An intellectual friend of mine whom
I really respect shocked me recently by dropping a bombshell. He told me, after
a glass of wine at a sports club in Kakamega, that of all the things God
created; it is only human beings that marry. “Other animals fornicate the rest
of their lives,” he intoned. As usual, such talk is punctuated with laughter.
But as it is my habit, I reflected on this matter much later. I just realised
that some statements, however weird, carry universal truth. Indeed, while we
share many things with animals, marriage is not one of them. But I also know
that marriage is one of the institutions in a crisis. Is it because it is an
artificial arrangement by humans? No! My religious readers can skin me for such
a statement. So, what has gone wrong with a God-ordained institution? Look,
this newspaper is precisely what it is because it focuses on the crisis of
marriage and relationships that lead to it in our society. As a social
scientist, I am fully aware of the fact that transformation of societies from
one stage to another often creates tension that leads to some degree of
dislocation. The tension is a product of struggles, fears, changes and trauma
associated with critical stages of development. That is why we thinkers have to
interrogate these processes with a view to understanding what has not gone
wrong. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, taught me the value of literature. I
have virtually spent most of my time on earth consuming, writing and critiquing
good literature. He argued that literature is something philosophical and
therefore presents universal truth about life. It presents to us a variety of
possibilities of what can happen anywhere in the world. That is why, in this
piece, I want to attempt to answer questions concerning relationships and
marriage from lessons learnt from great literature of the world. I first want
to argue that anxieties of every generation are recorded in the national
literature of every society. That is why an understanding of social dynamics
should inevitably involve a study of creative works of the age or era of
society. Marriage, as a primary institution in society, has not been spared the
tensions that affect other institutions. That is precisely why great literature
from every generation treats the theme of marriage. Let us examine the subject
by focusing on how this social phenomenon has been replayed in creative works.
While it is necessary to direct inquiry into the phenomenon of husband crisis,
we have to see it in relation to marriage as an institution. See also: How to
know a man doesn't truly love you Let me begin by underscoring the fact that
the theme of marriage has all along been at the heart of great literature from
all over the world. That is why Jane Austin starts her 1813 novel, Pride and
Prejudice, with the statement: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” She then
goes on to demonstrate how this cherished institution turns out to be the cage
of unhappiness to many who desire and get into it. As you read this great
novel, you notice how marriage, that we all desire, turns out to be a cage of
torture and torment. But it was Russian writer Leo Tolstoy who said it all in
his phenomenal 1877 novel, Anna Karenina. I still consider this the greatest
novel ever written. Tolstoy starts by making one of the most fundamental
statements ever made on the institution of marriage. He writes: “All happy
families resemble one another, every unhappy family is unhappy after its own
way.” The novel proceeds to present one of the most tragic love stories ever
written. The bottom line, it appears, is that while many desire to get into
marriage, few get happiness in it. Should this not worry you as you prepare for
that glamorous wedding? It should.
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