Chesterton on marriage

The catalyst quotes for today's Sunday School lesson-- following the three sets of quotes from last week-- come from de Silva's compilation Brave New Family...

We started with Chesterton on those who (frequently) say “I must” (p. 47):

...he means that he must obey a passion or that he must obey a policeman. He always represents himself as driven by some sort of irresistible compulsion, whether it is that of lawless love or an emphatically loveless law. Whether he is obeying the State, or the Boss, or the brute force of Nature [or heredity or environment and education], he equally excuses himself on the plea that the power is stronger than his own will….he talks as if he himself had really nothing to do with it…

and then his connection of this to vows within a marriage ceremony:

…he naturally finds something annoying in an antiquated and superstitious formula that requires him to pronounce the words ‘I will’.

It's interesting that "must" and "will" have their own strengths. Of course, the ideal is "will"-- done properly (and freely).

p. 103

the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so
obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got
over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness
and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor,
the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be
welded together, it must be while they are red-hot.
Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish
beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard
of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are
both still in the story of "Beauty and the Beast".
Every man has to find out that his wife is cross--that is to
say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is
mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that
she is mad while her madness is more worth considering
than anyone else's sanity.This is not a digression.  The whole value

of the normal relations of man and woman lies
in the fact that they first begin really to 
criticise each other when they first begin really
to admire each other.

from p. 92-93 (hat tip: My Ordinary Days), on the "notion that the unity of marriage, the being one flesh, has something to do with being perfectly happy, or being perfectly good, or even with being perfectly and continuously affectionate":

I tell you, an ordinary and honest man is part of his wife even when he wishes he wasn’t. I tell you, an ordinary good woman is part of her husband even when she wishes him at the bottom of the sea. I tell you that, whether the two people are for the moment friendly or angry, happy or unhappy, the Thing marches on, the great four-footed Thing, the quadruped of the home. They are a nation, a society, a machine. I tell you they are one flesh even when they are not one spirit.

from p. 92, quoting the princess in The Surprise: “Many a man has been lucky in marrying the woman he loves. But he is luckier in loving the woman he marries.”

from p. 91, quoting from Orthodoxy: “Keeping to one woman is a small price to pay for so much as seeing one woman.”

from p. 143-144 (hat tip: Adventures in Mercy), on what the Bible means by calling the husband the "head" of the house...

The family is primarily supposed to rest upon consent - that is, on certain spontaneous attachments...It is for this reason that the father of a family has never been called “the king of the house” or “the priest of the house” or, again, “the pope of the house.” His power was not dogmatic or definite enough for that. He was called “the head of the house.” The man is the head of the house, while the woman is the heart of the house. The definition of the head is that it is the thing that talks.

The head of an arrow is not more necessary than the shaft of it; perhaps not so much. The head of an ax is not more necessary than the handle; for mere fighting I would sooner have the handle alone than the blade alone. But the head of axe and arrow is the thing that enters first; the thing that speaks. If I kill a man with an arrow I send the arrow-head as an ambassador, to open the question. If I split a man’s skull with an axe, it is the blade of the axe that opens the question - and the head.

Now the old human family, on which all civilization is built, meant this when it talked about its “head.” It has nothing to do with detailed despotism or the control of other people’s daily lives. That is quite another and later idea, arising out of the crazy complexity of all high civilizations. If authority means power (which it does not), I think the wife has more of it than the husband. If I look round any ordinary room at all the objects - at their color, choice, and place - I feel as if I were a lonely and stranded male in a world wholly made by women. All the same, if a canvasser comes to urge the cause of the Conservative-Radicals or of the Radical-Conservatives, it is I who ought to see him. If a drunkard has wandered into my front garden and lain down on the principal flower-bed, it is I who ought to inspect him. If a burglar wanders about the house at night, it is I who ought to parley with him. Because I am the head; I am the tiresome excrescence that can talk to the world.