
Charles Dickens on being unhappily married (1858) - samclemens
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/family/autopsy-report
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padobson
Marriage requires time, energy, empathy. It requires mental, physical,
emotional and spiritual support. A successful marriage forces two people to
put the success of the marriage above their individual successes. No
institution that I know of forces an individual to abandon selfishness so
completely. For it to work, individuality itself needs to be abandoned.

So it's not really surprising that so many talented, ambitious people have had
failing marriages.

~~~
maratd
> Marriage requires time, energy, empathy.

Yes! As do all things. If you're not willing to commit the time, energy, and
empathy necessary to get a cooperative task done, don't start it.

> It requires mental, physical, emotional and spiritual support.

No! Co-dependence is the path to ruin. This is very different from empathy and
rendering help. Don't be a crutch for anyone else. Ever.

> A successful marriage forces two people to put the success of the marriage
> above their individual successes.

No no no! This is the path to misery and unhappiness. Your interests should
coincide! They should be mutually shared! The success of any partnership is
based on common interests, not on the partners selflessly making themselves
miserable for the sake of some perceived interest of the other party.

Always pursue your own happiness. A healthy marriage is where you can make the
other person happy by doing just that.

> For it to work, individuality itself needs to be abandoned.

Absolutely not! This sort of romantic nonsense plays well on Disney movies,
but doesn't work in real life.

You'll just make yourself miserable, then you'll make your partner miserable,
then your kids, and then everyone else in your family.

Absolutely take care of yourself FIRST. If you don't take care of yourself and
your needs, you can't take of anyone else!

Nobody needs a useless, moping wreck of a person who is always depressed. Take
care of yourself, then take care of others.

It works the same way as those emergency instructions you see on a plane. Put
your mask on first. If you're not breathing, you can't help anyone else by
definition.

> So it's not really surprising that so many talented, ambitious people have
> had failing marriages.

So many talented, ambitious people have failed marriages because they over-
think things. They go on the Internet and read stupid posts. Normal people
don't do that!

~~~
ryanwaggoner
How long have you been married?

~~~
maratd
> How long have you been married?

6 years now. 2 kids. Why?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I think you really misinterpreted the person you were responding to.

This says it better than I can:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10706886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10706886)

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bshimmin
This part rather struck me:

 _In the manly consideration toward Mrs. Dickens which I owe to my wife, I
will only remark of her that the peculiarity of her character has thrown all
the children on someone else. I do not know — I cannot by any stretch of fancy
imagine — what would have become of them but for this aunt, who has grown up
with them, to whom they are devoted, and who has sacrificed the best part of
her youth and life to them._

It perhaps makes sense in a Victorian context, but today you might wonder,
well, why he didn't look after the children himself?

~~~
d4nt
When I first read "the manly consideration toward Mrs. Dickens" I thought he
was talking about sex.

Having assumed that meaning, the next part about how her sister raising the
children seemed to suggest that they had not had sex and that the children
were not Mrs Dickens's.

But I think I was wrong because, he then goes on to strongly deny having an
affair. Why hint at one affair, then deny another.

~~~
bshimmin
I _think_ he meant "manly consideration" in the sense of "It would not be
fitting of a man (read: gentleman) to make disparaging remarks about his wife
in public". Perhaps I'm totally wrong though.

~~~
aaronem
That's what he meant.

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feintruled
Note his forceful denials of an affair at the end, which we now know to be
false. Of course, he couldn't possibly admit to such a thing back then, but it
does make you doubt the rest of the account.

~~~
tlb
Citation for the affair? Wikipedia gives only weak evidence for them living
together after the separation.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Middle_years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens#Middle_years)

~~~
nightspirit
And if you click the "Ellen Ternan" link there you will see that they lived
together for 10 years and are even suspected of having a child (who died
early).

~~~
gjm11
Yeah, but he wrote this before he and his wife separated. Living with Ellen
Ternan for ten years _after_ that isn't good evidence that they had an affair
_before_ it.

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civilian
This really just reminds me how much I hate Dickens' writing style. He adds
unnecessary lists in the middle of sentences which distracts the reader, and
adds little unrelated remarks that distracts from the point of an individual
sentence.

As part of my humanities requirement I took a "modern english novels" class in
college. Little did I know that literature departments have an erroneous
definition of modern.

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bubalus
> I have uniformly replied that she must bear our misfortune and fight the
> fight out to the end, that the children were the first consideration, and
> that I feared they must bind us together in “appearance.”

I'm curious as to what he actually said to her. Nobody talks to their spouse
in such a stuffy way, even if they are estranged.

~~~
civilian
Have you read the Pickwick Papers? It wouldn't surprise me if Dickens did
speak that stuffily.

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JWSJ
Is there an explanation for the "peculiarity of her character?"

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DanBC
On a slight tangent: Darwin's children drew vegetable battles on the
manuscript of On the Origin of Species.

[http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/2/darwins-children-drew-
veg...](http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/2/darwins-children-drew-vegetable-
battles-on-the-origin-of-species)

~~~
kraftman
Just a slight tangent.

