What's Wrong with Marriage?
Crabitès, Pierre
June ii, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL WHAT'S WRONG WITH MARRIAGE ? By PIERRE CRABITES WE HAVE our wires crossed when we say that we are confronted with a divorce peril. Divorce may be a...
...It is a case of applied suggestion...
...It is, itself, but a consequence, a sequel, a corollary...
...It is a matter of having the principals to the contract get the proper reaction to its import...
...They said to me: "These contracts are absolutely incontestable after the expiration of twelve months from the date of their issuance...
...The stability of our family life is in danger...
...He looked upon such sans gene as being something inherently dangerous and as striking at that "solemnity" essential to a proper appreciation of the dignity of married life...
...I am not here writing a theological thesis or reckoning with the supernatural...
...The first step in this direction should be to drum into the heads of men and women— and boys and girls—that marriage is a sticking plaster which sticks...
...It is all a question of psychology...
...I am approaching the problem solely from the point of view of a reasonable citizen...
...He felt that a stop, look and listen policy was just as essential to the happiness of the future husband and wife as it is to the safety of pedestrians...
...This problem is the smallpox which preys upon our body politic...
...Such a provision would, perhaps, in certain cases, work hardships...
...The clause in question, therefore, safeguarded the insurer against my having had suicidal intent when I took out my insurance...
...My proposals will not do away with divorce...
...And here I quote his exact words: If all that is necessary is that the state take cognizance of the marriage, the services of a notary public should The increasing quantity of divorce wreckage has caused so much excitement that other aspects of marital relationship have been ignored...
...If they consider that there is something probationary, experimental or empirical about their pact, then they are not a bit better off than were the Gretna Green couple—except that the former may have received worlds of costly presents...
...They have heard so much about "so-andso having got his or hers," that their subconscious mind is impressed with the idea that marriage is not, in its essence, a permanent relationship...
...Until that period shall have elapsed they are subject to the suicide clause...
...Approaching the matter as a sensible legalist, he shows that the practical measure which clamors for establishment is the precise opposite of the idea sponsored by Judge Lindsey.—The Editors...
...The marital knot is taken to be a slip-knot, not a Gordian knot...
...Indeed, some prominent sociologists have drawn the easy conclusion that since the family is unstable, the family no longer exists...
...It must be stabilized, otherwise it loses its value...
...It is not even, strictly speaking, the proximate source of the trouble...
...The whole thing is looked upon as a lark, not as a solemn contract...
...It was willing to take such a risk because its business is that of scientific risk-taking...
...I suggest as a means of dissipating it that it be illegal for a plaintiff to apply for divorce until three years shall have elapsed since the date of his or her marriage...
...The American sociologist knows that there is a marriage question...
...It should not be something precarious, transitory and probationary...
...But the efforts of those who go up against this absolute barrier will be such a lesson to others that the misfortune of the few will be apt to benefit the many...
...The root of the mischief lies in the flippancy with which American public opinion views marriage...
...My point is that a three-year term of indissolubility will tend to arrest inconsiderate marriages...
...This it will not cease to be as long as it is almost as easy for an American to get rid of his wife as it is for a Frenchman to end a collage...
...This would tend to reduce the temptation of men and women to seek for faults in their spouses...
...But it is the multimarried man and woman who so insolently assails the dignity of matrimony...
...The period of incubation of their germ of discontent may have exceeded three years but the bacillus itself was there from the outset...
...In other words, the great soldier, who was also a great legislator, was (though essentially incapable of religious insight) radically opposed to the happy-go-lucky impetuosity of precipitate marriages...
...I mean by this that if the twain think that their union is, in its essence, a durable one, they will most likely make it so...
...We say that we are a monogamous nation...
...But this contract will create a new family...
...And the Corsican believed in using outward signs— formality and ritual if you prefer—to drive home to the minds of the couple that they were performing an act of momentous importance...
...Yet this is what he said when his Conseil d'Etat was working on the Code Napoleon: We have fixed twenty-one years as the age of majority...
...It is too late, however, in a cosmopolitan country like ours where so many races and religions abound, for a practical legislator to attempt to make the American marriage indissoluble...
...The ravages of the disease will continue until we make up our minds to look the facts in the face...
...We have merely substituted continuous polygamy for contemporaneous polygamy...
...Divorce may be a pockmark but it is not smallpox...
...It appears to me as illogical as it is unjust to allow them, or their parents for them, to barter away this contentment when the man or woman could not of their own volition legally carry through a trade affecting a horse...
...The country may return to fundamental Christianity, but the law cannot anticipate the date...
...This implied that it was made of the essence of my insurance that I had to wait 366 days before I could commit suicide and at the same time enrich my beneficiary...
...suffice...
...Such "typhoid Marys," even if innocent, should be put into quarantine...
...There is, in their essence, nothing very radical about what I outline...
...And he was right...
...It vitally affects the happiness of the contracting parties...
...I am told, nevertheless, that statistics show that in the majority of cases actions are brought after the expiration of this three-year period...
...only sincere Christian living will do that...
...Divorce is not the primary cause of the disintegration of our homes...
...Here again I would apply an invariable rule...
...He held out, however, for what he called solemnity...
...In the following paper Judge Crabites considers the matter from a point of view which is deliberately set apart from the high realms of religious faith...
...I cannot, therefore, do better than to quote what Napoleon Bonaparte had to say upon the subject...
...Neither a man nor a woman may validly bind himself or herself for an ordinary debt until he or she attains that age...
...But if runaway marriages and analogous weddings are apt to be the headstrong impulse of hot-blooded youth, the most elaborate of precautions and the most formal of ceremonies mean nothing unless the contracting parties recognize that they are taking on a serious responsibility...
...I do not offer these suggestions as a panacea...
...In decrying this state of mind I am not insisting to those who are not children of the Church, that marriage should be envisioned as a sacrament...
...I have not checked up these figures...
...Marriage is the most solemn and most binding of contracts...
...It will not prevent them...
...It should, therefore, be entered into with solemnity...
...It is their frame of mind which counts...
...In other words, marriage is, from the purely social point of view, like money...
...They are beside the issue...
...The husbands and wives who brought these suits probably married with a wrong idea of the stability of the contract entered into by them...
...To justify my three-year rule I invoke the principle applied by life insurance companies when they wrote my policies...
...Divorces are often born of affinities...
...We are not...
...He did not insist that a church ceremony should be a prerequisite for those who practised no creed...
...This point of view should be fought...
...I would have it ordained that no divorced man or woman should be permitted to contract another valid marriage until two years had elapsed since the decree of divorce had become final...
...And I shall not do so...
...The company would have lost money on me if I had put an end to my life at so early a moment as this year and a day delay...
...He, assuredly, was not an orthodox church-goer...
...Yet marriage should at least be made stable...
...We have done this because we have demonetized marriage...
...I would further decree that no man or woman could be authorized to enter into another legal union as long as he or she had three or more living divorced consorts...
...But its records had taught it that men who contemplate suicide do not wait 366 days before carrying their plan into execution...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 6
