Freedom to marry?
From the novel The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton:
"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"
"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of success," he said, "is personal freedom."
"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
"From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that's what I call success."
Edith Wharton was an insider in America's privileged classes when she wrote about freedom "from all the material accidents." Nevertheless her heroine, Lily Bart, must marry for money in order to maintain her position in 1890s New York upper-class society. Her desperate need contradicts the notion of personal freedom as mentioned above and especially the freedom to build love relationships.
In modern times and particularly in the beginning of the third millennium, one would expect that women will be free to marry out of love; to put less emphasis on class, race, and education. But this is not the case, as statistics reveals. Women still look for economic security, and they are much more likely to marry someone from their own race and ethnicity:
"Never-married women place a great deal of importance on finding someone who has a steady job—fully 78% say this would be very important to them in choosing a spouse or partner… the changes in the labor market have contributed to a shrinking pool of available employed young men… the vast majority of new marriages (85%) take place between people of the same race and ethnicity," (taken from: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/0...)
And I ask – what have changed since Edith Wharton' time? One possible answer – today women can "bypass" the whole subject of marriage or cohabitation with a suitable spouse; nowadays they can be single parent, support themselves and not be criticized and even condemned as they would have been in Wharton's time. There are probably many other possible answers…
"Success?" She hesitated. "Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I suppose. It's a relative quality, after all. Isn't that your idea of it?"
"My idea of it? God forbid!" He sat up with sudden energy, resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. "My idea of success," he said, "is personal freedom."
"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
"From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that's what I call success."
Edith Wharton was an insider in America's privileged classes when she wrote about freedom "from all the material accidents." Nevertheless her heroine, Lily Bart, must marry for money in order to maintain her position in 1890s New York upper-class society. Her desperate need contradicts the notion of personal freedom as mentioned above and especially the freedom to build love relationships.
In modern times and particularly in the beginning of the third millennium, one would expect that women will be free to marry out of love; to put less emphasis on class, race, and education. But this is not the case, as statistics reveals. Women still look for economic security, and they are much more likely to marry someone from their own race and ethnicity:
"Never-married women place a great deal of importance on finding someone who has a steady job—fully 78% say this would be very important to them in choosing a spouse or partner… the changes in the labor market have contributed to a shrinking pool of available employed young men… the vast majority of new marriages (85%) take place between people of the same race and ethnicity," (taken from: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/0...)
And I ask – what have changed since Edith Wharton' time? One possible answer – today women can "bypass" the whole subject of marriage or cohabitation with a suitable spouse; nowadays they can be single parent, support themselves and not be criticized and even condemned as they would have been in Wharton's time. There are probably many other possible answers…
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