Getting Married · Chapter
For Better for Worse explained
The chapter critiques the marriage service as a commercial contract disguised by religious and poetic sentiment, arguing that it forces two people in a transient, passionate state to vow lifelong fidelity.
What happens
The chapter critiques the marriage service as a commercial contract disguised by religious and poetic sentiment, arguing that it forces two people in a transient, passionate state to vow lifelong fidelity. It observes that most married couples do not truly live together but merely share a household, and that the ideal of marital intimacy is rarely achieved. The chapter contrasts the intolerable strain of poverty-stricken couples in a single room with the empty domestic peace of the leisured classes, concluding that the revolt against marriage is not only against its sordid origins in sex slavery but also against its sentimentality and romantic illusions.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Marriage as an Institution
The chapter argues that the marriage service is a commercial contract of property and slavery disguised by religious restraint and poetry, and that the marriage vow is impossible and unwholesome.
Illusions of Romantic Love
The chapter describes the passion that leads to marriage as 'the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions,' and criticizes the sentimentality and Amorism of marriage.
Key passages
“when two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”
People in the grip of an intense, irrational, and fleeting passion are forced to promise they will stay in that heightened state forever.
Highlights the absurdity of the marriage vow.
“The typical British husband sees much less of his wife than he does of his business partner, his fellow clerk, or whoever works beside him day by day.”
The average husband spends more time with his work colleagues than with his wife.
Illustrates the lack of real intimacy in marriage.
“Very few couples can live in a single-roomed tenement without exchanging blows quite frequently.”
Couples forced to share one room often end up physically fighting.
Shows the strain of poverty on marriage.