Despite having had a singularly bad press for the past couple of decades, there can be little doubt that the vast majority of us want marriage, or at least a simulacrum of it.
The evidence? The ever-increasing number of so-called dating agencies (a check on the web produced more than 13,000 entries for the UK alone) and the blossoming of pages of eager advertisers seeking partners, particularly in upmarket publications such as our own dear New Statesman.
Two questions beg an answer. Is this a phenomenon of our times? And does it mean that marriage is becoming ever more consumer-driven?
In essence, dating agencies are not new. We are a sociable species, fascinated with each other’s domestic arrangements. We like nothing better than to curl up in the warm pelt of the family when the outside world appears hostile (and when does it not?), and therefore have a deep interest in who belongs to that family and how they get to be members of it.
You need only read 18th- and 19th- century novels to realise how much effort was expended (at least by the middle classes) in matchmaking for their sons and daughters. One of the most famous first lines in English literature is that of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with its concern for rich men “in search of a wife”. All her readers knew perfectly well the seriousness of matchmaking. That was what gave the book its contemporary popularity.
We are as concerned today about how young people find their mates. In the early part of the 20th century – indeed, until the Second World War – the upper classes in Britain had a careful system of match-making involving presentation at the royal court, the giving of private parties and balls with carefully controlled guest-lists and fierce chaperonage of virginal females.
Those who look further afield than the world of the upper and middle classes will see that, for many decades, there has flourished a system of matchmaking that enjoys a high success rate. That its use is confined to ethnic subgroups should not prevent it from being an excellent example to the rest of us. Jewish, Asian and, to an extent, Greek and Turkish Cypriot families have long used matchmaking systems. In the majority of cases, it has worked superbly, because coercion was never needed. When young people, especially females, are kept under close watch by their elders, the only chance the young have for adult freedom and a regular sex life is marriage.
Having someone presented to you who is of similar background, tastes and values is an excellent way of making the presentee appear highly desirable. It may not be love at first sight, but it frequently becomes love. It is not surprising that the classic Indian love story is not boy finds girl, boy gets girl, happy ever after, but husband marries wife, both fall in love, HEA.
My grandparents were introduced to each other at the ages of 18 and 16 by a Jewish shadchan, and they lived together adoringly for the rest of my grandfather’s life, leaving my grandmother a grieving widow for the rest of hers. For such matchmaking to work, there must be a tightly organised society in which young females are under constant watch and young males, if they sow wild oats at all, are expected to do so outside the community. What is most admired is early marriage, which removes the temptation of unsuitable partners. Indeed, in Judaism, early (teenage) marriage is a religious duty.
But obviously, we are different now. The young want education before marriage, and their elders want it for them. So there are hordes of young, hormone-fizzing single people whirling around, well out of the family’s eye – and no modern parents, be they upper-class aristocrats or from the ethnic minorities, have a hope in hell of using the old techniques to help their eager young find mates. The result is that, while some happen to meet life partners at clubs and pubs and evening classes, too many fail in their search for that one special person who would provide the family life for which they yearn. Hence the dating agencies.
But this is not an indictment of modern marriage. Marriage is as important to modern people as it was to our remoter ancestors. It is what it has always been: a contract between two people to share their re-sources in order to rear their young; to enjoy regular sex; to provide each other with companionship and, in due course, care in rickety old age (if they’re lucky).
However, an element of consumerism has been added to the process of getting married. These agencies and ads often cost a fortune and, although some may have success, it is unlikely that they will ever be as good at the job as the old shadchan who paired off my grandparents. She brought to the task a deep personal knowledge of the young people involved and a real affection for them and their community.
I think it’s time we brought this service back into use. It is not coercive (parents who try to force their wishes on their unwilling young are at fault, not the system) and certainly delivers happy marriage more successfully than our western system of relying on hormone-fired romantic love between two people who meet by accident.
And, in the meantime, even a return to the social mores of the Fifties, when I married, would help. Back then, new brides were considered to have a duty to introduce their single girlfriends to their husband’s single men friends. I did it, and it worked. Twice.
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