The Superstition of Divorce

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I. THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE

It is futile to talk of reform without reference to form. To take a case from my own taste and fancy, there
is nothing I feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window. All casements are magic casements,
whether they open on the foam or the front-garden; they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of
limitation and liberty. But if I followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows, it would end
in having no walls. It would also (it may be added incidentally) end in having no windows either; for a
window makes a picture by making a picture-frame. But there is a simpler way of stating my more
simple and fatal error. It is that I have wanted a window, without considering whether I wanted a house.
Now many appeals are being made to us to-day on behalf of that light and liberty that might well be
symbolised by windows; especially as so many of them concern the enlightenment and liberation of the
house, in the sense of the home. Many quite disinterested people urge many quite reasonable
considerations in the case of divorce, as a type of domestic liberation; but in the journalistic and general
discussion of the matter there is far too much of the mind that works backwards and at random, in the
manner of all windows and no walls. Such people say they want divorce, without asking themselves
whether they want marriage. Even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go
through the preliminary formality of being married; and unless the nature of this initial act be
considered, we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind. To be
divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried; and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we
do not know if it is done.

There is perhaps no worse advice