Durant on The Breakdown of Marriage

As you may recall from yesterday's post, I recently discovered a first edition of Will Durant's "The Mansions of Glory", published in 1929. I was fascinated to find that much of what this forward-thinking philosopher predicted has come true, or is seen today. Equally fascinating are his mistakes. I intend to share some excerpts from this book for a short time (since the comments are minimal at best), as I haven't seen any reprints of this book on the internet; not even a mere quote from it!

DURANT'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE BREAKDOWN OF MARRIAGE

"The family was invented by nature to bind the male in service to the female whom nature had bound in service to the child. Men are by nature slaves to women, and women are by nature slaves to children and the race; in that natural slavery is the secret of their deepest and most durable content."

"...Marriage is not a relation between a man and a woman, designed to legalize desire; it is a relation between parents and children, designed to preserve and strengthen the race."

"It is clear enough, God knows, that marriage was never intended for the happiness of the mates, but for the rearing of children... Only with the modern lengthening of life, the superabundance of humanity, ...and the reduction of parentage to a phase rather than the sole content of marriage, has the individual raised the query whether his own happiness in mating is not to be considered along with the continuance and elevation of the race."

"...As war decreased in frequency, and life and health became more secure, the numerical superiority of women was reduced, and monogamy began. It was an advantage to the children, who had now a united care, a concentrated love, and more food to eat since there were fewer mouths to feed. It was an advantage to the man, for it enabled him to... found a family instead of scattering his wealth, like his seed, among a horde of progeny. He found himself still free to satisfy his variegated appetites in secret, while he could surround his wife's fidelity with all the guards of custom and power, and so secure the transmission of his property to children probably his own."

"The rest of the history of marriage has been between woman and property, between wealth and love."

"(As mankind evolved) wealth brought education, education soothed the savage breast of the male, and after centuries of evolution the simple lust of body for body was replaced... by romantic love."

In regards to romantic fiction: "Who can say how far this ocean of fiction cleansed away something of the coarser aspects of modern love, making incipiently real that hunger of soul for soul...?"

"Youth, which is braver and more conceited than before, is materially helpless and economically ignorant beyond anything in the past. Love comes, and youth, finding its pockets empty, dares not marry: love comes again, more weakly (years have passed), and yet the pockets do not bulge enough for marriage; love comes once more, with half of its early freshness and power (years have passed), and now the pockets are full, and marriage celebrates the death of love."

On the modern girl's sex life: "The terrific compulsion is on her, she feels, of getting attention, entertainment, stockings, and champagne - everything except a wedding-ring - through sexual favors or display. ...She is no longer dependant on the male and may therefore risk the male's increasing distaste for marrying a lady as learned as himself in the arts of love. Her very capacity to earn a good income makes the possible suitor hesitate; how can his modest wage suffice to keep both at their present standard?"

On the modern man after marriage: "...Slowly it comes to him that these rooms are precisely like those in which he had brooded as a lonely bachelor, that his relations with his wife are prosaically like those which he has had for years with women of undiscriminating receptivity."

On a childless marriage: "Their marriage being no marriage - being a sexual instead of a parental association - it decays for lack of root and sustenance; it dies because it is detached from the life of the race. ...The natural varietism of the man reappears; familiarty has bred contempt; through her very generosity the woman has nothing new to give. ...If there is any sexual incompatibility between them it becomes an insuperable barrier, because they conceive of marriage as a purely sexual relation. ...If they are modern, they play at equality; and a tug of war ensues till one or the other has established an irritating mastery."

"Soon no man will go down the hill of life with a woman who has climbed it with him, and a divorceless marriage will be as rare as a maiden bride."

On how to save marriage: "Perhaps we should abandon the problem and say, with the oldest of the Christian religions: Close every door of escape, and the prisoners will forget that they are in jail. If marriage is for children and the race, and not for individuals and mates, then for the children's sake let marriage be irrevocable... There is, after all, so little difference between one of us and the next, that if we can not get along with the mate we have, we shall soon find like difficulties with another. Man was not made for happiness; he is born for suffering; let him marry then, and hold his peace."

"Out of our individualistic age comes an opposite theory, more interesting and as extreme; and how attractively it is named! - "Free Love." Since vows are made to be broken, why make any vows at all? Since marriages are now made to be dissolved, why bother a thousand courts with a million matings and separations? If love is the best motive for marriage, its death is sufficient reason for divorce; how can love be real if it is not free? ...This solution of the marriage problem is gathering new popularity every year. Judge Lindsay, reporting that marriage licenses fell 25% from 1921 to 1922, explains the decrease as due to the spread of unlicensed (unions). These free unions would offer an admirable exit from the difficulties of our current code were it not for the continued economic dependence of woman upon man..."

"Periodic disabilities, and the possibility of pregnancy, reduce the woman's earning power; unless she can secure a home and some fairly permanent protection in return for the risks she runs, the advantage of "freedom" is all on the side of the male. ...All that will change, perhaps, when the woman's economic independence is complete, and contraceptives have quite differentiated mating from parentage..."

"...Companionate marriage provides that until maternity is in the offing, the wife shall go to work. Here hides the joker by which the liberation of women shall be made complete: she shall be privileged henceforth to pay her fare from A to Z. The Industrial Revolution is to be carried out to its logical and merciless conclusion; woman is to join her husband in the factory..."

"It is true that youth is blind, and cannot judge; but age is old, and cannot love."

"Perhaps at no time should we be permitted or required to make irrevocable decisions."

"(Who knows) that the compulsory association of distrustful and alienated mates is any better for their children than the allotment or alteration of the children between two households separate and at peace?"

"Without doubt, companionate marriage will be more and more condoned where there is no intent to reproduce. Free unions, sanctioned or not, will multiply; and though their freedom will be chiefly for the male, women will take them as a lesser evil than the sterile loneliness of uncourted days. The "double standard" will be broken down, and woman, having imitated man in all things else, will emulate his premarital experience. Divorce will grow, and every city will be crowded with the derelicts of shipwrecked unions. The entire institution of marriage will be recast into newer and looser forms."

"Emancipate as we will, free ourselves as much as we can from the prejudices of our past, the voluntarily childless woman still fills us with a sense of something abnormal and disagreeable. ...The modern girl will laugh at this old-fashioned suggestion, and will remind the world that the day is gone when she can be used as a maternity machine."

"The last word, however, must be for monogamy. The lifelong union remains the loftiest conception of human marriage; and it is still the goal which the complete lover will set himself when he pledges his troth. There is something cowardly in divorce, like flight from the field of war; and something unstable and superficial in the one who flits from mate to mate. Men and women of character will solve these difficulties as they arise, kowing that difficulties as great would meet them on any battleground."

TOMORROW: Durant's views on morality and immorality.

The Mansions of Philosophy by Durant

Yesterday I stopped by a thrift store on my way home from errands in another city. It was a little hole-in-the-wall place, smelling of old, unwashed clothes and filled with unmatched dishware and grimy knicknacks.

At the very back of the store was a bookshelf piled high with books wantonly tossed there. I started going through the books to see if I could find anything of interest, and among them was a very old, tattered original first edition of "The Mansions of Philosophy" written in 1929 by Will Durant, who is most famous for his work in the multi-volumed "The Story of Civilization." He was an incredible man with a brilliant mind who was very respected during his own time as well as today. In fact, "The Mansions of Philosophy" was one of the top 10 bestsellers in 1929.

Although my edition is more beat-up than the one pictured here, the content is the same. I find it fascinating to hear a voice from beyond the grave concerning societal issues. Some of it is shockingly predictive and dead-on, perhaps due to his progressive thinking (he was strongly pro women's rights and racial equality, equal wages and good labor conditions).

Perhaps it's only me, and you won't find it of interest, but over the next couple of days I intend to share some of his thoughts with you. If you find it deadly dull, please warn me so that I don't expend too much energy on the project.

DURANT'S OBSERVATIONS ON THE MODERN WOMAN

"That woman should be anything but a household slave, a social ornament, or a sexual convenience, was a phenomenon known to other centuries than ours, but only as a phenomenon, as an immoral exception worthy of universal notice and surprise."

"It is to woman's credit that she went out of the home into the factory; she sought the work that had gone from her hands; she knew that without it she would become a meaningless parasite, an impossible luxury for any but economically established or physiologically decadent men."

"Through work in the factory, or lack of work at home, the modern woman had become physiologically weaker than her ancestors. The decadent esthetic sense of the modern male had made matters worse by idolizing the slenderest and frailest figure; such women as Rubens knew, or such mothers as Bonaparte's Laetitia, were not to the taste of our artists or men about town, who judged beauty in terms of transient sexual lure rather than as a promise of robust maternity."

"One by one the new woman took over the habits, good or bad, of the traditional and old-fashioned male; she imitated his cigarettes, his profanity, his agnosticism, his hair-dress, and his trousers. The new diurnal propinquity made men effeminate and women masculine... Within a generation it will be necessary to label them with distinguishing badges to prevent regrettable complications. Already one cannot be quite sure."

"In industry she is adapting herself with an astounding versatility, with an unsuspected flexibility of mind. Most of the tricks and habits of intelligence which a fairly recent psychology pronounced innately male, turn out to be superficial acquisitions which women can take on as readily as rouge."

"There is no telling how far this feminine permeation of industry will go; the time may come when the superior tact of women, and their skill in the manipulation of details, will all but balance the greater strength and bolder initiative of men."

"In politics our daughters will not be so fortunate. No doubt the industrialized woman had to enter this sorry game to protect herself against man-made decrees and contemporary discrimination... The bravery of embattled men drunk with the sound and fury of war could not outmatch the courage of these women marching to the polls, knocking at the gates of power, knocking till the doors were opened and democracy was forced to take them in. Fifty years from now they will realize how completely they have been taken in... Some of them understand it now, and perceive that nose-counting is not emancipation, and that freedom is not political, but of the mind."

"What will come of all this education? Will it... give her an intelligence capable of coping with this changing world? ...Will this new intelligence in woman disturb and frighten off the possible suitor, and make it difficult for the educated woman to find a mate? ...the girl whose culture is of knowledge and ideas rather than of natural charm and half-unconscious skill, is at a disadvantage in the pursuit of a mate; she is trespassing upon fields which men have for centuries reserved for men. Sixty percent of women college graduates remain unmarried. ...A clever lass will conceal her mental superiority until it is too late."

"Once a woman of forty was old, decrepit, and trustworthy; today there is nothing so dangerous."

"Short skirts are a boon to all the world except the tailors."

"Recently, as a respectable Baltimore periodical informs us, "an unidentified man was brought to a hospital here in a critical condition, suffering from painful injuries said to have been inflicted by three girls in a wood near Hurlock. The man was walking... when the girls, in an auto, offered him a 'lift.' He accepted. After riding a short distance, he said, the girls stopped the car on a lonely road. During a petting party which followed... one of the girls became enraged at his lack of ardour. A scuffle ensued. While two held him, the third stabbed him with a hatpin. The girls fled, leaving him helpless on the ground." After this can we any longer doubt the emancipation of women?" (Note: hatpins weren't ordinary pins. They were very large and sharp)

"Shaw was wrong: matrimony is not a maximum of temptation combined with a maximum of opportunity. The opportunity endures; but the temptation is soon reduced to a minimum... Soon, doubtless, we shall have polyandry, and masterful women will collect harems of industrious males, guarded by lady eunuchs who will stand for no nonsense."

"Perhaps in the future we will have three sexes, as among the ants and bees; some women will procreate the race, and others will give themselves so completely to economic activity as to lose their first desire, and then the capacity, for motherhood."

"Behold... the parasitic woman. Freed from domestic toil by the withdrawal of industry from the home, and freed from the burden of motherhood by contraceptives or nurses and maids, she is left with hands, head and heart restlessly idle, a rich soil for alien seed. And by a natural development, the less she has to do the lazier she becomes, and the less willing she is to perform what remains of the work which once made her a helpmate instead of a doll. No insult is offered here to the woman who works, at home or in the shop, as a producer of human life or of humanly valuable goods. The insult is offered... to the woman who commercializes her beauty, in marriage or without; who drives hard bargains in luxury and finery for her love; who spends her days in resting, primping, powdering, curling, and (at last) dressing, and her nights in amusement and flirtation." (This sounds like all the names in Hollywood!)

Tomorrow: THE BREAKDOWN OF MARRIAGE