The Myth in Marriage

The Myth in Marriage by Alice Hubbard

The Myth in Marriage* by Alice Hubbard is a philosophical essay contrasting the spiritual ideal of love with the practical business of marriage. Hubbard opens by declaring love a sacred mystery, spirit that cannot be analyzed, whose rare manifestations have led humanity to call the Creator "Love." Lovers desire only to give, and love purifies and enlightens the soul; the beloved is merely the means by which the lover's soul is awakened to an Ideal. So long as neither partner demands anything of the other, this shared vision of the Ideal persists. But lovers, wishing to prolong the ecstasy, arrange to live permanently together — and this decision introduces "a thousand conditions" foreign to the soul's awakening: earning money, housework, personal habits, and human frailty. The once-angelic beloved becomes "a wife, a weaver, a worker"; the lover becomes "a husband, an earner of money." Each wonders across the breakfast table what happened to the ideal they meant to dwell with. Hubbard argues marriage is "ninety-nine per cent" business and less romantic than any other relationship, yet couples enter this uniquely intimate partnership — capable of ruining each other's fortunes as no outsider could — without discussing its business terms, emphasizing only the love that mortals cannot control. She likens this to two business partners who discuss only the pleasure of each other's company. She distinguishes "falling in love" (a false notion) from the true process: as consciousness evolves, imagination creates ideals, and one loves by recognizing another who reminds one of that ideal. She cites Dante's love for Beatrice, whom he saw only twice and never knew, as distinct from his actual wife, mother of his children. Discussing young couples, Hubbard describes the "cosmic urge" that draws youth and maiden together before will and judgment are developed, followed by disillusionment when domestic realities intrude. She critiques the Church's concern over divorce statistics (one in twelve marriages), noting no one asks whether the other eleven marriages secure genuine life, liberty, and happiness. A bishop's proposed "cure" — permanent estrangement between divorced parties — she calls punishment, not remedy. Hubbard contends that social marriage, an indissoluble intellectual partnership, was not devised by Nature, which only prompted the cosmic urge, not lifelong bondage. She criticizes the persisting belief, in both men and women, that marriage confers ownership — husbands demanding accountability of wives, wives demanding support "till death" — producing more discord among the married than the unmarried. She proposes that if neither spouse claimed rights beyond what existed before marriage, marriage would not fail; conversely, couples who marry with modest, purely transactional expectations (shelter and service exchanged plainly) suffer little disappointment, having no ideals to disappoint. She defines two distinct phases of marriage: the business partnership and the spiritual relation. The state, she notes, recognizes only the vow "to cherish" (enforced as alimony) and cannot compel love, honor, or obedience. She surveys the historical burden placed on women — required virtue, submission, and dependency — quoting Luther that "it is a hard world for girls." A substantial portion addresses motherhood as economic sacrifice: pregnancy and child-rearing consume a mother's independence and up to twenty-five years of her life, uncompensated, while industrialization stripped women of their former home-based economic productivity (spinning, weaving, farming). Hubbard argues mothers are essentially unpaid state servants producing citizens, and calls for the state to financially endow motherhood, since "children are the greatest asset of the nation" yet no institution funds their rearing directly. She traces citizenship itself to maternal instinct — women extending care from their own children to all children, then to civic and social reform — asserting women are citizens "by natural tendency," men "by education." She calls for women's economic freedom as prerequisite to marital democracy: paid, independent, self-respecting mothers will produce a stronger, more evolved populace, whereas "servile mothers have slave sons and stupid daughters." Democracy, she insists, must begin at the foundation of government — the home — through a genuinely mutual marriage partnership. The essay closes by naming Romance as life's illuminating, essential myth-force, while warning against two false assumptions: that romance alone suffices, or that business struggles do not touch lovers. True happiness, Hubbard concludes, is not one person's gift to another but resides within the individual; economically independent lovers who meet freely, without obligation or demand, sustain both love and Romance "even unto death." Marriage should not be sought by those seeking ease, luxury, or service without earning it. The work ends affirming that higher intelligence and mutual, unforced love will one day let humanity say at life's close: "To live is glorious. I have lived!"

By Alice Hubbard · First published 1912 · Genre: Romance, Fiction, Drama · 16 chapters · 8,685 words

First lines

"The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love. -- Thoreau."

Marriage, although a most common incident in life, is understood as little as is birth, life and death. People are perpetually ignorant on the subject, and insist upon remaining in this state until the veil of their temple is rent in twain, and their holy of holies has daylight thrown upon it.

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Marriage · br · business · care · children · citizens · give · great · human · husband · ideal · life

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More by Alice Hubbard