The Power of Love
In which I read an excessively confused article about marriage and wonder why I'm not just doing my actual work.
It’s pouring rain in a southernly manner—torrentially, which means we are all lying around here in this quiet, clean, beautiful house instead of at the beach. I, therefore, unearthed my dusty (not actually, they’re on the computer, but they might as well be festooned with cobwebs like Mrs. Havisham’s cake) marriage notes that I’ve been intending for a year and a half to fashion into a book. After two decades of saying the same things over and over to besotted couples before they get married, I thought it would be nice to write some of them down.
In the spirit of procrastination, though, I puttered around, adding words here and there, feeling bad about not reading more books about marriage before trying to write one, and then figured I’d better surf the internet for a few minutes before really getting down to work.
I came across this—I don’t want to be horrid…. but for me anyway—nearly unreadable and meandering review of a book that purports to be about marriage. Here is a little taste:
I don’t mean to conflate marriage and love. Quite the opposite – it is marriage’s function as an organising logic that I fear, that I believe does not work for anyone (especially not women). When I speak of marriage, it is not love I think of, but power. I think about Phyllis Rose discussing this in the introduction to PARALLEL LIVES: FIVE VICTORIAN MARRIAGES (1983): ‘When we resign power or assume new power, we insist it is not happening and demand to be talked to about love. Perhaps that is what love is – the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.’ But power is impossible to sidestep. A page later: ‘Who can resist the thought that love is the ideological bone thrown to women to distract their attention from the powerlessness of their lives?’
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