Marriage and Love

An essay contends that the institution of marriage is an economic and social contract often at odds with genuine romantic love. It argues marriage commonly enforces female dependency, ignorance about sexual life, and conformity to social roles, producing emotional and physical harm, domestic stagnation, and frequent dissolution. Love is portrayed as spontaneous, intense, and independent of legal bonds, while marriage is sustained by custom, church, and state. The essay links changing female economic independence to a weakening of traditional marital norms and critiques both sentimental and practical defenses of marriage.