(Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage.) I have before me as I write a newspaper article by Robert Blatchford, a great writer and great man. He is dealing with the subject of "Love and Marriage," and his doctrine is summed up in the following sentences: "There is a difference between loving a woman and falling in love with her. The love one falls into is a sweet illusion. But that fragrant dream does not last. In marriage there are no fairies."
This expresses one of the commonest ideas in the world. Passionate love is one thing, and marriage is another and different thing, and it is no more possible to reconcile them than to mix oil and water. Our notions of "romantic" love took their rise in the Middle Ages, from the songs and narratives of the troubadours, and this whole tradition was based upon the glorification of illegitimate and extra-marital love. That tradition has ruled the world of art ever since, and rules it today. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is the conventional view of grand opera and the drama, of moving pictures and novels, that impassioned and thrilling love is found before marriage, and is found in adultery and in temptations to adultery, but is never found in marriage. I have a pretty varied acquaintance with the literature of the world, and I have sat and thought for quite a while, without being able to recall a single portrait of life which contradicts this thesis; and certainly anyone familiar with literature could name ten thousand novels and dramas and grand operas which support the thesis.
English and American Puritanism have beaten the tradition down to this extent: the novelist portrays the glories and thrills of young love, and carries it as far as the altar and the orange blossoms and white ribbons and showers of rice—and stops. He leaves you to assume that this delightful rapture continues forever after; but he does not attempt to show it to you—he would not dare attempt to show it, because the general experience of men and women in marriage would make him ridiculous. So he runs away from the issue; if he tells you a story of married life, it is a story of a "triangle"—the thrills of love imperiling marriage, and either crushed out, or else wrecking the lives of the victims. Such is the unanimous testimony of all our arts today, and I submit it as evidence of the fact that there must be something vitally wrong with our marriage system.
Personally, I am prepared to go as far as the extreme sex-radical in the defense of love and the right to love. I believe that love is the most precious of all the gifts of life. I accept its sanctions and its authority. I believe that it is to be cherished and obeyed, and not to be run away from or strangled in the heart. I believe that it is the voice of nature speaking in the depths of us, and speaking from a wisdom deeper than we have yet attained, or may attain for many centuries to come. And when I say love, I do not mean merely affection. I do not mean merely the habit of living in the same home, which is the basis of marriage as Blatchford describes it. What I mean is the love of the poets and the dreamers, the "young love" which is thrill and ecstasy, a glorification and a transfiguration of the whole of life. I say that, far from giving up this love for marriage, it is the true purpose of marriage to preserve this love and perpetuate it.
To save repetition and waste of words, let us agree that from now on when I use the word love, I mean the passionate love of those who are "in love." I believe that it is the right of men and women to be "in love," and that there is no true marriage unless they are "in love," and stay "in love." I believe that it is possible to apply reason to love, to learn to understand love and the ways of love, to protect it and keep it alive in marriage. Blatchford writes the sentence, "Matrimony cannot be all honeymoon." I answer that assuredly it can be, and if you ask me how I know, I tell you that I know in the only way we really know anything—because I have proven it in my own life. I say that if men and women would recognize the perpetuation of the honeymoon as the purpose of marriage, and would devote to that end one-hundredth part of the intelligence and energy they now devote to the killing of their fellow human beings in war, we might have an end to the wretched "romantic tradition" which makes the most sacred emotion of the human heart into a sneak-thief skulking in the darkness, entering our lives by back alleys and secret stairways—while greed and worldly pomp, dullness and boredom, parade in by the front entrance.
In the first place, what is love—young love, passionate love, the love of those who "fall in"? I know a certain lady, well versed in worldly affairs, who says that it is at once the greatest nonsense and the deadliest snare in the world. This lady was trained as a "coquette"; she, and all the young ladies she knew, made it their business to cause men to fall in love with them, and their prestige was based upon their skill in that art. So to them "love" was a joke, and men "in love" were victims, whether ridiculous or pitiable. To this I answer that I know nothing in life that cannot be "faked"; but an imitation has value only as it resembles something that is real, and that has real value.
I am aware that it is possible for a society to be so corrupted, so given up to the admiration of imitations, of the paint and powder and silk-stocking-clad-ankle kind of love, that true and genuine love interest, with its impulse to self-sacrifice and self-consecration, is no............