The Marriage Book (60 page)

“QUESTION BOX,” 1940

Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948), who led the Indian fight for independence from Britain, was, among countless other things, an effective writer. Fairly late in his life, he founded the English weekly journal
Harijan
, which featured a column called “Question Box.” This was his response to a husband who suspected his wife of keeping a secret.

I admit that between husband and wife there should be no secrets from one another. I have a very high opinion of the marriage tie. I hold that husband and wife merge in each other. They are one in two or two in one.

PAUL TOURNIER

THE MEANING OF PERSONS
, 1954

The great insight of the Swiss doctor and writer Paul Tournier (1898–1986) sounds perfectly unremarkable today: that one could not know, let alone help heal, a person’s body without understanding his or her psychological and spiritual health. In his medical and counseling practices, as in his many books and speeches, Tournier blended Christian theology, modern psychology, and traditional medical training in an attempt to understand the health of the whole person, including the extent to which honesty played a part in marriage.

The true dialogue is not that first easy communion, wonderful though it be—the impression one has of sharing the same feelings, saying the same things and thinking the same thoughts. The true dialogue is inevitably the confrontation of two personalities, differing in their past, their upbringing, their view of life, their prejudices, their idiosyncrasies and failings—and in any case with two distinct psychologies, a man’s and a woman’s. Sooner or later they will find out that they are less alike than they thought.

Either, one will dominate the other, and there will no longer be a dialogue because one of the persons is eclipsed, his power of self-determination paralysed. Or else the course of the dialogue will take it through some very dangerous waters. One of the partners will find himself saying to the other: “I can’t understand why you are acting like this.” And then there arises the risk of being judged or betrayed . . . And the temptation to run away from it by keeping back certain confidences. . . .

It is always a denial of love, and to some extent a disavowal of marriage, to begin to calculate what one says and does not say, even when it is done with the excellent motive of safeguarding one’s love. It is a contradiction of the law of marriage instituted by God: “They are no more twain, but one flesh” (Matt. 19:6). . . .

But even in the happiest marriage personal contact cannot be a permanent state, acquired once and for all. The windows of our houses have to be cleaned from time to time if the light is to penetrate. They get dirty more quickly in the town, but there is no countryside so remote or so clean that they do not gradually lose their transparency. Between man and wife too, the true dialogue has periodically to be re-established by the confession of some secret; and the higher and more sincere our ideal of marriage, the more irksome it is to admit that we have hidden something.

SEPARATION

PLINY THE YOUNGER

LETTER TO CALPURNIA, CIRCA 2ND CENTURY

Roman author, administrator, and lawyer, Pliny the Younger (circa 61–circa 113) wrote hundreds of letters, eventually collected in ten volumes, that provided invaluable glimpses of life in the Roman Empire.

Scholars debate whether Calpurnia was Pliny’s second or third wife, and whether this letter was a literary conceit or a legitimate expression of longing. In 1966, critic A. N. Sherwin-White wrote that it is one of three letters by Pliny that “blend together, for the first time in European literature, the role of husband and lover.”

The eagerness of my desire to see you is incredible. Love is the first spring of it. The next ariseth from our having been so seldom separated. For these reasons, I pass a great part of the night in thinking of you. In the day too, at those hours, when I used to see you, my feet carry me spontaneously, in the strictest sense of the expression, to your apartment, from whence I constantly return as much out of humour, and dejected, as if I had been refused admittance into your chamber. There is one part of the day only, that affords relief to my misery; I mean the particular time, when I am employed in pleading causes for my friends. Just what a kind of life mine must be, when labour is my rest, and when perplexity and cares are my comfort. Adieu.

THE WIDOW OF EUNG-TAE YI

LETTER TO HER LATE HUSBAND, 1586

This letter was found in 1998 when archaeologists excavated the tomb of a thirty-one-year-old man named Eung-Tae Yi in Andong City, South Korea. Clothing, family letters, and a pair of sandals, woven from hemp and the widow’s hair, were also found in the tomb.

You always said, “Dear, let’s live together until our hair turns gray and die on the same day.” How could you pass away without me? Who should I and our little boy listen to and how should we live? How could you go ahead of me?

How did you bring your heart to me and how did I bring my heart to you? Whenever we lay down together you always told me, “Dear, do other people cherish and love each other like we do? Are they really like us?” How could you leave all that behind and go ahead of me?

I just cannot live without you. I just want to go to you. Please take me to where you are. My feelings toward you I cannot forget in this world and my sorrow knows no limit. Where would I put my heart in now and how can I live with the child missing you?

Please look at this letter and tell me in detail in my dreams. Because I want to listen to your saying in detail in my dreams I write this letter and put it in. Look closely and talk to me.

When I give birth to the child in me, who should it call father? Can anyone fathom how I feel? There is no tragedy like this under the sky.

You are just in another place, and not in such a deep grief as I am. There is no limit and end that I write roughly. Please look closely at this letter and come to me in my dreams and show yourself in detail and tell me. I believe I can see you in my dreams. Come to me secretly and show yourself. There is no limit to what I want to say and I stop here.

NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED

A CODE OF GENTOO LAWS
, 1781

Edited by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1751–1830) and published by the East India Company,
A Code of Gentoo Laws
was a British colonial attempt to create a canon of Hindu law. Based on Brahmin scholars’ compilation of beliefs and practices from old Hindu texts, it included some ancient marriage customs—from thousands of years before Christ—that radically curtailed a wife’s freedoms (including the right to divorce) and allowed polygamy. Not until 1955 did India’s Hindu Marriage Act officially reverse these rules.

If a man goes on a journey, his wife shall not divert herself by play, nor shall see any public show, nor shall laugh, nor shall dress herself in jewels and fine clothes, nor shall see dancing, nor hear music, nor shall sit in the window, nor shall ride out, nor shall behold any thing choice or rare; but shall fasten well the house-door, and remain private; and shall not eat any dainty victuals, and shall not blacken her eyes with eye-powder, and shall not view her face in a mirror; she shall never exercise herself in any such agreeable employment during the absence of her husband.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

LETTER TO JOHN ADAMS, 1782

Few eighteenth-century American marriages are as vivid as that of John and Abigail Adams (1744–1818). Circumstances forced them to spend a great deal of time apart, and the letters they consequently wrote were wonderfully eloquent. The future president was in Paris, helping to negotiate the peace with England, when Abigail sent this one.

Portia was the Adamses’ nickname for Abigail, a direct reference to Brutus’s faithful wife (see
Secrets
). “No man liveth for himself” paraphrases Romans 14:7: “For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.”

Look to the date of this Letter—and tell me, what are the thoughts which arise in your mind? Do you not recollect that Eighteen years have run their anual Circuit, since we pledged our mutual Faith to each other, and the Hymeneal torch was Lighted at the Alter of Love. Yet, yet it Burns with unabating fervour, old ocean has not Quenched it, nor old Time smootherd it, in the Bosom of Portia. It cheers her in the Lonely Hour, it comforts her even in the gloom which sometimes possesses her mind.

It is my Friend from the Remembrance of the joys I have lost that the arrow of affliction is pointed. I recollect the untitled Man to whom I gave my Heart, and in the agony of recollection when time and distance present themseves together, wish he had never been any other. Who shall give me back Time? Who shall compensate to me those
years
I cannot recall? How dearly have I paid for a titled Husband; should I wish you less wise, that I might enjoy more happiness? I cannot find that in my Heart. Yet providence has wisely placed the real Blessings of Life within the reach of moderate abilities, and he who is wiser than his Neighbour sees so much more to pitty and Lament, that I doubt whether the balance of happiness is in his Scale.

I feel a disposition to Quarrel with a race of Beings who have cut me of, in the midst of my days from the only Society I delighted in. Yet No Man liveth for himself, says an authority I will not dispute. Let me draw satisfaction from this Source and instead of murmuring and repineing at my Lot consider it in a more pleasing view. Let me suppose that the same Gracious Being who first smiled upon our union and Blessed us in each other, endowed my Friend with powers and talents for the Benifit of Mankind and gave him a willing mind, to improve them for the service of his Country.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

SONNET 4,
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE
, CIRCA 1845

Most of the poems in
Sonnets from the Portuguese
(see
Love
) were written between 1845, the year Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning, and 1846, the year they married. A combination of ill health, depression over the deaths of several of her siblings, and increasing reticence kept Elizabeth more or less housebound, while Robert moved freely in society. The poem suggests how physical separation can threaten spiritual separation as well.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace floor,

Most gracious singer of high poems! where

The dancers will break footing from the care

Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more,

And dost thou lift this house’s latch too poor

For hand of thine? and canst thou think and bear

To let thy music drop here unaware

In folds of golden fulness at my door?

Look up and see the casement broken in,

The bats and owlets builders in the roof!

My cricket chirps against thy mandolin.

Hush, call no echo up in further proof

Of desolation! there’s a voice within

That weeps—as thou must sing—alone, aloof.

ABREAM SCRIVEN

LETTER TO DINAH JONES, 1858

Abream Scriven wrote this heartbreaking letter to his wife, Dinah Jones, on the eve of their forced separation. Both slaves on Colonel’s Island in Georgia, they had had four children together. Abream was sold to a New Orleans slave trader in Savannah. Despite Dinah’s attempts to have Abream bought by a nearby plantation owner and returned, the two never saw each other again.

In 1861, Dinah married again but died of typhoid fever the same year. By 1863, Abream had also remarried.

My Dear Wife,

I take the pleasure of writing you these few with much regret to inform you that I am sold to a man by the name of Peterson a [trader] and Stays in new orleans. I am here yet But I expect to go before long but when I get there I will write and let you know where I am. My Dear I want to Send you some things but I donot know who to Send them by but I will thry to get them to you and my children. Give my love to my father and mother and tell them good Bye for me. and if we Shall not meet in this world I hope to meet in heaven. My Dear wife for you and my children my pen cannot Express the griffe I feel to be parted from you all I remain your truly husband until death

Abream Scriven

MARCUS SPIEGEL

LETTER TO CAROLINE SPIEGEL, 1862

A German Jew and son of a rabbi, Marcus Spiegel (1829–1864) came to the United States in 1849 and, outfitted by relatives in Chicago, became a peddler of fabrics, thread, and needles on a route in Ohio farm country. There he fell in love with a young Quaker woman named Caroline Hamlin. By 1853, they were married, and she converted to Judaism. He was already in his mid-thirties when he joined the Union army in 1861 and would, as a colonel, become one of its highest-ranking Jewish officers.

Spiegel was able to leave for home the day after writing this letter, though the Spiegels’ fourth child, Hattie, wouldn’t be born for another month. Their fifth and youngest child, Clara, was also born during the war, only a few months before Spiegel was fatally wounded by an exploding shell in the Red River Campaign.
Gefattershopt
means “godfather.”