Socialism; Women -- Social and moral questions; Women and socialism
to continue living together in spite of their inward estrangement
and mutual aversion. A condition of this sort, maintained by law, is
profoundly immoral. The result is that in a large number of cases
adultery is made a cause for divorce, since this cause cannot be
ignored by the law; neither the state nor society are improved
by this process. It must also be regarded as a concession to the
Catholic Church, that in many cases separation takes the place of
divorce which was formerly not the case according to civil law. It
is no longer considered a cause for divorce, when through the fault
of the one party, a marriage remains childless. The new German code
of civil law contains the following paragraph: “The religious duties
in regard to marriage are not touched upon in the rules laid down
in this paragraph.” This likewise is a concession to the church. It
is merely ornamental in character, but it is characteristic of the
spirit still prevailing in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth
century. For our purposes the admission is important, that divorce
was made more difficult to counteract the advancing disruption of
the family.
Human beings then remain chained to one another for lifetime against
their will. One party becomes a slave to the other and is forced in
fulfillment of “matrimonial duties,” to endure intimate embraces
that perhaps seem more loathsome than harsh words and ill treatment.
Rightly Mantegazza says: “There is no greater torture than to suffer
the caresses of an unloved person....”[50] Is such marriage not
worse than prostitution? Even the prostitute has a certain degree
of liberty of withdrawing from her abominable trade, and if she is
not the inmate of a public brothel, she may refuse herself to a man
she does not wish for some reason or other. But a woman sold in
marriage must endure the embraces of her husband, even though she
have a hundred reasons to hate and despise him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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