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Marriage is in fact nothing more than a chain. It is a
chain that society obscurely uses to hinder a person from pursuing their dreams,
their hopes and their aspirations. From the beginning, marriage is an ideal. The
child grows up thinking he or she will one day get married. Girls are encouraged
to wait until they find “the one.” This “one” is a man who will be able to make
a living, someone who can support a wife. Love is not a consideration by this
time. In many cultures, marriages are arranged to make familial and societal
ties more influential, for practical purposes. The parents decide who their
children will love, and on what basis.
Many young people, girls especially, grow up thinking of marriage as a time when
bliss is experienced, when everything they could ever want is given to them. A
time of beautiful gowns and songs and honeymoons in Paris and other exotica. The
media promotes this view to a great extent: there are magazines, advertisements,
TV shows and movies that all glorify the institution of marriage, displaying it
as the perfect happy ending. The process of courtship and romantic proposals
seem lovely and just the way everyone would want their lives to be. It is no
wonder that with all this media and cultural influence, young people have come
to look forward to marriage as an institution that will complete the happiness
in their lives. All her life, a woman looks forward to marriage as an
institution of self-fulfilment. Simone de Beauvoir remarks on this, saying that
“parents still raise their daughter with a view to marriage rather than to
furthering her personal development; she sees so many advantages in it that she
herself wishes for it.”
Marriage has become a social convention, a deeply rooted and very dangerous one.
Children born out of wedlock are considered illegitimate. People may pretend
that they do not have prejudices against such single mother families, but
actually their prejudices have become ingrained in them over the generations.
People will marry primarily because it is what is expected of them by society:
the ultimate step, the ultimate ideal. For the sake of public opinion, couples
will submit to the farce that is marriage. Truly, motherhood does not need
marriage to make it any better than it can be – motherhood thrives in an
environment that is free and loving, and if marriage does not provide this,
rather placing a confinement and obligation on the part of the woman to remain
with her spouse, what use is marriage?
Why is marriage a farce? It limits that great feeling and power, love. Marriage
often exists without love – destroying the sanctity of this human emotion. After
a few years of confinement, the possible initial love wallows and wanes. It
involves “growing used to each other,” destroying the passion, intensity and
fire of love.
Marriage can be compared to an economic agreement. As Emma Goldman elaborates,
“If, however, the woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name,
her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, ‘until death doth part.’” The
woman is forever dependent on the man. Even in these modern times, the woman can
try to be dependent on herself by getting a job, ensuring economic freedom and
liberty, but she is always tied to her husband, always trying to shake off the
ties of patriarchy that have been part of the feminist struggle over great
periods of time. Men’s sphere of liberty and personal freedom has always been
greater, despite efforts to change the situation. Especially in less “developed”
countries, women exist in great subordination to men. A woman’s subordination to
her husband is almost valued in a marriage, something that will make her a
greater asset as a wife. The Biblical reference to Eve being conjured as a
companion for man, as a convenience almost, makes her all the more a slave to
her husband.
The marriage arrangement is one in which the two people are not separate from
each other; rather, everything they do is done with the agreement of the other,
or, according to Church doctrine, should be so. Is this not a curb on freedom,
to demand that two people always do things in perfect complementation and
agreement of each other?
The Church sanctions a great deal of what marriage is. Marriage should be a
personal relationship, one without outside interference. This is swayed by the
insistence by the Church on the beauty and holiness of marriage. How can such an
institution, fettered by the opinions of Church and State, ever live up to the
expectation of being a perfect state of existence?
Over the centuries, homosexuals and bisexuals have had to live without tolerance
from society. Today it is a raging debate as to whether gay marriage should be
legalised. This proves the extent to which the state and religion will interfere
in an institution that was supposed to be based on love.
Social perceptions contribute to the failure of marriage. There are
superstitions, beliefs and ideas about the two sexes that build up in society
over time, and these create a wall between people. These beliefs become part of
everyday customs and habits, and it is very hard to degrade them. It has the
potential to make a couple strangers to their real selves, strangers to each
other.
In many cultures a woman is kept in ignorance about sex until marriage,
something that is considered her only virtue, for the sake of respectability.
And then after marriage something that was supposed to be pure seems defiled and
ugly, a sudden entrance into the world of adults, into a world of strangers the
woman was not prior aware of. This respectability that is kept up, and then
suddenly disappears in the so-called “sanctity” of marriage, is quite shameful.
Social disapproval of sex and romance before marriage is echoed by the fact that
monitors are kept on young couples who engage in romances before marriage. Today
this is not as prevalent as it once was in American society, but in many other
societies it still remains. Many times a young couple will be looked on with
disapproval and suspicion, only treated like they are having “flings” and “silly
affairs,” and they must curb their raging hormones. If love is existent, it is
ignored or treated with contempt or as if it is petty and simple, not like real
love at all.
Some say that marriage should be kept up for the sake of the children. But what
will children learn from growing up in a household that is based on foundations
of pretence? For marriage is a pretence, a farce – a show to keep up the image
of a happy family, the image of pureness and a well-to-do livelihood. Many
children do not experience happy upbringings. Many children are poor, for that
matter, and homeless. Many children live in foster homes. Many are forced to act
older than they really are, to pick up after the mistakes of their parents. In
some instances they will grow up to continue the farce of marriage as their
parents did, having led sheltered lives, unaffected by the outside world that
pulsates around them. This is rare, however. In most instances, the
psychological repercussions of a failed marriage are severe, but often hidden
for the sake of appearances. In a home that is failing steadily, it is
questionable as to whether marriage has been a good thing at all. And in today’s
society, marriage fails to a great extent. Divorce statistics are increasing
more and more – as of August 2005, approximately 49% of marriages end in divorce
in the United States.
The biggest characteristic of marriage that makes it a fallacy is the way it
places a limitation on love. Some may say that people can only have one true
love, but this is untrue. Love is free and love needs no curbs – yet in our
society it is placed so many curbs upon it is impossible to discern whether true
love exists at all. Marriage cannot be based on a love when the only love that
exists in marriage is limited, “protected” and confined. Love needs no
protection for that matter – it protects itself by existing. Nothing can conquer
love. It can become distant but if people want it to be, it will exist.
As Emma Goldman says, “Someday, someday men and women will rise, they will reach
the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to
partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love…. If the world is ever to give
birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the
parent.”
bravenet.com