The Oxford Book of Marriage

About this book

For richer or for poorer for better or for worse virtually everyone at one time in his or her life utters the fateful words: "I do." Many of us live to regret these words but as Charles Darwin noted in his journal: "Theres many a happy slave." Now in The Oxford Book of Marriage Helge Rubinstein takes us "happy slaves" on a truly special tour--both richly intimate and at times wildly amusing--of the many faces of married life. Its all here: the first meetings and courtship and proposals (such as Mister Collinss absurd proposal to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) through the many ups and downs of married life until "death do us part." Here readers will discover Queen Victoria the day after her wedding feeling "the happiest happiest Being that ever existed." And Karl Marxs daughter describing her elderly parents marriage: "When they were together they were young again she a loving girl and he a loving youth on the threshold of life." Of course not every marriage is pure bliss: witness the total war in a scene from "Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or Sofia Tolstoys bitter reflection in old age: "For the whole of my life I have single-mindedly and unwaveringly loved a man who was utterly selfish and returned all my feelings with a withering and pitiless scorn." And yet Chaucers lusty Wife of Bath who spoke from experience about the misery and woe of marriage could exclaim "Blessed be God that I have wedded five! / Welcome the sixth whenever he appears. / I cant keep continent for years and years." And Winston Churchill could write to his wife Clementine: "My greatest good fortune in a life of brilliant experience has been to find you and to lead my life with you." In compiling this marvelous reader Rubinstein has combed novels love letters poems plays and memoirs providing a kaleidoscope of marraige that spans over two thousand years. There is much here that amuses much that moves much that comforts. The Oxford Book of Marriage will make an especially thoughtful and unique shower wedding or anniversary gift. It is the kind of book that becomes a treasured keepsake read and reread over the years.