Some people consider the death of marriage to be a good thing, and many of those people are feminists. Opposition to marriage was a common theme in much of the writing of the second wave, with feminists including Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer and Kate Millett all arguing for its abolition. ‘The institution of marriage is the chief vehicle for the perpetuation of the oppression of women,’ insisted the American sociologist Marlene Dixon in 1969, summarising the dominant feminist critique of the time. ‘It is through the role of wife that the subjugation of women is maintained.’33
