In the poem “Marriage” the narrator hypothetically thinks through the stages of a marriage while contemplating if it is for him.
In the first stanza the narrator is contemplating whether or not he should do the traditional thing and get married. He imagines choosing “the girl next door” (l. 2) and amuses himself by thinking about courting her in untraditional ways. Towards the end of the stanza, he muses that the girl would have fallen in love with him. The narrator states nothing about reciprocating her feelings, but appears pleased.
In the second stanza the narrator thinks about meeting his hypothetical girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Being forced to act through such a conventional setting is clearly making him uncomfortable and the narrator likens the situation to urgently having to pee. However, he also acknowledges that the girl’s family would feel just as awkward, but appears to see this as a necessary step towards marriage.
In the third stanza the hypothetical wedding is taking place. The narrator again imagines being highly uncomfortable during the entire process. He reckons that most of the guest list would be comprised of his new wife’s friends and family and that his own few guests would negatively stand out. Even the officiating priest would silently judge him while the other guests would bother him with the usual borderline obscene behavior generally associated with weddings.
In the fourth stanza the narrator is imagining the honeymoon at Niagara Falls. He details how he and his wife would be only one of countless couples celebrating their honeymoon at this popular destination and how everyone they’d meet would immediately assume that they would be spending most nights having sex. The narrator, in response to this, imagines how he would purposefully do the exact opposite and assumes that he would already be tempted to break off the marriage.
In the fifth stanza the narrator goes on to imagine how early married life would be. He speaks in a very positive tone, imagining himself to be a fabulous husband with a devoted housewife and claims that this situation would indeed be very pleasant. In the second half of the stanza however, his unconventional side comes through again and he imagines how he would frequently disrupt the local community and their neighborhood with his eccentricities.
In the sixth stanza the narrator’s hypothetical wife has just given birth to a baby and he tries to imagine the difficult time as young parents. The narrator now slightly changes the tone and is convinced that he would end up immensely tired and overworked and how he would be an unusual father. He realizes however, that becoming a father would begin to change him.
In the seventh stanza the narrator now deviates from the harmonic small town, middle-class family life he has described so far. Prompted by the thought of becoming a father, he imagines that he is far more likely to live in New York City, with a very vulgar wife, a large number of children, unemployed and in horrid living conditions. After exclaiming that in this case he should better not be getting married, the narrator describes a third scenario, where instead of a girl-next-door or a low-class “fat Reichian wife” (l. 82) he would get married to a successful, beautiful and educated woman, with whom he would live in a beautiful New York City penthouse. While the narrator appears to be undecided about his attitude towards the third scenario, he dismisses it at too unlikely.
In the eighth stanza the narrator takes love, for the first time in this poem, into consideration. He claims to not be generally against falling in love, simply facing the problem that there is no one for him to fall in love with. Finally, the narrator reveals the reason for him to consider marriage without being in love. The narrator is afraid to eventually end up alone and, as the only person in his social circle, unmarried. Therefore he appears to be willing to marry almost anyone who would have him.
In the short ninth stanza the narrator finally states that somewhere there must be the right woman for him and that he will wait until they meet.
