MARRIAGE THEORIES

Evening Star, Issue 20993, 6 January 1932, Page 10

MARRIAGE THEORIES

DO OPPOSITES ATTRACT?

The supply of those who desire to instruct us how to be happy though married never fails. What is more remarkable is that they have always an audience. It is an impressive proof of the capacity for faith in the human race (writes H. C. Bailey, in the ‘ Daily Telegraph’). The professor who has lectured recently was eloquent upon the aptitude of opposites to constitute a mutual felicity. The lion finds bliss with the lamb whichever sex is which, the “hundred per cent, he-man,” sheik, caveman, or other form of brute, with the shrinking, timid woman or the fine flower of high brows. And vice versa and mutatis mutandis, the Amazon and the shrew, and the managing woman do best with shy and nervous little men. The professor explains this phenomenon as one phase of the general principle of the attraction of the sexes. Each is so constituted by the wisdom of Nature as to admire the qualities which it has not got. When the strong woman marries the little man she is only obeying the general law that feminine characteristics crave the company of masculine characteristics._ That these may happen to have got into the wrong bodies makes no difference. Yet I do not observe the professor recommending the marriage of opposites. He prefers the simple rule that similarity of faste is one of the essentials of a happy marriage. Subtlety may argue that the lady who is thrilled by the violence of sheiks and cavemen is at heart, however meek her habits, of the same truculent taste. Many and many a book from female pens of the shyest respectability has glorified the bullying hero, but I am not persuaded that _ Charlotte Bronte was herself much like her_ bounding Rochester. In fact, the glorification of these boisterous heroes is in literature and in reality quite as much masculine as feminine. It is a commonplace that people many because they are unlike each other, the tall and the short, the dark and the fair, Jack Sprat who could eat no fat and his wife who could eat no lean. We say it is always the way. But this I take to be an example of the familiar weakness of the human intellect, noticing the exceptions and not the rule. How many marriages have you seen in which the opposites of human nature were united? How often, in fact, is the Amazon’s bridegroom sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, how often does Hercules many a highbrow or Romeo a prude? Not once in a thousand chances. This may bo an illmanaged world, but it is not managed so badly that nobody knows what is good for him. For my own part, I have but a mild faith in this fundamental principle of the attraction of the sexes by opposite characteristics. The superficial qualities which were supposed to be mutually ravishing, the ambrosial beard and whiskers of the male, the flowing tresses of the female and the hour-glass figure, are now whelmed in oblivion. Each sex has for long been_ striving to make itself as like the other as possible, and outwardly at least, much success has been attained.