C.S. Lewis on Marriage Protection

6 Comments

1. 
   Jayelle on October 18, 2003

   I think I want to forward that to every Marriage Protection Week advocate I know! Thank you for that perspective.

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2. 
   Rich on October 20, 2003

   As well thought out as that section is, the rest of the chapter goes as follows. CSL’s second point is a disaster.

   So much for the Christian doctrine about the permanence of marriage. Something else, even more unpopular, remains to be dealt with. Christian wives promise to obey their husbands. In Christian marriage the man is said to be the `head’. Two questions obviously arise here. (1) Why should there be a head at all – why not equality? (2) Why should it be the man?

   (1) The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent. Of course, as long as the husband and wife are agreed, no question of a head need arise; and we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage. But when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Talk it over, of course; but I am assuming they have done that and still failed to reach agreement. What do they do next? They cannot decide by a majority vote, for in a council of two there can be no majority. Surely, only one or other of two things can happen: either they must separate and go their own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote. If marriage is permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of deciding the family policy. You cannot have a permanent association without a constitution.

   (2) If there must be a head, why the man? Well, firstly, is there any very serious wish that it should be the woman? As I have said, I am not married myself, but as far as I can see, even a woman who wants to be the head of her own house does not usually admire the same state of things when she finds it going on next door. She is much more likely to say ‘Poor Mr X! Why he allows that appalling woman to boss him about the way she does is more than I can imagine.’ I do not think she is even very flattered if anyone mentions the fact of her own ‘headship’. There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it and despise the husbands whom they rule. But there is also another reason; and here I speak quite frankly as a bachelor, because it is a reason you can see from outside even better than from inside. The relations of the family to the outer world -what might be called its foreign policy -must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to the outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children and husband against the rest of the world. Naturally, almost, in a sense, rightly, their claims override, for her, all other claims. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife. If anyone doubts this, let me ask a simple question. If your dog has bitten the child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress? Or, if you are a married woman, let me ask you this question. Much as you admire your husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick up for his rights and yours against the neighbours as vigorously as you would like? A bit of an Appeaser?

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3. 
   Mike Airhart on October 20, 2003

   Thank you for adding context, Rich.

   So on the one hand, Lewis argues for a stark separation of Christian marriage from civil marriage.

   On the other hand, he argues for a man-in-charge model of marriage that may now be partly responsible for high divorce rates in the U.S. Bible Belt.

   I don’t see a conflict here, just an acknowledgment that he was moderately conservative in his treatment of marriage.

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4. 
   Rich on October 21, 2003

   I think that’s a fair assessment. Mere Christianity was written before Lewis fell in love with Joy Gresham. Their marriage was very non-standard. Her dying to cancer profoundly affected Lewis (cf. the movie Shadowlands). Thus, I suspect he would write a very different last section of chapter 16 later in life.

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5. 
   Natalie Davis on October 21, 2003

   One can hope.

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6. 
   Rich on October 21, 2003

   My comments were not based merely on hope. For example, Lewis wrote the following in A Grief Observed:

   For we did learn and achieve something. There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tendernesss ‘feminine.’ But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. ‘In the image of God created He them.’ Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.

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