AUGUST 429 



ever. Do you call me practical for speaking in this way ? 

 Very well, I am practical and tell you what I know.' 



To go back to our original text, * The Marriage 

 Market.' The writers of all four articles seem to me too 

 much under the impression that marriages are decided by 

 the parents. So far as my experience goes, in England 

 this is not the case. The girls take their lives in their 

 own hands, though often with very insufficient knowledge. 

 I have known girls who distrust to such a degree the 

 feelings they may have for a man who is rich that they 

 have actually refused him for fear they should be 

 influenced by worldly reasons, everyone about them 

 taking it for granted that they could never be so foolish 

 as not to marry him. Many girls think of marriage 

 solely as a means of escaping home duties, and assume 

 that the duties will be lighter after marriage than before. 



I hear many people condemn the girl who ' marries 

 for money ' ; and Marie Corelli vituperates against the 

 women who ' sell themselves,' as she calls it. This seems 

 to me unfair. Marriage and even love do not alter a 

 nature ; and if a girl knows herself, and is quite well aware 

 that she cares most for the things that money alone can 

 give her, I think there is more of wickedness if she makes 

 the misery of the man she may like best by marrying him 

 if he is poor, than in accepting the rich man if she can 

 get him. I speak only of those whose standard of life is 

 a low one. What is supremely idiotic, and distinctly the 

 fault of the mother, showing a general want of training, is 

 to imagine that when you marry a man for his money, 

 whom you neither love nor admire, you are to have as well 

 all the joys of life which no money can buy. The thing 

 is ridiculous. There are few who, like Danae, can have 

 god and gold together. Marrying for money or position 

 may be a high or a low line ; it is often the only vent for 

 a woman's ambition. But if she does it of her own free 



