Author's Preface

THE REVOLT AGAINST MARRIAGE

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and
thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and
thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into
disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman
and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder
and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending
cards round to their friends announcing what they have
done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think they ought
to consent to marry the man they have decided to live with; and
they are perplexed and astonished when I, who am supposed (heaven
knows why!) to have the most advanced views attainable on the
subject, urge them on no account to compromize themselves without
the security of an authentic wedding ring. They cite the example
of George Eliot, who formed an illicit union with Lewes. They
quote a saying attributed to Nietzsche, that a married philosopher
is ridiculous, though the men of their choice are not
philosophers. When they finally give up the idea of reforming our
marriage institutions by private enterprise and personal
righteousness, and consent to be led to the Registry or even to
the altar, they insist on first arriving at an explicit
understanding that both parties are to be perfectly free to sip
every flower and change every hour, as their fancy may dictate, in
spite of the legal bond. I do not observe that their unions prove
less monogamic than other people's: rather the contrary, in fact;
consequently, I do not know whether they make less fuss than
ordinary people when either party claims the benefit of the
treaty; but the existence of the treaty shews the same anarchical
notion that the law can be set aside by any two private persons by
the simple process of promising one another to ignore it.

MARRIAGE NEVERTHELESS INEVITABLE

Now most laws are, and all laws ought to be, stronger than the
strongest individual. Certainly the marriage law is. The only
people who successfully evade it are those who actually avail
themselves of its shelter by pretending to be married when they
are not, and by Bohemians who have no position to lose and no
career to be closed. In every other case open violation of the
marriage laws means either downright ruin or such inconvenience
and disablement as a prudent man or woman would get married ten
times over rather than face. And these disablements and
inconveniences are not even the price of freedom; for, as Brieux
has shewn so convincingly in Les Hannetons, an avowedly illicit
union is often found in practice to be as tyrannical and as hard
to escape from as the worst legal one.

We may take it then that