The Superstition of DivorceChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The Superstition of Divorce
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Divorce
social training, the tradition of greater roughness even in the gestures
of affection. To make all marriage or divorce, in the case of such a
man, turn upon a blow is like blasting the whole life of a gentleman
because he has slammed the door. Often a poor man cannot slam the door;
partly because the model villa might fall down; but more because he has
nowhere to go to; the smoking-room, the billiard-room and the peacock
music-room not being yet attached to his premises.
I say this in passing, to point out that while I do not dream of
suggesting that there are only happy marriages, there will quite
certainly, as things work nowadays, be a very large number of unhappy
and unjust divorces. They will be cases in which the innocent partner
will receive the real punishment of the guilty partner, through being in
fact and feeling the faithful partner. For instance, it is insisted that
a married person must at least find release from the society of a
lunatic; but it is also true that the scientific reformers, with their
fuss about “the feeble-minded,” are continually giving larger and looser
definitions of lunacy. The process might begin by releasing somebody
from a homicidal maniac, and end by dealing in the same way with a
rather dull conversationalist. But in fact nobody does deny that a
person should be allowed some sort of release from a homicidal maniac.
The most extreme school of orthodoxy only maintains that anybody who has
had that experience should be content with that release. In other words,
it says he should be content with that experience of matrimony, and not
seek another. It was put very wittily, I think, by a Roman Catholic
friend of mine, who said he approved of release so long as it was not
spelt with a hyphen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account