The Marriage Book (49 page)

NEWLYWEDS

WILLIAM HOGARTH

MARRIAGE À LA MODE
, 1743

William Hogarth (1697–1764) was an English painter and engraver known best—despite his continual attempts at being viewed as a serious portraitist—for his insightful, usually satirical, pictorial commentaries on society.
Marriage à la Mode
was a popular six-part work that the artist painted in oils and later re-created as engravings. The second image in the series, called “Shortly after the Marriage,” shows a pair of newlyweds still awake past one in the morning after an evening apparently spent apart. The room is a mess, the husband debauched, the wife despairing, and their employee fleeing the scene in dismay.

BOB EUBANKS AND CONTESTANTS

THE NEWLYWED GAME
, CIRCA 1972

Part game show, part reality show, in some ways an immediate parody-in-the-making,
The Newlywed Game
, hosted by the ever-cheerful Bob Eubanks, was on the air in its initial incarnation from 1966 to 1974. It featured four newlywed couples, with wives and husbands given the chance to predict what their spouses would say in answer to questions that ranged from the straightforward (like favorite color) to the obviously suggestive, such as the one below.

“Making whoopee” was the show’s signature euphemism for
sex
at a time when networks would have censored more direct references. Nevertheless, one of the show’s most infamous moments, aired in 1977, included a wife’s answer to the question “Where is the weirdest place you have ever had the urge to make whoopee?” Her answer—aired but bleeped out—turned out to be not geographical but anatomical.

THE DON’T SWEAT GUIDE FOR NEWLYWEDS
, 2003

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff—and It’s All Small Stuff
became a number one bestseller in 1997 and was eventually published in 135 countries. Its author, who parlayed that success into a hugely lucrative cottage industry, was Richard Carlson, a psychotherapist who used to sign his letters with the phrase “Treasure Yourself.” His several dozen spin-offs included advice books for parents, bosses, teenagers, and, in the case of the above example, newlyweds. Carlson’s wife, Kristine, wrote several of the books as well, and after Richard’s death in 2006 at the age of forty-five, she continued to spread his live-in-the-moment message through both traditional and web formats, including guidebooks published by the Don’t Sweat Press.

It’s a good guess that if you’ve been trying unsuccessfully to change things about your partner since the wedding, right about now, you’re pretty frustrated. Guess what? People don’t change just because you married them.

Choosing to accept someone else for exactly who they are can liberate you from preconceptions. When you make a conscious choice to truly accept your new husband or wife, to understand that those little behaviors that drive you crazy are simply part of the person that you fell in love with, you can finally free yourself of your efforts to change them. Giving up this task will relieve you of the tension that has probably built up between you and your partner because of the pressure that you’ve put upon him or her to change.

O

OBJECTIONS

PROVERB

Why buy a cow when the milk is so cheap?

FRANCIS BACON

“OF MARRIAGE AND SINGLE LIFE,” 1612

Sir Francis Bacon (see
Jealousy
) lined up the pros and cons of marriage in his oft-quoted essay. Though he opened with the objection below, he proceeded to note that “those that have Children should have greatest care of future times, unto which, they know, they must transmit their dearest pledges.”

He that hath Wife and Children hath given Hostages to Fortune; For they are Impediments to great Enterprises, either of Vertue, or Mischiefe. Certainly, the best workes, and of greatest Merit for the Publike, have proceeded from the unmarried or Childlesse Men, which, both in Affection and Meanes, have married and endowed the Publike.

GIACOMO CASANOVA

HISTORY OF MY LIFE
, 1797

Perhaps history’s most famous seducer, Venice’s Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was at various times an abbot, soldier, gambler, legal assistant, musician, and Freemason. He left sexual conquests in his path all over Europe, while getting into and out of trouble—and prison—as he enraged authorities with his libertine behavior and alleged blasphemies. Unmarried and ultimately worn down by illness and isolation, he embarked late in life on an autobiography that originally ran to twelve volumes but was much abridged upon publication.

The first speaker is Pauline, Casanova’s young lover, referring to the way the couple was pretending to be married while entertaining Sophie, his daughter from a previous relationship. Sophie has just left Casanova’s home and is on her way to see her mother.

“I laugh to think of [Sophie] telling her [mother] that she found you at table with your wife.”

“She will not believe it, for she knows too well that marriage is the sacrament I detest.”

“Why?”

“Because it is the tomb of love.”

VICTORIA WOODHULL

“WHAT I OPPOSE IN MARRIAGE,”
BOSTON INVESTIGATOR
, 1876

Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838–1927) was a suffragist and fierce advocate of rights for women to marry, divorce, bear children, and even engage in prostitution without interference from the government. She was also the first woman to run for United States president, in 1872. She was fifteen when she married for the first time, and was divorced twice before she was forty. Her third marriage—to a British banker—lasted eighteen years, until his death.

A union between two persons of opposite sex, that is enforced by law is, in my view, nothing more or less than prostitution. I maintain stoutly and always that men have no right to make a law that shall take away the power of woman to control her own body. It may be denied that marriage, as a legal institution, does do this; but we have only to remember that, if a woman refuse the use of her body to her husband, the law gives him a divorce. Now here is a fact that cannot be escaped, and to which I desire to pin all those who pretend that they “do not agree with Mrs. Woodhull.” Under this liberty, the law is simply a license for husbands to compel their wives to their desires, whether it be the wish of their wives or not. This is perhaps a rough
view to take of the “divine institution”; but it is a true one nevertheless. For purely legal marriage I have the utmost horror; and it seems to me that every pure-hearted woman should regard it in the same way. . . .

But this is not my principal objection to legal marriage. If women, with their eyes wide open, prefer to obtain a living by selling themselves into such slavery, they have a perfect right to do so, and I should content myself with attempting to point out the terrible degradation of the condition. But when the evils do not stop with the two contracting parties, when by the relations entered into or maintained for any motive other than love they produce children to curse the future, then I have a right to do something more than merely to call attention to the debasement. I have the right to protest in the name of a common humanity against the breeding and rearing of children under such improper conditions. I have the right to say to men and women who are only legally married, that they have no right to bear children to curse the world and to be burdens to themselves and society.

AUGUST STRINDBERG

GETTING MARRIED
, 1884

August Strindberg (see
Children
), was still married to his first wife, Siri, when he published
Getting Married
and was consequently accused of blasphemy. After his trial and acquittal, his marriage broke up, and he lost custody of his four children. He had two short, unhappy marriages after that, leaving him deeply bitter and making the observations he had offered in the preface, below, seem all the more poignant.

The reasons for an unhappy marriage are many. The first lies in the nature of marriage itself. Two human beings, and what is more, beings of opposite sexes, are incautious enough to promise to stick together for the rest of their lives.

Thus marriage is based on an impossibility. One partner develops in one direction, the other in another, and their marriage breaks up. Or one of the two remains stationary, while the other develops, and they drift apart. Incompatibility between husband and wife may arise when two strong spirits clash, and realize that no compromise is possible unless one partner gives way. This makes them hate their bonds. If they were free they would adjust to each other, now they will not, for to do so would be a surrender of personality. Finally they may reach a position where, in order to keep their identity uncontaminated, and prompted by an instinctive impulse of self-preservation, each grows to hate what the other thinks. To contradict becomes a
necessity as if it were a guarantee that each would be able to keep themselves and their thoughts intact. This situation, that the world finds so hard to explain, is one that often arises. They once loved each other, they shared the same views, but suddenly this inexplicable antipathy breaks out, and all that is left is a couple who cannot agree.

J. D. SALINGER

FRANNY AND ZOOEY
, 1961

With his short stories about the Glasses, J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) created an eccentric and wholly vivid Manhattan family. In this scene—memorably set in the bathroom of the clan’s apartment—Zooey, the youngest son, is told by his mother that she wishes he would get married.

He gave an explosive sound, mostly through the nose, of either laughter or the opposite of laughter. Mrs. Glass quickly and anxiously leaned forward to see which it was. It was laughter, more or less, and she sat back relieved. “Well, I
do
,” she insisted. “Why
don’t
you?”