|
 So Much to Think About Before Saying 'I Do'
As appeared in The Wall Street Journal
May 17, 2001
By Nick Schulz
IT WAS A STARTLING sort of headline to read: "Men and Women Are Different, and That Matters, Scientists Say." The news itself wasn't startling, but
the story's existence was. We have reached a point in modern life, apparently, where what was once assumed has been so relentlessly deconstructed that it is "news" to see a
perennial truth reaffirmed, even if we must turn to scientists to clear up the confusion.
The need to address this state of radical skepticism is the driving: force behind two important
anthologies - "The Book of Marriage," edited by Dana Mack and David Blankenhorn, and "Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying," edited by Leon and Amy Kass. Both
books seek to shore up a traditional understanding of the relations between the sexes with excerpts from literature, philosophy and religious texts. Both are, in their perennial way, timely.
That marriage is an embattled institution seems beyond debate. It is a relative standard, of course: If marriage were a baseball player it would be in all-star shape, since it's batting about .500 these
days. But marriage is obviously more than a contest against odds: It is the linchpin of society, a path to happiness and the social architecture within which children are raised. A high failure rate is
troubling and rightly prompts the need to reaffirm the institution and its principles.
Both anthologies do exactly that, with a remarkable range of selections. The Kasses' volume, for
example, contains a set of notes from Charles Darwin's autobiography, in which he pushes the case against marriage to its limits, only to conclude: "Cheer up. One, cannot live this solitary life, with
groggy old age, friendless and cold and childless staring in one's face, already beginning to wrinkle."
The contemporary theologian Gilbert Meilaender provides a meditation on the complementarity of
the sexes, arguing that it is precisely the differences between men and women that give rise to the ennobling life they may live together. "Friendship between the sexes," he writes "may take us . . .
beyond ourselves - may make us more whole more balanced and sane, than we could otherwise be."
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing two centuries before, notes the comparative advantages of the
fairer sex, which possesses "the modesty and the shame with which nature armed the weak in order to enslave the strong." With respect to mankind as a whole, he observes, "The only thing we know
with certainty is that everything man and woman have in common belongs to the species, and that everything which distinguishes them belong to the sex. . . .In what they have in common, they are
equal. Where they differ, they are not comparable.
"The Book of Marriage" is equally varied in its selections. It includes, naturally, the "seminal Western
narrative of Adam and eve" as well as an excerpt from the eighth-century painter and poet Tu Fu, who asks poignantly: "A living man, but with no family to take leave of - how can I be called a
proper human being?" Isak Dinesen makes an appearance arguing that marriages - even the best of them - can at times impose a considerable burden on both husbands and wives. But it is a burden,
she goes on to say, that is lightened with the presence of God and family and a strong community to help give the sense that one is not alone.
In the modern age, when ties to God, clan, nation, or family have weakened, how much more difficult is marriage? It is this new ordeal that haunts both books. One of the important functions of
tradition is to offer, as the Kasses put it, "inherited cultural forms, smoothly re-enacted, [that] provide tacit answers to questions which therefore need not be asked." But it is precisely such
cultural forms that are now under siege - not only marriage but also the rituals of courtship that once led carefully to it. A certain "taken-for-grantedness" has disappeared.
Thus "The Book of Marriage" begins with an essay from Don Browning, a professor at the University of Chicago, that helps define marriage for a modern audience. The institution, he reminds
us, gives "form to persistent yet sometimes conflicting natural inclinations and needs." It is "not a direct product of our instincts and needs, but it does organize a wide range of our natural human
tendencies, elevating some and de-emphasizing others."
Alas, as the Kasses write, "only the rarest of human beings will be moved to marry by argument
alone." Nevertheless, ideas do matter. They note that "precisely because the passions of human beings are shaped by and tied to their opinions and beliefs, the stirrings of the human heart are
heavily influenced by the musings of the human mind." The wisdom contained in both of these anthologies is well-suited to guide such musings, even to direct our judgments about how to live.
Mr. Schuls is politics editor at FoxNews.com.
Back to Top | Previous
|
