Getting Married · Chapter
The Impersonality of Sex explained
This chapter argues that the sexual relation authorized by marriage is not inherently intimate or personal, but can exist between strangers with nothing in common.
What happens
This chapter argues that the sexual relation authorized by marriage is not inherently intimate or personal, but can exist between strangers with nothing in common. It critiques the romantic illusion that love is a permanent bond, exposing how economic necessity forces women to use sexual attraction as a bait for marriage. Shaw advocates for disentangling sex from exaggerated personal claims and legal slavery, calling for honest contracts about consequences rather than vows based on transient infatuation.
Themes in this chapter
Illusions of Romantic Love
Shaw systematically dismantles the notion that love is a permanent, personal bond, calling it an appetite that is destroyed by gratification and warning against the 'wildly extravagant illusions' that lead to disastrous marriages.
Economic Dependence of Women
The chapter highlights how women without property must be sexually attractive to secure a livelihood through marriage, and how needy parents use false romantic pretences to get daughters 'off their hands.'
Key passages
“the specific relation which marriage authorizes between the parties is the most intimate and personal of human relations, and embraces all the other high human relations. Now this is violently untrue.”
The idea that the sexual relationship in marriage is deeply personal and covers all other human connections is completely false.
Shaw directly refutes a core assumption of traditional marriage.
“it would be far better for everyone, as well as far honester, if young people were taught that what they call love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification”
It would be more honest to teach young people that romantic love is a temporary appetite that fades once satisfied.
Shaw advocates for a radical re-education about the nature of love.
“to make marriage an open trade in it as at present, with money, board and lodging, personal slavery, vows of eternal exclusive personal sentimentalities and the rest of it as the price, is neither virtuous, dignified, nor decent.”
Treating marriage as a commercial exchange of sex for material support and lifelong emotional promises is not moral or respectable.
Shaw condemns the economic and emotional exploitation inherent in conventional marriage.