Page:The Future of Single Women.pdf/9

 is carried on are open to reform. Some of them could be immediately improved, others need greater knowledge of the laws of health in civilization than we already possess. If marriage is a natural condition, it ought to be a pleasurable and painless one; if it is not pleasurable and painless, we may conclude that our ignorance and negligence are leading us into grave error. Perhaps the necessary preliminary to such improved conditions is a woman's freedom of choice, the power of a woman to refuse marriage with advantage to herself. So long as marriage was the one alternative, so long as all women were pressed into it by necessity, moral or social or pecuniary, there seemed little reason why the lords of creation should trouble themselves to make marriage comfortable and easy for any one but themselves. The pains and penalties which Nature, or rather our own ignorance of Nature, impose upon a woman in marriage, have been mercilessly and wantonly aggravated by selfish laws, and by the careful cultivation of a public opinion which made it disreputable or ridiculous for a married woman to be anything but a slave to her husband.

The moment a woman marries she is more or less the subject of every existing authority. Conventional society dictates to her how, where, and in what manner it is proper for her to live. In the eyes of the law her personal liberty and her status are nil, her husband may lock her up and refuse her friends access to her, the guardianship of her children is not hers; again, marriage involves her in personal discomfort, suffering, and danger to life. She is not able, however much she may deplore it, to continue those habits of physical exercise and healthy recreation which maintain the elasticity and vigour of her unmarried sister; she cannot command for herself those conditions of life which conduce to health.

It is often argued that statistics show a higher death-rate for the unmarried than the married, and it is concluded that married life is most conducive to health; but such statistics may be interpreted as proving nothing more than that beauty and health being attractive, well-favoured persons marry sooner than illfavoured, delicate ones. This difference between the married and the single is in no sense caused by, but on the contrary, precedes marriage; therefore the conclusion, in so far as it is based on these statistics, that the health of married women is greater than that of single women, is not necessarily correct.

We ought to apply to both sexes the words which Mr. Stevenson seems almost inclined to apply only to men. He says, "Marriage if comfortable is not at all heroic. It certainly