SHOULD DIVORCE BE MADE EASIER?

However much some of us may feel that divorce can never touch our personal lives, at least the question of it in regard to the nation must always be interesting; and now, with the Majority and Minority report of the Royal Commission still ringing in every one’s ears, it seems a moment to suggest some points of view upon the matter.  To those people entirely influenced by religion as it is expounded from the laws laid down by the Church, there can be nothing to say, because, in the first place, their belief in the infallibility of these laws and the influence of their pastors ought certainly to keep them from sinning at all; and if sinned against, ought to enable them to bear the pain without murmur.  But there are a vast number of our countrymen and women who do not consider the dogmas of religion and are not entirely imbued with respect for the laws of the Church, while nevertheless being good and honest citizens.  It depends upon each person’s point of view.

In this paper, as in my former ones upon Marriage, I want only to take the subject from the standpoint of common sense, while with reverence I admit that if the moral conscience could be awakened by any religious convictions whatever, so that it would keep each individual from sinning, that would be the true solution of the problem.  But, while seeking to enforce its laws in opposition to the laws of the State, the teaching of the Church seems somehow not to have been able to retain much hold over the general conscience which, ever since the first secular law came into being, has availed itself of the relief so afforded to free itself from galling shackles.  The point, then, to look at sensibly is not whether divorce is right or wrong in itself, but what sort of effect the making of it easier or less easy would have upon the nation.  There does not seem to be the slightest use in applying any arguments to the subject which do not take into consideration the immeasurable upheaval in ideas, manner of living, relaxation of personal discipline, and loss of religious control which have taken place since the last reform was made.  The luxury of existence, the rapid movement from place to place permitted by motor-cars, the emancipation of women, the general supposed necessity of indulging in amusements, have so altered all the notions of life, and so excited and encouraged interest in sex relationships, that the old idea of stability and loyalty in marriage is shaken to its foundations.  The temptations for people to err are now a thousand-fold greater than they were fifty years ago, and very few young people are brought up with ideas of stern self-control at all.  This being the case, it would seem that the only rational standpoint to view the question of divorce reform or divorce restriction from is the one which gives the vastest outlook over each side’s eventuality, realising present conditions and tendencies to be as they are, and not as they were, or ought to be.  The forces which produced these conditions are not on the decline, but, if anything, on the increase, and must therefore be reckoned with and not ignored.  What are they likely to bring in the future?  Still greater intolerance of all restraint, still more desire for change?  And if this is so, will it have been wiser to have made the law harder or more lenient?  That is the question we shall soon, as a people, have to try to decide.

In setting out to look calmly at the subject of divorce, no good can be arrived at by studying isolated cases, inasmuch as surely there can be no divided opinion upon the fact of the cruelty of some of them, and the certainty of their betterment by divorce.  The one and only aim to keep in view is what will be best for the whole people, and no other aspect should ever influence the true citizen in making up his mind upon so vital a question.  Thus surely we ought each one of us to ask himself or herself to look ahead, and try to imagine what would be the result to our nation of relaxing the severity of the present divorce law ­or of increasing it.  Of the effects of its present administration we can judge, so it ought to be no impossible task to work from that backwards or forwards.

But to look at any subject dispassionately, without the prejudice of religion or personal feeling, is one of the hardest things to accomplish.  These two forces always make people take views as unchangeable as the laws of the Mèdes and Persians, regardless of totally altered conditions and requirements of mankind.  I hold a brief for neither side, and in this paper I only want to suggest some points of view so as to help, perhaps, some others to look at the matter with justice, as I have tried to look at it myself.  It would seem to me that divorce as a means of ridding oneself of one partner merely to be happier with another must surely always be wrong, because it must entail the degradation of conscious personal motive, in the knowledge that one had taken advantage of a law to gain an end, and to help one to break a vow solely for one’s own gratification.  The enormous responsibility of so taking fate into their own hands would frighten most people, if they gave themselves time to think ­but they do not.  Nine-tenths of them have no compunction in breaking vows, because they do not realise that by making them they have connected themselves with currents and assumed responsibilities the consequences of which to themselves they cannot possibly eventually avoid, no matter how they may try temporarily to evade them.

It would seem to me that divorce for the rich and educated should be made as difficult as possible, and the pleas investigated mercilessly, to discover if any advantage has been taken of legal quibbles for ulterior ends; but that the judge should grant decrees instantly when habitual drunkenness, madness, or anything which degrades and lowers a household or community is proved against the defendant.  It would seem to me that divorces for the poor should be facilitated in every way, if this difference to those of the rich could possibly be accomplished, so that the hideous cruelty and encouragement of vice (cases of which are so admirably set forth in the pamphlets issued by the Divorce Law Reform Union) could be summarily dealt with, and relief and peace conferred upon the innocent party.  Because the lives of the poor are too filled with work to be as easily influenced by personal emotion as the lives of the rich, and the lower level of their education and standard of manners admits of such far greater unkindness and brutality in their actions than in a higher class; and thus they are the more entitled by justice to relief and protection than the highly endowed and developed section of society who can better take care of themselves.  It seems to me to be a crying injustice that the law of divorce can only be administered by paying exorbitant fees for it; and that if the separation of two human beings who are admittedly bound together by law can be accomplished by law and that the breaking of the marriage vow is a sin against the law, then the poorest in the land have an absolute right that this law should be put into execution for them without special payment, just as they have now a right to the Law’s working for them to catch offenders who steal their goods, or who break business contracts with them.  It would seem that this is a frightful case of there being one law for the rich and one for the poor, and that it is a blot upon the boasted equity and fairness of English justice.  How glorious it would be if all lawyers could be remunerated equally by the State!  It would do away with a thriving industry perhaps, but it might be a great aid to real justice being arrived at, and not as things now are, when whoever can pay the cleverest pleader has the best chance of winning the case.  But to get back to the views of divorce!

It would seem to me that the vital and essential question all persons wishing for divorce ought to ask themselves is, “What is my motive in desiring this freedom?” They should search their very souls for the truth.  If it is because the position has not only become intolerable to themselves, but is a menace to their children or society, then they should know that they are acting rightly in trying their utmost to be free; but if the real reason is that they may legally indulge in a new passion, then they may be certain that if they take advantage of a law designed for the benefit of a race, and use it to their own baser ends, they are invoking most dangerous forces to militate against their own eventual unhappiness.  No one who is in a position where his or her good or bad example will be followed has any right to indulge in any personal feelings to the influencing in a harmful way of his or her public actions.  This is the true meaning of that finest of all old sayings, “Noblesse oblige.”  To me it would seem to be a frightful sin for a man or woman for personal motives to degrade an order or a community.

So this is the standpoint I would suggest every one looking at divorce from:  “Will the thing bring good or harm? ­not to me who am only a unit, but to that wider circle of my family and my country?” And if common sense assures him or her that no good can come of it, then the true citizen should not hesitate to bear the pain of refraining.

It would seem to me to be wrong to allow any personal feeling at all to influence one to divorce, no matter what the cruelty of the circumstances or the justice of the grievance one had, if by so doing the children of the marriage were injured in any way, or that the prestige of an order or the honour of a family were lowered by one’s action; but that were the husband or wife a shame and degradation to the children or the family, the individual would be entirely justified in divorcing, and would be helping the good of the State by preventing the guilty and debased partner from committing further harm.  Common sense is always the truest wisdom, but it has often unhappily had to be cloaked and hampered either by spiritual superstition, prejudice, or ignorance.  So that when a flagrant case which corrupts a whole neighbourhood cries aloud to common sense to remove it by divorce, there are found hundreds of good and worthy people to oppose this on the ground that the Church does not sanction such proceeding!  If the State religion administered by the Church cannot inculcate higher principles in its members, so as to prevent them from sinning, it would obviously seem to be more fair to allow the statesmen and sociologists to have a free hand in their attempt to better the morality of England than for the Church to use the vast influence it still possesses to the stultifying of these plans.  The homely proverb of the proof of the pudding being in the eating seems to be plainly shown here.  The religious teaching has failed to influence the people to refrain from sin and to discountenance divorce, proving that its method of imparting knowledge and obtaining influence over the modern mind is no longer effectual, and common sense would suggest changing the method to ensure the desired end.  There is a story told of a French regiment in the early days of conscription.  A certain size of boots had been decided upon for recruits, and this decision had worked very well when the young men were drawn from the town, where the feet were comparatively small, but when countryside youths became the majority, the boots they were given were an agony to them, and constant complaints were the result, with, however, no redress.  Omnipotent head-quarters had decided the size!  And that was the end of it!  And it was not until nearly the whole regiment was in hospital with sore feet that it entered the brain of the officials that it might be wiser for France to regulate the size of the boots of the regiment to the feet of the wearers.  Why, then, cannot the Church devote all its brain and force to evolving some new form of teaching which will, so to speak, “fit the feet of the wearers”?  Then all questions of divorce could be settled by noble and exalted feeling and desire to do right and elevate the nation.  But meanwhile, with the growth and encouragement of individualism, every little unit is giving forth his personal view (as I am doing in this paper!), perhaps many of them without the slightest faculty for looking ahead, or knowledge of how to make deductions from past events, or other countries’ experiences; and the Church is preaching one thing, and the State another, the Majority report taking a certain view, and the Minority a different one ­and we are all at sea, and the supreme issue of it all seems to be fogged.

An enormous section of the public, and almost all women it would seem, are of opinion that divorce should be granted for the same reason to women as it is now to men.  But surely those who hold this view cannot understand that fundamental difference in the instincts of the sexes which I tried to show as forcibly as I could in my former articles upon Marriage.  Infidelity in man cannot be nearly such a degradation to his own soul as infidelity in woman must be to hers, because he is following natural impulses and she is following grafted ones.  A woman must feel degraded in her body and soul when she gives herself to two men at the same time, a husband and a lover; but a man, when he strays, if it has any moral effect upon him at all, probably merely feels some twinges on account of breaking his word, and the fear of being found out.  The actual infidelity cannot degrade him as much as it generally degrades a woman, and may be only the yielding to strong temptation at a given moment, and have no bearing upon the kind home treatment he accords his wife and children, or the tenor of his domestic life.  The eventuality of what this law would bring should be looked at squarely.  And it is rather a pitiful picture to think of the entire happiness of a home being upset because a wife, without judgment or the faculty of making deductions, discovering a single instance of illicit behaviour in her husband, sees fit to, and is enabled by law, to divorce him.  It may be argued that the fear of this would make him mend his ways; but did fear ever curb strong natural instincts for long? ­instincts as strong as hunger, or thirst, or desire to sleep?  Fear could only curb such for a time, and then intelligence would suggest some new and cunning method of deceit, so as to obtain the desired end.  The only possible way to ensure fidelity in a man is by influencing him to wish to remain faithful, either by fond love for the woman or deep religious conviction or moral opinion that not to do so would degrade his soul.  The accomplishment of this end would seem to be either in the hands of the woman or in the teaching of the Church ­and cannot be brought about by law.  Law can only punish offenders; it cannot force them to keep from sin.  When a man is unfaithful habitually, it amounts to cruelty, and even with the present law the woman can obtain relief on that ground.

In looking at a single case of infidelity in a woman, a man would be wise to question himself to see if he has not been in some measure responsible for it ­by his own unkindness or indifference, and in not realising her nature; and if his conscience tells him he is to blame, then he ought never to be hard upon the woman.  He ought also very seriously to consider the circumstances, and whether or no his children or his family will be hurt by the scandal of public severance, as they should be more important to him than his personal feelings.  Tolerance and common sense should always hold wounded vanity and prejudice in check.  How often one sees happy and united old couples who in the meridian of their lives have each looked elsewhere, but have had the good taste and judgment to make no public protest about the matter, and thus have given each other time to regain command of vagrant fancies and return to the fold of convention!

With so many different individual views upon the right and wrong of divorce, it is impossible for either side ­the divorce reform or the divorce restriction supporters ­to state a wholly convincing case against the other.  The only possible way to view the general question is, as I said before, to keep the mind fixed upon the main issue, that of what may possibly be best for the nation, having regard to the ever-augmenting forces of luxury and liberty and democracy and want of discipline which are holding rule.

Lack of space prevents me from trying to touch upon the numerous other moot points in divorce, so I will only plead that, when each person has come to a definite and common-sense conclusion, unclouded by sentiment or prejudice, he or she may not hesitate to proclaim his or her conviction aloud, so that the law of the land may be reorganised to the needs of present-day humanity and help it to rise to the highest fulfilment.