Chapter III – Marriage


Health, happiness, and usefulness await those who enter into marriage from pure motives, accept its responsibilities, live up to its duties, and share its joys in moderation, and with due regard to that proportionate exercise of all the bodily, mental, and spiritual powers and faculties which alone can result in perfect health….


Why women marry, is a question that has long puzzled the philosophers, and becomes more and more difficult to answer as one by one the avenues of professional and business life often to them. It is impossible to believe that any considerable portion of them do so because only through marriage can they attain to that most exalted office open to humanity–motherhood–and perhaps we cannot do better than content ourselves with the answer that it is because marriage is an institution established by the Creator Himself, and rooted into the very basis and fibre of human nature, and because in the case of each individual married woman, some man asked her.

But both portions of that answer plead, in their very statement, for more sound and complete instruction for the young, and especially for girls, on all subjects connected with this institution. Unfortunate, unhappy, unworthy marriages are matters of almost every day occurrence; immature young girls are asked by boys and men, of whose real character they know, and can know almost nothing, to enter a state of which, in its real significance and relations, they are absolutely ignorant beyond, perhaps, the facts that the majority of grown-up folk are, or have been married, and that only such, for some mysterious reason, are burdened with the nuisance of children. We shall not be rid of matrimonial blunders; of marrying for money, for a home, for convenience; of ruined health; of blighted happiness; of worthless, incompetent mothers, and frivolous, unprincipled children; or of our disgraceful divorced record, until we begin to give our daughters sound ideas of the meaning and importance of marriage, and wise and practical guidance in forming their opinions of boys and men; and to do this successfully, experience shows that we must begin early, long before school-days are over.

The best school for the girl, as for the boy, is the mixed school, and until the highest grades are reached, as a rule, it is better to avoid both the boarding, and the city public school. As the home itself is by far the best place in which to train and develop the character of the young, so the home and family model- male and female, man and women, boy and girl, sharing together the tasks, the experiences, the joys, the troubles, that go to make up life–is the best one to adopt as far as it can be made to apply to those means of education which cannot be brought under the domestic roof. The monastic system is a failure, at least, it has no relation to our modern conception of social and family life. To prevent the evils of ill-assorted marriages, educate young people, and especially girls, on this very subject. And the only way to teach a girl what a boy or man is, or should be, is to put her in contact with him. Let her study the same books in the same classes, meet him at the same games, and discuss the same problems and every-day affairs with him, and thus she will best learn how to judge him when he asks her to risk life’s voyage with him, and at the same time how best to make true men out of her own boys in the future.

And teach her plainly and truly what marriage is and what it signifies. Root out that false idea that it is founded upon love, while at the same time you teach that its relations are so intimate and binding that there is no possible safety for those entering its bonds unless they are absolutely certain that there is between them that devoted, pure, self-sacrificing love which the Master’s command makes it the duty of each of His creatures and disciples to feel for all his fellows. And on the other hand save her from the conception of marriage that has given polygamous Mormonism its power, namely, that its sole object is the preservation of the species, while at the same time you teach that no one has a right to enter this holy estate unless willing to accept all the duties and responsibilities, including parent-hood, which the all-wise Father has seen fit to associate with this institution.

The object of marriage is the development of character; it is founded not upon love but upon sexual instincts, which, though given by the Creator, honorable in all, and beautiful in their proper uses and relations, are yet unworthy the sacred name of Love. Teach your daughter that these instincts, of which she probably knows comparatively little in her own body before marriage, are the impelling motive in the man who seeks her hand and heart. Teach her that without these sexual desires no man would ever sacrifice his personal liberty, or see the many charms her lover now discovers in her person or in the thought of being ever near her, no matter how many and how different causes combine with this one to make her attractive to him; and you have given her more profit than she could find in a hundred romantic novels. Let her know that her failure as a wife, whatever the cause, to meet and fall in with the instincts in her husband upon which marriage is founded, will almost certainly alienate from her his affections sooner or later, no matter how faithful he may seem or how congenial otherwise she may be; and you have given her a secret which will do more to secure for her happiness in the married state than all the fashion plates and cookery recipes in existence. Health and happiness are not prizes drawn in a lottery; they are the result and evidence of right living. Sexual organs and instincts are heaven-implanted, and the women who marries has not merely a privilege regarding them, it is her duty to her husband, her children and herself, to heartily enjoy with her husband sexual intercourse, and to keep herself in such condition that she may enjoy it.

And this involves knowledge of the significance of marriage before its consummation. The day for this event should be selected so as to be as remote as possible from the monthly flow, for, as a general rule through life, a woman should be excused from sexual intercourse during her periods, and her first experiences of that act should interfere as little as possible with them. The only exception to the rule just given is that in case a woman seems barren, and no other time of meeting her husband results in conception, a union during her period may be tried as an experiment that sometimes succeeds if tried with sufficient caution and gentleness. And gentleness should always characterize the performance of this act. Usually at the beginning it is necessary that the membrane which closes in the vagina to a greater or less extent, be broken and this is commonly more or less painful to the woman, besides being attended with some loss of blood. Any violence on the part of the husband in effecting this initial connection is far worse than unnecessary–it is brutal, and quite likely to result in permanent injury to the wife, possibly making all future sexual intercourse painful instead of pleasurable to her. Once the membrane is fairly broken and the act completed the woman ought to be allowed an interval of several days before repeating inter-course, to allow the healing of the wounded parts in their new conditions; then the act may be safely and pleasantly performed with due moderation in the future, and without so much likelihood of evil consequences.

This membrane which closes the vagina is called the hymen, and its object is undoubtedly to serve as an evidence of virginity. But it should never to forgotten that it is far from being a positive or infallible evidence. It is even possible for it to persist after marriage, and cases have been known in which this membrane has been found impeding the progress of an infant on its way into the world. Such a state of things is, however, extremely rare, while the absence of the membrane in a young and innocent virgin is by no means uncommon. A certain class of midwives and wet-nurses frequently make it a point to break up the membrane in new-born girls, and necessary surgical interferences and occasional accidents destroy the hymen in others. Then, too, the hymen is a variously-shaped organ and is sometimes so small as scarcely to be noticed by an unprofessional person. Undoubtedly it is broken in some cases by attempts at masturbation, and occasionally girls are born without this membrane. All these things make it highly unjust to entertain the slightest suspicion of a woman’s virtue solely because at her marriage the hymen is not present.

After its rupture the membrane curls up at the sides of the vagina and shrivels away, but if during this process it is irritated and inflamed by repeated acts of sexual indulgence it is apt to become a permanent source of pain of a neuralgic character, lasting often until the birth of a child so alters the arrangement of parts as to cure the difficulty.

With regard to the repetition of the sexual act, what was said on a preceding page must apply here. When anything more than a temporary feeling of lassitude succeeds it, indulgence is probably excessive. A woman ordinarily can endure more indulgence than can a man, but she ought to be entirely excused during her period, and even for a day or so after it, and also during any illness, since a woman can hardly be ill without experiencing some untoward effects in the sexual region of her body. And again after a “confinement,” a woman ought to excuse herself from the approaches of her husband for from three to six months, that the greatly distended parts may have ample time and rest to resume the normal conditions.

Henry Granger Hanchett
HENRY G. HANCHETT, M.D., F.A.A., (1853-1918)
Member New York State and County Homoeopathic Medical Societies ;
Formerly Staff-Physician to the College and Wilson Mission
Dispensaries ; Fellow of the N. Y. Academy of Anthropology ; Member American Historical Association,