This bears
chiefly on women. Everything which violates the taboo in the mores is
vice, and is disastrous to all who participate in it. The more real pair
marriage is, the more disastrous is every illicit relation. The harm is
infinitely greater for women than for men. Within the taboo, unmarried
women lead aimless existences, or they are absorbed in an effort to earn
a living which is harassed by especial obstacles and difficulties. This
is the price which has to be paid for all the gain which women get from
pair marriage as compared with any other form of sex relation. It
assumes that every man and woman can find a mate, which is not true.
Very little serious attention is paid to this offset to the advantages
of pair marriage. The mores teach unmarried women that it is "right"
that things should be so, and that any other arrangement would contain
abominations which are not to be thought of. Probably the unmarried
women rarely think of themselves as victims of the arrangement by which
their married sisters profit. They accept a life career which is
destitute of self-realization, except for those few who are so gifted
that they can make independent careers in the struggle for existence.
Nearly all our discussions of our own social order run upon questions of
property. It is under the sex relation that all the great problems
really present themselves.

+384. Marriage in modern mores.+ It is very remarkable that marriage
amongst us has become the most distinct example there is, and the most
widespread, of ritual (what is said in the marriage ceremony, in its
rational sense, is of little importance, and people rarely notice it.
What force attaches to "obey"?), of religious intervention in private
affairs, and of the importance attached to a ceremony. If two people
cohabit, the question of right and wrong depends on whether they have
passed through a certain ceremony together or not. That determines
whether they are "married" or not. The reason is, because if they have
passed through the ceremony together, no matter what was said or done,
they have expressed their will to come into the status of wedlock, as
the mores make it and as the state enforces it, at the time and place.
The woman wants to "feel that she is married." Very many women would not
feel so in a civil marriage; others want a "fully choral" ceremony;
others want the communion with the wedding ceremony. Perhaps the
daughter of a great nobleman might not feel m