Remarriage

“ I shall fail of my intent if my words seem like railings at the sex most tender, most burdened. Since we are treating of the weeds of the mourners, let us question why it is that widowers more frequently seek remarriage than do widows. The bereaved man easily says: ‘Get me another wife.’ The bereaved woman more frequently says: ‘Let me hurry on heavenward after my only and ever beloved.’
“With the true woman marriage is a committal so utter that it is difficult for her, generally, to make it more than once. Again me thinks that marriage brings the graver, heavier loads to women. ”

“ Remarriage after widowhood is in practice almost unknown; and divorce is so discountenanced that its relief is seldom sought. On the other hand, the ascetic idea is at least absent, and a wife expects and a husband is prepared to give constant attention and all possible comfort. ”

“ But the spirit of the religion of Yahweh was against laxity in this matter, and this more rigorous feeling finds expression in the evident distaste for the remarriage of a divorced woman which is expressed in Deut. xxiv. 4. Remarriage is not forbidden; but the woman who remarries is spoken of as one who has "let herself be defiled." No such expression could have been used, had not remarriage after divorce been looked upon as something which detracted from perfect feminine purity. ”

“ Therefore sensible and experienced people always assume that when a declaration of love is made to an already married person, the declaration binds the parties in honor never to see one another again unless they contemplate divorce and remarriage. ”

“ A pundit of the belief will argue that the practical reason for prohibiting remarriage is to prevent the crowding of the marriage market—and this is the only "reason" that can be extracted from one claiming to speak with knowledge on the unfortunate subject. ”

“ And it must be remembered that half a century ago and less you might have journeyed inquisitively through the length and breadth of that land and have found probably not one case of divorce nor of separation without divorce: among that people marriage was truly for better or for worse—a great binding and unalterable sacrament of blended lives. If after marriage love's young dream ended, then you lived on where you were—wide awake; if all gorgeous colors left the clouds and the clouds left the sky, you stood the blistering sun ”

“ With so many conspicuous examples in high places, it is hardly strange that divorces became deplorably common. “Does anybody blush at a divorce,” says one, “since illustrious and noble women compute their years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number of husbands they have had?” We hear of a woman who was the twenty-first wife of her twenty-third husband. ”

“ But one day it suddenly came into his mind that he would like to get married, and, moreover, that he would choose a very grand wife—a King’s daughter, in short. But as he did not trust himself as a wooer, he determined to send his old mother on the mission.
‘You must go to the King,’ he said to her, ‘and demand the hand of his lovely daughter in marriage for me.’
‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast at the idea. ‘Why cannot you marry someone in your own rank? ”

“ These and similar utterances you may very well hold over your wife.” [510]
In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1 Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband; whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether the first be living or dead! ”

“ There was once a husband and wife who had but one child, a daughter. Now it happened that the wife fell ill and was at the point of death. Before dying she called her husband, and said to him, weeping: "I am dying; you are still young; if you ever wish to marry again, be mindful to choose a wife whom my wedding ring fits; and if you cannot find a lady whom it fits well, do not marry." ”

“ Are there any married people here? It is only a question of tasting, in advance, the pleasures of a widowhood. Would you like to see your husband disappear, my sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wife decompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you! Come! Come up here! Death awaits you! ”

“ When she has thus obtained a wife for her husband, she carries her home, puts her to bed with her husband, where, having left her, she feasts with the bride's relations. There the children of the first marriage are produced, and the men of the bride's family put each their hands upon these children's heads, and afterwards take the oath in the usual manner, to live and die with them as their own offspring. ”

“ There's no talking to a young woman now about marriage, but she is all in a blaze about hearts, and darts, and—and—But hark ye, child, I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth—that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence—for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. ”

“ Now if we admit the eternal covenant of marriage between the first pair—two immortal beings, and that they were commanded to multiply, then, if the same order of marriage is to be continued, and we become immortal, and all the man's three wives who have died in succession come up out of the grave, must he divorce all but one, or will he have them all? ”

“ There was once an unmarried man whom some of his friends desired to marry to a maid, some to a widow, and others again to a woman who was divorced from her husband. For his part he knew not which to choose, for all the three were good and handsome. He went therefore to a certain old man, to ask his advice as to whether it would be best to marry the maid, the widow, or the divorced woman. ”

“ Then the widow said to the man's daughter, "Do you hear, tell your father I wish to marry him, and you shall every morning wash in milk and drink wine, but my daughter shall wash in water and drink water." So the girl went home and told her father what the woman had said, and he replied, "What shall I do? Marriage is a comfort, but it is also a torment." ”

“ That starched and ceremonious countenance looks not so much back as forward, and is rather intended to get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was a boy, a very beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, the widow of a prince, wore somewhat more ornament in her dress than our laws of widowhood allow, and being reproached with it, she made answer that it was because she was resolved to have no more love affairs, and would never marry again. ”

“ What can you be able to do, that would be more grateful to them, than if they should see you divorc'd from your Husband; a Widow, nay, to live, a Widow bewitcht, worse than a Widow? For Widows may marry again. ”

“ He said, "O woman! what hast thou, with thy wondrous beauty, to do with a poor sick husband? Go, be divorced from thy husband, and marry me. I have great possessions, and I will treat thee as a queen." ”

“ I grasped that this marriage, which started with widowhood to end up having, was perhaps preferable to ordinary marriages, which shatter on bad days. I no longer saw in the years that remained to me to spend among men anything other than a long engagement that death would crown with an eternal felicity. ”

“ A henpecked husband imagines he has escaped by divorce from the clutches of his wife and his mother-in-law. He marries again, when, lo and behold, the double combination of marriage and divorce brings back to him his former wife in the aggravated form of a second mother-in-law! ”

“ The sole object of this ceremony has been to relieve the bride of the reproach of prolonged and unseasonable maidenhood. Whether you will ever see one another in this life I cannot say. If it should happen that you meet, you would not be able to recognise one another as husband and wife. ”

“ Divorce, in its fullest interpretation;—divorce, which breaks the marriage utterly, and allows of a new choice; the children of which new choice shall be as legitimate and as capable of inheriting by succession, as the children of any other marriages,—is the established law of our land. ”

“ Tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnisation of the marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that every-day tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You are younger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose, however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. ”

“ In truth, the circumstances, so unexampled, that attended their separation, the last words of the wife to the husband being those of the most playful affection, while the language of the husband toward the wife was in a strain, as the world knows, of tenderest eulogy, are in themselves a sufficient proof that, at the time of their parting, there could have been no very deep sense of injury on either side. ”

“ XCIV. A husband will be best avenged by his wife’s lover.
MEDITATION XXVIII. OF COMPENSATIONS.
The marital catastrophe which a certain number of husbands cannot avoid, almost always forms the closing scene of the drama. At that point all around you is tranquil. Your resignation, if you are resigned, has the power of awakening keen remorse in the soul of your wife and of her lover; for their happiness teaches them the depth of the wound they have inflicted upon you. You are, you may be sure, a third element in all their pleasures. ”

“ Dear sisters, take the advice of your brother, who knows this world and its weaknesses, and when it comes to your turn to choose [Pg 99] husbands, marry nice elderly gentlemen with large fortunes, as your friend Miss Linley is doing. Marriage should be regarded simply as an unavoidable preliminary to a brilliant widowhood. And let me assure you, Eliza, your widowhood will not be long averted if you provide your husband with mutton as tough as that which you set before your brothers four days out of the seven. ”

“ If the widow remarrying is a minor whose marriage has not been consummated, she shall not remarry without the consent of her father, or, if she has no father, of her paternal grand-father, or, if she has no such grand-father, of her mother, or failing all these, of her elder brother, or, failing also brothers, of her next male relative. ”

“ If remaining a widow, thou wouldest have the same pomp, the same show, the same attire, as thou hadst while thy husband was living, it were better for thee to marry. For it is not the union that is objectionable, but the multitude of cares that attend it. ”

“ If the slight formalities that are the bulwarks of love as well as friendship, many forbearances, and more of the small, sweet courtesies of life, were but permitted to blossom forth like unexpected flowers beneath the family rooftree, fewer unhappy marriages would catalogue their miseries in the divorce court. ”

“ As she passed into the vestry to sign the marriage register, leaning proudly upon the arm of her newly made husband, and followed by her few attending personal friends, a man who had witnessed the ceremony from behind a clustered pillar in the church, stole out into the square, his face lighted by a lurid smile, his eyes emitting the same peculiar, exultant gleam as the bride’s had done. ”

“ If a wife divorced her husband for one of these reasons, she recovered her dowry and any property brought into the marriage by her husband for life with reversion to her children, or if there were no children, absolutely. ”

“ I have heard of one gentleman, who having lived in a state of domestic jarring with his wife, got her persuaded to concur with him in applying for a divorce.—This was soon obtained.—He then married another woman, with whom he was violently in love, and expected, as usual, eternal happiness. ”

“ Bridegroom, the person whom you now take by the hand, you receive to be your married wife: you promise to love her, to honor her, to support her, and in all things to treat her as you are now, or shall hereafter be convinced is by the laws of Christ made your duty,—a tender husband, with unspotted fidelity till death shall separate you. ”

“ A widow of any considerable rank seldom marries again. Those of high station esteem it a sacred duty to show this mark of veneration for the memory of a husband, even if they have been but a few days married, or even if the marriage contract had been settled at the time of his death. ”

“ But marriage, with all its accompanying conventions and indissoluble bonds—indissoluble, except through the loathsome medium of the divorce court—was a condition of life that his whole nature shrank from. ”

“ Give the elder son’s wife a year or two, cousin, for sometimes when seven years are passed barren, a woman will come to her true nature and bear a harvest of good children, for I have seen it so, and as for the lad’s saying he will not wed, why then he has a love somewhere, and we must find out who she is, and if she is fit for him to wed or not. ”

“ Granting even that a marriage after an English divorce would mean to you, from the strictly religious standpoint, simply nothing⁠—⁠why, surely, even then, it must be no small matter to set oneself right with the world, to be received and acknowledged as an honest woman, and my wife, in ordinary English society. ”

“ If he had died before his wife, he married again, selecting a partner from among the wives who had preceded their husbands; but if husband and wife chanced to die at the same time, they remarried in the world below. ”

“ But when it comes to marriage pertaining to a couple, neither of whom has ever been married before, the Lord has ordained that that marriage, if performed according to his law, by divine authority and appointment, shall have effect after the resurrection from the dead, and shall continue in force from that time throughout all the ages of eternity. ”