Getting Married · Chapter
Divorce Favorable to Marriage explained
The chapter argues that divorce is not the destruction of marriage but a necessary condition for its maintenance, allowing for re-assortment of ill-suited couples and making marriage more appealing.
What happens
The chapter argues that divorce is not the destruction of marriage but a necessary condition for its maintenance, allowing for re-assortment of ill-suited couples and making marriage more appealing. It contrasts England's restrictive divorce laws with more liberal ones in Washington State and Japan, showing that higher divorce rates do not lead to societal collapse but rather reduce hidden unhappiness and clandestine polygamy. The author criticizes alarmist reactions to divorce as moral cowardice and a resistance to progress.
Themes in this chapter
Divorce and Legal Reform
The chapter advocates for liberal divorce laws as a means to maintain marriage and reduce unhappiness, criticizing England's restrictive laws.
Economic Dependence of Women
The author notes that economic slavery of women, especially in the middle classes, suppresses divorce rates, implying that economic emancipation would change marital dynamics.
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
The chapter accuses journalists, bishops, and politicians of moral cowardice, disguising fear of change as virtue and purity.
Key passages
“Divorce, in fact, is not the destruction of marriage, but the first condition of its maintenance.”
Divorce actually helps preserve marriage rather than destroy it.
Central thesis of the chapter.
“A thousand indissoluble marriages mean a thousand marriages and no more. A thousand divorces may mean two thousand marriages; for the couples may marry again.”
Indissoluble marriages limit the total number of marriages, while divorce allows people to remarry and thus increases the overall number of marriages.
Illustrates the re-assortment benefit of divorce.
“Also, the fact that a divorce is possible often prevents its being petitioned for, not only because it puts married couples on their good behavior towards one another, but because, as no room feels like a prison if the door is left open, the removal of the sense of bondage would at once make marriage much happier than it is now.”
The mere possibility of divorce encourages better behavior and reduces the feeling of being trapped, making marriages happier.
Psychological effect of divorce availability.
“From this point of view England has the worst civil marriage law in the world, with the exception of silly South Carolina.”
England's marriage law is among the most restrictive globally, only slightly better than South Carolina's.
Critique of English divorce law.
“When journalists and bishops and American Presidents and other simple people describe this Washington result as alarming, they are speaking as a peasant speaks of a motor car or an aeroplane when he sees one for the first time.”
Critics of high divorce rates are like peasants frightened by new technology; their fear stems from unfamiliarity, not genuine danger.
Dismisses alarmist reactions as ignorant.