Marriage +Love = A Bunch of Hooey

          Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s give it up for Emma Goldman!  According to Goldman, love and marriage have nothing to do with one another and marriage “makes a parasite of woman”.  Those are two fantastic ideas that may have held quite a lot of truth in 1910, but what about now?  Is it possible that marriage makes a woman “an absolute dependent…incapacitates her for life’s struggles, annihilates her social consciousness, [and] paralyzes her imagination.”?  Most likely not, but that doesn’t stop the insanely wealthy from trying.  Not that I’m saying wealthy people seek to destroy their partner’s “backbone”, but there may be a few cases out there.  In her time, Ms. Goldman would have been discussing a topic that many people refused to openly acknowledge.  It saddens me to know that women were forced to marry a man they knew could provide for them, with any emotional attachment never coming into play.  It is a biological tendency to look for a mate that can provide protection, but to be completely dependent on another person will not create an effective member of society by today’s standards.  So now, I can’t help but wonder why other “traditions” are being clung to (when women are involved) while the idea of love and marriage being worlds apart was so quickly discarded.  Any ideas?