Miss Havisham Speaks

A Married State

Katherine Philips

A married state affords but little ease
The best of husbands are so hard to please.
This in wives’ careful faces you may spell
Though they dissemble their misfortunes well.
A virgin state is crowned with much content;
It’s always happy as it’s innocent.
No blustering husbands to create your fears;
No pangs of childbirth to extort your tears;
No children’s cries for to offend your ears;
Few worldly crosses to distract your prayers:
Thus are you freed from all the cares that do
Attend on matrimony and a husband too.
Therefore Madam, be advised by me
Turn, turn apostate to love’s levity,
Suppress wild nature if she dare rebel,
There’s no such thing as leading apes in hell[M1] .[i]


Every wedding I happen to attend strengthens my resolve never to marry. I believe that if the practice of wedding were totally abolished, there would infinitely be less waste and less expense in the world, and people would all be a great deal happier: people would no longer lie about their whereabouts or placate spouses with bribes, wives would no longer have to nag their lazy-ass husbands (who tease them about their figures, the potbellied bastards) to leave that frigging basketball game, children would quarrel less about whom their parents love more because, heck, they won’t know the identities of their parents. (How very Huxley.) People would be more independent because they would realize the impermanence and tenuousness of our relationships with other people.

I have never believed that marriage is a ceremony of lofty ideals and romantic, rosy dreams fulfilled. It is often a bloody business form start to finish. While I glory in bloodshed, I’d rather not parcel out my blood to the leeches. There's already enough trouble in the world, thank you very much.

Marriage is a delusion. It is not the peak people climb to arrive at happiness. It is not at all sacred; nothing but selfishness urges people to marry. People only marry for money, for companionship, for children. Though people may argue that this last is the object of selfless sacrifice, they are quite wrong. People want to have children so that they will not be left alone when they're old and decrepit. They have children so they can rest securely in the knowledge that the wealth they've accumulated won't go to strangers: ridiculous but true. People moralize and use their children's guilt to prevent being thrown out in the cold. However, I pity all those unfortunate parents, including my own. Raising children is a thankless job; it is a duty that holds no security, whose only sure return is pain and anger. It drains people's resources-- pecuniary, mental, and physical--and leaves them vulnerable to others who wish to destroy them. Marriage, and all its messy addenda and byproducts, I denounce for ever. Far better and happier fate it is to live in solitude, to be free to spend money in any way one wishes, to go anywhere one leads oneself, and to be untroubled by the fate of other souls yoked to yours. I may be a coward, but at least I am wise enough to know where I stand. Marriage will not solve problems, but increase them threefold; love is never enough, will never be enough. There is only so much to us, to our ceremonies, our fragile existence.The restless scrambling and searching, the endless self-immolation and self-laceration people commit in the name of finding love, are all meaningless. The only reprieve we will know from our common loneliness can only come from ourselves, by our own achievement, by our own realization, by our own redemption.


[i] This was allegedly the fate of spinsters.


[M1]