Getting Married

Getting Married

By George Bernard Shaw.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Preface to Getting Married
   1. The Revolt Against Marriage
   2. Marriage Nevertheless Inevitable
   3. What Does the Word Marriage Mean?
   4. Survivals of Sex Slavery
   5. The New Attack on Marriage
   6. A Forgotten Conference of Married Men
   7. Hearth and Home
   8. Too Much of a Good Thing
   9. Large and Small Families
   10. The Gospel of Laodicea
   11. For Better for Worse
   12. Wanted: An Immoral Statesman
   13. The Limits of Democracy
   14. The Science and Art of Politics
   15. Why Statesmen Shirk the Marriage Question
   16. The Question of Population
   17. The Right to Motherhood
   18. Monogamy, Polygyny and Polyandry
   19. The Male Revolt Against Polygyny
   20. Difference Between Oriental and Occidental Polygyny
   21. The Old Maid’s Right to Motherhood
   22. Ibsen’s Chain Stitch
   23. Remoteness of the Facts from the Ideal
   24. Difficulty of Obtaining Evidence
   25. Marriage as a Magic Spell
   26. The Impersonality of Sex
   27. The Economic Slavery of Women
   28. Unpopularity of Impersonal Views
   29. Impersonality Is Not Promiscuity
   30. Domestic Change of Air
   31. Home Manners Are Bad Manners
   32. Spurious “Natural” Affection
   33. Carrying the War Into the Enemy’s Country
   34. Shelley and Queen Victoria
   35. A Probable Effect of Giving Women the Vote
   36. The Personal Sentimental Basis of Monogamy
   37. Divorce
   38. Importance of Sentimental Grievance
   39. Divorce Without Asking Why
   40. Economic Slavery Again the Root Difficulty
   41. Labor Exchanges and the White Slavery
   42. Divorce Favorable to Marriage
   43. Male Economic Slavery and the Rights of Bachelors
   44. The Pathology of Marriage
   45. The Criminology of Marriage
   46. Does It Matter?
   47. Christian Marriage
   48. Divorce a Sacramental Duty
   49. Othello and Desdemona
   50. What Is to Become of the Children?
   51. The Cost of Divorce
   52. Conclusions
4. Preface
5. Dramatis Personae
6. Getting Married
   1. Getting Married
7. Colophon
8. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Preface to Getting Married

The Revolt Against Marriage

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage. If the mischief stopped at talking and thinking it would be bad enough; but it goes further, into disastrous anarchical action. Because our marriage law is inhuman and unreasonable to the point of downright abomination, the bolder and more rebellious spirits form illicit unions, defiantly sending cards round to their friends announcing what they have done. Young women come to me and ask me whether I think they ought to consent to marry the man they have decided to live with; and they are perplexed and astonished when I, who am supposed (heaven knows why!) to have the most advanced views attainable on the subject, urge them on no account to compromize themselves without the security of an authentic wedding ring. They cite the example of George Eliot, who formed an illicit union with Lewes. They quote a saying attributed to Nietzsche, that a married philosopher is ridiculous, though the men of their choice are not philosophers. When they finally give up the idea of reforming our marriage institutions by private enterprise and personal righteousness, and consent to be led to the Registry or even to the altar, they insist on first arriving at an explicit understanding that both parties are to be perfectly free to sip every flower and change every hour, as their fancy may dictate, in spite of the legal bond. I do not observe that their unions prove less monogamic than other people’s: rather the contrary, in fact; consequently, I do not know whether they make less fuss than ordinary people when either party claims the benefit of the treaty; but the existence of the treaty shows the same anarchical notion that the law can be set aside by any two private persons by the simple process of promising one another to ignore it.

Marriage Nevertheless Inevitable

Now most laws are, and all laws ought to be, stronger than the strongest individual. Certainly the marriage law is. The only people who successfully evade it are those who actually avail themselves of its shelter by pretending to be married when they are not, and by Bohemians who have no position to lose and no career to be closed. In every other case open violation of the marriage laws means either downright ruin or such inconvenience and disablement as a prudent man or woman would get married ten times over rather than face. And these disablements and inconveniences are not even the price of freedom; for, as Brieux has shown so convincingly in Les Hannetons, an avowedly illicit union is often found in practice to be as tyrannical and as hard to escape from as the worst legal one.

We may take it then that when a joint domestic establishment, involving questions of children or property, is contemplated, marriage is in effect compulsory upon all normal people; and until the law is altered there is nothing for us but to make the best of it as it stands. Even when no such establishment is desired, clandestine irregularities are