The Marriage Book (68 page)

“You’re talking absolute rot, Jeeves. You know as well as I do that Honoria Glossop is an Act of God. You might just as well blame a fellow for getting run over by a truck.”

ESTONIAN PROVERB

Better be an honest old spinster than a worthless husband’s wife.

HELEN GURLEY BROWN

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL
, 1962

In many ways an unlikely feminist, Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) was both a pioneer in championing women’s sexual independence and a traditionalist in expressing women’s desire for the validation of men. Brown began her career as an advertising copywriter and, later, executive. She married David Brown (producer of such films as
The Sting
and
Jaws
) three years before writing
Sex and the Single Girl
, an overnight bestseller that tapped into young women’s needs to navigate a new landscape of work, love, sex, fashion, and culture. The book made Brown famous, spawned many others, and led to her being named editor-in-chief of
Cosmopolitan
magazine, which she remade into a hugely successful monthly. Her fifty-one-year marriage to Brown lasted until his death in 2010.

The passage below is from the introduction to Brown’s first book.

WOMEN ALONE? OH COME NOW!

I married for the first time at thirty-seven. I got the man I wanted. It
could
be construed as something of a miracle considering how old
I
was and how eligible
he
was.

David is a motion picture producer, forty-four, brainy, charming and sexy. He was sought after by many a Hollywood starlet as well as some less flamboyant but more deadly types. And
I
got him! We have two Mercedes-Benzes, one hundred acres of virgin forest near San Francisco, a Mediterranean house overlooking the Pacific, a full-time maid and a good life.

I am not beautiful, or even pretty. I once had the world’s worst case of acne. I am not bosomy or brilliant. I grew up in a small town. I didn’t go to college. My family was, and is, desperately poor and I have always helped support them. I’m an introvert and I am sometimes mean and cranky.

But
I
don’t think it’s a miracle that I married my husband. I think I deserved him! For seventeen years I worked hard to become the kind of woman who might interest him. And when he finally walked into my life I was just worldly enough, relaxed enough, financially secure enough (for I also worked hard at my job) and adorned with enough glitter to attract him. He wouldn’t have looked at me when I was twenty, and I wouldn’t have known what to do with
him
.

There is a tidal wave of misinformation these days about how many more marriageable women there are than men (that part is true enough) and how tough is the plight of the single woman—spinster, widow, divorcee.

I think a single woman’s biggest problem is coping with the people who are trying to marry her off! She is so driven by herself and her well-meaning but addlepated friends to
become married that her whole existence seems to be an apology for
not
being married. Finding
him
is all she can think about or talk about when (a) she may not be psychologically ready for marriage; (b) there is no available husband for every girl at the time she wants one; and (c) her years as a single woman can be too rewarding to rush out of.

Although many’s the time I was sure I would die alone in my spinster’s bed, I could never bring myself to marry just to get married. If I had, I would have missed a great deal of misery along the way, no doubt, but also a great deal of fun.

I think marriage is insurance for the
worst
years of your life. During your best years you don’t need a husband. You do need a man of course every step of the way, and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen. . . .

Frankly, the magazines and their marriage statistics give me a royal pain.

There is a more important truth that magazines never deal with, that single women are too brainwashed to figure out, that married women know but won’t admit, that married men
and
single men endorse in a body, and that is that the single woman, far from being a creature to be pitied and patronized, is emerging as the newest glamour girl of our times.

She is engaging because she lives by her wits. She supports herself. She has had to sharpen her personality and mental resources to a glitter in order to survive in a competitive world and the sharpening looks good. Economically she is a dream. She is not a parasite, a dependent, a scrounger, a sponger or a bum. She is a giver, not a taker, a winner and not a loser. . . .

SEX—WHAT OF IT?

Theoretically a “nice” single woman has no sex life. What nonsense! She has a better sex life than most of her married friends. She need never be bored with one man per lifetime. Her choice of partners is endless and they seek
her
. They never come to her bed duty-bound. Her married friends refer to her pursuers as wolves, but actually many of them turn out to be lambs—to be shorn and worn by her.

Sex of course is more than the act of coitus. It begins with the delicious feeling of attraction between two people. It may never go further, but sex it is. And a single woman may promote the attraction, bask in the sensation, drink it like wine and pour it over her like blossoms, with never a guilty twinge. She can promise with a look, a touch, a letter or a kiss—and she doesn’t have to deliver. She can be maddeningly hypocritical and, after arousing desire, insist that it be shut off by stating she wants to be chaste for the man she marries. Her pursuer may strangle her with his necktie, but he can’t
argue
with her. A flirtatious married woman is expected to Go Through With Things.

Since for a female getting there is at
least
half the fun, a single woman has reason to prize the luxury of taking long, gossamer, attenuated, pulsating trips before finally arriving in bed. . . .

Yet, while indulging her libido, which she has plenty of if she is young and healthy, it is still possible for the single woman to be a lady, to be highly respected and even envied if she is successful in her work.

I did it. So have many of my friends.

Perhaps this all sounds like bragging. I do not mean to suggest for a moment that being single is not often hell. But I do mean to suggest that it can also be quite heavenly, whether you choose
it
or it chooses
you.

There is a catch to achieving single bliss. You have to work like a son of a bitch.

PAUL MAZURSKY

AN UNMARRIED WOMAN
, 1978

Being unmarried is the last thing that Erica Benton, played by Jill Clayburgh, imagines or wants at the start of
An Unmarried Woman
, which was written and directed by Paul Mazursky (1930–2014). The film, which was in many ways a feminist landmark, tells the story of Erica’s gradual liberation after being left by her husband for a younger woman. Alone, Erica experiences friendships with other women, self-exploration through therapy, casual sex with a colleague, and finally a love affair with a British artist, Saul, played by Alan Bates.

NANCY MEYERS, CHARLES SHYER, HARVEY MILLER

PRIVATE BENJAMIN
, 1980

Goldie Hawn coproduced and starred in this comedy about a privileged young woman, Judy Benjamin, who goes from her wedding to her husband’s funeral to the U.S. army in the course of several days. In this scene, she is holed up in a hotel room, talking to a radio hotline host.

If I’m not going to be married—I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with myself. Did you happen to see that movie,
Unmarried Woman
? Well, I didn’t get it. I mean, I would’ve been Mrs. Alan Bates so fast that guy wouldn’t have known what hit him.

HELEN FIELDING

BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY
, 1996

In her popular column-turned-novel-turned-high-grossing-movie, British writer Helen Fielding (1958–) captured the joys and frustrations—in work, friendship, dating, and dieting—of a single woman surrounded by smug young-marrieds who seem to want to impose their questionable bliss on others. Bumbling toward love and self-realization through a maze of missteps and embarrassments, Bridget defends her “singleton” turf with winning strength and humor.

Frankie Howerd was a British comedian famous for his double entendres.

Humph. Incensed by patronizing article in the paper by Smug Married journalist. It was headlined, with subtle-as-a-Frankie-Howerd-sexual-innuendo-style irony: “The Joy of Single Life.”

“They’re young, ambitious and rich but their lives hide an aching loneliness . . . When they leave work a gaping emotional hole opens up before them . . . Lonely style-obsessed individuals seek consolation in packeted comfort food of the kind their mother might have made.”

Huh. Bloody nerve. How does Mrs. Smug Married-at-twenty-two think she knows, thank you very much?

I’m going to write an article based on “dozens of conversations” with Smug Marrieds: “When they leave work, they always burst into tears because, though exhausted, they have to peel potatoes and put all the washing in while their porky bloater husbands slump burping in front of the football demanding plates of chips. On other nights they plop, wearing unstylish pinnies, into big black holes after their husbands have rung to say they’re working late again, with the sound of creaking leatherware and sexy Singletons tittering in the background.”

JENNY BICKS

“A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO SHOES,”
SEX AND THE CITY
, 2003

Based on the book by Candace Bushnell, the HBO television series
Sex and the City
ran for six years, showcasing the intimate lives of four Manhattan women in their thirties (in one case forties) as they grappled with the challenges of dating, sex, work, fashion, friendship, and marriage. Carrie, the Bushnell-based narrator of the show, was played by Sarah Jessica Parker, and Charlotte, the sweetest and most romantic of the four, by Kristin Davis. This scene occurs in an episode from the sixth season, when Carrie’s expensive shoes have disappeared from her friend Kyra’s baby shower. After Kyra questions the extravagance of Carrie’s lifestyle, Carrie debates with Charlotte her “right to shoes.”

OPRAH WINFREY

JAIPUR LITERATURE FESTIVAL INTERVIEW, 2012

One of the most powerful women in the world, Oprah Winfrey (1954–) is an actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and—most famously—talk-show host, with a magazine and a cable TV network of her own. Though for many years she was publicly if loosely engaged to author and educator Stedman Graham, they didn’t marry, a decision she discussed during an interview in India.

I live in a country that allows me to have the choice of not marrying. If I would have married, he would have been a wonderful husband, but I’ll be honest that we would have been divorced by now. I’m my own person, and I find it difficult to conform to other people’s ideas about me. And being married does call for some conformity. I respect the women of India who were in arranged marriages, which later turned into love marriages.