Marriage: Is This A Joke?

During the month of October, I read two pieces of literature that had a connecting topic- marriage. In both pieces, marriage was not taken seriously or respectively. In Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Gwendolen and Jack, and Cecily and Algernon all act as if marriage is really no big deal. Jack proposes to Gwendolen before they even know each other well enough. Lady Bracknell does not agree to the marriage until she hears that Jack smokes, his age, and his income. I feel like love does not even play a factor. Not to mention the name Earnest is such an important factor for the women. In James Joyce’s “The Boarding House,” After Mrs. Mooney discovers the affair between Polly and Mr. Doran, she immediately jumps to marriage. Now I am not saying I encourage affairs, but honestly they probably didn’t REALLY love each other, so marriage probably wasn’t the best answer. I think that this had become an issue in our society today too. Divorce rates are extremely high and so many people are just jumping into marriages that most likely do not have true, true love. So why is this? Teenage pregnancies? Women’s biological clocks? Money? There are numerous reasons contributing to this issue. Am I still one of the few people to hold marriage sacred? I do not think that marriage should be taken so lightly. I am definitely a fan of marriage and cannot wait to meet my future husband and get married, but I definitely am not going to jump into it for the wrong reasons, especially in the absence of true love. Unfortunately I don’t have a solution to this issue. There is absolutely nothing I can do for all the people in the world who go about marriage carelessly. My only argument is that more people should hold marriage to be more special than just throwing it around like candy on Halloween.