Marriage is still, despite evasive strategies by some of the young, the central decision of most people's lives, and of the three events which structure population, the only one completely under human control. The control is not exclusively that of the leading participants: who is free to marry whom, for example, is defined by law. But for the most part the Western European marriage has been the result of a deliberate choice by two people.

LRB 22 May 1986 | PDF Download