2 In England, Tennyson, in The Princess, was the first to give to “the new woman” her name and to speak of her objects, and many others began in the middle of the last century indirectly to develop the idea of love, especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the sisters BrontË, and Miss Muloch among women writers. Robert Browning, George Meredith, and other great poets among the men have also furthered it indirectly. In later days, George Egerton in Rosa Amorosa and Edward Carpenter in Love’s Coming of Age have, in their different ways, given a remarkable treatment of the evolution of love. Woman Free by Ellis Ethelmer, A Noviciate for Marriage by Edith M. Ellis, The Woman Who Did by Grant Allen, belong to the same group of writings.

3 Walt Whitman.

4 As far as England is concerned I will here only remind my readers of Galton’s contributions to this subject; of Geddes and Thomson’s Evolution of Sex; of Havelock Ellis’s Man and Woman, Sex in Relation to Society, etc.

5 See Woman and Economics and later works by this American authoress, who has many adherents in Europe as well as in America.

6 Every English reader knows what Dickens achieved in this respect. I will only remind them here of Hannah Lynch’s (anonymously published) Autobiography of a Child.

7 Before 1857, no legal divorce in the usual meaning of the term existed in England. The ecclesiastical courts could grant a sort of “divorce from bed and board,” whereupon the aggrieved party could get rid of his unfaithful half by a special Act of Parliament in each particular case. As a consequence, only very wealthy people could afford this luxury, for it cost immense sums to get a special motion of this kind through Parliament. The further injustice prevailed, that in practice this course was open only to men, not to women.

It was, moreover, with the greatest difficulty that Palmerston succeeded in carrying the reform of 1857. The friends of reform urged above all that the old law was unjust to poor people, and that among both rich and poor it had become increasingly common to marry again in an illegal way, so that in the eyes of the law thousands of people in England were living in bigamy.

The new law of 1857 introduced a separate secular court for divorce causes, divorce was made legal, and the possibility of taking advantage of it was placed within the reach of others than the wealthiest.

But the experience of fifty years has shown that divorce procedure is still altogether too costly for the poor, and entails an infinity of time and trouble. Furthermore, a number of revolting injustices remain.

Thus, for instance, a wife cannot obtain legal divorce from her husband either because he is an habitual drunkard, or an incurable lunatic, or is imprisoned for life for some grave crime, or has abandoned his home and refused to contribute to the support of his wife and children! The most she can obtain under such circumstances is a judicial separation—which makes it possible for either party to enter into any illegitimate connection they please. A husband can obtain divorce from his wife if he can prove a single case of infidelity on her part; but the wife cannot obtain divorce from her husband even if he can be proved to be living in continual adultery. In order to get rid of him she must be able to prove that he has been guilty of cruelty towards her or has deserted her for a period of two years.

The worst thing is that the greater offence is punished far more leniently than the less. A wife can get a judicial separation on account of her husband’s infidelity, but loses therewith the right of proceeding against him for divorce, and neither she nor her husband may marry again. But if the husband has also been guilty of cruelty to her, she obtains a divorce, and then both she and her husband are at liberty to remarry. The man who deceives his wife is not free to marry another; but if he both deceives her and beats her, he is divorced and may marry again!

In general the opponents of the existing law declare that it contributes powerfully to the formation of illegitimate connections.

8 These details refer, of course, to the Swedish law.—Translator.