g.

The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular
superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeper
into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so
disastrous.

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long
environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each
other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an
insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not
the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each
other, without which every union is doomed to failure.

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to
realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupid
critic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities or
feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that
for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children.
Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long
proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything
of the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman--what is
there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet
outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere
appendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of the
gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is
responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul--what is
there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater
her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her
husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that has
kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now
that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing
aware of herself as a being outside of the master's grace, the sacred
institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of
sentimental lamentation can stay it.

From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her
ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed
towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is
prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less
about her function as wife and mother