Committed
Forgive me then if at the end of my story I seem to be grasping at straws in order to reach a comforting conclusion about matrimony. I need those straws; I need that comfort. Certainly I have needed Ferdinand Mount's reassuring theory that, if you look at marriage in a certain light, you can make a case for the institution being intrinsically subversive... I have finally found my own little corner within matrimony's long and curious history. So this is where I will park myself - right there in this place of quiet subversion of all the other stubbornly loving couples across time who also endured all manner of irritating and invasive bullshit in order to get what they ultimately wanted: a little bit of privacy in which to practice love.
- from "Committed," by Elizabeth Gilbert
I have been exploring lately the idea of what marriage is and isn't at different stages of one's life and experience. The romantic bond, the social contract, the partnership, the spiritual sealing - are two bonded souls side by side, sharing of life, or zipped together like two halves of a sleeping bag? Is marriage the ultimate legalized zipper or something else entirely?
Liz Gilbert's account (quoted above) of her year of wandering with her exiled Brazillan boyfriend as they awaited permission to marry, a condition of her boyfriend's legal admittance to the United States (excerpt from COMMITTED by Elizabeth Gilbert, Penguin), made for some strange reading. Homeland Security played a very big role in the most important decision of their lives. And as two scarred, and skeptical divorced adults, the idea of second marriage had not, until then, been on the agenda. Now, marriage it seemed, was the only agenda if they were to be permitted to live in the United States. Gilbert's book is, frankly, depressing. If you really want a close look at the ugly side of the institution of marriage, as both limiting and damaging, as the controlling institution in which the State holds and enforces conditions of personal incorporation as Mr. and Mrs. Inc., then by all means go with Gilbert down her path of study of the history of marriage. Her personal solution, ironically motivated by love of the most romantic nature, is to find meaning in marriage based in a kind of ultimate subversive freedom: a private and personal space within the legal construct that even the state may not pry into. Marriage means to you, Gilbert argues, what you make of it, regardless of the license, ceremony, or social practice.
I thought this discussion of relationship might open up some interesting explorations of commitment here on this blog: What we mean when we choose one another. What it means when a relationship is legalized, or spiritually sanctified, or simply given significance between two individuals. This is of course a huge topic - and inclusive of elements of cultural anthropology, history and feminism, property, religion, law, hetero and homosexual distinctions, etcetera. But I assure you, I don't plan the definitive treatise here in these musings. I will open the debate to discussions of what commitment means to me, to you, our loved ones, friends and community.
So today's question is this: If you or your beloved's legal residency required marriage and you were not philosophically inclined to support marriage, would you, as Gilbert did, marry to permit freedom of choice of country where you were allowed to live, or stand outside the system and refuse to play? Is marriage primarily a bond or a construct, or move fluidly between the two? Is something lost in translation?
- from "Committed," by Elizabeth Gilbert
I have been exploring lately the idea of what marriage is and isn't at different stages of one's life and experience. The romantic bond, the social contract, the partnership, the spiritual sealing - are two bonded souls side by side, sharing of life, or zipped together like two halves of a sleeping bag? Is marriage the ultimate legalized zipper or something else entirely?
Liz Gilbert's account (quoted above) of her year of wandering with her exiled Brazillan boyfriend as they awaited permission to marry, a condition of her boyfriend's legal admittance to the United States (excerpt from COMMITTED by Elizabeth Gilbert, Penguin), made for some strange reading. Homeland Security played a very big role in the most important decision of their lives. And as two scarred, and skeptical divorced adults, the idea of second marriage had not, until then, been on the agenda. Now, marriage it seemed, was the only agenda if they were to be permitted to live in the United States. Gilbert's book is, frankly, depressing. If you really want a close look at the ugly side of the institution of marriage, as both limiting and damaging, as the controlling institution in which the State holds and enforces conditions of personal incorporation as Mr. and Mrs. Inc., then by all means go with Gilbert down her path of study of the history of marriage. Her personal solution, ironically motivated by love of the most romantic nature, is to find meaning in marriage based in a kind of ultimate subversive freedom: a private and personal space within the legal construct that even the state may not pry into. Marriage means to you, Gilbert argues, what you make of it, regardless of the license, ceremony, or social practice.
I thought this discussion of relationship might open up some interesting explorations of commitment here on this blog: What we mean when we choose one another. What it means when a relationship is legalized, or spiritually sanctified, or simply given significance between two individuals. This is of course a huge topic - and inclusive of elements of cultural anthropology, history and feminism, property, religion, law, hetero and homosexual distinctions, etcetera. But I assure you, I don't plan the definitive treatise here in these musings. I will open the debate to discussions of what commitment means to me, to you, our loved ones, friends and community.
So today's question is this: If you or your beloved's legal residency required marriage and you were not philosophically inclined to support marriage, would you, as Gilbert did, marry to permit freedom of choice of country where you were allowed to live, or stand outside the system and refuse to play? Is marriage primarily a bond or a construct, or move fluidly between the two? Is something lost in translation?
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