The Marriage Book (43 page)

This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos. . . .

America needs more marriages, not fewer, and the best way to encourage marriage is to encourage marriage, which is what society does by bringing gay couples inside the tent.

MUSLIM INSTITUTE AND ISLAMIC SHARI’AH COUNCIL

MUSLIM MARRIAGE CONTRACT, 2008

With 1.25 billion Muslims living in dozens of countries, contemporary Islamic marriage practices naturally differ widely. In many places, details of the marriage are still arranged between the groom and a male guardian of the bride, known as the walee, to prevent premarital interactions, and polygamy is permissible as authorized by the Qur’an. However, in an effort to create a marriage contract complying with both Islamic religious law (Shari’ah), and British law, Muslim leaders in Great Britain collaborated in 2008 to produce a modern marriage contract that barred polygamy and made the walee optional.

“Security of gaze” refers to the Islamic admonition that men and women should lower their eyes to avoid sexual temptation.

MUTUAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS

Marriage is a union for life having mutually inclusive benefits and fulfillment for the contracting parties including the following: • Preservation of chastity and security of gaze

• Companionship inside and outside home

• Emotional and sexual gratification

• Procreation and raising of any children by mutual consultation

•
Agreement to live together in a mutually agreed country and establish their matrimonial home therein • Working collectively towards the socio-economic welfare and stability of the family

• Maintaining their individual property rights but contributing to the welfare of the family according to their capacity • Maintaining social contacts with family and friends mutually beneficial for the family • Managing their individual activities/roles inside and outside the home by mutual consultation
OBLIGATIONS OF THE HUSBAND

In addition to the mutual duties and obligations, the husband undertakes not to:

• Abuse his wife/child(ren) verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually

• Desert/be absent from the marital home for more than 60 days unless by mutual agreement • Withhold economic contribution towards his wife/family

• Sexually transmit disease or other transmissible diseases

• Misuse/interfere with the wife’s property

OBLIGATIONS OF THE WIFE

In addition to the mutual duties and obligations, the wife undertakes not to:

• Abuse her husband/child(ren) verbally, emotionally, physically, or sexually

• Desert/be absent from the marital home for more than 60 days unless by mutual agreement • Sexually transmit disease or other transmissible diseases

• Misuse/interfere with the husband’s property

SPECIAL CONDITIONS

• Both parties reserve the right to amend/alter the contract through mutual written agreement •
Both parties undertake to stay loyal to each other and never to engage in extramarital affairs with the oppos[ite] or same sex • The husband is not to enter into formal or informal nikah (Muslim marriage) contract in the UK or abroad with another woman, as it is unlawful under the laws of England and Wales as well as the Scottish legal system • The husband is to procure separate/independent accommodation from shared or parental abode • The husband delegates his power of divorce (talaq al-tafwid) to his wife

• Details of any additional special conditions mutually agreed upon by bride

LOOKS

XENOPHON

ON HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT
, 4TH CENTURY BC

Like Plato, the Greek philosopher Xenophon (circa 430–circa 350 BC) recorded conversations with Socrates that purportedly showed the master’s interests, beliefs, and, not incidentally, his methods of dialogue. In this excerpt from Xenophon’s book
On Household Management
(
Oeconomicus)
, Socrates describes a conversation he had with an Athenian farmer named Ischomachus.

Ischomachus then said, “One time, Socrates, I saw that she had covered her face with white lead, so that she would seem to have a paler complexion than she really had, and put on thick rouge, so that her cheeks would seem redder than in reality, and high boots, so that she would seem taller than she naturally was.

“So I said, ‘Tell me, my dear, would you consider me more worthy of your love as a partner in our shared wealth, if I told you what I was worth, and didn’t boast that I had more than I actually had, and didn’t hide anything from you, or if I tried to deceive you by saying that I had more than I in fact had, and showed you counterfeit money and necklaces of gold plate and said that they were real?’

“She interrupted me at that point and said, ‘Don’t say such things; don’t become that sort of man, because if you did, I couldn’t love you from my heart.’ I replied: ‘Haven’t we come together, my dear, as partners in each other’s bodies?’ She replied: ‘At least so people say.’ ‘Then tell me,’ I said, ‘if I
would seem to you to be a more worthy bodily partner, if I cared for myself and tried to make myself more healthy and strong, and because of that were in reality healthy-looking, or if I smeared myself with vermilion and put flesh colour on my eyes and presented myself to you and made love to you deceiving you and presenting you with vermilion to see and touch rather than my own skin.’ ‘I would not,’ she said, ‘enjoy touching vermilion as much as your own skin and I do not enjoy looking at flesh colour as much as your own and I would not enjoy seeing your eyes covered with make-up as in good health.’

“ ‘Don’t think then, my dear,’ ” Ischomachus told me he said, ‘that I enjoy the colour of white lead more than the colour of your own skin, but just as the gods made horses prefer horses and cattle prefer cattle, and sheep sheep, so human beings prefer the natural human body. You might successfully fool someone outside the household by this kind of deception, but insiders always get caught when they try to deceive one another. For they can be found out when they get up in the morning before they have time to prepare or they are caught out by sweat or put to the test by tears and exposed completely by washing.’ ”

“What, by the gods,” I asked, “was her response to that?” “What else than that,” he said, “she never put on make-up again, but tried to present herself with a clean face and suitably dressed. And she asked me if I could advise her how she might look beautiful in reality, and not just appear to be beautiful.”

THOMAS MORE

UTOPIA
, 1516

Famous for his judgment, erudition, and stubborn refusal to recognize Henry VIII as head of the Anglican Church, Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) was tried for treason and beheaded, but he was ultimately canonized by the Catholic Church. His most tangible legacy is the novel
Utopia
, in which, while imagining the ideal society, he took on subjects of both public and private life, including the role of looks in the importance of choosing one’s spouse.

According to John Aubrey’s
Brief Lives
, More allowed his future son-in-law (and biographer) William Roper to choose which of More’s daughters to marry, somewhat along the
Utopian
principle described below; More supposedly led Roper to the bed where the daughters were sleeping on their backs, pulled off their sheet, watched them turn over, and allowed Roper to pat his preferred bride-to-be on the backside.

In choosing marriage partners, [the inhabitants of Utopia] solemnly and seriously follow a custom which seemed to us foolish and absurd in the extreme. Whether she is a widow or a virgin, the bride-to-be is shown naked to the groom by a responsible and respectable matron;
and, similarly, some respectable man presents the groom naked to his future bride. We laughed at this custom and called it absurd; but they were just as amazed at the folly of all other nations. When men go to buy a colt, where they are risking only a little money, they are so suspicious that though he is almost bare they won’t close the deal until the saddle and blanket have been taken off, lest there be a hidden sore underneath. Yet in the choice of a mate, which may cause either delight or disgust for the rest of their lives, people are completely careless. They leave all the rest of her body covered up with clothes and estimate the attractiveness of a woman from a mere handsbreadth of her person, the face, which is all they can see. And so they marry, running great risk of hating one another for the rest of their lives, if something in either’s person should offend the other. Not all people are so wise as to concern themselves solely with character; even the wise appreciate physical beauty, as a supplement to a good disposition. There’s no question but that deformity may lurk under clothing, serious enough to make a man hate his wife when it’s too late to be separated from her. When deformities are discovered after marriage, each person must bear his own fate, so the Utopians think everyone should be protected by law beforehand.

PROVERB

Chuse a Wife rather by your Ear, than your Eye.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

“ADVICE TO HIS SON,” 1702

On a different note from Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh (see
Endings
) advised his son not to be too persuaded by a woman’s appearance.

The . . . greatest care ought to be in the choice of a Wife, and the only danger therein, is beauty, by which all Men in all ages, wise and foolish, have been betrayed. And though I know it vain to use reasons or arguments, to disswade thee from being captivated therewith, there being few or none, that ever resisted that Witchery; yet I cannot omit to warn thee, as of other things, which may be thy ruin and destruction. For the present time, it is true, that every Man prefers his fantasie in that appetite, before all other worldly desires, leaving the care of honour, credit, and
safety in respect thereof: But remember, that though these affections do not last, yet the bond of Marriage dureth to the end of thy life; and therefore better to be born withal in a Mistress, than in a Wife, for when thy humour shall change, thou art yet free to chuse again, (if thou give thy self that vain liberty.) Remember, secondly, That if thou marry for Beauty, thou bindest thy self all thy life for that, which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the degree dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth, when it is satisfied.

MARGARET GRAVES DERENZY

A WHISPER TO A NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR, FROM A WIDOWED WIFE
, 1824

The title page said the author was anonymous, but the book was in fact written by Margaret Graves Derenzy (circa 1778–1829). Hardly a widow, the Irish-born writer had married a Major Derenzy when she was sixteen but been abandoned a few years later, when he eloped with his mistress. The experience undoubtedly informed the part of Derenzy’s advice book in which she addressed the unheeding adulterers of the world: “Welcome hell! Welcome flames! Welcome devils!” But her bitterness did not stop her from urging wives to be careful in their daily habits and to see the overall challenge of marriage as keeping a husband from his natural tendency to stray.

Derenzy’s book became extremely popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century and went through twenty-eight editions.

There is not an hour in the day in which a man so much likes to see his wife dressed with neatness, as when she leaves her bed-room, and sits down to breakfast. At any other moment,
vanity
stimulates her efforts at the toilette, for she expects to see and to be seen; but at this retired and early hour, it is for the very sake of cleanliness, for the very sake of pleasing her husband, that she appears thus neat and nice. Some one says, “A woman should never appear untidily or badly dressed, when in the presence of her husband.” While he was your lover, what a sad piece of business if he caught you dressed to disadvantage!—“O dear, there he is, and my hair all in papers; and this frightful unbecoming cap! I had no idea he would have been here so early; let me off to my toilette!” But now that he is your husband, “Dear me, what consequence? My object is gained; my efforts to win him, and all my little manoeuvres to captivate, have been successful, and it is very hard if a woman is to pass her life in endeavouring to please
her husband!
” I remember greatly admiring a lady who lived among the mountains, and scarcely saw any one but her husband. She was rather a plain woman; and yet when she sat to breakfast each morning,
and all the day long, her extreme neatness and attention to the niceness of her appearance, made her quite an agreeable object; and her husband loved her, and would look at her with more pleasure than at a pretty woman dressed soiled and untidily: for believe me, those things (though your husband appears not to notice them, nor perhaps is he himself conscious of the cause) strongly possess the power of pleasing or displeasing.