The Irony of Marriage Blessings
Mary Astell writes, “But if Marriage be such a blessed State, how comes it, may you say, that there are so few happy Marriages? Now in answer to this, it is not to be wonder’d that so few succeed; we should rather be surpriz’d to find so many do, considering how imprudently Men engage, the Motives they act by, and the very strange Conduct they observe throughout.” In the perspective of religion, marriage is sanctified and cemented by oaths. Nevertheless, the sanctity of marriage does not rule out the inconveniences that are blatant in matrimony. The ironic blessings indicate that marriage is dependent on external contributors other than its consecrated standing. For the marital blessings to manifest, virtues, appropriate decisions and satisfactory love must prevail.
The Irony of Men respecting their Wives
Astell asks “But how can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex? When from his own Elevation he looks down on them as void of Understanding, full of Ignorance and Passion, so that Folly and a Woman are equivalent Terms with him? Can he think there is any Gratitude due to her whose utmost Services he exacts as strict Duty? Because she was made to be a Slave to his Will, and has no higher End than to Serve and Obey him?” The rhetorical queries in this passage accentuate the irony of husbands professing to adulate their wives, when they intrinsically loathe the females. A man who derides women in general would not emphatically esteem his wife because, for him, the wife is an exemplification of the other females all of whom he despises.
