The Marriage Book (23 page)

Montaigne didn’t marry until two years after La Boétie’s death and didn’t start writing until four years after that.

A good marriage, if such there be, rejects the company and conditions of love. It tries to reproduce those of friendship. It is a sweet association in life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and solid services and mutual obligations. No woman who savors the taste of it,

Whom the nuptial torch with welcome light has joined,

—Catullus

would want to have the place of a mistress or paramour to her husband. If she is lodged in his affection as a wife, she is lodged there much more honorably and securely. When he dances ardent and eager attention elsewhere, still let anyone ask him then on whom he would rather have some shame fall, on his wife or his mistress; whose misfortune would afflict him more; for whom he wishes more honor. These questions admit of no doubt in a sound marriage.

ELBERT HUBBARD

HOLLYHOCKS AND GOLDENGLOW
, 1912

Author Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) (see
Ernest Cowper letter
) was flamboyant in his opinions and restless in his twenty-year marriage to Bertha Crawford, with whom he had four children. His affair with a schoolteacher named Alice Moore lasted more than a dozen years and produced a daughter, who was for the most part raised by Moore’s sister and brother-in-law. Eventually, Hubbard was sued by them for child support. Amid much scandal, he finally divorced his wife and married Alice in 1904. It was with Alice that he died during the sinking of the
Lusitania
.

A correspondent asks me this: “Do brilliant men prefer brilliant women?”

First, disclaiming the gentle assumption that I am brilliant, I say, yes.

The essence of marriage is companionship, and the woman you face across the coffee-urn every morning for ninety-nine years must be both able to appreciate your jokes and to sympathize with your aspirations. If this is not so, the man will stray, actually, or else chase the ghosts of dead hopes through the graveyard of his dreams.

. . . Brilliant
men are but ordinary men who at intervals are capable of brilliant performances. . . . Your ordinary man who does the brilliant things would be ordinary all the time were it not for the fact that he is inspired by a woman. Great thoughts and great deeds are the children of married minds. . . .

Men and women must go forward hand in hand—single file is savagery. A brilliant man is dependent on a woman, and the greater he is the more he needs her. . . .

The only man who has no use for a woman is one who is not all there—one whom God has overlooked at the final inspection. The brilliant man wants a wife who is his chum, companion, a “good fellow” to whom he can tell the things he knows, or guesses, or hopes: one with whom he can be stupid and foolish—one with whom he can act out his nature. If she is stupid all the time, he will have to be brilliant, and this will kill them both. To grin and bear it is gradual dissolution; to bear it and not grin is death.

JOHN GOTTMAN AND NAN SILVER

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES FOR MAKING MARRIAGE WORK
, 1999

John Gottman (1942–) is a psychologist and author, one of the best known in the vast, cluttered field of marital advice. In the 1990s, his research—based on couples’ perceptions of one another—led him to create a system for predicting a marriage’s success or failure, a system he has claimed to be 90 percent effective. In turn, those predictions led him to collaborate with author Nan Silver on their seminal bestselling work. Other books, as well as DVDs and TV appearances, have followed, as have a research organization (popularly known as “the Love Lab”) and an institute where he and his wife, fellow psychologist Julie Gottman, offer training for other therapists and workshops for couples.

At the heart of my program is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company. These couples tend to know each other intimately—they are well versed in each other’s likes, dislikes, personality quirks, hopes, and dreams. They have an abiding regard for each other and express this fondness not just in the big ways but in little ways day in and day out.

Take the case of hardworking Nathaniel, who runs his own import business and works very long hours. In another marriage, his schedule might be a major liability. But he and his wife Olivia have found ways to stay connected. They talk frequently on the phone during the day. When she has a doctor’s appointment, he remembers to call to see how it went. When he
has a meeting with an important client, she’ll check in to see how it fared. When they have chicken for dinner, she gives him both drumsticks because she knows he likes them best. When he makes blueberry pancakes for the kids Saturday morning, he’ll leave the blueberries out of hers because he knows she doesn’t like them. Although he’s not religious, he accompanies her to church each Sunday because it’s important to her. And although she’s not crazy about spending a lot of time with their relatives, she has pursued a friendship with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters because family matters so much to him.

If all of this sounds humdrum and unromantic, it’s anything but. Through small but important ways Olivia and Nathaniel are maintaining the friendship that is the foundation of their love. As a result they have a marriage that is far more passionate than do couples who punctuate their lives together with romantic vacations and lavish anniversary gifts but have fallen out of touch in their daily lives.

Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse. Because Nathaniel and Olivia have kept their friendship strong despite the inevitable disagreements and irritations of married life, they are experiencing what is known technically as “positive sentiment override.” This means that their positive thoughts about each other and their marriage are so pervasive that they tend to supersede their negative feelings. It takes a much more significant conflict for them to lose their equilibrium as a couple than it would otherwise. Their positivity causes them to feel optimistic about each other and their marriage, to assume positive things about their lives together, and to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

G

GRIEVANCES

WILLIAM DUNBAR

“UPON THE MIDSUMMER EVE, MERRIEST OF NIGHTS,” 15TH CENTURY

William Dunbar (circa 1460–circa 1530) was a Scottish poet and priest notable for the versatility of his writing, which included elegies, hymns, and sermons as well as ribald lampoons and satires.

The speaker in this section of Dunbar’s poem is one wife to another wife and a widow.

My husband was a whoremaster, the hugest in earth; Therefore I hate him with my heart, so help me our Lord.

He is a young man, very lively, but not in the flower of youth, For he is faded very far and enfeebled of strength.

He was as flourishing fresh within these few years, But he is very greatly weakened and exhausted in labour.

He has been a lecher so long until his potency is lost, His tool has become impotent, and lies in a swoon.

There was never a rest worse set than on that tired slug, For after seven weeks’ rest it will not strike once.

He has been wasted upon women before he chose me as his wife, And in adultery in my time I have caught him often.

And yet he is as prancing with his bonnet at an angle, And staring at the prettiest that dwell in the town, As courtly of his clothes and combing of his hair, As he that is more valiant in Venus’ chamber.

He seems to be worth something, that nothing in the bedroom, He looks as though he wants to be loved, though he’s worth little, He does as a doted dog that pisses on all the bushes, And lifts his leg up high though he doesn’t want to piss.

He has a look without lust and life without desire; He has a form without force and appearance without power, And fair words without reality, all useless in deeds.

He is for ladies in love a very lustful shadow, But in private, at the deed, he shall be found drooping.

ALEXANDER POPE

“THE WIFE OF BATH, HER PROLOGUE, FROM CHAUCER,” CIRCA 1704

The original “Wife of Bath’s Tale” was Geoffrey Chaucer’s, written in the fourteenth century in Middle English, and as famous for its prologue—in which the title character bawdily describes her five marriages—as for its message about women’s desire for power over men. Chaucer’s tale drew on works by previous writers and was in turn the inspiration for many others, including Dunbar’s poem (above) and this one, by Alexander Pope (1688–1744), which in full ran some 150 lines.

If I but see a cousin or a friend,

Lord! how you swell and rage like any fiend!

But you reel home, a drunken beastly bear, Then preach till midnight in your easy chair; Cry, wives are false, and every woman evil, And give up all that’s female to the devil.

If poor (you say), she drains her husband’s purse: If rich, she keeps her priest, or something worse;
If highly born, intolerably vain, Vapours and pride by turns possess her brain; Now gaily mad, now sourly splenetic,

Freakish when well, and fretful when she’s sick: If fair, then chaste she cannot long abide, By pressing youth attack’d on every side;

If foul, her wealth the lusty lover lures, Or else her wit some fool-gallant procures, Or else she dances with becoming grace,

Or shape excuses the defects of face.

There swims no goose so gray but soon or late She finds some honest gander for her mate.

Horses (thou say’st) and asses men may try, And ring suspected vessels ere they buy;

But wives, a random choice, untried they take, They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

“MARRIAGE AND HEALTH”

MILWAUKEE SENTINEL
, 1893

This item ran as an editorial a few days after the case it described appeared in a New York courtroom. A month later, the matter was settled out of court, with Philip Scheyer paying Johanna Scheyer an extraordinary $18,000 in cash—the equivalent of about half a million dollars today. Headline writers around the country enjoyed themselves: “She Was Too Vivacious”; “Wife Laughed Too Much”; “Tired of His Young Wife.”

We await with some interest the decision of Justice Burk of Harlem in the case brought by Mrs. Johanna Scheyer against her husband, Philip Scheyer, for abandonment. The case is peculiar from the nature of Mr. Scheyer’s defense. He is a well-to-do cloakmaker, aged 50 years, who married a few months ago a tall brunette of 27 years “with luminous brown eyes and clear-cut features.” In giving her testimony Mrs. Scheyer said she had not been in the house a week before he told her they must separate. “He told me I laughed too much and must behave myself differently.” Later, while making another complaint of her too ready laugh, he averred that she was too good looking to be the wife of a man of his age and he offered to give her $8,000 if she
would get a divorce. She refused, and when she insisted on knowing what her fault was he said: “Nothing; you are not at fault in any way.” But still, after repeating his offer of $8,000, he left her.

The defense made by Mr. Scheyer is that his doctor told him he must separate from his wife or sink into hopeless melancholy. The doctor professed to have made an elaborate examination of his condition and to have discovered that the much laughing of the wife bore heavily on the spirits of the husband; and that as she seemed unable to control her cachinnatory impulses, the only hope was in a separation. It is probable that her alleged laugh is a giggle, in which case there is little reason to doubt the correctness of the doctor’s diagnosis and prognosis.

WILLIAM ROBINSON

SEXUAL PROBLEMS OF TO-DAY
, 1912

With his frank and methodical approach to sexual problems, birth control, health, and behavior, New York urologist William J. Robinson (1867–1936) was a pioneer, brave enough to put the words
sex
or
sexual
into many of his titles, no small feat in an era still ruled by anti-obscenity laws. He was stern and quite specific in the following statement, and his later books, including the 1915
Fewer and Better Babies
, were increasingly strident in support of eugenics.

No woman has a right to marry who has a bad odor from her mouth. It will end disastrously. It may not end in divorce—it often does—but it will surely cause coolness and marital infelicity, and the husband will be very apt to stray into by-paths. For which we should not be inclined to blame him too severely. There is no excuse for anybody, and particularly for a member of the lovely sex, to have a bad odor from the mouth (or from anywhere else). The worst and most obstinate case of bromopnea can be cured if the causes are diligently sought for and properly treated.

IRA WILE AND MARY DAY WINN

MARRIAGE IN THE MODERN MANNER
, 1929

Psychiatrist and physician Ira Wile (1877–1943) and journalist Mary Day Winn (1888–1965) dedicated their book to “those who find increasing happiness in and through marriage.” Enthusiastically, they offered the semi-radical idea that American wives, having had more education, independence, and earning power in the 1920s than ever before, should no longer be seen as housekeepers and mothers but might also be seen as partners. The authors enumerated plenty of traditional “don’ts” for wives (see
Husbands, How to Keep
), but in passages like the one below, husbands were nudged into a more reciprocal view of marriage.