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Marriage and Love

Decent Essays

American University of Beirut
Spring 2012 - 2013

Response to "Marriage and Love" by Emma Goldman
"Marriage and Love", an article by Emma Goldman tackles the issue of marriage and the notion of free motherhood. Goldman argues that "love" and "marriage" are two concepts that simply can 't go together. She states that love has the ability to liberate its subject, empower him. However, marriage does quite the opposite; it’s an "economic arrangement", an "insurance pact", which traps the women and reduces their role to simply being objects owned by their husbands. According to Goldman, marriage is an institution condemned to failure. It 's born out of traditions, convenience and public opinion; certainly not out of love. Once married, …show more content…

The author decided to eliminate the possibility that such kind of marriages exist. However they do exist because I personally witnessed a good amount of them, including my parents ' marriage. The author goes on to reinforce the idea of "free motherhood". She stresses that women should not be "degraded to a mere machine". I agree with Goldman that women have the right to decide on the number of children they want and when they want to have them. However, she states that marriage is used as a way to force the women to have children, as a way of preserving the race. I don’t agree with that simply because a good marriage won 't force the woman into such a thing. Other married women might have suffered from that, however they are the exception not the rule. She states that a woman "desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes." However, a woman can have her free choice while being married. Marriage gives her the right to choose that she doesn 't want children right away and decides to wait instead. "Free motherhood" shouldn’t be exclusive to unmarried women.

In conclusion, I strongly agree with the author about protecting women 's rights and privacy. However, I find myself disagreeing with her when she

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