| PART TWO |
SITUATION
| CHAPTER 5 |
The Married Woman
The destiny that society traditionally offers women is marriage. Even today, most women are, were, or plan to be married, or they suffer from not being so. Marriage is the reference by which the single woman is defined, whether she is frustrated by, disgusted at, or even indifferent to this institution. Thus we must continue this study by analyzing marriage.
The economic evolution of woman’s condition is in the process of upsetting the institution of marriage: it is becoming a union freely entered into by two autonomous individuals; the commitments of the two parties are personal and reciprocal; adultery is a breach of contract for both parties; either of them can obtain a divorce on the same grounds. Woman is no longer limited to the reproductive function: it has lost, in large part, its character of natural servitude and has come to be regarded as a freely assumed responsibility;1 and it is considered productive work since, in many cases, maternity leave necessitated by pregnancy must be paid to the mother by the state or the employer. For a few years in the U.S.S.R., marriage was a contract between individuals based on complete freedom of the spouses; today it seems to be a duty the state imposes on them both. Which of these tendencies prevails in tomorrow’s world depends on the general structure of society: but in any case masculine guardianship is becoming extinct. Yet, from a feminist point of view, the period we are living through is still a period of transition. Only a part of the female population participates in production, and those same women belong to a society where ancient structures and values still survive. Modern marriage can be understood only in light of the past it perpetuates.
Marriage has always been presented in radically different ways for men and for women. The two sexes are necessary for each other, but this necessity has never fostered reciprocity; women have never constituted a caste establishing exchanges and contracts on an equal footing with men. Man is a socially autonomous and complete individual; he is regarded above all as a producer, and his existence is justified by the work he provides for the group; we have already seen the reasons why the reproductive and domestic role to which woman is confined has not guaranteed her an equal dignity.2
Of course, the male needs her; with some primitive peoples, a bachelor, unable to support himself alone, may become a sort of pariah; in agricultural societies, a woman partner-worker is indispensable to the peasant; and for most men, it is advantageous to unload some of the chores onto a woman; the man himself wishes to have a stable sexual life, he desires posterity, and society requires him to contribute to its perpetuation. But man does not address his appeal to woman herself: it is men’s society that allows each of its members to accomplish himself as husband and father; woman, integrated as slave or vassal into the family group dominated by fathers and brothers, has always been given in marriage to males by other males. In primitive times, the clan, the paternal gens, treats her almost like a thing: she is part of payments to which two groups mutually consent; her condition was not deeply modified when marriage evolved into a contractual form;3
dowered or receiving her share of an inheritance, woman becomes a civil person: but a dowry or an inheritance still enslaves her to her family; for a long period, the contracts were signed between father-in-law and son-in-law, not between husband and wife; in those times, only the widow benefited from an economic independence.4 A young girl’s free choice was always highly restricted; and celibacy—except in rare cases where it bears a sacred connotation—ranked her as a parasite and pariah; marriage was her only means of survival and the only justification of her existence. It was doubly imposed on her: she must give children to the community; but rare are the cases where—as in Sparta and to some extent under the Nazi regime—the state takes her under its guardianship and asks only that she be a mother. Even civilizations that ignore the father’s generative role demand that she be under the protection of a husband; and she also has the function of satisfying the male’s sexual needs and caring for the home. The charge society imposes on her is considered a service rendered to the husband: and he owes his wife gifts or a marriage dowry and agrees to support her; using him as an intermediary, the community acquits itself of its responsibilities to the woman. The rights the wife acquires by fulfilling her duties have their counterpart in the obligations the male submits to. He cannot break the conjugal bond at whim; repudiation and divorce can only be granted by public authority, and then sometimes the husband owes a monetary compensation: the practice even becomes abusive in Bocchoris’s Egypt, as it is today with alimony in the United States. Polygamy was always more or less tolerated: a man can have slaves, pallakès, concubines, mistresses, and prostitutes in his bed; but he is required to respect certain privileges of his legitimate wife. If she thinks she is maltreated or wronged, she has the option—more or less concretely guaranteed—to return to her family and to obtain a separation or divorce in her own right. Thus for both parties marriage is a charge and a benefit at the same time; but their situations are not symmetrical; for young girls, marriage is the only way to be integrated into the group, and if they are “rejects,” they are social waste. This is why mothers have always at all costs tried to marry them off. Among the bourgeoisie of the last century, girls were barely consulted. They were offered to possible suitors through “interviews” set up in advance. Zola describes this custom in Pot-Bouille:
“A failure, it’s a failure” said Mme Josserand, falling into her chair.
“Ah!” M. Josserand simply said.
“But you don’t seem to understand,” continued Mme Josserand in a shrill voice. “I’m telling you that here’s another marriage gone down the river, and it’s the fourth to fall through!
“Listen,” went on Mme Josserand, advancing toward her daughter. “How did you spoil this marriage too?”
Berthe realized that her turn had come.
“I don’t know, Mamma,” she murmured.
“An assistant department head,” continued her mother, “not yet thirty, a superb future. Every month it brings you money: solid, that’s all that counts … You did something stupid, as you did with the others?”
“I swear I didn’t, Mamma.”
“When you were dancing, you slipped into the small parlor.”
Berthe was unnerved: “Yes, Mamma … and as soon as we were alone, he wanted to do disgraceful things, he kissed me and grabbed me like this. So I got scared and pushed him against the furniture!”
Her mother interrupted her, “Pushed him against the furniture! Ah, you foolish girl, pushed him against the furniture!”
“But, Mamma, he was holding on to me.”
“And what? He was holding on to you … how bad is that! Putting you idiots in boarding school! What do they teach you there, tell me!… For a kiss behind a door! Should you really even tell us about this, us, your parents? And you push people against furniture and you ruin your chances of getting married!”
Assuming a pontificating air, she continued:
“It’s over, I give up, you are just stupid, my dear … Since you have no fortune, just understand that you have to catch men some other way. By being pleasant, gazing tenderly, forgetting your hand, allowing little indulgences without seeming to; in short, you have to fish a husband … And what bothers me is that she is not too bad when she wants,” continued Mme Josserand. “Come now, dry your eyes, look at me as if I were a gentleman courting you. You see, you drop your fan so that when the gentleman picks it up he’ll touch your fingers … And don’t be stiff, let your waist bend. Men don’t like boards. And above all, don’t be a simpleton if they go too far. A man who goes too far is caught, my dear.”
The clock in the parlor rang two o’clock; and in the excitement of the long evening, fired by her desire for an immediate marriage, the mother let herself think aloud, twisting and turning her daughter like a paper doll. The girl, docile and dispirited, gave in, but her heart was heavy and fear and shame wrung her bre
ast.
This shows the young girl becoming absolutely passive; she is married, given in marriage by her parents. Boys marry; they take a wife. In marriage they seek an expansion, a confirmation of their existence but not the very right to exist; it is a charge they assume freely. So they can question its advantages and disadvantages just as the Greek and medieval satirists did; for them it is simply a way of life, not a destiny. They are just as free to prefer a celibate’s solitude or to marry late or not at all.
In marrying, the woman receives a piece of the world as property; legal guaranties protect her from man’s caprices; but she becomes his vassal. He is economically the head of the community, and he thus embodies it in society’s eyes. She takes his name; she joins his religion, integrates into his class, his world; she belongs to his family, she becomes his other “half.” She follows him where his work calls him: where he works essentially determines where they live; she breaks with her past more or less brutally, she is annexed to her husband’s universe; she gives him her person: she owes him her virginity and strict fidelity. She loses part of the legal rights of the unmarried woman. Roman law placed the woman in the hands of her husband loco filiae; at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bonald declared that the woman is to her husband what the child is to the mother; until the 1942 law, French law demanded a wife’s obedience to her husband; law and customs still confer great authority on him: it is suggested by her very situation within the conjugal society. Since he is the producer, it is he who goes beyond family interest to the interest of society and who opens a future to her by cooperating in the construction of the collective future: it is he who embodies transcendence. Woman is destined to maintain the species and care for the home, which is to say, to immanence.5 In truth, all human existence is transcendence and immanence at the same time; to go beyond itself, it must maintain itself; to thrust itself toward the future, it must integrate the past into itself; and while relating to others, it must confirm itself in itself. These two moments are implied in every living movement: for man, marriage provides the perfect synthesis of them; in his work and political life, he finds change and progress, he experiences his dispersion through time and the universe; and when he tires of this wandering, he establishes a home, he settles down, he anchors himself in the world; in the evening he restores himself in the house, where his wife cares for the furniture and children and safeguards the past she keeps in store. But the wife has no other task save the one of maintaining and caring for life in its pure and identical generality; she perpetuates the immutable species, she ensures the even rhythm of the days and the permanence of the home she guards with locked doors; she is given no direct grasp on the future, nor on the universe; she goes beyond herself toward the group only through her husband as mouthpiece.
Marriage today still retains this traditional form. And, first of all, it is imposed far more imperiously on the young girl than on the young man. There are still many social strata where she is offered no other perspective; for peasants, an unmarried woman is a pariah; she remains the servant of her father, her brothers, and her brother-in-law; moving to the city is virtually impossible for her; marriage chains her to a man and makes her mistress of a home. In some bourgeois classes, a girl is still left incapable of earning a living; she can only vegetate as a parasite in her father’s home or accept some lowly position in a stranger’s home. Even when she is more emancipated, the economic advantage held by males forces her to prefer marriage over a career: she will look for a husband whose situation is superior to her own, a husband she hopes will “get ahead” faster and further than she could. It is still accepted that the love act is a service she renders to the man; he takes his pleasure, and he owes compensation in return. The woman’s body is an object to be purchased; for her it represents capital she has the right to exploit. Sometimes she brings a dowry to her husband; she often agrees to provide some domestic work: she will keep the house, raise the children. In any case, she has the right to let herself be supported, and traditional morality even exhorts it. It is understandable that she is tempted by this easy solution, especially as women’s professions are so unrewarding and badly paid; marriage is a more beneficial career than many others. Mores still make sexual enfranchisement for a single woman difficult; in France a wife’s adultery was a crime until recent times, while no law forbade a woman free love; however, if she wanted to take a lover, she had to be married first. Many strictly controlled young bourgeois girls still marry “to be free.” A good number of American women have won their sexual freedom; but their experiences are like those of the young primitive people described by Malinowski in “The Bachelors’ House”—girls who engage in pleasures without consequences;* they are expected to marry, and only then will they be fully considered adults. A woman alone, in America even more than in France, is a socially incomplete being, even if she earns her living; she needs a ring on her finger to achieve the total dignity of a person and her full rights. Motherhood in particular is respected only in the married woman; the unwed mother remains an object of scandal, and a child is a severe handicap for her. For all these reasons, many Old and New World adolescent girls, when interviewed about their future projects, respond today just as they did in former times: “I want to get married.” No young man, however, considers marriage as his fundamental project. Economic success is what will bring him to respectable adulthood: it may involve marriage—particularly for the peasant—but it may also exclude it. Modern life’s conditions—less stable, more uncertain than in the past—make marriage’s responsibilities particularly heavy for the young man; the benefits, on the other hand, have decreased since he can easily live on his own and sexual satisfaction is generally available. Without doubt, marriage brings material conveniences (“Eating home is better than eating out”) and erotic ones (“This way we have a brothel at home”), and it frees the person from loneliness, it establishes him in space and time by providing him with a home and children; it is a definitive accomplishment of his existence. In spite of this, overall there is still less masculine demand than feminine supply. The father does not so much give his daughter as get rid of her; the young girl seeking a husband does not respond to a masculine call: she provokes it.
Arranged marriages have not disappeared; there is still a right-minded bourgeoisie perpetuating them. In France, near Napoleon’s tomb, at the Opera, at balls, on the beach, or at a tea, the young hopeful with every hair in place, in a new dress, shyly exhibits her physical grace and modest conversation; her parents nag her: “You’ve already cost me enough in meeting people; make up your mind. The next time it’s your sister’s turn.” The unhappy candidate knows her chances diminish the older she gets; there are not many suitors: she has no more freedom of choice than the young bedouin girl exchanged for a flock of sheep. As Colette says, “A young girl without a fortune or a trade, who is dependent on her brothers for everything, has only one choice: shut up, be grateful for her good luck, and thank God!”6
In a less crude way, high society permits young people to meet under mothers’ watchful eyes. Somewhat more liberated, young girls go out more, attend university, take jobs that give them the chance to meet men. Between 1945 and 1947, Claire Leplae conducted a survey on the Belgian bourgeoisie, about the problem of matrimonial choice.7 The author conducted interviews; I will cite some questions she asked and the responses given:
Q: Are arranged marriages common?
A: There are no more arranged marriages (51%).
Arranged marriages are very rare, 1% at most (16%).
1 to 3% marriages are arranged (28%).
5 to 10% of marriages are arranged (5%).
The people interviewed point out that arranged marriages, frequent before 1945, have almost disappeared. Nonetheless, “specific interests, poor relations, self-interest, not much family, shyness, age, and the desire to make a good match are motives for some arranged marriages.” These marriages are often conducted by priests; sometimes the young girl marries by correspon
dence. “They describe themselves in writing, and it is put on a special sheet with a number. This sheet is sent to all persons described. It includes, for example, two hundred female and an equal number of male candidates. They also write their own profiles. They can all freely choose a correspondent to whom they write through the agency.”
Q: How did young people meet their fiancées or fiancés over the past ten years?
A: Social events (48%).
School or clubs (22%).
Personal acquaintances, travel (30%).
Everyone agrees that “marriages between childhood friends are very rare. Love is found in unexpected places.”
Q: Is money a primary factor in the choice of a spouse?
A: 30% of marriages are based on money (48%).
50% of marriages are based on money (35%).
70% of marriages are based on money (17%).
Q: Are parents anxious to marry their daughters?
A: Parents are anxious to marry their daughters (58%).
Parents are eager to marry their daughters (24%).
Parents wish to keep their daughters at home (18%).
Q: Are girls anxious to marry?
A: Girls are anxious to marry (36%).
Girls are eager to marry (38%).
Girls prefer not to marry than to have a bad marriage (26%).
“Girls besiege boys. Girls marry the first boy to come along simply to get married. They all hope to marry and work at doing so. A girl is humiliated if she is not sought after: to escape this, she will often marry her first prospect. Girls marry to get married. Girls marry to be married. Girls settle down because marriage assures them more freedom.” Almost all the interviews concur on this point.