V Is Legalised Polyandry the Solution?
In Mr W. Somerset Maugham’s very interesting psychological study, Mrs Craddock, he makes one of his characters say: ‘The fact is that few women can be happy with only one husband. I believe that the only solution of the marriage question is legalised polyandry.’
This is the kind of statement which it is only respectable to receive with horror, but if the secrets of feminine hearts could be known it might prove that a goodly amount of this horror is assumed. I decline to commit my sex either way. Mr Maugham is evidently a gentleman very deeply experienced in feminine hearts, and I daresay he knows what he is talking of. He is, moreover, safely unmarried, but even he entrenches himself behind one of the characters in his novel, and who am I that a greater courage should be expected of me?
There is, of course, a marvellous virtue in the word ‘legalised.’ The most unholy and horrible marriages between fair young girls and rich or titled dotards, drunkards, or cretins are considered perfectly proper and respectable because ‘legalised.’ Yet the people who countenance these abominations would probably be unutterably shocked by the very whisper of polyandry—an infinitely more decent relation, because regulated by honest sex attraction, and free presumably from mercenary considerations. But whether legalised polyandry is THE solution to the marriage question or not, it is clearly an impossible one for women-ridden England, and though of late years women have made startling strides, and shown themselves possessed of unsuspected vitality, it seems unlikely that their superfluous energies will be expended in this direction.