“Odd that marriage, a public display and free to all, gives way to that most secret of liaisons, an adulterous affair.” (16).
In the civil and religious world, marriage is a binding contract. There is a certain image of the “perfect marriage” that society has indoctrinated us all with. Society dictates that marriage is between two people whom love each other and wish to spend the rest of their lives together, sharing every bit of themselves with one another, and presenting a perfect image of themselves as a couple to all that look at their relationship. Society says this union is a partnership with no secrecy or issues. As we all know, this is never the case. This short but precise sentence eloquently expresses what I have thought about marriage for quite a while.
The use of punctuation in this passage is very telling of how the narrator feels about the “sanctity” of marriage. Every thought regarding marriage is separated by a comma. I took this to be that the narrator is pausing for the narrator to sigh in disgust. The narrator is fed up with the unholiness of the marriages the narrator has witnessed. The narrator has had many affairs with married women, and knows that those marriages are shams. The narrator knows that these woman stay in these marriages, although they wish to be with the narrator, in order to keep their societal image and acceptance. These commas are used to express and emphasize the disgust that the narrator feels towards those marriages that are just illusions for the public eye.
This passage also emphasizes that marriage, the perfect and ultimate union of two people, is not always what it seems. This also applies to the concept of the family unit. However, to fit in with society, most people want to have a perfect marriage and family to show off to the world. This concept of the desire to have a perfect family unit is discussed in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing “Tendencies.” In her writing Sedgwick says
“Looking at my own life, I see that-probably like most people-I have valued and pursued these various elements of family identity to quite differing degrees….I see it’s been a ruling intuition for me that the most productive strategy (intellectually, emotionally) might be, whenever possible, to disarticulate them from one another, to disengage them-the bonds of blood, of law, of habitation, of privacy, of companionship and succor- from the lockstep of the unanimity in system called family.” (pg6).
The desire for a perfect familial image and identity begins with the foundation of a perfect marriage. Society tells us to strive for perfection and happiness, and a way to do that is to have a family. The pressure from society to maintain this image eventually leads to people being forced into lives they never wished for themselves.
I found your comment about the commas to be interesting, as I did not initially think of that, but in the context of the reading, it makes a lot of sense. Over the years, marriage has been belittled, to the point that now it is tossed around like nothing. I like how you brought up the idea that the narrator does not despise marriage because of resentment, but rather because of the unhappiness that the binding can cause. Your use of the family unit in your analysis was significant to me, as I used a similar example. People strive for that “perfect family image,” which is why homosexuality is sometimes seen as “abnormal.” I understand that people are sometimes forced into lives they don’t want, but why? Why do people care about others’ love lives and marriage plans, to the point of discrimination, when it is not affecting their own personal desires?
I think your argument is very interesting, as wells as the comment posted above. In Written on the Body, there is a point where the speaker has these secret feelings for Louise, a very unrequited love. Louise is together with Jacqueline, which begs the question: are the feelings for Louise simply lustful possibly love feelings? Or is it the shadowy image of someone that can be never be had? This image goes to support your argument that
“The narrator knows that these woman stay in these marriages, although they wish to be with the narrator, in order to keep their societal image and acceptance.”