1、1The Marriage BusinessWILL you marry me?“ I asked her m my mostromantic tone, all those years ago. I admit thatmy voice may have been trembling a little atthat moment, but still I was surprised that ittook her two days to say “yes.“ Was it that she thought thatthis nervousness suggested a question a
2、bout my commit-ment? Was it perhaps that she needed time to think aboutit? (I dont think so:by that time, we had already been an“item“ for almost seven years). What else could possibly ac-count for a delayed response to such an attractive, eligibleyoung man with prospects? I never did discover the a
3、nswerto that question, and Ive decided that there would be no ad-vantage in enquiring, so I remain in blissflflignorance. But probably the most shocking realization that cameto me at that time was that marriage can be a surprisinglyexpensive business. I may have had good prospects, butthe sordid tru
4、th is that I was fiat broke at that time (largelybecause I was spending so much money having a good timewhilst I was still a bachelor). So the day came when my fu-ture bride called me to ask for money to pay the 28 neededto acquire an Archbishops 2License - and I didnt have 28in my bank account, So
5、she had to pay. Quite right, too:aswe all know, its the brides family that should pay for thewedding. Well, that was my excuse, anyway! There was a greater shock to come. As we stood thereside by side in church, I realized that this was not just aboutmoney:this was very serious business! It was as t
6、he priestintoned those famous words from the Book of CommonPrayer that told me that I was now binding myself to thiswoman “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sick-ness and in healthtill death do us part.“ Yes, it was at thatmoment that I fully appreciated that this was a pretty oner-ous
7、 contract that I was entering into, of a kind that I certain-ly would not countenance in my business life. It was a very restrictive covenant that I was making, withlots of things I was permitted to do, but at the same timethere were all sortts of people making good profit from ourunion. If you thin
8、k about it, the church was making somemoney or, if we had chosen a civil wedding, it would havebeen the Town Hall; the dressmaker could have made a for-tune, except that the new Mrs Bourne was something of aseamstress, so made it herself; the musicians took their 3cut;the champagne-makers did very w
9、ell on that day; and so itgoes on. The website “UK Wedding Belles“ helpfully tellsus that the average cost of a wedding in 2011 in the UK willbe about 18,605 (lets say RMB 190,000), including an as-tonishing 1,500 for the brides dress (yet only 200 for thebridegrooms outfit). This is good business f
10、or many, but anightmare for the pogr father of the bride, who has to saveup for years to foot the bill. And just imagine if youre unfor-tunate enough to have four daughters! I havent even started talking about the cost of the mari- tal home, the school fees or the bills for feeding hungry andoften u
11、ngrateful children. And yet some people go throughthis performance again and again Elizabeth Taylor wasmarried seven times, so there must be something attractiveabout marriage. Was it simply that she could afford it andthat the new husbands kept her feeling young? And yet again, it is an institution
12、 which attracts endlessjokes and satirical comment. Here, I must give credit to apublication produced by one of my competitors, The OxfordDictionary of Thematic Quotations. There, I find that StellaGibbons referred to it as “the long monotony of 4marriage,“but apparently its much worse than that. Al
13、exandre Dumasopines, “The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes twoto bear them, and sometimes three.“ On the other hand, oneof his compatriots, Simone Signoret, is of the view:“Chainsdo not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds oftiny threads which sew people together through th
14、e years.That is what makes a marriage last - more than passion oreven sex!“ Even more unkindly, Michel de Montaigne (yes, its thoseFrench again) suggested, “A good marriage would be be-tween a blind wife and a deaf husband.“ What a shocking as-sertion, but I think we all know what he meant, But the
15、lastword goes to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, who famously said,“A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then hesfinished!“ However, people still get married and it doesnt seem tomatter which part of the world youre in, nor from which re-ligious or cultural background. The newspapers focus o
16、n thehigh rate of divorce in the UK - there were some 114,000 in2009, representing about one percent of the married popu-lation. But perhaps they should have been focusing on thenumber of marriages that were registered in the same year,namely 231,000, or roughly double the figure for divorces.Intere
17、stingly, civil 5weddings are more popular than religiousceremonies, and yet its always seemed to me that marriagehas a strongly religious theme underpinning it. Whateverthe reality, and for whatever reasons people choose to do it,marriages do seem to survive remarkably well in this modernage. Is it because, as one of my friends suggested to me, thebest way to ensure that you have plenty of money in your oldage is not to get divorced? Or would that be altogether toocynical?
