The Second Sex (77 page)

Marriage today still retains this traditional form. And, first of all, it is imposed far more imperiously on the young girl than on the young man. There are still many social strata where she is offered no other perspective; for peasants, an unmarried woman is a pariah; she remains the servant of her father, her brothers, and her brother-in-law; moving to the city is virtually impossible for her; marriage chains her to a man and makes her mistress of a home. In some bourgeois classes, a girl is still left incapable of earning a living; she can only vegetate as a parasite in her father’s home or accept some lowly position in a stranger’s home. Even when she is more emancipated, the economic advantage held by males forces her to prefer
marriage over a career: she will look for a husband whose situation is superior to her own, a husband she hopes will “get ahead” faster and further than she could. It is still accepted that the love act is a
service
she renders to the man; he
takes
his pleasure, and he owes compensation in return. The woman’s body is an object to be purchased; for her it represents capital she has the right to exploit. Sometimes she brings a dowry to her husband; she often agrees to provide some domestic work: she will keep the house, raise the children. In any case, she has the right to let herself be supported, and traditional morality even exhorts it. It is understandable that she is tempted by this easy solution, especially as women’s professions are so unrewarding and badly paid; marriage is a more beneficial career than many others. Mores still make sexual enfranchisement for a single woman difficult; in France a wife’s adultery was a crime until recent times, while no law forbade a woman free love; however, if she wanted to take a lover, she had to be married first. Many strictly controlled young bourgeois girls still marry “to be free.” A good number of American women have won their sexual freedom; but their experiences are like those of the young primitive people described by Malinowski in “The Bachelors’ House”—girls who engage in pleasures without consequences;
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they are expected to marry, and only then will they be fully considered adults. A woman alone, in America even more than in France, is a socially incomplete being, even if she earns her living; she needs a ring on her finger to achieve the total dignity of a person and her full rights. Motherhood in particular is respected only in the married woman; the unwed mother remains an object of scandal, and a child is a severe handicap for her. For all these reasons, many Old and New World adolescent girls, when interviewed about their future projects, respond today just as they did in former times: “I want to get married.” No young man, however, considers marriage as his fundamental project. Economic success is what will bring him to respectable adulthood: it may involve marriage—particularly for the peasant—but it may also exclude it. Modern life’s conditions—less stable, more uncertain than in the past—make marriage’s responsibilities particularly heavy for the young man; the benefits, on the other hand, have decreased since he can easily live on his own and sexual satisfaction is generally available. Without doubt, marriage brings material conveniences (“Eating home is better than eating out”) and erotic ones (“This way we have a brothel at home”), and it frees the person from loneliness, it establishes him in space and time by providing him with
a home and children; it is a definitive accomplishment of his existence. In spite of this, overall there is still less masculine demand than feminine supply. The father does not so much give his daughter as get rid of her; the young girl seeking a husband does not respond to a masculine call: she provokes it.

Arranged marriages have not disappeared; there is still a right-minded bourgeoisie perpetuating them. In France, near Napoleon’s tomb, at the Opera, at balls, on the beach, or at a tea, the young hopeful with every hair in place, in a new dress, shyly exhibits her physical grace and modest conversation; her parents nag her: “You’ve already cost me enough in meeting people; make up your mind. The next time it’s your sister’s turn.” The unhappy candidate knows her chances diminish the older she gets; there are not many suitors: she has no more freedom of choice than the young bedouin girl exchanged for a flock of sheep. As Colette says, “A young girl without a fortune or a trade, who is dependent on her brothers for everything, has only one choice: shut up, be grateful for her good luck, and thank God!”
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In a less crude way, high society permits young people to meet under mothers’ watchful eyes. Somewhat more liberated, young girls go out more, attend university, take jobs that give them the chance to meet men. Between 1945 and 1947, Claire Leplae conducted a survey on the Belgian bourgeoisie, about the problem of matrimonial choice.
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The author conducted interviews; I will cite some questions she asked and the responses given:

The people interviewed point out that arranged marriages, frequent before 1945, have almost disappeared. Nonetheless, “specific interests, poor relations, self-interest, not much family, shyness, age, and the desire to make a good match are motives for some arranged marriages.” These marriages are often conducted by priests; sometimes the young girl marries by correspondence. “They describe themselves in writing, and it is put on a special
sheet with a number. This sheet is sent to all persons described. It includes, for example, two hundred female and an equal number of male candidates. They also write their own profiles. They can all freely choose a correspondent to whom they write through the agency.”

Everyone agrees that “marriages between childhood friends are very rare. Love is found in unexpected places.”

“Girls besiege boys. Girls marry the first boy to come along simply to get married. They all hope to marry and work at doing so. A girl is humiliated if she is not sought after: to escape this, she will often marry her first prospect. Girls marry to get married. Girls marry to be married. Girls settle down because marriage assures them more freedom.” Almost all the interviews concur on this point.

Here again the response is nearly unanimous: it is the girls who usually take the initiative in pursuing marriage. “Girls realize they are not equipped to get along on their own; not knowing how they can work to make a living, they seek a lifeline in marriage. Girls make declarations, throw themselves at boys. They are frightening! Girls use all their resources to get married … it’s the woman who pursues the man,” and so forth.

No such document exists in France; but as the situation of the bourgeoisie is similar in France and Belgium, the conclusions would probably be comparable; “arranged” marriages have always been more numerous in France than in any other country, and the famous Green Ribbon Club,
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whose members have parties for the purpose of bringing people of both sexes together, is still flourishing; matrimonial announcements take up columns in many newspapers.

In France, as in America, mothers, older sisters, and women’s magazines cynically teach girls the art of “catching” a husband like flypaper catching flies; this is “fishing” and “hunting,” demanding great skill: do not aim too high or too low; be realistic, not romantic; mix coquetry with modesty; do not ask for too much or too little. Young men mistrust women who “want to get married.” A young Belgian man declares, “There is nothing more unpleasant for a man than to feel himself pursued, to realize that a woman wants to get her hooks into him.”
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They try to avoid their traps. A girl’s choice is often very limited: it would be truly free only if she felt free enough not to marry. Her decision is usually accompanied by calculation, distaste, and resignation rather than enthusiasm. “If the young man who proposes to her is more or less suitable (background, health, career), she accepts him without loving him. She will accept him without passion even if there are ‘buts.’ ”

At the same time as she desires it, however, a girl is often apprehensive of marriage. It represents a more considerable benefit for her than for the man, which is why she desires it more fervently; but it demands weighty sacrifices as well; in particular, it implies a more brutal rupture with the past. We have seen that many adolescent girls are anguished by the idea of leaving the paternal home: when the event draws near, this anxiety is heightened. This is the moment when many neuroses develop; the same thing is true for young men who are frightened by the new responsibilities they are assuming, but such neuroses are much more widespread in girls
for the reasons we have already seen, and they become even more serious in this crisis. I will cite only one example, taken from Stekel. He treated a young girl from a good family who manifested several neurotic symptoms.

When Stekel meets her, she is suffering from vomiting, takes morphine every night, has fits of temper, refuses to wash, eats in bed, refuses to leave her room. She is engaged to be married and affirms that she loves her fiancé. She admits to Stekel that she gave herself to him. Later she says that she derived no pleasure from it: the memory of his kisses was even repugnant to her, and they are the cause of her vomiting. It is discovered that, in fact, she succumbed to him to punish her mother, who she felt never loved her enough; as a child, she spied on her parents at night because she was afraid they might give her a brother or sister; she adored her mother. “And now she had to get married, leave [her parents’] home, abandon her parents’ bedroom? It was impossible.” She lets herself grow fat, scratches and hurts her hands, deteriorates, falls ill, tries to offend her fiancé in all ways. The doctor heals her, but she pleads with her mother to give up this idea of marriage: “She wanted to stay home, to remain a child forever.” Her mother insists that she marry. A week before the wedding day, she is found in her bed, dead; she shot herself with a revolver.

In other cases, the girl willfully falls into a protracted illness; she becomes desperate because her state keeps her from marrying the man “she adores”; in fact, she makes herself ill to avoid marrying him and finds her balance only by breaking her engagement. Sometimes the fear of marriage originates in former erotic experiences that have left their mark on her; in particular, she might dread that her loss of virginity will be discovered. But frequently the idea of submitting to a male stranger is unbearable because of her ardent feelings for her father and mother or a sister, or her attachment to her family home in general. And many of those who decide to marry because it is what they should do, because of the pressure on them, because they know it is the only reasonable solution, because they want a normal existence of wife and mother, nonetheless keep a secret and obstinate resistance in their deepest hearts, making the early days of their married lives difficult and even keeping themselves from ever finding a happy balance.

Marriages, then, are generally not based on love. “The husband is, so to speak, never more than a substitute for the loved man, and not that man himself,” said Freud. This dissociation is not accidental. It is implicit in the very nature of the institution. The economic and sexual union of man and woman is a matter of transcending toward the collective interest and not of individual happiness. In patriarchal regimes, a fiancé chosen by parents had
often never seen his future wife’s face before the wedding day—and this still happens today with some Muslims. There would be no question of founding a lifelong enterprise, considered in its social aspect, on sentimental or erotic caprice. Montaigne says: