I have a hypothesis guaranteed to make the current infernal denizens of social media nauseous.
The Victorians had more fun.
Because they had restrictions, standards, and were taught virtue, modesty, chivalry and honour.
They were allowed to have tragedy and disaster. But they were also allowed to have redemption and joy. The moderns see the disaster, but have forgotten the joy.
Close up from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Water Willow’, 1871
Era gia l’ora che volge il desio. – Dante
Ricorro al tempo ch’io vi vidi prima. – PetrarcaI wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand – Did one but know!Christina Rossetti.
Silent Noon
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,–
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
‘Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:–
So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.Dante Rossetti
The Victorians knew sexual love. They made much of romance, and they were the first generation to consider that love was a reason to marry. Their forebears, such as Austen, considered infatuation a vice to be discouraged, and romantic feelings no firm foundation for anything but a disaster.
They did not consider that love would lead to the acceptance of all variations and perversions, and Obergfell, and that there would ever need to be a #NashvilleStatement.
I had not read it until your post. It’s not bad, really. Around the manosphere the CBMW gets a lot of criticizing for the weird stuff they say about headship/submission and it is well deserved.
But the only thing I found lacking was the use of the word “covenant” instead of “sacrament” which I would prefer. “Sacrament” incorporates the mysterious part of marriage–the part that only God can accomplish. You can’t create a marriage by having two people say a bunch of stuff in front of a third person. It takes one more element.
A covenant is a 3 way contract between man, wife and God. A sacrament has God as the central mover and initiator of the thing and His part is mysterious.
But that’s a theological difference and one I am confident I can convince people of face to face. (And pretty much always do). They got most of it right.
Agree, and this is why the usual suspects hate it.