ide; he compels adornment, for what is "good enough
for my husband" is not good enough for the lady over the way. The
stranger serves the pleasure lust, this violent passion of man, and
cannot harm him because the lust for pleasure, within the limits of
hysteria, involves a desire for good looks, for elegance, for gaiety;
above all, love of pleasure was reviled of our fathers, and whatever our
fathers thought bad is become a good thing. Our fathers did not
understand certain forms of pride: there is more than pride of body in
good looks, good clothes, and showing off before acquaintances: there is
achievement, which means pride of conquest. I imagine that the happiest
couple in the world is the one where each lives in perpetual fear that
somebody will run away with the other.

Looking at it broadly, I see marriage as a Chinese puzzle, almost, but
not quite, insoluble. Spoilt by coldness, spoilt by ardour, spoilt by
excess, spoilt by indifference, spoilt by obedience, by stupidity, by
self-assertion, spoilt by familiarity, spoilt by ignorance. Spoilt in
every possible way that man can invent. Spoilt by every ounce of
influence a jealous or ironical world can muster, spoilt by habit, by
contrast, by obtuseness quite as much as by overclose understanding. And
yet it stands. It stands because there is nothing much to put into its
place, because marriage is the only road that leads a man away from his
dinner when he is forty-five, or teaches a woman to preserve her
complexion. It stands like most human things, because it is the better
of two bad alternatives. Only because it stands we must not think that
it will never change. All things change, otherwise one could not bear
them. I suspect that marriage, that was once upon a time the taking of a
woman by a man, which has now grown legalized, and may become courteous,
will turn into a very skilled occupation. It will be recognized still
more than now that all freedom need not be lost after putting on the
wedding ring. As legal right and privilege grow, as women develop
private earnings, a consciousness of worth must arise. Already women
realize their value and demand its recognition. If they demand it long
enough, they will get it. I suspect that the economic problem is at the
root of the marriage problem, for people are not indiscriminate in their
relationships, and even Don Juan, after a while, longs to be faithful,
if only somebody could teach him how to be it. Marriage can