MARRIAGE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19905, 27 September 1926, Page 13

MARRIAGE.

Modern .fiction harps-on the failure ol marriage, but modern • biography—which is. fact and not fiction —throws into relief its far more frequent success. If this generation gets the evil notion that marriage is a stupid tragedy. Inevitably attended by disillusionment, it will ■be thanks to novelists and playwrights who have portrayed what is fundamentally un true—untrue' not only to the facts of the case, but to the instincts of the .Human heart. No doubt the old time ‘happy ending” was a little bit overdone, out it was vastly nearer the truth than the grotesque travesty which.forms the theme of some of our ‘‘best'sellers,” and our “problem plays.” Realists thei- authors call themselves, hut what they portray is as far from reality as ' nightmare. Failures in. marriage there are, of course, and many ill-assorted couples. The wonder is there are- not more of them considering the atmosphere in which court ship is allowed to begin, and the very general . lack of wise, understanding and sympathy on the part of,elders. But one of the thousand arguments for the “divinity that shapes our ends” is the fact that the vast bulk of marriages, though, entered into so lightly, and with such small preparation, and perhaps no invocation >f divine help, turn out not unhappily, or so as to spoil the life And in every street of everv town, and every cluster ’of cottages in everv hamlet, in every West-end square and every block of workmen’s dwellings, there are couples so united as to make one believe that some marriages, at 11 events, are mamin heaven This has always been sc, and cnee again. this time bv a great Scottish laird and hi* chatelaine, it has been re corded on the minutes.—Roger Eimlewocd, in the Sunday at Home on We Twa