Marriage and Love

7.2K 41 8
                                    

MARRIAGE AND LOVE ***

Produced by Tamise Totterdell, Fritz Ohrenschall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)

Marriage and Love

BY

EMMA GOLDMAN

Price Ten Cents

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK

1911

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

ALEXANDER BERKMAN

_A Unique Contribution to Socio-Psychological Literature_

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY REPRESENTS THREE PHASES:

I) The Revolutionary Awakening and its Toll--The _Attentat_

II) The Allegheny Penitentiary: Fourteen Years in Purgatory

III) The Resurrection and After

_Price One Dollar Fifty_

Send Advance Subscription to

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

210 EAST THIRTEENTH STREET

NEW YORK

THE BOOK IS NEARING COMPLETION AND WILL BE ISSUED IN THE EARLY SPRING

Marriage and Love

BY

EMMA GOLDMAN

Price Ten Cents

MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK

1911

MARRIAGE AND LOVE

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.

Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.

On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.

Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, 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." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.

You've reached the end of published parts.

⏰ Last updated: Mar 16, 2008 ⏰

Add this story to your Library to get notified about new parts!

Marriage and LoveWhere stories live. Discover now