The art of taking a wife

by Paolo Mantegazza

Of all the accidents which we may meet on the threshold of matrimony one of the most common is the stoppage of the way by someone who exclaims: “Halt! there is no passage here.”

You are a minor, or your loved one is, or the person who has the right to speak does not find your choice to his taste, and shuts the door of the temple you wish to enter in your face, securing it with many chains. Civil war is declared, and it is to be seen who can and ought to gain the victory.

This can and ought are not synonymous terms, because the parents on one side or the other can withhold their consent to your union, but many times they are in the wrong, and ought not to refuse to sanction the marriage.

As regards two lovers, if their love is sincere, if in their secret and confidential dialogues they have sworn the everlasting yes to each other, if they have nearly conjugated half of the verb to love, they believe that they have every right in the world to become husband and wife; and when they have tried all fair means to bend the will of the tyrant or tyrants they run away together, secretly, hoping that once the deed is done it will sooner or later receive the consent of those opposing it. Sometimes, however, the wandering sheep are discovered before the deed is consummated, and are re-conducted with many reproaches to their respective folds. In more serious cases spectres of single or double suicide, asphyxiation, poison, or the revolver may appear.

Should anyone find himself in such case meditating death, and have time to cast a look on these pages, let him leave the charcoal, the poison of the druggist, and the revolver of the armourer. Life is a good and beautiful thing that must be guarded with love, caressed with tenderness, and if love ought to be the bridegroom of the marriage, reason and good sense ought always to be present as witnesses.

If with a stroke of a magic wand one could raise all those who have committed self-destruction to life again, after having dressed their wounds, they would take up life gaily, and even another love affair.

Parents always have the duty and the right of speaking, protesting, and counselling, nay, even of interposing a veto, if they see their children’s future endangered when they have chosen love as arbitrator, but have forgotten to call good sense and reason as witnesses.

If you will marry an abject creature who will dishonour your name and the name of the family to which you belong, and of whom after a few months of warm passion you yourself will be ashamed; if you will marry a woman suffering from tuberculous disease, or one of a consumptive family, or where madness is present; if you will increase the sad patrimony of proletaries and the unemployed, having neither present nor future resources; if in one way or another you throw yourself with closed eyes head foremost into a bottomless abyss only to satisfy carnal excitement which you may call passion, but which is only the desire of the flesh—father and mother have full right to oppose your ruin with all possible means; and even if they should not succeed they will have done their duty. If the means they take succeed you will later on thank them with a warm gratitude.

In all these cases I allow you to combat, to weep, even tear out some of your hair; but the tears over, the muscles tired, gather up the hair you have torn out and present it to your fair one, telling her to keep it until your return as a pledge of your eternal faith; for you ought to leave, and that instantly, even on foot, even asking money of the tyrannical parents or of some compassionate friend. Travel in far countries, and who knows if on your return you will not find a neat little packet tied with rose-coloured ribbon—your letters, your hair, and perhaps the announcement of the marriage of your old fiancée.

If your love, instead, has known how to resist the long absence, if it has strengthened and grown, who knows if the hard parents will not be moved to pity and try to make an adjustment, provided, however, that there be no consumption, madness, or other calamities to dissuade you from marriage in an absolute and decided way. Better that you should die than sow death broadcast in future generations.