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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34085-8.txt b/34085-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f111226 --- /dev/null +++ b/34085-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,868 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Shelley and the Marriage Question, by John +Todhunter + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Shelley and the Marriage Question + + +Author: John Todhunter + + + +Release Date: October 16, 2010 [eBook #34085] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE +QUESTION*** + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/shelleyandthema00todhuoft + + + + + +SHELLEY AND MARRIAGE. + +Of this Book Twenty-Five Copies only have been printed. + + +SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION. + +by + +JOHN TODHUNTER, M.D., + +Author of _Notes on "The Triumph of Life," A Study of Shelley, etc._ + + + + + + + +London: +Printed for Private Circulation Only. +1889. + + + + +SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION. + + +Now that marriage, like most other time-honoured institutions, has come +to stand, a thing accused, at the bar of public opinion, it may be +interesting to see what Shelley has to say about it. The marriage +problem is a complex one, involving many questions not very easy to +answer offhand or even after much consideration. What is marriage? Of +divine or human institution? For what ends was it instituted? How far +does it attain these ends? And a dozen others involved in these. + +The very idea of marriage implies some kind of bond imposed by society +upon the sexual relations of its members, male and female; some kind of +restriction upon the absolute promiscuity and absolute instability of +these relations--such restriction taking the form of a contract between +individuals, endorsed by society, and enforced with more or less +stringency by public opinion. Its object at first was probably simply to +ensure to each male member of the tribe the quiet enjoyment of his wife +or wives, and the free exploitation of the children she or they +produced. The patriarchal tyranny was established, and through the +sanction of primitive religion and law became a divine institution. +Then, as civilization progressed, the wife and children became less and +less the mere slaves, more and more the respected subjects, of the +patriarch. The paternal instinct (like the maternal) became developed, +and family affection came into existence. At present the whirligig of +time is bringing its revenges. The patriarchal tyranny begins to +totter; parents are often more the slaves than the masters of their +children. And even wives begin to rebel against wifedom, and threaten to +revolutionize marriage in their own interest. Woman, like everybody +else, is beginning to strike for higher wages. There are more than the +first mutterings of that revolution in the Golden City of Divine +institutions prophesied of by Shelley in _Laon and Cythna_. There are a +good many Cythnas ready to rush about on their black Tartarian hobbies, +of whom Mrs. Mona Caird is the one who has recently made most noise. + +There is a little design of Blake's in _The Gates of Paradise_, which +represents a man standing on the earth who leans a ladder against the +moon and prepares to mount; the motto underneath being: "I want! I +want!" This is a type of our own age. Never was such an age of +discontent, never such a Babel of voices crying: "I want! I want!" We +have become very conscious of our pain, and are not ashamed to cry out +and proclaim it on the house-tops in these hysterical times--simply +because the ancient sanctions and anodynes have lost their sanctity and +comfort for us. The very "priests in black gowns" who used to "walk +their rounds and bind with briers our joys and desires," have been +themselves corrupted with a longing for a little present happiness, and +that Old Woman in the shoe, Mrs. Grundy herself, instead of whipping us +all round and putting us to bed in the old summary fashion, when we +venture to complain that the shoe pinches here and there, has herself +become lachrymose. We cry out because, having neither the old +repressions nor the old opiates to restrain us, there is no valid reason +why we should hold our tongues. By crying loud enough and long enough we +may get some help. We may even find some good-natured person to stop +crying himself and help us; and then for very shame we may go and do +likewise. In this lies the age's hope. It is really in its best aspect +an unselfish age, an age in which sympathy and justice are vital forces, +in which the miseries of others are felt as our own. There are thousands +now who feel themselves "as nerves o'er which do creep the else unfelt +oppressions of the earth." We are not wise enough yet to conceive and +organize those vital adjustments between conflicting wants, interests, +and principles, which shall be of deeper efficiency than mere +superficial compromises; but this wisdom will come in due time, if we do +not rush into anarchy through that licentious impatience which is the +curse of revolutionary periods. + +Now, of all the bitter cries ringing in the air at the present time, +about the bitterest and most persistent is that not merely of women, but +of woman with a capital W. It is the most appalling note of change that +can pierce the ear of self-satisfied Conservatism. The patient Griselda +has begun to protest against the tyranny of her lord and master. Love's +martyr has at last begun to think that her martyrdom must have its +limits. It is as if the Lamb, whose function we thought was to be dumb +before its shearers and even sacrificers, had found a voice of +protestation. It is a portent. And even men are constrained to listen to +the cry; for it sounds like the birth-cry of regenerated Love. Not now +"Love self-slain in some sweet shameful way," but Love the winged angel +who shall finally cast out Lust, the adversary. But many things must +come to pass before this triumph of love can be brought about; and in +many respects the horoscope looks unpropitious enough. The first effect +of the birth, or coming to the surface of a higher ideal, gradually +evolved by the progress of society, is apparently to make confusion +worse confounded. Not peace but a sword is the first gift of the Prince +of Peace. Liberty comes masked like Tyranny, and cries "Fraternity or +death!" Love goes wantonly about with the Mænads of licentiousness at +his heels. But the divine Logos, incarnate as the Son of man, always +comes not to destroy but to fulfil. + +Just now that highly moral being, Man in the masculine gender, is much +shocked at the strangely immoral conduct of his feminine counterpart. In +the first place, she has dared to look at the realities of things with +her own eyes, not through the rose-coloured spectacles with which he has +been at pains to provide her; and not only that, but to peep behind the +sacred veil which man has modestly cast over many ugly things. Secondly, +she has begun to talk openly about these ugly things, and to call them +by non-euphemistic, ugly names, in a manner quite unprecedented. +Thirdly, she has dared to attempt her own solution of things insoluble, +her own achievement of things impossible. And fourthly, she has dared to +formulate a demand for liberty, equality, fraternity on her own +account--a demand which every day comes more and more within the sphere +of practical politics. Here are pure women making common cause with +prostitutes, married women crying out against the holy institution of +matrimony, mothers rebelling against the tyranny of the beatific +baby--nay, absolutely on strike against child-bearing, or at least +demanding limited liability as regards that important function. Finally, +here is Woman, whether as virgin, wife, or widow, demanding independence +as to property and a fair share of the world's goods in return for a +fair share of the general work of the world outside of her special +womanly functions. "D----n it, sir, I say that women are unsexing +themselves--unsexing themselves, by Jove!" as Major Pendennis might +exclaim. And the worst of it is that there are so many men, traitors to +their sex, who are casting in their lot with women in this terrible +Women's Rights movement--"unsexing themselves," too, no doubt--so that +we shall all soon become either a-sexual or hermaphrodite beings! And +here let us leave for a moment the more or less limited and prosaic +Cythnas of the day, the terrible women who ride about upon Tartarian +hobby-horses in novels and magazine articles, who spout on platforms and +practise medicine and other dreadful trades--the scientific Mrs. +Somervilles, and medical Mrs. Garrett Andersons, and pious Mrs. +Josephine Butlers, and impious Mrs. Mona Cairds, and get back to Shelley +himself, the poet of this shocking social aberration. + +Shelley, as Mr. Cordy Jeafferson has taken great pains to demonstrate, +was an exceedingly immoral young man. He outraged the conventional +morality of his day by his actions as well as in his writings in the +most shameless manner; but this shamelessness was due to his intense +conviction that he thus outraged _conventional_ in the interests of +_ideal_ morality. His life and writings are so full of the paradoxical +character which I have ascribed to the social agitation of the present +day, and some of his utterances are so prophetic of it, that we may +fairly regard him as its precursor. + +Shelley, as we know, started rather as an anarchist than as a mere +reformer. His ideas were cataclysmal rather than evolutional. But he was +an optimistic not a pessimistic anarchist, and he endeavoured to destroy +in order to rebuild with all possible expedition. The kingdom of heaven +was, for him, at the very doors, ready to take shape as soon as man +willed it; and man _would_ will it as soon as the mind-forged fetters of +his mind were loosed. Accordingly he endeavoured to loose them. He +dethroned God that the Spirit of Nature might be enthroned; and then he +proceeded to abolish marriage that free love might regenerate mankind. +He believed in regeneration by incantation--a few words murmured in +men's ears would make them as obedient to the ideas those sacred words +represented as spirits to the spells of a magician. Abolish marriage +(and what could be easier?), and love, being set free, prostitution +would cease. We may pass by such puerilities of inexperienced idealism, +to be found by the score in _Queen Mab_, and pass on to Shelley's more +mature utterances, always remembering that he died, as the _Triumph of +Life_ shows, in the very process of maturation. His whole history is +that of an idealist, who first seeks his ideal in the actual, and not +finding it endeavours to bring the actual into harmony with his ideal. +His imagination hacks at the rude block of the world with the divine +fury of a Pygmalion; thinking at first that he has but to remove the +dull superfluous husks of custom to find the living idea in the centre; +but gradually perceiving it was but created an inanimate image, which +can only come to life by the invocation of Venus Urania. All the +weaknesses, faults, and follies of his life and his writings, as well as +that "power in weakness veiled" which he felt himself to be, come from +this. He is driven to reform society by attacking the conventional +morality of marriage, because he is first a transcendental lover; just +as Mr. William Morris is driven into socialism, because he is first a +very practical decorative artist. To speak irreverently, both men want +elbow-room for their fads. But Shelley's fad is of even more importance +to us than Morris's. It is better to have a beautiful love, than to have +a beautiful house to put him in. Shelley is, above all things, the poet +of modern love. Dante's love, fantastic and supersensuous, was not +modern love. We do not want angels, either in heaven or in the house, to +condescend to our depravity and lead us upward. We do not want the +divine school-mistress to bring us to something not ourselves which may +or may not make for righteousness, but the divine mistress, passionate +as well as pure, to bring us to our best selves, and live with us in +perfect union. Shakespeare showed us glimpses of this love defeated by +circumstances in _Romeo and Juliet_, triumphant over circumstances in +Posthumus and Imogen; but Shelley has had a fuller vision of it. Since +Shakespeare's time both manhood and womanhood, and especially womanhood, +have by pressure of circumstances become more self-conscious, and the +conditions of their union through love more complex. + +And what is this modern ideal of love, of which Shelley is the exponent? +What is this strange affection, love, whether ancient or modern? It is +that most paradoxical of passions, that compound of selfishness and +self-renunciation, that forlorn desire which strives to reconcile all +things, and found an eternal home on the shifting sands of time, of +which we all know something. Blake has expressed this paradoxical +character of love once for all in his little poem "The Clod and the +Pebble." + + "Love seeketh not itself to please, + Nor for itself hath any care, + But for another gives its ease, + And builds a heaven in hell's despair. + + Love seeketh only self to please, + To bind another to its delight, + Joys in another's loss of ease, + And builds a hell in heaven's despite." + +We may call these the masculine and feminine elements in love; though of +course both exist in all love, whether of man to woman or woman to man. +Both sexes give more than they receive, and receive more than they +give. In all love, from the first step beyond mere physical appetite, to +the most transcendental Platonism, there are these two antagonistic +elements. If the merely self-indulgent element prevails, we tend in +the direction of lust, one of the most cruel diseases that plague +humanity, which Milton rightly places "hard by hate." If the merely +self-renouncing, we tend in the direction of monastic chastity, which +though not so distinctly an evil thing, may become cruel and inhuman, +and a bar to human progress. Asceticism is not, like lust, a disease, +physical and spiritual, but it may lead to disease, spiritual if not +physical. There is an asceticism, the Greek [Greek: aschêsis], a +training of the lower faculties to act in subordination to the higher, +which is the strait gate by which we enter upon the arduous ascent +toward noble passion and noble action. There is another asceticism which +if not truly Christian, came in the wake of Christianity, which, denying +the rights of the body, was less a training than a mortification. Both +unrestrained sensuality and monastic chastity, in their injustice to the +body outrage the sexual principle, the former by regarding it as a toy +to be polluted by base pleasure, the latter by regarding it as a thing +unclean in itself to be cast out and killed, or at best tolerated and +cleansed by the Church's holy water. To the present day the average +man's, or at least the average Englishman's great temptation is to sin +against love, through dull unimaginative lust, the average +Englishwoman's through dull unimaginative chastity. Men live too much in +the sensuous, and women in the supersensuous, to meet fairly. Love, the +reconciler, himself is too weak fully to reconcile them and to bring +them together in that perfect ecstasy, body to body, spirit to spirit, +soul to soul, that "unreserve of mingled being," which Shelley, giving a +voice to the desire of all ages, but especially to modern desire, sighed +for. To understand Shelley's protest against marriage, we must +understand his ideal of love--the unconstrained rush together of two +personalities of opposite sexes, in whom the body is but the vehicle of +the spirit. This love is not born merely of the flickering fire of the +senses. It is a divine flame, kindled alike in body, soul, and spirit, +and fusing them into unity. Of course, if this love is to be the great +end of life, marriage is somewhat of an impertinence. While the divine +fire burns, what need of artificial ties to keep the two lovers +together? If it goes out why should they be kept together? To which the +prosaic moralist replies: "Your ideal of love is very beautiful, no +doubt. Get as much as you can of this divine flame into your Hymen's +torch; and after all, every young couple start with some such high-flown +notions in their heads; but I must have some guarantee that your wife +and children are not left as burdens upon the parish, when you begin to +feel the pinch of real life, and the glamour of your imagination fades +from your 'divine mistress.' Marriage was not ordained to be the +paradise of ideal love, but for the sober discipline of the affections +of men and women, and above all for the production and rearing up of +good citizens of the commonwealth. To judge by your own writings, Mr. +Shelley, you seem to have been running after a will-o'-the-wisp all your +life in this ideal love. And if _you_ did not catch it, is it likely +that Tom, Dick, and Harry will? In any case the pursuit of it seems just +as likely to make inconstant lovers as that sensuality you affect to +look down upon. You always had the word 'for ever' on your tongue; but +how long did your for evers last? No, no, my dear sir, the good of +society demands fidelity to incurred responsibilities, and we find by +practical experience that both men and women, but especially men, are +inclined to shirk the responsibilities which indulgence of the sexual +passion brings in its train. Hence the marriage contract. It does not +concern itself primarily with either love or lovers, but it helps to +keep husbands and wives together, and women and children maintained +decently without coming upon the rates. And, mind you, it does not by +any means leave love out in the cold. It may not rise to your +transcendental ecstasy; but it is love all the same, good honest +domestic affection, when your young couples get well broken to harness. +Did you not say yourself that one might as well go to a gin-shop for a +leg of mutton as to you for anything human? Well, give me the wholesome +leg of mutton--none of your gin for me. Egad, sir, when I see some +honest couple going to church of a Sunday morning, with half-a-dozen +pretty children about them, I call that a poem--ay, and a better poem, +Mr. Shelley, than all the fantastic Epipsychidions you ever put upon +paper. Hang it all, sir, let a man make love to his own wife, and stick +to her when he has got her. I'm a plain man, sir, but I hope a moral +man, and them's my sentiments." To all which, let Shelley reply as best +he may. The fact is that he has given no satisfactory reply, simply +because it was only just before his death that he realised the +complexity of the problem of life. He did, however, see clearly that the +bringing of men and women into more complete harmony, by raising the +ideal of love, was the most important step towards that renewal of the +world, that living of the most perfect life attainable by man, for which +he sighed and after which he strove; and he saw clearly that our +solution of the marriage problem was imperfect, not merely in practice, +but to some extent in theory. As regards the subjection of women, he +seems to have considered this wholly an artificial product of religious +dogma, and not, as it is, the natural result of an imperfect +civilization. Man protects woman because, on the whole, she adds to his +comfort. Protection implies subjection, and subjection to a tyrant is +slavery; and man, if not altogether a tyrant in these later times, has +always the temptation to become one, and the tyrannical traditions of +bygone times have a strong tendency to persist. Laws and even customs +lag far behind the highest public opinion of the day. + +Now, men being in possession of the capital of the world, the material +means of life, women stand to them in the position of what the +socialists call wage-slaves. They must do what their employers require +of them on pain of starvation, and there is no true freedom of contract. +And so far men have almost without exception required of them +concubinage or menial service, or a mixture of both. English marriage, +while recognizing the existing fact of the subjection of women, has done +something to raise their status, chiefly by making the bond between the +contracting parties theoretically, and to a great extent practically, +one of love and mutual service. It has indeed been much more than +Shelley seems to have realized, the _nidus_ of a love pure and +wholesome, if not very passionate. Theoretically strictly monogamic, it +has been so practically to a very respectable extent. It has put a +perceptible curb upon the strong polygamous instinct of men, and it has +fostered the monogamous habit in women enormously. English women are for +the most part faithful wives. Even transitory prostitution does not kill +the monogamous propensity in them. They settle down into marriage, or +live faithfully with one man, if they get the chance. + +Still, Englishwomen are not satisfied with marriage as it exists. Let us +hear Mrs. Mona Caird on the subject. She is much more prosaic than +Shelley; she looks at the subject, chiefly from the standpoint of +practical comfort. She sees that from this standpoint, from various +reasons, which may be summed up in the phrase "incompatibility of +temper," marriage does not induce even that amount of mutual toleration, +not to say happiness, without which it is impossible for man and wife to +live decently together. She therefore asks, What good purpose is served +by keeping two people together who are evidently unfit to live together? +Why indeed? if, as Mrs. Caird says, "The matter is one in which any +interposition, whether of law or society, is an impertinence." But, +unfortunately, law and society are the most impertinent things in the +world, always binding with briers our joys and desires, and poking their +ugly noses into our private affairs in the interests of the British +ratepayer. We shall never be happy until we have got rid of them--if +even then, and it is quite impossible to get rid of them for some time +to come. Now the British ratepayer cares nothing about women and +children, except in so far as there is a danger of their coming upon the +rates. And he is a little scared about giving greater liberty of +divorce, "saving for the cause of adultery," as he piously ejaculates. +He does not like stray women and children going about the world. But +after all, adultery is only a particular, perhaps even a minor, case of +incompatibility. Marriage was made for man, and not man for marriage, +and although marriage may work well in nine cases out of ten, the tenth +case must be considered, and relief given if possible. The individual is +right to demand relief, and the mode of giving relief is a question for +the legislator. Greater facility of divorce must come, and will come, +now that both men and women demand it. + +Mrs. Caird's demand for greater laxity of the marriage bond _ab initio_, +the nature of the contract being left to the contracting parties, like a +marriage settlement, is quite outside the sphere of practical politics, +as she is herself quite aware. If men were but educated up to the +Shelleyan ideal, then we might try all sorts of delightful experiments +in marriage, and gradually arrive at absolute freedom of contract, which +would _not_ mean that absolutely unsentimental hygienic promiscuity +which is the ideal of the highly advanced physiologist. But men are not +yet harmonious creatures, like Wordsworth's cloud, which "moveth +altogether if it move at all." They are torn by their lusts which war in +their members. Hence these bonds. Lust, lust, lust: this is the most +concentrated form of selfishness--the undying worm at the root of the +Tree of Life. This is the tyrant that women have at last begun to +recognize as their deadly adversary and to fight against. Shelley, a +better physician than Goethe, laid his finger on this plague-spot, and +told the age plainly: "Thou ailest here." But he did not see that +instead of saying, "Abolish marriage and prostitution will cease," he +ought to have said, "Abolish prostitution and marriage will +cease"--marriage without love being only a particular form of +prostitution. He did not see that the abolition of marriage would no +more get rid of lust than the abolition of private property would get +rid of selfishness. We have already, in monogamic marriage, struggled +painfully upward to the level of the higher animals; let us not imperil +this progress rashly. + +The Cythnas of the present day have felt their burthens more directly +than Shelley did. Hence their demand for economic independence, that +they may not be forced into marriage or prostitution by the various +degrees of starvation. Their demand is a just one, and must be satisfied +somehow, even if we have to put a bonus upon womanhood and pay women, +not merely fair wages for their work of all kinds, but a tribute to them +as women, as potential mothers, which shall fairly handicap the sexes +in the struggle for existence, and put men more on their good behaviour. + +Shelley, the mystic, who looked for a miraculous change in nature +coincident with a miraculous change in man, seems to have seen, almost +as little as the average socialist of the present day, who believes in +the spiritual efficacy of a purely material revolution, that the ideals +and interests of the two sexes are widely apart, more so now than ever +before probably. He, like the socialist, in his impatience to arrive at +a practical solution of the life-problem, did not take the trouble to +understand the true bearing of the doctrine of Malthus. He did not see +that whether Malthus's figures be right or wrong, it is a fact that the +population of any given district (be it an English barony, or the world +itself) tends to increase up to the limits of its food-supply, taking +the word _food_ in its very widest sense to signify all the means of +well-being; and that this tendency is a fundamental element in all +social problems, just as friction is in all mechanical problems. He did +not see that, other things being the same, a higher standard of comfort, +while, finally tending to diminish the rate of increase of population, +first increases its pressure. He did not contemplate that strike against +child-bearing on the part of women, which is induced, not merely by the +desire for personal comfort, but is largely due to the vague influence +of those new ideals of which he was himself the prophet. He, like the +socialist, thought that we might go on increasing and multiplying _ad +libitum_, till we reached the ultimate limit of standing-room on the +earth, and of miraculous chemical food out of the air, and began, as +astral bodies, to emigrate to Mars. Women know better than this; and +feel the pinch of population, when what they just now consider their +higher life is hampered by children. The woman who has one child more +than she wants is an over-populated woman; and the advanced woman of the +present day, having her own higher culture, and the culture of humanity, +on the brain, possibly with a high ideal of the duties of maternity, and +frequently a sickly and weary creature, morbid in body and mind, is very +easily over-populated. Hence much social discomfort. Shelley does not +seem to have contemplated this, nor seen that the good-natured +acceptance of the feminine ideal by man might lead him, like poor St. +Peter in his old age, "whither he would not." How all this is going to +end I confess I don't know. I trust in more delicate adjustments, a +higher and more wholesome life all round; but the ascent of man is +always a painful process. Meanwhile it is quite time for this bald, +disjointed chat of mine to come to an end. + + + + + _London: + Printed by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bread Street Hill. + September, 1889._ + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + +The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these +letters have been replaced with transliterations. + +The misprint "tempation" has been corrected to "temptation" (page 15). + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION*** + + +******* This file should be named 34085-8.txt or 34085-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/0/8/34085 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Shelley and the Marriage Question</p> +<p>Author: John Todhunter</p> +<p>Release Date: October 16, 2010 [eBook #34085]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/toronto">http://www.archive.org/details/toronto</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/shelleyandthema00todhuoft"> + http://www.archive.org/details/shelleyandthema00todhuoft</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h1>SHELLEY AND MARRIAGE.</h1> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>Of this Book<br />Twenty-Five Copies only have been printed.</i></p> +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> + +<h1>SHELLEY<br />AND<br />THE MARRIAGE QUESTION.</h1> +<p> </p> +<h4>BY</h4> +<h3>JOHN TODHUNTER, M.D.,</h3> +<p class="center">Author of <i>Notes on “The Triumph of Life,” A Study of Shelley, etc.</i></p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title_deco.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">London:<br /><i>PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY.</i><br />1889.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/begin_deco.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<h2>SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION.</h2> + +<p><br />Now that marriage, like most other time-honoured institutions, has come +to stand, a thing accused, at the bar of public opinion, it may be +interesting to see what Shelley has to say about it. The marriage +problem is a complex one, involving many questions not very easy to +answer offhand or even after much consideration. What is marriage? Of +divine or human institution? For what ends was it instituted? How far +does it attain these ends? And a dozen others involved in these.</p> + +<p>The very idea of marriage implies some kind of bond imposed by society +upon the sexual relations of its members, male and female; some kind of +restriction upon the absolute promiscuity and absolute instability of +these relations—such restriction taking the form of a contract between +individuals, endorsed by society, and enforced with more or less +stringency by public opinion. Its object at first was probably simply to +ensure to each male member of the tribe the quiet enjoyment of his wife +or wives, and the free exploitation of the children she or they +produced. The patriarchal tyranny was established, and through the +sanction of primitive religion and law became a divine institution. +Then, as civilization progressed, the wife and children became less and +less the mere slaves, more and more the respected subjects, of the +patriarch. The paternal instinct (like the maternal) became developed, +and family affection came into existence. At present the whirligig of +time is bringing its revenges. The patriarchal tyranny begins to +totter;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> parents are often more the slaves than the masters of their +children. And even wives begin to rebel against wifedom, and threaten to +revolutionize marriage in their own interest. Woman, like everybody +else, is beginning to strike for higher wages. There are more than the +first mutterings of that revolution in the Golden City of Divine +institutions prophesied of by Shelley in <i>Laon and Cythna</i>. There are a +good many Cythnas ready to rush about on their black Tartarian hobbies, +of whom Mrs. Mona Caird is the one who has recently made most noise.</p> + +<p>There is a little design of Blake’s in <i>The Gates of Paradise</i>, which +represents a man standing on the earth who leans a ladder against the +moon and prepares to mount; the motto underneath being: “I want! I +want!” This is a type of our own age. Never was such an age of +discontent, never such a Babel of voices crying: “I want! I want!” We +have become very conscious of our pain, and are not ashamed to cry out +and proclaim it on the house-tops in these hysterical times—simply +because the ancient sanctions and anodynes have lost their sanctity and +comfort for us. The very “priests in black gowns” who used to “walk +their rounds and bind with briers our joys and desires,” have been +themselves corrupted with a longing for a little present happiness, and +that Old Woman in the shoe, Mrs. Grundy herself, instead of whipping us +all round and putting us to bed in the old summary fashion, when we +venture to complain that the shoe pinches here and there, has herself +become lachrymose. We cry out because, having neither the old +repressions nor the old opiates to restrain us, there is no valid reason +why we should hold our tongues. By crying loud enough and long enough we +may get some help. We may even find some good-natured person to stop +crying himself and help us; and then for very shame we may go and do +likewise. In this lies the age’s hope. It is really in its best aspect +an unselfish age, an age in which sympathy and justice are vital forces, +in which the miseries of others are felt as our own. There are thousands +now who feel themselves “as nerves o’er which do creep the else unfelt +oppressions of the earth.” We are not wise enough yet to conceive and +organize those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> vital adjustments between conflicting wants, interests, +and principles, which shall be of deeper efficiency than mere +superficial compromises; but this wisdom will come in due time, if we do +not rush into anarchy through that licentious impatience which is the +curse of revolutionary periods.</p> + +<p>Now, of all the bitter cries ringing in the air at the present time, +about the bitterest and most persistent is that not merely of women, but +of woman with a capital W. It is the most appalling note of change that +can pierce the ear of self-satisfied Conservatism. The patient Griselda +has begun to protest against the tyranny of her lord and master. Love’s +martyr has at last begun to think that her martyrdom must have its +limits. It is as if the Lamb, whose function we thought was to be dumb +before its shearers and even sacrificers, had found a voice of +protestation. It is a portent. And even men are constrained to listen to +the cry; for it sounds like the birth-cry of regenerated Love. Not now +“Love self-slain in some sweet shameful way,” but Love the winged angel +who shall finally cast out Lust, the adversary. But many things must +come to pass before this triumph of love can be brought about; and in +many respects the horoscope looks unpropitious enough. The first effect +of the birth, or coming to the surface of a higher ideal, gradually +evolved by the progress of society, is apparently to make confusion +worse confounded. Not peace but a sword is the first gift of the Prince +of Peace. Liberty comes masked like Tyranny, and cries “Fraternity or +death!” Love goes wantonly about with the Mænads of licentiousness at +his heels. But the divine Logos, incarnate as the Son of man, always +comes not to destroy but to fulfil.</p> + +<p>Just now that highly moral being, Man in the masculine gender, is much +shocked at the strangely immoral conduct of his feminine counterpart. In +the first place, she has dared to look at the realities of things with +her own eyes, not through the rose-coloured spectacles with which he has +been at pains to provide her; and not only that, but to peep behind the +sacred veil which man has modestly cast over many ugly things. Secondly, +she has begun to talk openly about these ugly things,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> and to call them +by non-euphemistic, ugly names, in a manner quite unprecedented. +Thirdly, she has dared to attempt her own solution of things insoluble, +her own achievement of things impossible. And fourthly, she has dared to +formulate a demand for liberty, equality, fraternity on her own +account—a demand which every day comes more and more within the sphere +of practical politics. Here are pure women making common cause with +prostitutes, married women crying out against the holy institution of +matrimony, mothers rebelling against the tyranny of the beatific +baby—nay, absolutely on strike against child-bearing, or at least +demanding limited liability as regards that important function. Finally, +here is Woman, whether as virgin, wife, or widow, demanding independence +as to property and a fair share of the world’s goods in return for a +fair share of the general work of the world outside of her special +womanly functions. “D——n it, sir, I say that women are unsexing +themselves—unsexing themselves, by Jove!” as Major Pendennis might +exclaim. And the worst of it is that there are so many men, traitors to +their sex, who are casting in their lot with women in this terrible +Women’s Rights movement—“unsexing themselves,” too, no doubt—so that +we shall all soon become either a-sexual or hermaphrodite beings! And +here let us leave for a moment the more or less limited and prosaic +Cythnas of the day, the terrible women who ride about upon Tartarian +hobby-horses in novels and magazine articles, who spout on platforms and +practise medicine and other dreadful trades—the scientific Mrs. +Somervilles, and medical Mrs. Garrett Andersons, and pious Mrs. +Josephine Butlers, and impious Mrs. Mona Cairds, and get back to Shelley +himself, the poet of this shocking social aberration.</p> + +<p>Shelley, as Mr. Cordy Jeafferson has taken great pains to demonstrate, +was an exceedingly immoral young man. He outraged the conventional +morality of his day by his actions as well as in his writings in the +most shameless manner; but this shamelessness was due to his intense +conviction that he thus outraged <i>conventional</i> in the interests of +<i>ideal</i> morality. His life and writings are so full of the paradoxical +character which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> ascribed to the social agitation of the present +day, and some of his utterances are so prophetic of it, that we may +fairly regard him as its precursor.</p> + +<p>Shelley, as we know, started rather as an anarchist than as a mere +reformer. His ideas were cataclysmal rather than evolutional. But he was +an optimistic not a pessimistic anarchist, and he endeavoured to destroy +in order to rebuild with all possible expedition. The kingdom of heaven +was, for him, at the very doors, ready to take shape as soon as man +willed it; and man <i>would</i> will it as soon as the mind-forged fetters of +his mind were loosed. Accordingly he endeavoured to loose them. He +dethroned God that the Spirit of Nature might be enthroned; and then he +proceeded to abolish marriage that free love might regenerate mankind. +He believed in regeneration by incantation—a few words murmured in +men’s ears would make them as obedient to the ideas those sacred words +represented as spirits to the spells of a magician. Abolish marriage +(and what could be easier?), and love, being set free, prostitution +would cease. We may pass by such puerilities of inexperienced idealism, +to be found by the score in <i>Queen Mab</i>, and pass on to Shelley’s more +mature utterances, always remembering that he died, as the <i>Triumph of +Life</i> shows, in the very process of maturation. His whole history is +that of an idealist, who first seeks his ideal in the actual, and not +finding it endeavours to bring the actual into harmony with his ideal. +His imagination hacks at the rude block of the world with the divine +fury of a Pygmalion; thinking at first that he has but to remove the +dull superfluous husks of custom to find the living idea in the centre; +but gradually perceiving it was but created an inanimate image, which +can only come to life by the invocation of Venus Urania. All the +weaknesses, faults, and follies of his life and his writings, as well as +that “power in weakness veiled” which he felt himself to be, come from +this. He is driven to reform society by attacking the conventional +morality of marriage, because he is first a transcendental lover; just +as Mr. William Morris is driven into socialism, because he is first a +very practical decorative artist. To speak irreverently, both men want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> +elbow-room for their fads. But Shelley’s fad is of even more importance +to us than Morris’s. It is better to have a beautiful love, than to have +a beautiful house to put him in. Shelley is, above all things, the poet +of modern love. Dante’s love, fantastic and supersensuous, was not +modern love. We do not want angels, either in heaven or in the house, to +condescend to our depravity and lead us upward. We do not want the +divine school-mistress to bring us to something not ourselves which may +or may not make for righteousness, but the divine mistress, passionate +as well as pure, to bring us to our best selves, and live with us in +perfect union. Shakespeare showed us glimpses of this love defeated by +circumstances in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, triumphant over circumstances in +Posthumus and Imogen; but Shelley has had a fuller vision of it. Since +Shakespeare’s time both manhood and womanhood, and especially womanhood, +have by pressure of circumstances become more self-conscious, and the +conditions of their union through love more complex.</p> + +<p>And what is this modern ideal of love, of which Shelley is the exponent? +What is this strange affection, love, whether ancient or modern? It is +that most paradoxical of passions, that compound of selfishness and +self-renunciation, that forlorn desire which strives to reconcile all +things, and found an eternal home on the shifting sands of time, of +which we all know something. Blake has expressed this paradoxical +character of love once for all in his little poem “The Clod and the +Pebble.”</p> + +<p class="poem">“Love seeketh not itself to please,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor for itself hath any care,</span><br /> +But for another gives its ease,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.</span><br /> +<br /> +Love seeketh only self to please,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To bind another to its delight,</span><br /> +Joys in another’s loss of ease,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”</span></p> + +<p>We may call these the masculine and feminine elements in love; though of +course both exist in all love, whether of man to woman or woman to man. +Both sexes give more than they receive, and receive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> more than they +give. In all love, from the first step beyond mere physical appetite, to +the most transcendental Platonism, there are these two antagonistic +elements. If the merely self-indulgent element prevails, we tend in the +direction of lust, one of the most cruel diseases that plague humanity, +which Milton rightly places “hard by hate.” If the merely +self-renouncing, we tend in the direction of monastic chastity, which +though not so distinctly an evil thing, may become cruel and inhuman, +and a bar to human progress. Asceticism is not, like lust, a disease, +physical and spiritual, but it may lead to disease, spiritual if not +physical. There is an asceticism, the Greek <ins class="correction" title="aschêsis">ασχησις</ins>, a +training of the lower faculties to act in subordination to the higher, +which is the strait gate by which we enter upon the arduous ascent +toward noble passion and noble action. There is another asceticism which +if not truly Christian, came in the wake of Christianity, which, denying +the rights of the body, was less a training than a mortification. Both +unrestrained sensuality and monastic chastity, in their injustice to the +body outrage the sexual principle, the former by regarding it as a toy +to be polluted by base pleasure, the latter by regarding it as a thing +unclean in itself to be cast out and killed, or at best tolerated and +cleansed by the Church’s holy water. To the present day the average +man’s, or at least the average Englishman’s great temptation is to sin +against love, through dull unimaginative lust, the average +Englishwoman’s through dull unimaginative chastity. Men live too much in +the sensuous, and women in the supersensuous, to meet fairly. Love, the +reconciler, himself is too weak fully to reconcile them and to bring +them together in that perfect ecstasy, body to body, spirit to spirit, +soul to soul, that “unreserve of mingled being,” which Shelley, giving a +voice to the desire of all ages, but especially to modern desire, sighed +for. To understand Shelley’s protest against marriage, we must +understand his ideal of love—the unconstrained rush together of two +personalities of opposite sexes, in whom the body is but the vehicle of +the spirit. This love is not born merely of the flickering fire of the +senses. It is a divine flame, kindled alike in body, soul, and spirit, +and fusing them into unity. Of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> course, if this love is to be the great +end of life, marriage is somewhat of an impertinence. While the divine +fire burns, what need of artificial ties to keep the two lovers +together? If it goes out why should they be kept together? To which the +prosaic moralist replies: “Your ideal of love is very beautiful, no +doubt. Get as much as you can of this divine flame into your Hymen’s +torch; and after all, every young couple start with some such high-flown +notions in their heads; but I must have some guarantee that your wife +and children are not left as burdens upon the parish, when you begin to +feel the pinch of real life, and the glamour of your imagination fades +from your ‘divine mistress.’ Marriage was not ordained to be the +paradise of ideal love, but for the sober discipline of the affections +of men and women, and above all for the production and rearing up of +good citizens of the commonwealth. To judge by your own writings, Mr. +Shelley, you seem to have been running after a will-o’-the-wisp all your +life in this ideal love. And if <i>you</i> did not catch it, is it likely +that Tom, Dick, and Harry will? In any case the pursuit of it seems just +as likely to make inconstant lovers as that sensuality you affect to +look down upon. You always had the word ‘for ever’ on your tongue; but +how long did your for evers last? No, no, my dear sir, the good of +society demands fidelity to incurred responsibilities, and we find by +practical experience that both men and women, but especially men, are +inclined to shirk the responsibilities which indulgence of the sexual +passion brings in its train. Hence the marriage contract. It does not +concern itself primarily with either love or lovers, but it helps to +keep husbands and wives together, and women and children maintained +decently without coming upon the rates. And, mind you, it does not by +any means leave love out in the cold. It may not rise to your +transcendental ecstasy; but it is love all the same, good honest +domestic affection, when your young couples get well broken to harness. +Did you not say yourself that one might as well go to a gin-shop for a +leg of mutton as to you for anything human? Well, give me the wholesome +leg of mutton—none of your gin for me. Egad, sir, when I see some +honest couple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> going to church of a Sunday morning, with half-a-dozen +pretty children about them, I call that a poem—ay, and a better poem, +Mr. Shelley, than all the fantastic Epipsychidions you ever put upon +paper. Hang it all, sir, let a man make love to his own wife, and stick +to her when he has got her. I’m a plain man, sir, but I hope a moral +man, and them’s my sentiments.” To all which, let Shelley reply as best +he may. The fact is that he has given no satisfactory reply, simply +because it was only just before his death that he realised the +complexity of the problem of life. He did, however, see clearly that the +bringing of men and women into more complete harmony, by raising the +ideal of love, was the most important step towards that renewal of the +world, that living of the most perfect life attainable by man, for which +he sighed and after which he strove; and he saw clearly that our +solution of the marriage problem was imperfect, not merely in practice, +but to some extent in theory. As regards the subjection of women, he +seems to have considered this wholly an artificial product of religious +dogma, and not, as it is, the natural result of an imperfect +civilization. Man protects woman because, on the whole, she adds to his +comfort. Protection implies subjection, and subjection to a tyrant is +slavery; and man, if not altogether a tyrant in these later times, has +always the <ins class="correction" title="original: tempation">temptation</ins> to become one, and the tyrannical traditions of +bygone times have a strong tendency to persist. Laws and even customs +lag far behind the highest public opinion of the day.</p> + +<p>Now, men being in possession of the capital of the world, the material +means of life, women stand to them in the position of what the +socialists call wage-slaves. They must do what their employers require +of them on pain of starvation, and there is no true freedom of contract. +And so far men have almost without exception required of them +concubinage or menial service, or a mixture of both. English marriage, +while recognizing the existing fact of the subjection of women, has done +something to raise their status, chiefly by making the bond between the +contracting parties theoretically, and to a great extent practically, +one of love and mutual service. It has indeed been much more than +Shelley<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> seems to have realized, the <i>nidus</i> of a love pure and +wholesome, if not very passionate. Theoretically strictly monogamic, it +has been so practically to a very respectable extent. It has put a +perceptible curb upon the strong polygamous instinct of men, and it has +fostered the monogamous habit in women enormously. English women are for +the most part faithful wives. Even transitory prostitution does not kill +the monogamous propensity in them. They settle down into marriage, or +live faithfully with one man, if they get the chance.</p> + +<p>Still, Englishwomen are not satisfied with marriage as it exists. Let us +hear Mrs. Mona Caird on the subject. She is much more prosaic than +Shelley; she looks at the subject, chiefly from the standpoint of +practical comfort. She sees that from this standpoint, from various +reasons, which may be summed up in the phrase “incompatibility of +temper,” marriage does not induce even that amount of mutual toleration, +not to say happiness, without which it is impossible for man and wife to +live decently together. She therefore asks, What good purpose is served +by keeping two people together who are evidently unfit to live together? +Why indeed? if, as Mrs. Caird says, “The matter is one in which any +interposition, whether of law or society, is an impertinence.” But, +unfortunately, law and society are the most impertinent things in the +world, always binding with briers our joys and desires, and poking their +ugly noses into our private affairs in the interests of the British +ratepayer. We shall never be happy until we have got rid of them—if +even then, and it is quite impossible to get rid of them for some time +to come. Now the British ratepayer cares nothing about women and +children, except in so far as there is a danger of their coming upon the +rates. And he is a little scared about giving greater liberty of +divorce, “saving for the cause of adultery,” as he piously ejaculates. +He does not like stray women and children going about the world. But +after all, adultery is only a particular, perhaps even a minor, case of +incompatibility. Marriage was made for man, and not man for marriage, +and although marriage may work well in nine cases out of ten, the tenth +case must be considered, and relief given if possible. The individual is +right to demand relief,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> and the mode of giving relief is a question for +the legislator. Greater facility of divorce must come, and will come, +now that both men and women demand it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Caird’s demand for greater laxity of the marriage bond <i>ab initio</i>, +the nature of the contract being left to the contracting parties, like a +marriage settlement, is quite outside the sphere of practical politics, +as she is herself quite aware. If men were but educated up to the +Shelleyan ideal, then we might try all sorts of delightful experiments +in marriage, and gradually arrive at absolute freedom of contract, which +would <i>not</i> mean that absolutely unsentimental hygienic promiscuity +which is the ideal of the highly advanced physiologist. But men are not +yet harmonious creatures, like Wordsworth’s cloud, which “moveth +altogether if it move at all.” They are torn by their lusts which war in +their members. Hence these bonds. Lust, lust, lust: this is the most +concentrated form of selfishness—the undying worm at the root of the +Tree of Life. This is the tyrant that women have at last begun to +recognize as their deadly adversary and to fight against. Shelley, a +better physician than Goethe, laid his finger on this plague-spot, and +told the age plainly: “Thou ailest here.” But he did not see that +instead of saying, “Abolish marriage and prostitution will cease,” he +ought to have said, “Abolish prostitution and marriage will +cease”—marriage without love being only a particular form of +prostitution. He did not see that the abolition of marriage would no +more get rid of lust than the abolition of private property would get +rid of selfishness. We have already, in monogamic marriage, struggled +painfully upward to the level of the higher animals; let us not imperil +this progress rashly.</p> + +<p>The Cythnas of the present day have felt their burthens more directly +than Shelley did. Hence their demand for economic independence, that +they may not be forced into marriage or prostitution by the various +degrees of starvation. Their demand is a just one, and must be satisfied +somehow, even if we have to put a bonus upon womanhood and pay women, +not merely fair wages for their work of all kinds, but a tribute to them +as women, as potential mothers, which shall fairly handicap the sexes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +in the struggle for existence, and put men more on their good behaviour.</p> + +<p>Shelley, the mystic, who looked for a miraculous change in nature +coincident with a miraculous change in man, seems to have seen, almost +as little as the average socialist of the present day, who believes in +the spiritual efficacy of a purely material revolution, that the ideals +and interests of the two sexes are widely apart, more so now than ever +before probably. He, like the socialist, in his impatience to arrive at +a practical solution of the life-problem, did not take the trouble to +understand the true bearing of the doctrine of Malthus. He did not see +that whether Malthus’s figures be right or wrong, it is a fact that the +population of any given district (be it an English barony, or the world +itself) tends to increase up to the limits of its food-supply, taking +the word <i>food</i> in its very widest sense to signify all the means of +well-being; and that this tendency is a fundamental element in all +social problems, just as friction is in all mechanical problems. He did +not see that, other things being the same, a higher standard of comfort, +while, finally tending to diminish the rate of increase of population, +first increases its pressure. He did not contemplate that strike against +child-bearing on the part of women, which is induced, not merely by the +desire for personal comfort, but is largely due to the vague influence +of those new ideals of which he was himself the prophet. He, like the +socialist, thought that we might go on increasing and multiplying <i>ad +libitum</i>, till we reached the ultimate limit of standing-room on the +earth, and of miraculous chemical food out of the air, and began, as +astral bodies, to emigrate to Mars. Women know better than this; and +feel the pinch of population, when what they just now consider their +higher life is hampered by children. The woman who has one child more +than she wants is an over-populated woman; and the advanced woman of the +present day, having her own higher culture, and the culture of humanity, +on the brain, possibly with a high ideal of the duties of maternity, and +frequently a sickly and weary creature, morbid in body and mind, is very +easily over-populated. Hence much social discomfort. Shelley does not +seem to have contemplated this, nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> seen that the good-natured +acceptance of the feminine ideal by man might lead him, like poor St. +Peter in his old age, “whither he would not.” How all this is going to +end I confess I don’t know. I trust in more delicate adjustments, a +higher and more wholesome life all round; but the ascent of man is +always a painful process. Meanwhile it is quite time for this bald, +disjointed chat of mine to come to an end.</p> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/end_deco.jpg" alt="" /></div> + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center"><i>London</i>:<br /> +<i>Printed by</i> Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, <i>Bread Street Hill</i>.<br /> +<i>September, 1889.</i></p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> +<p> </p> +<h4>Transcriber's note:</h4> + +<p><small>A dull gray underscore in the text indicates where a correction was +made. Hover the cursor over the underscored text to see the nature of the +correction.</small></p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 34085-h.txt or 34085-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/0/8/34085">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/8/34085</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Shelley and the Marriage Question + + +Author: John Todhunter + + + +Release Date: October 16, 2010 [eBook #34085] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE +QUESTION*** + + +E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/shelleyandthema00todhuoft + + + + + +SHELLEY AND MARRIAGE. + +Of this Book Twenty-Five Copies only have been printed. + + +SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION. + +by + +JOHN TODHUNTER, M.D., + +Author of _Notes on "The Triumph of Life," A Study of Shelley, etc._ + + + + + + + +London: +Printed for Private Circulation Only. +1889. + + + + +SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION. + + +Now that marriage, like most other time-honoured institutions, has come +to stand, a thing accused, at the bar of public opinion, it may be +interesting to see what Shelley has to say about it. The marriage +problem is a complex one, involving many questions not very easy to +answer offhand or even after much consideration. What is marriage? Of +divine or human institution? For what ends was it instituted? How far +does it attain these ends? And a dozen others involved in these. + +The very idea of marriage implies some kind of bond imposed by society +upon the sexual relations of its members, male and female; some kind of +restriction upon the absolute promiscuity and absolute instability of +these relations--such restriction taking the form of a contract between +individuals, endorsed by society, and enforced with more or less +stringency by public opinion. Its object at first was probably simply to +ensure to each male member of the tribe the quiet enjoyment of his wife +or wives, and the free exploitation of the children she or they +produced. The patriarchal tyranny was established, and through the +sanction of primitive religion and law became a divine institution. +Then, as civilization progressed, the wife and children became less and +less the mere slaves, more and more the respected subjects, of the +patriarch. The paternal instinct (like the maternal) became developed, +and family affection came into existence. At present the whirligig of +time is bringing its revenges. The patriarchal tyranny begins to +totter; parents are often more the slaves than the masters of their +children. And even wives begin to rebel against wifedom, and threaten to +revolutionize marriage in their own interest. Woman, like everybody +else, is beginning to strike for higher wages. There are more than the +first mutterings of that revolution in the Golden City of Divine +institutions prophesied of by Shelley in _Laon and Cythna_. There are a +good many Cythnas ready to rush about on their black Tartarian hobbies, +of whom Mrs. Mona Caird is the one who has recently made most noise. + +There is a little design of Blake's in _The Gates of Paradise_, which +represents a man standing on the earth who leans a ladder against the +moon and prepares to mount; the motto underneath being: "I want! I +want!" This is a type of our own age. Never was such an age of +discontent, never such a Babel of voices crying: "I want! I want!" We +have become very conscious of our pain, and are not ashamed to cry out +and proclaim it on the house-tops in these hysterical times--simply +because the ancient sanctions and anodynes have lost their sanctity and +comfort for us. The very "priests in black gowns" who used to "walk +their rounds and bind with briers our joys and desires," have been +themselves corrupted with a longing for a little present happiness, and +that Old Woman in the shoe, Mrs. Grundy herself, instead of whipping us +all round and putting us to bed in the old summary fashion, when we +venture to complain that the shoe pinches here and there, has herself +become lachrymose. We cry out because, having neither the old +repressions nor the old opiates to restrain us, there is no valid reason +why we should hold our tongues. By crying loud enough and long enough we +may get some help. We may even find some good-natured person to stop +crying himself and help us; and then for very shame we may go and do +likewise. In this lies the age's hope. It is really in its best aspect +an unselfish age, an age in which sympathy and justice are vital forces, +in which the miseries of others are felt as our own. There are thousands +now who feel themselves "as nerves o'er which do creep the else unfelt +oppressions of the earth." We are not wise enough yet to conceive and +organize those vital adjustments between conflicting wants, interests, +and principles, which shall be of deeper efficiency than mere +superficial compromises; but this wisdom will come in due time, if we do +not rush into anarchy through that licentious impatience which is the +curse of revolutionary periods. + +Now, of all the bitter cries ringing in the air at the present time, +about the bitterest and most persistent is that not merely of women, but +of woman with a capital W. It is the most appalling note of change that +can pierce the ear of self-satisfied Conservatism. The patient Griselda +has begun to protest against the tyranny of her lord and master. Love's +martyr has at last begun to think that her martyrdom must have its +limits. It is as if the Lamb, whose function we thought was to be dumb +before its shearers and even sacrificers, had found a voice of +protestation. It is a portent. And even men are constrained to listen to +the cry; for it sounds like the birth-cry of regenerated Love. Not now +"Love self-slain in some sweet shameful way," but Love the winged angel +who shall finally cast out Lust, the adversary. But many things must +come to pass before this triumph of love can be brought about; and in +many respects the horoscope looks unpropitious enough. The first effect +of the birth, or coming to the surface of a higher ideal, gradually +evolved by the progress of society, is apparently to make confusion +worse confounded. Not peace but a sword is the first gift of the Prince +of Peace. Liberty comes masked like Tyranny, and cries "Fraternity or +death!" Love goes wantonly about with the Maenads of licentiousness at +his heels. But the divine Logos, incarnate as the Son of man, always +comes not to destroy but to fulfil. + +Just now that highly moral being, Man in the masculine gender, is much +shocked at the strangely immoral conduct of his feminine counterpart. In +the first place, she has dared to look at the realities of things with +her own eyes, not through the rose-coloured spectacles with which he has +been at pains to provide her; and not only that, but to peep behind the +sacred veil which man has modestly cast over many ugly things. Secondly, +she has begun to talk openly about these ugly things, and to call them +by non-euphemistic, ugly names, in a manner quite unprecedented. +Thirdly, she has dared to attempt her own solution of things insoluble, +her own achievement of things impossible. And fourthly, she has dared to +formulate a demand for liberty, equality, fraternity on her own +account--a demand which every day comes more and more within the sphere +of practical politics. Here are pure women making common cause with +prostitutes, married women crying out against the holy institution of +matrimony, mothers rebelling against the tyranny of the beatific +baby--nay, absolutely on strike against child-bearing, or at least +demanding limited liability as regards that important function. Finally, +here is Woman, whether as virgin, wife, or widow, demanding independence +as to property and a fair share of the world's goods in return for a +fair share of the general work of the world outside of her special +womanly functions. "D----n it, sir, I say that women are unsexing +themselves--unsexing themselves, by Jove!" as Major Pendennis might +exclaim. And the worst of it is that there are so many men, traitors to +their sex, who are casting in their lot with women in this terrible +Women's Rights movement--"unsexing themselves," too, no doubt--so that +we shall all soon become either a-sexual or hermaphrodite beings! And +here let us leave for a moment the more or less limited and prosaic +Cythnas of the day, the terrible women who ride about upon Tartarian +hobby-horses in novels and magazine articles, who spout on platforms and +practise medicine and other dreadful trades--the scientific Mrs. +Somervilles, and medical Mrs. Garrett Andersons, and pious Mrs. +Josephine Butlers, and impious Mrs. Mona Cairds, and get back to Shelley +himself, the poet of this shocking social aberration. + +Shelley, as Mr. Cordy Jeafferson has taken great pains to demonstrate, +was an exceedingly immoral young man. He outraged the conventional +morality of his day by his actions as well as in his writings in the +most shameless manner; but this shamelessness was due to his intense +conviction that he thus outraged _conventional_ in the interests of +_ideal_ morality. His life and writings are so full of the paradoxical +character which I have ascribed to the social agitation of the present +day, and some of his utterances are so prophetic of it, that we may +fairly regard him as its precursor. + +Shelley, as we know, started rather as an anarchist than as a mere +reformer. His ideas were cataclysmal rather than evolutional. But he was +an optimistic not a pessimistic anarchist, and he endeavoured to destroy +in order to rebuild with all possible expedition. The kingdom of heaven +was, for him, at the very doors, ready to take shape as soon as man +willed it; and man _would_ will it as soon as the mind-forged fetters of +his mind were loosed. Accordingly he endeavoured to loose them. He +dethroned God that the Spirit of Nature might be enthroned; and then he +proceeded to abolish marriage that free love might regenerate mankind. +He believed in regeneration by incantation--a few words murmured in +men's ears would make them as obedient to the ideas those sacred words +represented as spirits to the spells of a magician. Abolish marriage +(and what could be easier?), and love, being set free, prostitution +would cease. We may pass by such puerilities of inexperienced idealism, +to be found by the score in _Queen Mab_, and pass on to Shelley's more +mature utterances, always remembering that he died, as the _Triumph of +Life_ shows, in the very process of maturation. His whole history is +that of an idealist, who first seeks his ideal in the actual, and not +finding it endeavours to bring the actual into harmony with his ideal. +His imagination hacks at the rude block of the world with the divine +fury of a Pygmalion; thinking at first that he has but to remove the +dull superfluous husks of custom to find the living idea in the centre; +but gradually perceiving it was but created an inanimate image, which +can only come to life by the invocation of Venus Urania. All the +weaknesses, faults, and follies of his life and his writings, as well as +that "power in weakness veiled" which he felt himself to be, come from +this. He is driven to reform society by attacking the conventional +morality of marriage, because he is first a transcendental lover; just +as Mr. William Morris is driven into socialism, because he is first a +very practical decorative artist. To speak irreverently, both men want +elbow-room for their fads. But Shelley's fad is of even more importance +to us than Morris's. It is better to have a beautiful love, than to have +a beautiful house to put him in. Shelley is, above all things, the poet +of modern love. Dante's love, fantastic and supersensuous, was not +modern love. We do not want angels, either in heaven or in the house, to +condescend to our depravity and lead us upward. We do not want the +divine school-mistress to bring us to something not ourselves which may +or may not make for righteousness, but the divine mistress, passionate +as well as pure, to bring us to our best selves, and live with us in +perfect union. Shakespeare showed us glimpses of this love defeated by +circumstances in _Romeo and Juliet_, triumphant over circumstances in +Posthumus and Imogen; but Shelley has had a fuller vision of it. Since +Shakespeare's time both manhood and womanhood, and especially womanhood, +have by pressure of circumstances become more self-conscious, and the +conditions of their union through love more complex. + +And what is this modern ideal of love, of which Shelley is the exponent? +What is this strange affection, love, whether ancient or modern? It is +that most paradoxical of passions, that compound of selfishness and +self-renunciation, that forlorn desire which strives to reconcile all +things, and found an eternal home on the shifting sands of time, of +which we all know something. Blake has expressed this paradoxical +character of love once for all in his little poem "The Clod and the +Pebble." + + "Love seeketh not itself to please, + Nor for itself hath any care, + But for another gives its ease, + And builds a heaven in hell's despair. + + Love seeketh only self to please, + To bind another to its delight, + Joys in another's loss of ease, + And builds a hell in heaven's despite." + +We may call these the masculine and feminine elements in love; though of +course both exist in all love, whether of man to woman or woman to man. +Both sexes give more than they receive, and receive more than they +give. In all love, from the first step beyond mere physical appetite, to +the most transcendental Platonism, there are these two antagonistic +elements. If the merely self-indulgent element prevails, we tend in +the direction of lust, one of the most cruel diseases that plague +humanity, which Milton rightly places "hard by hate." If the merely +self-renouncing, we tend in the direction of monastic chastity, which +though not so distinctly an evil thing, may become cruel and inhuman, +and a bar to human progress. Asceticism is not, like lust, a disease, +physical and spiritual, but it may lead to disease, spiritual if not +physical. There is an asceticism, the Greek [Greek: aschesis], a +training of the lower faculties to act in subordination to the higher, +which is the strait gate by which we enter upon the arduous ascent +toward noble passion and noble action. There is another asceticism which +if not truly Christian, came in the wake of Christianity, which, denying +the rights of the body, was less a training than a mortification. Both +unrestrained sensuality and monastic chastity, in their injustice to the +body outrage the sexual principle, the former by regarding it as a toy +to be polluted by base pleasure, the latter by regarding it as a thing +unclean in itself to be cast out and killed, or at best tolerated and +cleansed by the Church's holy water. To the present day the average +man's, or at least the average Englishman's great temptation is to sin +against love, through dull unimaginative lust, the average +Englishwoman's through dull unimaginative chastity. Men live too much in +the sensuous, and women in the supersensuous, to meet fairly. Love, the +reconciler, himself is too weak fully to reconcile them and to bring +them together in that perfect ecstasy, body to body, spirit to spirit, +soul to soul, that "unreserve of mingled being," which Shelley, giving a +voice to the desire of all ages, but especially to modern desire, sighed +for. To understand Shelley's protest against marriage, we must +understand his ideal of love--the unconstrained rush together of two +personalities of opposite sexes, in whom the body is but the vehicle of +the spirit. This love is not born merely of the flickering fire of the +senses. It is a divine flame, kindled alike in body, soul, and spirit, +and fusing them into unity. Of course, if this love is to be the great +end of life, marriage is somewhat of an impertinence. While the divine +fire burns, what need of artificial ties to keep the two lovers +together? If it goes out why should they be kept together? To which the +prosaic moralist replies: "Your ideal of love is very beautiful, no +doubt. Get as much as you can of this divine flame into your Hymen's +torch; and after all, every young couple start with some such high-flown +notions in their heads; but I must have some guarantee that your wife +and children are not left as burdens upon the parish, when you begin to +feel the pinch of real life, and the glamour of your imagination fades +from your 'divine mistress.' Marriage was not ordained to be the +paradise of ideal love, but for the sober discipline of the affections +of men and women, and above all for the production and rearing up of +good citizens of the commonwealth. To judge by your own writings, Mr. +Shelley, you seem to have been running after a will-o'-the-wisp all your +life in this ideal love. And if _you_ did not catch it, is it likely +that Tom, Dick, and Harry will? In any case the pursuit of it seems just +as likely to make inconstant lovers as that sensuality you affect to +look down upon. You always had the word 'for ever' on your tongue; but +how long did your for evers last? No, no, my dear sir, the good of +society demands fidelity to incurred responsibilities, and we find by +practical experience that both men and women, but especially men, are +inclined to shirk the responsibilities which indulgence of the sexual +passion brings in its train. Hence the marriage contract. It does not +concern itself primarily with either love or lovers, but it helps to +keep husbands and wives together, and women and children maintained +decently without coming upon the rates. And, mind you, it does not by +any means leave love out in the cold. It may not rise to your +transcendental ecstasy; but it is love all the same, good honest +domestic affection, when your young couples get well broken to harness. +Did you not say yourself that one might as well go to a gin-shop for a +leg of mutton as to you for anything human? Well, give me the wholesome +leg of mutton--none of your gin for me. Egad, sir, when I see some +honest couple going to church of a Sunday morning, with half-a-dozen +pretty children about them, I call that a poem--ay, and a better poem, +Mr. Shelley, than all the fantastic Epipsychidions you ever put upon +paper. Hang it all, sir, let a man make love to his own wife, and stick +to her when he has got her. I'm a plain man, sir, but I hope a moral +man, and them's my sentiments." To all which, let Shelley reply as best +he may. The fact is that he has given no satisfactory reply, simply +because it was only just before his death that he realised the +complexity of the problem of life. He did, however, see clearly that the +bringing of men and women into more complete harmony, by raising the +ideal of love, was the most important step towards that renewal of the +world, that living of the most perfect life attainable by man, for which +he sighed and after which he strove; and he saw clearly that our +solution of the marriage problem was imperfect, not merely in practice, +but to some extent in theory. As regards the subjection of women, he +seems to have considered this wholly an artificial product of religious +dogma, and not, as it is, the natural result of an imperfect +civilization. Man protects woman because, on the whole, she adds to his +comfort. Protection implies subjection, and subjection to a tyrant is +slavery; and man, if not altogether a tyrant in these later times, has +always the temptation to become one, and the tyrannical traditions of +bygone times have a strong tendency to persist. Laws and even customs +lag far behind the highest public opinion of the day. + +Now, men being in possession of the capital of the world, the material +means of life, women stand to them in the position of what the +socialists call wage-slaves. They must do what their employers require +of them on pain of starvation, and there is no true freedom of contract. +And so far men have almost without exception required of them +concubinage or menial service, or a mixture of both. English marriage, +while recognizing the existing fact of the subjection of women, has done +something to raise their status, chiefly by making the bond between the +contracting parties theoretically, and to a great extent practically, +one of love and mutual service. It has indeed been much more than +Shelley seems to have realized, the _nidus_ of a love pure and +wholesome, if not very passionate. Theoretically strictly monogamic, it +has been so practically to a very respectable extent. It has put a +perceptible curb upon the strong polygamous instinct of men, and it has +fostered the monogamous habit in women enormously. English women are for +the most part faithful wives. Even transitory prostitution does not kill +the monogamous propensity in them. They settle down into marriage, or +live faithfully with one man, if they get the chance. + +Still, Englishwomen are not satisfied with marriage as it exists. Let us +hear Mrs. Mona Caird on the subject. She is much more prosaic than +Shelley; she looks at the subject, chiefly from the standpoint of +practical comfort. She sees that from this standpoint, from various +reasons, which may be summed up in the phrase "incompatibility of +temper," marriage does not induce even that amount of mutual toleration, +not to say happiness, without which it is impossible for man and wife to +live decently together. She therefore asks, What good purpose is served +by keeping two people together who are evidently unfit to live together? +Why indeed? if, as Mrs. Caird says, "The matter is one in which any +interposition, whether of law or society, is an impertinence." But, +unfortunately, law and society are the most impertinent things in the +world, always binding with briers our joys and desires, and poking their +ugly noses into our private affairs in the interests of the British +ratepayer. We shall never be happy until we have got rid of them--if +even then, and it is quite impossible to get rid of them for some time +to come. Now the British ratepayer cares nothing about women and +children, except in so far as there is a danger of their coming upon the +rates. And he is a little scared about giving greater liberty of +divorce, "saving for the cause of adultery," as he piously ejaculates. +He does not like stray women and children going about the world. But +after all, adultery is only a particular, perhaps even a minor, case of +incompatibility. Marriage was made for man, and not man for marriage, +and although marriage may work well in nine cases out of ten, the tenth +case must be considered, and relief given if possible. The individual is +right to demand relief, and the mode of giving relief is a question for +the legislator. Greater facility of divorce must come, and will come, +now that both men and women demand it. + +Mrs. Caird's demand for greater laxity of the marriage bond _ab initio_, +the nature of the contract being left to the contracting parties, like a +marriage settlement, is quite outside the sphere of practical politics, +as she is herself quite aware. If men were but educated up to the +Shelleyan ideal, then we might try all sorts of delightful experiments +in marriage, and gradually arrive at absolute freedom of contract, which +would _not_ mean that absolutely unsentimental hygienic promiscuity +which is the ideal of the highly advanced physiologist. But men are not +yet harmonious creatures, like Wordsworth's cloud, which "moveth +altogether if it move at all." They are torn by their lusts which war in +their members. Hence these bonds. Lust, lust, lust: this is the most +concentrated form of selfishness--the undying worm at the root of the +Tree of Life. This is the tyrant that women have at last begun to +recognize as their deadly adversary and to fight against. Shelley, a +better physician than Goethe, laid his finger on this plague-spot, and +told the age plainly: "Thou ailest here." But he did not see that +instead of saying, "Abolish marriage and prostitution will cease," he +ought to have said, "Abolish prostitution and marriage will +cease"--marriage without love being only a particular form of +prostitution. He did not see that the abolition of marriage would no +more get rid of lust than the abolition of private property would get +rid of selfishness. We have already, in monogamic marriage, struggled +painfully upward to the level of the higher animals; let us not imperil +this progress rashly. + +The Cythnas of the present day have felt their burthens more directly +than Shelley did. Hence their demand for economic independence, that +they may not be forced into marriage or prostitution by the various +degrees of starvation. Their demand is a just one, and must be satisfied +somehow, even if we have to put a bonus upon womanhood and pay women, +not merely fair wages for their work of all kinds, but a tribute to them +as women, as potential mothers, which shall fairly handicap the sexes +in the struggle for existence, and put men more on their good behaviour. + +Shelley, the mystic, who looked for a miraculous change in nature +coincident with a miraculous change in man, seems to have seen, almost +as little as the average socialist of the present day, who believes in +the spiritual efficacy of a purely material revolution, that the ideals +and interests of the two sexes are widely apart, more so now than ever +before probably. He, like the socialist, in his impatience to arrive at +a practical solution of the life-problem, did not take the trouble to +understand the true bearing of the doctrine of Malthus. He did not see +that whether Malthus's figures be right or wrong, it is a fact that the +population of any given district (be it an English barony, or the world +itself) tends to increase up to the limits of its food-supply, taking +the word _food_ in its very widest sense to signify all the means of +well-being; and that this tendency is a fundamental element in all +social problems, just as friction is in all mechanical problems. He did +not see that, other things being the same, a higher standard of comfort, +while, finally tending to diminish the rate of increase of population, +first increases its pressure. He did not contemplate that strike against +child-bearing on the part of women, which is induced, not merely by the +desire for personal comfort, but is largely due to the vague influence +of those new ideals of which he was himself the prophet. He, like the +socialist, thought that we might go on increasing and multiplying _ad +libitum_, till we reached the ultimate limit of standing-room on the +earth, and of miraculous chemical food out of the air, and began, as +astral bodies, to emigrate to Mars. Women know better than this; and +feel the pinch of population, when what they just now consider their +higher life is hampered by children. The woman who has one child more +than she wants is an over-populated woman; and the advanced woman of the +present day, having her own higher culture, and the culture of humanity, +on the brain, possibly with a high ideal of the duties of maternity, and +frequently a sickly and weary creature, morbid in body and mind, is very +easily over-populated. Hence much social discomfort. Shelley does not +seem to have contemplated this, nor seen that the good-natured +acceptance of the feminine ideal by man might lead him, like poor St. +Peter in his old age, "whither he would not." How all this is going to +end I confess I don't know. I trust in more delicate adjustments, a +higher and more wholesome life all round; but the ascent of man is +always a painful process. Meanwhile it is quite time for this bald, +disjointed chat of mine to come to an end. + + + + + _London: + Printed by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bread Street Hill. + September, 1889._ + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). + +The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these +letters have been replaced with transliterations. + +The misprint "tempation" has been corrected to "temptation" (page 15). + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHELLEY AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION*** + + +******* This file should be named 34085.txt or 34085.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/0/8/34085 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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