The Aspersions of Marriage
Contrary to popular conceptions in liberal society, marriage is an unromantic anachronism that refuses to die.
If marriage is the solution, what is the problem?
Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. Roman marriage
The most important activity in the social calendar of my life in Pakistan was attending a wedding. Every year, on average, I would attend three weddings which were themselves 3-day affairs consisting of the mehndi, barat, and walima. The first is a more informal and smaller social event where bride and groom are prepared for their nuptials with patterns stained on their skin with henna. The second event, the grandest of all, literally means procession, whereby the groom’s family collect the bride from her home and she is bid farewell to her new home. The last is a celebratory dinner traditionally paid for by the groom’s family.
Islamically speaking, none are relevant except for the walima and the nikkah (the actual binding of people in marriage). The nikkah is usually read however during the barat. The traditions are a bit confusing even for myself, I never knew these details well when I attended weddings. My interest was the big buffet at the finale of each event. Weddings were the one occasion where my parents, and those of many others I am sure, practically pep-talked us into becoming gluttonous shock troops that would devour as much food as humanly possible. The one occasion when there was no shaming for eating to be expected. Perhaps that is why I would sit through the otherwise dull affairs, sitting next to adults who would talk and catch up with each other while I tried to run down the clock towards dinner.
Childhood has ended. I am in the 30th year of my existence. The initial trickle of relatives, friends, and acquaintances getting married has become a downpour. Social convention dictates that each wedding be greeted with joyous overtones. Yet we all know that behind the festive visage lie darker truths that, if acknowledged, will sour the mood and break the trance of tranquility the event serves to cast on our world-wearied souls. I do not begrudge people their moment of celebration, justified and genuine or not. However, some thought must be given to the question posed at the start.
For those of us fortunate to live in the more socially liberal enclaves of the world, it is understandable that we become steadily unmoored from the true norms of societies in the world at large. For the vast majority of human beings today and for nearly the entirety of human civilisation in the past, marriage was not the voluntary and romantic undertaking that we might perceive it as today. Marriage is first and foremost an economic relation.
Consider the classic fairy-tale of a prince marrying a commoner – Cinderella. By the very categorical definition of the story, we are made aware that the story is in fact impossible. The impossibility stems from the fact that a fairy godmother endows Cinderella temporarily with the accoutrements of high nobility. That the prince, upon learning that he was smitten with a scullery maid, chose to marry her in spite of her low status is less often remarked upon. But that is the real fairy-tale. In any realistic depiction the prince would be more likely to execute Cinderella, arrange a marriage to lesser nobles of her daughters, and pay off her stepmother to keep silent about the embarrassing flirtation with morganatic matrimony.
Marriage calcifies the boundaries between rank, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality. All of the exemplars of romantic marriage in the popular imaginary are defined by their defiance of these calcified boundaries. Cinderella is one example but more routine ones include Shia Muslims marrying Sunnis, inter-ethnic, inter-caste, or inter-religious marriages, non-heterosexual marriages, and of course rich people marrying poor people. Even when princes marry commoners, they don’t pick the poor ones!
In that context, the most romantic examples of marriage are in fact anti-marriages. Because these marriages, or enduring forbidden romances, inevitably involve sacrificing a combination of social and economic capital for the sake of love. Such unions inspire derision and contempt from their contemporaries. Their continued existence becomes a source of grief for the wedded. This situation has not substantially changed in the present day. And in the context of tremendous technological, economic, social, and intellectual advances the backwardness of marriage is all the more spectacular.
To this day, child marriages are legal in many countries, as a matter of fact in 43 US states. Until the latter half of the 20th Century, marital rape was largely legal as part of the “marriage contract”. It is common in many parts of the world to entice poorer women into marrying a wealthier man into a condition of marital serfdom, particularly in war torn regions but also within large countries with severe regional inequalities. The most striking example of this is in North-East India’s Seven Sister states where men from wealthier but gender imbalanced states travel to find brides in the North-East. Then there’s the frequency of “honour killings”, marital abuse, financial penalties for unmarried couples, liabilities for debts in case of divorce, the list can go on and then this blog becomes a pseudo-academic mess.
No amount of hand waving can erase the instrumentality of marriage. People seek it out and that tells us something about its functionality and necessity. But this contradicts the romantic perception of marriage that prevails in the socially liberal echo chambers in the Western world. Is it not worth considering that marriage itself is a problem?
Marriage sits haughtily on the throne of romantic hierarchies despite having been an instrumental impediment to the consummation of romance for thousands of years. Why was it necessary to wage a decades long campaign to achieve marriage equality between hetero- and homosexual couples? Why do you have to get married if you want the shortest legal route to emigrating to a new country? Why does marriage reshape our economic lives altogether?
Further to this is the more personal social impact it has on a person that feels alienated from the conventions of marriage. I am tired of the social stigma of being unmarried, not just the entrenched stigma I encounter from my conservative relatives and family circles. Every marriage announcement on Instagram (it is always she said yes and not he said yes), every idyllic image that veils a darker story of coercion or desperation (which I am sometimes privy to), and every assumption that would accompany me if I ever announced getting married makes me feel suffocated by the toxic air of hypocrisy.
People say they are modern and progressive. That they don’t believe in gender norms. And then they participate in perpetuating the very structures that uphold backwardness and inequality. It is men getting on their knees. It is women planning weddings and saying yes to the dress. It is men budgeting for a ring. It is women signing up for a life of domesticity (even if sharply reduced relative to generations past). People who claim to be romantics marrying someone their parents tacitly approved. Stifling homogeneity in terms of race, religion, and class among people that come from socially liberal, non-religious backgrounds.
Being a single parent (particularly a single mother), being divorced young, being unmarried in your 30s, being in a long-term relationship in your 30s but unmarried, being polyamorous or non-monogamous – all these situations draw a combination of, explicit or implicit, shame, pity or derision. Something is considered incomplete in your life if you have “struggled” to climb the relationship escalator. There is next to no room for considering if that is actually desirable in the first place. That marriage itself is entered into out of a combination of social and economic necessity is nowhere on the agenda of these conversations.
Beyond the tax benefits, discrimination in the pensions system, sharing of economic liabilities, immigration privileges that are too extensive to adequately discuss here, nobody publicises how much money, not romance, decides the decision to marry for those who do. Couples with a shared mortgage, savings, parental economic support, stable jobs (as can be in this economy) are the ones that get married. Those lacking one or more of these stabilising factors are generally not as quick to swap vows.
If marriage truly acted as a purely symbolic, declarative affirmation of commitment and love with no perceptible economic, social, or legal consequences would people in their late 20s to early 30s with stable incomes and housing really be so eager to sign some pieces of paper? I don’t think so.
Marriage reifies distinctions which serve certain socio-economic functions. And this is antithetical to romance. Because romance, at least in our imaginary, is idealistic in character. There is, in its purest form, nothing transactional about romance. In this sense, marriage is foundation of a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) constituted of two individuals.
I have emphasised the legal, contractual instrument of marriage and not the social event that is a wedding. The wedding is much less nefarious in comparison to the marriage because it serves a communitarian purpose. It is a celebratory feast and in that sense little separates it materially from an extravagant birthday party. But if marriage is accession to a throne, then a wedding is the coronation. At a stroke, the juridical stench of marriage problematises the communal feast.
If two people get married but do not have a wedding, it is somewhat difficult for friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances to properly internalise the foundation of the LLC. Indeed, to many it may even become a cause for resentment. Why do they get to forego the expenses associated with a ring, a dress, a reception, and a dinner? You gained membership of the country club but you avoided the entrance fee. This is by no means universal but that is not the threshold for it to matter; if one in ten skittles give you food poisoning you will probably not want to eat skittles.
Your marriage will carry the dour odour of convenience if you were not willing or able to do the labour of matrimonial performance. And weddings are a performance. They are extensively choreographed, tense affairs, reminiscent of a royal court where intrigues abound behind the grandiose veneer. All of which belies the claim that marriage is a private commitment of love or romance.
We can declutter the romantic space by throwing marriage onto the scrapheap of history. It is better to start anew than to continue to achieve minor, painstakingly won improvements to a fundamentally archaic convention. But at the very least, it would be nice to live in a society where marriage wasn’t so entwined with notions of love or romance. It should be assumed that every marriage is innocent of romance until proven guilty. Because every “she said yes”, every purchase of a ring worth a month’s salary or more, every tired promise to spend a life together perpetuates an anachronistic set of norms. And in doing so, the conventions of marriage itself cast aspersions of incompleteness and taint on romances untethered from marriage.
Really enjoyed reading this! It's really refreshing to find someone with similar views on the theatricality and pressures of weddings.
Tally ho! What on earth do we have here? This pseudo-academical plebian has created one of the most spectacularly pitiful incel manifestos known to man. Wait until Jonty Bonty and the other chaps from the yacht club hear of this failed writer/human being. I have seen declarations of landed property in the Charterhouse School library that are shorter than this. And all because you can't find a wife. Oh sorry, """"don't wish to find a wife"""" Which you put down to some mystical all-encompassing politico-social-economical-cultural-magical phenomenon and not your lack of a sports car and a family seat in Surrey.
By the way, I was in Serbia recently (clerical work for the legit branch of daddy's offshore hedgefund) and I met Tito. He is not a fan of your work. Good day!