# Remoteness of the Facts from the Ideal explained — Getting Married

> Chapter companion for Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw.

## What happens

This chapter contrasts the idealized notion of marriage with its flawed reality, arguing that the institution is already unraveling under social pressures. It points out that legal changes in other countries have not destroyed society, suggesting that marriage as practiced is far from the sacred ideal it is claimed to be.

## Themes in this chapter

### Critique of Marriage as an Institution

The chapter directly challenges the ideal of marriage, calling it a 'figment' and exposing the gap between its pretensions and reality.

### Hypocrisy and Social Pretense

The text accuses bigots of preserving a false ideal of matrimony while the actual institution is 'questionable at its best, and abominable at its worst.'

## Key lines

> the ideal matrimony and domesticity which our bigots implore us to preserve as the corner stone of our society is a figment: what we have really got is something very different, questionable at its best, and abominable at its worst.

The perfect marriage that traditionalists defend is a fantasy; the reality is often dubious or even terrible.

_This encapsulates the chapter's central argument that the ideal and the actual are vastly different._

> Marriage as a fact is not in the least like marriage as an ideal.

The real institution of marriage bears no resemblance to its idealized version.

_A concise statement of the chapter's theme._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/getting_married_se/chapters/remoteness-of-the-facts-from-the-ideal
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/getting_married_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/getting_married_se/chapters