The Objects of Marriage

Book excerpt

About the Author: Havelock Ellis

Date: 1937

Source: Ellis, Havelock. "The Objects of Marriage" in On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue. New York: Garden City, 1937.

About the Author: Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) was an English physician, sexual psychologist, and social activist.

INTRODUCTION

While the definitions of marriage differ greatly between religions and societies, the institution of marriage is generally understood as one wherein two people, traditionally a man and a woman, enter into a contract to begin a family. In certain societies, mostly non-Western cultures, marriage can exist between a man and more than one woman, referred to as polygamy. In recent years, marriages between two people of the same gender, known as same-sex marriage, has become increasingly recognized in some areas of the world. The marriage contract has religious, legal and social ramifications and is perceived as a formal recognition of commitment between spouses.

Marriage in most modern cultures in Western society is entered into by the parties voluntarily. In other parts of the world, as was the case prior to modernity, marriages are arranged with little or no consultation with the spouses who will be entered into the contract. Throughout history, marriages in royal courts existed only between other members of royal dynasties and the choice of spouse was an issue of honor and thus required the choice of a respected spouse with the proper lineage. These strong traditions remain in many cultures, social arenas, and religions today. The concept of intermarriage, defined as a marriage between two different groups, whether religious, cultural, ethnic, or social, is seldom seen in cultures where marriage is arranged.

In Western culture, marriage is often preceded by a period of courtship where the parties can become acquainted with one another and decide whether marriage is appropriate. Most religions consider marriage to be a prerequisite for sexual intercourse between husband and wife, and extra-marital sexual relations by one of the parties in a marriage can be used as the grounds for divorce.

The widely accepted custom of exchanging wedding rings between the spouses finds its origins in biblical mandates requiring the exchange of items of value to consecrate a marriage. Even while alternative coupling arrangements in modern society have evolved, marriage remains the most popular form of social contract between two people for the purposes of building a life together within a new family.

PRIMARY SOURCE

WHAT are the legitimate objects of marriage? We know that many people seek to marry for ends that can scarcely be called legitimate, that men may marry to obtain a cheap domestic drudge or nurse, and that women may marry to be kept when they are tired of keeping themselves. These objects in marriage may or may not be moral, but in any case they are scarcely its legitimate ends. We are here concerned to ascertain those ends of marriage which are legitimate when we take the highest ground as moral and civilized men and women living in an advanced state of society and seeking, if we can, to advance that state of society still further.

The primary end of marriage is to beget and bear off-spring, and to rear them until they are able to take care of themselves. On that basis Man is at one with all the mammals and most of the birds. If, indeed, we disregard the originally less essential part of this end—that is to say, the care and tending of the young—this end of marriage is not only the primary but usually the sole end of sexual intercourse in the whole mammal world. As a natural instinct, its achievement involves gratification and well-being, but this bait of gratification is merely a device of Nature's and not in itself an end having any useful function at the periods when conception is not possible.

This is clearly indicated by the fact that among animals, the female only experiences sexual desire at the season of impregnation, and that desire ceases as soon as impregnation takes place, though this is only in a few species true of the male, obviously because, if his sexual desire and aptitude were confined to so brief a period, the chances of the female meeting the right male at the right moment would be too seriously diminished; so that the attentive and inquisitive attitude towards the female by the male animal—which we may often think we see still traceable in the human species—is not the outcome of lustfulness for personal gratification ("wantonly to satisfy carnal lusts and appetites like brute beasts," as the Anglican Prayer Book incorrectly puts it) but implanted by Nature for the benefit of the female and the attainment of the primary object of procreation. This primary object we may term the animal end of marriage.

This object remains not only the primary but even the sole end of marriage among the lower races of mankind generally. The erotic idea, in its deeper sense, that is to say the element of love, arose very slowly in mankind. It is found, it is true, among some lower races, and it appears that some tribes possess a word for the joy of love in a purely psychic sense. But even among European races the evolution was late. The Greek poets, except the latest, showed little recognition of love as an element of marriage. Theognis compared marriage with cattle-breeding. The Romans of the Republic took much the same view. Greeks and Romans alike regarded breeding as the one recognizable object of marriage; any other object was mere wantonness and had better, they thought, be carried on outside marriage. Religion, which preserves so many ancient and primitive conceptions of life, has consecrated this conception also, and Christianity—though, as I will point out later, it has tended to enlarge the conception—at the outset only offered the choice between celibacy on the one hand and on the other marriage for the production of offspring.

Yet, from an early period in human history, a secondary function of sexual intercourse had been slowly growing up to become one of the great objects of marriage. Among animals, it may be said, and even sometimes in man, the sexual impulse, when once aroused, makes but a short and swift circuit through the brain to reach its consummation. But as the brain and its faculties develop, powerfully aided indeed by the very difficulties of the sexual life, the impulse for sexual union has to traverse ever longer, slower, more painful paths, before it reaches, and sometimes it never reaches, its ultimate object. This means that sex gradually becomes intertwined with all the highest and subtlest human emotions and activities, with the refinements of social intercourse, with high adventure in every sphere, with art, with religion. The primitive animal instinct, having the sole end of procreation, becomes on its way to that end the inspiring stimulus to all those psychic energies which in civilization we count most precious. This function is thus, we see, a by-product. But, as we know, even in our human factories, the by-product is sometimes more valuable than the product. That is so as regards the functional products of human evolution. The hand was produced out of the animal forelimb with the primary end of grasping the things we materially need, but as a by-product the hand has developed the function of making and playing the piano and the violin, and that secondary functional by-product of the hand we account, even as measured by the rough test of money, more precious, however less materially necessary, than its primary function. It is, however, only in rare and gifted natures that transformed sexual energy becomes of supreme value for its own sake without ever attaining the normal physical outlet.

For the most part the by-product accompanies the product, throughout, thus adding a secondary, yet peculiarly sacred and specially human, object of marriage to its primary animal object. This may be termed the spiritual object of marriage.

By the term "spiritual" we are not to understand any mysterious and supernatural qualities. It is simply a convenient name, in distinction from animal, to cover all those higher mental and emotional processes which in human evolution are ever gaining greater power. It is needless to enumerate the constituents of this spiritual end of sexual intercourse, for everyone is entitled to enumerate them differently and in different order. They include not only all that makes love a gracious and beautiful erotic art, but the whole element of pleasure in so far as pleasure is more than a mere animal gratification. Our ancient ascetic traditions often make us blind to the meaning of pleasure. We see only its possibilities of evil and not its mightiness for good. We forget that, as Romain Rolland says, "Joy is as holy as Pain."' No one has insisted so much on the supreme importance of the element of pleasure in the spiritual ends of sex as James Hinton. Rightly used, he declares, Pleasure is "the Child of God," to be recognized as a "mighty storehouse of force,"' and he pointed out the significant fact that in the course of human progress its importance increases rather than diminishes. While it is perfectly true that sexual energy may be in large degree arrested, and transformed into intellectual and moral forms, yet it is also true that pleasure itself, and above all, sexual pleasure, wisely used and not abused, may prove the stimulus and liberator of our finest and most exalted activities. It is largely this remarkable function of sexual pleasure which is decisive in settling the argument of those who claim that continence is the only alternative to the animal end of marriage. That argument ignores the liberating and harmonizing influences, giving wholesome balance and sanity to the whole organism, imparted by a sexual union which is the outcome of the psychic as well as physical needs. There is, further, in the attainment of the spiritual end of marriage, much more than the benefit of each individual separately. There is, that is to say, the effect on the union itself. For through harmonious sex relationships a deeper spiritual unity is reached than can possibly be derived from continence in or out of marriage, and the marriage association becomes an apter instrument in the service of the world. Apart from any sexual craving, the complete spiritual contact of two persons who love each other can only be attained through some act of rare intimacy. No act can be quite so intimate as the sexual embrace.

SIGNIFICANCE

Within the institution of marriage, the act of sexual intercourse is considered as the ultimate display of affection and intimacy and has therefore been an act which within traditional and religious circles is reserved for marriage. As this excerpt displays, sex is not simply an act that takes place during marriage, but is rather at the center of what two humans being married is all about. While sex is in itself a physical act driven by hormonal desires and physical attraction, it is directly linked to emotional and spiritual issues including love, which acts as a central factor in bringing people together in marriage.

This excerpt identifies that sex in marriage has two principle roles, the functional and the spiritual. From the functional perspective, it achieves the goal for which the institution of marriage exists, to allow for procreation. On a spiritual level, the act of sex produces emotions of love that further fosters attraction between spouses and encourages marriages to succeed. It is this distinction whereby humans are able to transmit the physicality of sex to the emotions of love that differentiates people from all other living things that reproduce sexually.

Sexuality need not be recognized as something that is only linked to eroticism and attractions between people. Rather, as this excerpt contends, sex has been proven to have an impact upon human emotions that enable the person to fully appreciate many of the interactions that people deal with on a daily basis, including art and religion.

This excerpt is most significant because it argues that sex is a prerequisite for a healthy life and marriage in the sense that some degree of sex is necessary to enable the type of love that fosters in successful marriages. Sex in the context of marriage therefore is an element that is necessary for the development of the union that defines the institution of marriage. With-out sex in a marriage, it should be assumed it would be difficult if not impossible to preserve a sense of intimate unity that often exists between spouses.

While the excerpt reflects a traditional view in it's depiction of marriage in the 1930s, the reality of today's objects of marriage are more varied. Some modern couples choose not to have children, and families in developed countries have fewer children than in the 1930s. While China has an official one-child policy, married couples in other countries including Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic have, on average, only one child, thus de-emphasizing the object of marriage as mainly to bear and raise children. Americans are also waiting longer to marry and start their families than young people in the 1930s. Whereas the median age for a bride in 1930s America was barely twenty years old, by 2006, the average age for a woman marrying for the first time had risen to 25 years.