What can Vanessa and Clive Bell, or H.G. and Jane Wells teach us about marriage? Lots, says Katie Roiphe in Uncommon Arrangements.
Your book focuses on seven married couples in the 1910s and ’20s. Why did you pick that era?
That period mirrors our period—people were poised between nostalgia for old-fashioned notions of marriage and an interest in equality. These couples struggled with questions I see married couples asking today: why do people stay together; how do relationships fall apart; how do you sustain romantic interest; how do you have friendship in marriage?
How do struggles over gender roles figure in the marriages you write about?
Some of the figures were real feminists, who devoted so much thought to equality and yet in their personal lives, they were devoted to domineering men. Even H.G. Wells—he was very interested in women’s rights, but he ends up staying with and being devoted to an incredibly traditional wife. We see that marriage is this irrational territory in which ideas you have about your life get worked out. We see how our political ideals are sometimes at odds with our deepest personal desires.
Did you learn any lessons that might help couples today?
I do believe that you can learn a little about how to live your own life by reading biography, and studying marriages inevitably gives you ideas about your own marriage. There was a belief in the 1920s about communication—people thought they should tell each other everything, including everything about being attracted to someone else. To me, that looks pretty destructive. The other idea they had in the ’20s was a belief in the ability to rationally control emotion. They thought, “If everybody’s just reasonable, we can handle anything.” That’s an experiment that doesn’t quite succeed.
Were you influenced by Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives, a portrait of five Victorian marriages?
I’ve always loved Parallel Lives—it was a great inspiration to me. That, along with Strachey’s Eminent Victorians. It opened up a way of thinking about history and literature which has to do with studying marriages as a way of looking at a culture.
How are people responding to Uncommon Arrangements?
Some people think I’m saying we should return to old-fashioned marriages, and other people think I’m saying go out and have affairs. I’m definitely not saying either! Reading about other people’s marriages becomes about your own story. When people tell me their response to the book, they’re really saying more about their own marriages.
