because the child is capable of understanding argument. The child is more lawful, more sensitive; it is unready to obey blindly, and it is no longer required to obey blindly, because, while the parent has begun to doubt his own infallibility, the child has been doing so, too. The child is more ready and more able to criticize its parents; indeed, the whole generation is critical, has acquired the habit of introspection. The child is a little like the supersoul of Mr. Stephen Leac.o.c.k, and is developing thoughts like, ”Why am I? Why am I what I am? How? and why how?” Obviously, such questions, when directed at one's father and mother, are a little shattering. It is true that once upon a time the child readily obeyed; now and then it criticized, but still it obeyed, for it had been told that its duty was to execute, as was its parents'
to command. But duty is in a bad way, and I, for one, think that we should be well rid of duty, for it appears to me to be merely an excuse for acting without considering whether the deed is worthy. The man who dies for his country because he loves it is an idealist and a hero; the man who does that because he thinks it his duty is a fool. The conception of duty has suffered; from the child's point of view, it is almost extinct; it has been turned upside down, and there is a growth of opinion that the parent should have the duties and the child the privileges. It is the theory of _La Course du Flambeau_, where Hervieu shows us each generation using and bleeding the elder generation. Or perhaps it is a more subtle conception. It may be that the eugenic idea is vaguely forming in the young generation, and that, in an unperceived return to nature, they are deciding to eat their grandfathers, a primitive taste which I have never been able to understand. Youth, feeling that the world is its orange to suck, is inclined to consider that the elder generation, being responsible for its presence, should look after it and serve it. That is not at all illogical; it is borne out by Chinese law, where, if you save a man from suicide, you must feed him for the rest of his life.
Or perhaps it is a broader view, a more socialized one. Very young, the child is acquiring a vague sense of its responsibility to the race, is very early becoming a citizen. It is directed that way; it hears that liberty consists in doing what you like, providing you injure no other man. Its personality being encouraged to develop, the child acquires a higher opinion of itself, considers that it owes something to itself, that it has rights. Sacrifice is still inculcated in the child, but not so much because it is a moral duty as because it is mental discipline.
The little boy is not told to give the chocolates to his little sister because she is a dear little thing, and he must not be cruel to her and make her cry; he is told that he must give her the chocolates because it is good for him to learn to give up something. That impulse is the impulse of Polycrates, who threw his ring into the sea. But, then, Polycrates had no luck. The child, more fortunate, is tending to realize itself as a person, and so, as it becomes more responsible, acquires tolerance; it makes allowances for its parents, it is kind, it realizes that its parents have not had its advantages. All that is very swollen-headed and unpleasant, but still I prefer it to the old att.i.tude, to the time when voices were hushed and footsteps slowed when father's latchkey was heard in the lock. To the child the parent is becoming a person instead of the G.o.d of Wrath; a person with rights, but not a person to whom everything must be given up. Sacrifice is out of date, and in the child as well as in the elders there is a denial of the dream of Ellen Sturges Cooper, for few wake up and find that life is duty. _My_ life, _my_ personality--all that has sprung from Stirner, from Nietzsche, from the great modern reaction against socialism and uniformity; it is the a.s.sertion of the individual. It is often harsh; the daughter who used to take her father for a walk now sends the dog.
But still it is necessary; old hens make good soup. I do not think that this has killed love, for love can coexist with mutual forbearance, however much Doctor Johnson may have doubted it. Doctor Johnson was the bad old man of the English family, and I do not suppose that anybody will agree that
”If the man who turnips cries Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis a proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.”
A possible sentiment in an older generation, but sentiments, like generations, grow out of date; they are swept out by new ideas and new rejections--rejection of religion, rejection of morals. We tend toward an agnostic world, with a high philosophical morality; we have attained as yet neither agnosticism nor high morality, but the child is shaking off the ready-made precepts of the faiths and the Smilesian theories. It is unwillingly bound by the ordinances of a forgotten alien race; as a puling child, carried in a basket by an eagle, like the tiny builders of Ecbatana, it calls for bricks and mortar with which to build the airy castle of the future.
3
As a house divided against itself, the family falls. It protests, it hugs that from which it suffered; it protests in speech, in the newspapers, that still it is united. The clan is dead, and blood is not as thick as marmalade. There are countries where the link is strong, as in France, for instance. I quote from a recent and realistic novel the words of a mother speaking of her young married daughter:
”Every Tuesday we dine at my mother's, and every Thursday at my mother-in-law's. Of course, now, at least once a week we go to Madame de Castelac; later on I shall expect Pauline and her husband every Wednesday.”
”That is a pity,” said Sorel. ”That leaves three days.”
”Oh, there are other calls. Every week my mother comes to us the same evening as does my father-in-law, but that is quite informal.”
Family dinners are rare in England. They flourish only at weddings and at funerals, especially at funerals, for mankind collected enjoys woe.
But other occasions--birthdays, Christmas--are shunned; Christmas especially, in spite of d.i.c.kens and Mr. Chesterton, is not what it was, for its quondam victims, having fewer children, and being less bound to their aunts' ap.r.o.n strings, go away to the seaside, or stay at home and hide. That is a general change, and many modern factors, such as travel, intercourse with strangers, emigration, have shown the family that there are other places than home, until some of them have begun to think that ”East or West, home's worst.” There is a frigidity among the relations in the home, a disinclination to call one's mother-in-law ”Mother.”
Indeed, relations-in-law are no longer relatives; the two families do not immediately after the wedding call one another Kitty or Tom. The acquired family is merely a sub-family, and often the grouping resembles that of the Montagues and the Capulets, if Romeo and Juliet had married.
Mrs. Herbert said, charmingly, in _Garden Oats_, ”Our in-laws are our strained relations.”
With the closeness of the family goes the regard for the name, once so strong. I feel sure that in all seriousness, round about 1850, a father may have said to his son that he was disgracing the name of Smith. Now he may almost disgrace the name of FitzArundel for all anybody cares.
There was a time when it was thought criminal that a man should become a bankrupt, but few families will now mortgage their estate to prevent a distant member's appearance before the official receiver. The name of the family is now merely generic, and the bold young girl of to-morrow will say, ”My father began life as a forger and was ultimately hanged, but that shouldn't bother you, should it?” Much of that deliquescence is due to the factory system, for it opened opportunities to all, which many took, raised men high in the scale of wealth; one brother might be a millionaire in Manchester, while another tended a bar in Liverpool.
Sometimes the rich member of the family came back, such as the uncle who returned from America with a fortune, in a state of sentimental generosity, but most of the time it has meant that the family split into those who keep their carriage and those who take the tram. Perhaps Cervantes did not exaggerate when saying that there are only two families: Have-Much and Have-Little.
4
What the future reserves I disincline to prophesy. It is enough to point to tendencies, and to say, ”Along this road we go, we know not whither.”
But of one thing I feel certain: the family will not become closer, for the individualistic tendency of man leads to instinctive rebellion; his latent anarchism to isolate him from his fellows. There is a growing rebellion among women against the thrall of motherhood, which, however delightful it may be, is a thrall--the velvet-coated yoke is a yoke still. I do not suppose that the mothers of the future will unanimously deposit their babies in the munic.i.p.al creche. But I do believe that with the growth of cooperative households, and especially of that quite new cla.s.s, the skilled Princess Christian or Norland nurses, there will be a delegation of responsibility from the mother to the expert. It will go down to the poor as well as to the rich. Already we have district nurses for the poor, and I do not see why, as we realize more and more the value of young life, there should not be district kindergartens.