Getting Married · Chapter
Spurious “Natural” Affection explained
Shaw argues that the convention of natural affection within marriage and family is a manufactured emotion used to mask the intolerable situations created by indissoluble marriage.
What happens
Shaw argues that the convention of natural affection within marriage and family is a manufactured emotion used to mask the intolerable situations created by indissoluble marriage. He criticizes how this pretense leads to bad manners, unsociability, and psychological harm, especially in small families, contrasting the middle class unfavorably with the upper and poorest classes in terms of genuine sociability.
Themes in this chapter
Hypocrisy and Social Pretense
Shaw exposes the convention of natural affection as a hypocritical mask for the misery caused by indissoluble marriage.
Illusions of Romantic Love
The chapter critiques the illusion that family relationships are naturally affectionate, calling it a 'hypnotic suggestion' that distorts human behavior.
Critique of Marriage as an Institution
The indissolubility of marriage is blamed for creating situations that require such spurious emotional conventions to maintain appearances.
Key passages
“the hypnotism of the convention that the natural relation between husband and wife and parent and child is one of intense affection, and that to feel any other sentiment towards a member of one’s family is to be a monster.”
Society hypnotizes us into believing that family members must feel intense love for each other, and that any other feeling is monstrous.
Shaw critiques the manufactured nature of familial affection.
“the convention that marriage and family relationship produces special feelings which alter the nature of human intercourse is a mischievous one.”
The belief that marriage and family create unique emotions that change how people interact is harmful.
Central thesis of the chapter.
“In the middle classes, where the segregation of the artificially limited family in its little brick box is horribly complete, bad manners, ugly dresses, awkwardness, cowardice, peevishness, and all the petty vices of unsociability flourish like mushrooms in a cellar.”
Middle-class families, isolated in small houses, develop bad manners and unsociability as if growing in a dark cellar.
Shaw contrasts middle-class unsociability with upper and lower classes.