Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess or a handsome prince-- living in a lavish castle with a preposterous amount of grandeur. He seems to have everything, any object starting from A to Z. For all we know, he could have pink elephants as pets. Yet, there is this feeling, this yearning for this majestic feeling: love. On the other side of town, another gal or fellow is the polar opposite-- living in a crumby, filthy shack with little to go off of. Unlike these soon-to-be rulers, these indigents believe that no one is capable of loving them. Somehow, in some magical way, these two supposedly incompatible individuals meet, kiss, and then live happily ever after.
Every little girl grows up listening to these happy endings about perfect relationships and true love. Subconsciously, these paragons are planted in her tiny, little head and, then, produce these high expectations. A marriage should be based off of this supposed “true love” not off of greedy necessity. A husband and wife should respect each other not to have one ignore the other. The roles of a man and woman should be equal, not lopsided. Yet, do these fairytale ideals exist in the real world?
Some can be found in a handful of relationships, but that is certainly not the case for everyone. After all, almost 50% of marriages end in divorce. That statistic just proves that marriage does not automatically consist of true love and have to be between soulmates. Soulmates are supposed to be together forever, not for a limited period of time that ends in divorce. And isn’t true love supposed to conquer all? Certainly, Jesus agrees, “love always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:5, 7). Yet, this “true love” can’t seem to stop the inevitable: divorce.
Wait but then does that mean that being married doesn’t necessarily mean being in love? Yes, that’s also possible. Just take a stroll through history. In all different cultures, women have been subdued and forced to marry some random stranger to her. They first meet on their wedding day and then begin living with each other on the next day. Even worse, the women typically lived out their lives fettered to their husbands, fulfilling their every need and desire. These preposterously obedient wives may seem to you like a thing of the distant past, but they still exist today in many other countries and even in some places in the United States.
In multiple literary pieces, there is also compiling evidence of the distorted relationship between husband and wife. “I Want a Wife”, by Judy Brady, is only one of those essays. Based on her ex-husband’s attitude towards her, Judy repeatedly emphasizes the greedy nature of husbands and the ridiculously high expectations of a wife by using a variety of rhetoric. For example, the most prominent literary device is anaphora as Brady begins almost every sentence with “I want a wife…” This husband’s constant “want” for the perfect wife only demonstrates his self-centeredness and manipulation, which are two factors that prove that this husband-wife relationship is not formulated from anything close to love, specifically on the husband’s side. If their marriage was out of love, the husband would emphasize with his wife at least a little and would definitely not force her or even “want” her to do all of these painstaking tasks.
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