Divorce as a Pastime
Marbury, Elisabeth
February 9, x927 THE COMMONWEAL 377 stars which is almost worthy of special study as a side- light on the growth of dramatic art in this country. There is no need to rob the zoo monkey of...
...Why should not people live together because of sex urge, without any further sense of moral responsibility than to enjoy each other so long as the appeal endures ? Investigate the facts which induce the average divorce of today...
...No scarlet letter except as a trimming to a sport blouse was worn upon the breast of those who boasted of a past--so that today, in general society, it is safe to assume that one-third at least of those present have either been divorced or are going to be divorced...
...If they ignore these obligations, they have deliberately entered into a contract under false pretenses...
...Divorce was no longer a brand of disrespect as even the best families were vandalized by it...
...Then came the period when actors and actresses became the target of criticism...
...Its suggestions are in most cases sound, as, for example, its insistence on the need for professional guidance in club dramatics and professional standards in all little theatres...
...I believe it will play a still greater part in the evolution of a national theatre of the future...
...Divorce has become so common that today it does not even elicit surprise--nor does it seem advisable to discuss this from any religious standpoint...
...This may not be admitted by many, yet a study of biology emphasizes the truth of the purpose...
...The natural objective of marriage, despite the modernists, is child-bearing...
...They are not perishing, they are prospering...
...378 I'ttE COMMONWEAL February 9, 1927 So I prefer, in order to advance my contention, to regard marriage as a contract into which people have entered in good faith...
...George Kelly's The Show-Off, Craig's Wife, and Daisy Mayme make them look mechanical and tawdry...
...The men and women who marry have assumed certain responsibilities toward society...
...Certainly, she cannot be so self-deceived as to imagine that by working up a spurious ease which may legally liberate her, and by announcing a new marriage, that she is deceiving anyone but herself as to the validity of this relation...
...This is what raises it to dignity...
...but if ever sermon was preached on a stage, and preached on a great topic suggested by certain aspects of American life, it was preached from the text of Craig's Wife...
...Their credit is thereby impaired...
...Little by little, however, people became accustomed to the new order, and society slowly but surely grew used to the idea...
...There was a time when America looked to England for really finely balanced casts...
...The national drama of America will not be a sermon...
...This contract, like any other business undertaking, is not contingent upon the adverse conditions which may arise...
...They have come together agreeing to certain stipulations which are assumed to be obligatory in their execution...
...it convinced inevitably...
...In the majority of cases, how frequently there is an intentional perversion of truth...
...Remarriages are entered into over the state border-line...
...That devastating development of the growth of materialism to a point where every spiritual possession had been lost, was a drama--not a mere theatrical effect...
...because deception is easier than truth that people rush into the divorce courts upon the merest provocation, and replace the wedding rings with the same facility as any other ornament that they wear...
...There is no need to rob the zoo monkey of his peanuts in order to rescue the perishing among our promising young actors...
...What am I supposed to know about it ? What value can my opinion have concerning it...
...MARY' I~ATHARINE REELY...
...Evangelical disapproval was no more a restraint...
...It is easy, indeed, to indulge in sophistries which offer plausible excuses for any line of conduct, but I have yet to find anyone who is more fertile of selfexoneration than the man or woman who wishes to rid himself or herself from a present marital encumbrance for the purpose of making another matrimonial experiment...
...These--he planted in his youth, Watched and tended in his prime...
...It is mainly because they work up a case of grievances...
...After a while, this microbe of divorce is as recognizable as is any other disease-germ...
...And if this be true of American actingAand I do not think it can be successfully refuted what shall be said of American playwriting...
...February 9, x927 THE COMMONWEAL 377 stars which is almost worthy of special study as a sidelight on the growth of dramatic art in this country...
...It marched inevitably...
...I remember vividly the time when a woman who was divorced was regarded socially as "not quite nice," and I can recall the disintegrating progress made when later in a New York fashionable drawing-room, thirteen divorc6es were counted to the consternation of those present who gloried in their respectability...
...To compare these with three plays by only one American playwright of today, is to visualize the advance that has been made...
...Here surely there has been a development which shows in a manner to put a period to pessimism...
...Revolution is neither to be expected nor to be desired...
...If those in business regarded obligations as lightly as do the present-day seekers of divorce, they would soon lose their standing as people of integrity, and would be considered so unreliable that no one would dream of doing business with them...
...because they are unwilling to play the game...
...They have undertaken, in theory at least, to found and to maintain a home, and to make their contribution to the human race by bringing children into the world...
...because they are selfish and self-indulgent...
...What are they...
...Once more I return to acknowledgment of the part which the Drama League has played in bringing about these conditions...
...The presentation of even secondary parts is now so often informed by insight and interpreted with intelligence that performances by individuals, which no more than fifteen or even ten years ago would have presaged stardom, are now accepted entirely as a matter of course...
...Fictitious proofs of adultery, the naming of imaginary co-respondents, are mere subterfuges, framed to falsify testimony and to mislead justice...
...so that we heard the phrase "a stage divorce" as though it were of a trivial and recurrent nature...
...If men and women who wish to become divorced, would be honest and strip the procedure of all flimsy excuses and of all faking influences, they would often stand so denuded of any legitimate ground even in their own eyes that they might try and stick to their bargains...
...they are not begging, they are giving...
...How the young green tender shoots Hold their hands up to the skies...
...The law does not accept the excuse that since he signed the contract, his income has decreased...
...In looking back over the many years through which divorce has gradually assumed an increasing proportion and a decreasing seriousness, I naturally must review the situation with considerable interest, to say the least...
...In asking for an explanation, I am often told that to be married makes things easier when a couple has to register in a hotel l Personally, I believe that the French method of upholding the outward semblance of family respectability, although the parents may lead their private lives apart, is far better than to proclaim infidelities from the housetops, and to toss children about from one parent to the other, or to leave them to the care of someone who happens to furnish a convenient solution for their guardianship...
...The contract is broken with the same lack of integrity as existed when it was made...
...If a man and woman who marry are honestly barren of offspring, then society should pity them because, with every good disposition, their union has been robbed of its legitimate purpose...
...There never was any honest intention to keep it, nor was there any fear of consequences when it was broken...
...A man who buys something, and who gives his notes to bind the purchase, must see that these notes are duly met even though he finds grave financial difficulties in living up to his bargain...
...The only answer is to be found in the fact that remoteness from an object frequently accentuates the sharpness of its angles, and that the impersonal treatment of a mooted subject is at times more reliable than one in which personal feelings and experiences must necessarily play a major part...
...It it not wise to inquire as to the health of any woman's husband, lest she retort: "Which one...
...To take three popular successes, they were The Heart of Maryland, Barbara Freitchie, and The Climbers...
...relations which are frankly illicit become legal...
...this is what separates it from mere sexual gratification...
...8pitapA See a man's life entwined with trees...
...The great outstanding stars no longer dominate the stage in the United States, but the average of acting in this country is much higher today than when they reigned...
...because they want to take and not to give...
...There is an arresting quality communicated to the commonplace in the scene in which Cliff Mettinger proposes to Daisy Mayme--and that quality is truth, reality...
...If birth control is to be advocated, why then should not marriage be abrogated...
...It frequently becomes chronic...
...because they lack patience and discipline...
...DIVORCE AS A PASTIME By ELISABETH MARBURY HE question will pertinently be raised, as my name is attached to this article, why the utterances of an elderly spinster should have any weight in the consideration of the subject of divorce...
...and thus a foundation of lies merely erects another building of cardboard...
...Here he lies...
...These recurrent dissolutions become more skilled in the handling as they become more automatic in practice...
...A few brief passing days of time, He came to rest beneath their roots...
...Perjury is in order, and misstatements hold sway...
...The mystery to me is why a woman who has no scruples whatever in being the mistress of a man, seems insistent upon the marriage ceremony...
...In view of the latitude of modern standards, this would only provoke a frank admission on the part of many that the parties involved believe in nothing...
...They are not people of integrity with whom to do business...
...Again in the later play, Daisy Mayme, there is the same lack of striving for the unusual, the same simplicity and sureness of line of the artist disclosing the full possibilities of the usual...
...She had acquired the habit, and was lost without a wedding ring...
...But it is a real process of evolution which is taking place...
...A young woman who had been divorced several times, casually remarked to me after a few months of conjugal solitude, that she had never before been so long without a husband...
...There is a man who has something to say, and he is not asking M. Scribe or Herr Freytag by what tricks he shall get his message across...
...What were the American plays of the last generation, or the plays in which American authors disclosed American life to the rest of the world...
...She has no need to do so today, and in the dressing-rooms of many London theatres the fact is only too well known...
...because they are wilful and egotistical...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 14
