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Unit 8: Charles Lamb-A Bachelors Complaint on the Behaviour of Married ...

Not too loving neither: that does not explain my meaning. Besides, why should that offend me? Notes
The very act of separating themselves from the rest of the world, to have the fuller enjoyment of
each other’s society, implies that they prefer one another to all the world.
But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the
faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being
made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not the object of this preference.
Now there are some things which give no offence, while implied or taken for granted merely; but
expressed, there is much offence in them. If a man were to accost the first homely-featured or
plain-dressed young woman of his acquaintance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome
or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, he would deserve to be kicked for his ill
manners; yet no less is implied in the fact, that having access and opportunity of putting the
question to her, he has never yet thought fit to do it. The young woman understands this as clearly
as if it were put into words; but no reasonable young woman would think of making this the
ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that
are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man, the lady’s choice. It is enough
that I know I am not: I do not want this perpetual reminding.
The display of superior knowledge or riches may be made sufficiently mortifying; but these admit
of a palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to insult me, may accidentally improve me;
and in the rich man’s houses and pictures, — his parks and gardens, I have a temporary usufruct
at least. But the display of married happiness has none of these palliatives: it is throughout pure,
unrecompensed, unqualified insult.
Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of
most possessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advantage as much out of sight as possible,
that their less favoured neighbours, seeing little of the benefit, may the less be disposed to question
the right. But these married monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their patent into our
faces.
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the
countenances of a new-married couple, — in that of the lady particularly: it tells you, that her lot
is disposed of in this world: that you can have no hopes of her. It is true, I have none; nor wishes
either, perhaps: but this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, to be taken for
granted, not expressed.
The excessive airs which those people give themselves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried
people, would be more offensive if they were less irrational. We will allow them to understand the
mysteries belonging to their own craft better than we who have not had the happiness to be made
free of the company: but their arrogance is not content within these limits. If a single person
presume to offer his opinion in their presence, though upon the most indifferent subject, he is
immediately silenced as an incompetent person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaintance,
who, the best of the Jest was, had not changed her condition above a fortnight before, in a question
on which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respecting the properest mode of breeding
oysters for the London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, how such an old Bachelor
as I could pretend to know any thing about such matters.
But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to the airs which these creatures give themselves
when they come, as they generally do, to have children. When I consider how little of a rarity
children are, — that every street and blind alley swarms with them, — that the poorest people
commonly have them in most abundance, — that there are few marriages that are not blest with
at least one of these bargains, — how often they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their
parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in poverty, disgrace, the gallows, &c. — I cannot for
my life tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in having them. If they were young phoenixes,

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