If Women Can Do Without Marriage, Can Men Do So?
And If Not, How Are The Men To Get Wives, If The Women Elect To
Remain Single?
It will be thought that I am treating the subject as though it were
simply jocose, but I beg to assure my reader that such is not my
intention.
It certainly is the fact that that disinclination to an
apprenticeship and unwillingness to bear the long training for a
trade, of which Mrs. Dall complains on the part of young women,
arise from the fact that they have other hopes with which such
apprenticeships would jar; and it is also certain that if such
disinclination be overcome on the part of any great number, it must
be overcome by the destruction or banishment of such hopes. The
question is whether good or evil would result from such a change.
It is often said that whatever difficulty a woman may have in
getting a husband, no man need encounter difficulty in finding a
wife. But, in spite of this seeming fact, I think it must be
allowed that if women are withdrawn from the marriage market, men
must be withdrawn from it also to the same extent.
In any broad view of this matter, we are bound to look not on any
individual case, and the possible remedies for such cases, but on
the position in the world occupied by women in general - on the
general happiness and welfare of the aggregate feminine world, and
perhaps also a little on the general happiness and welfare of the
aggregate male world.
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