Divorce: The Unnatural Termination of a Story
In The Abolition of Marriage (Regnery, 1996) Maggie Gallagher explains that one of the disastrous results of divorce is the abrupt, unnatural termination of a story, both the story of a marriage and the story of a family. The plot of the story lacks a logical ending that would provide meaning and illumination; the beginning and middle of the story do not lead to some significant conclusion that demonstrates the relationship between sowing and reaping, between the promise and the fulfillment. Just as the ending of a story gives special meaning to the plot and just as the harvest of a field gives significance to the planting of seed, so the fruits of a marriage reflect the fulfillment of promises and the honoring of vows.
In Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, for example, the final chapter entitled "Harvesttime" depicts the October festival of apple picking when "every tree stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the first shake." However, "Harvesttime" also celebrates the fruitfulness of love and marriage, as Mr. and Mrs. March behold the happiness of their married children and the blessings of grandchildren surrounding them. One of their daughters says, "we never can thank you enough for the patient sowing and reaping you have done."
Divorce however, destroys the possibility of the harvest and frustrates the sense of purpose that is always inspired by the vision of joyous accomplishment at the end -- the homecoming that signifies victory and celebration. It is this universal source of happiness associated with the harvest and the homecoming that divorce destroys by terminating the story of marriage prematurely and not allowing the plot of a love story to follow its course to a natural destination. Moreover, the continuity between the generations, and the transmission of culture and wisdom from parents to children, suffer.
Homer's Odyssey depicts the fullness of joy that awaits the hero in his homecoming to Ithaca. After 20 years of absence fighting the Trojan War and wandering on the ocean, Odysseus returns to his family and experiences the exquisite pleasures of home that could not be duplicated in any of the luxurious countries he visited in his travels. Rejecting the peerless beauty of the goddess Calypso who promises Odysseus the gift of eternal youth if he remains with her, and refusing the generous offer of King Alcinous to marry his beautiful daughter Nausicaa, Odysseus longs to see his wife, his son, his parents, and his native land. Although the world lures Odysseus with wealth, beauty, and pleasure, Odysseus risks the wrath of the god Poseidon, struggles to escape drowning in the ocean, and does battle with many enemies in order to return to Ithaca -- the source of life's deepest happiness. In his reunion with his servants, his son, his wife, and his father, Odysseus is moved to tears and feels profound joy for life's greatest blessings that his home and marriage have provided him:
Penelope's surrender melted Odysseus's heart, and he wept as he held his dear wife in his arms, so loyal and so true. Sweet moment too for her, sweet as the sight of land to sailors struggling in the sea.... If that is bliss, what bliss it was for her to see her husband once again. She kept her white arms round his neck and never quite let go.
In his return to Ithaca, Odysseus not only experiences the victorious homecoming of a hero who has proven his honor and loyalty and survived the stormy seas of life, but also enjoys the abundant harvest of his life, the fruitfulness of his marriage and fidelity. He is showered with tender affection by his nurse Eurycleia, greeted with tears of joy by his swineherd Eumaeus, and embraced by his son bursting with tears. The tree of life he had planted has borne fruit, and he is in awe at the plentiful blessings produced by a marriage founded in the fidelity of a husband and wife who have remained true to their vows. Homer praises Penelope as "a wife in whom all virtues meet...who has proved herself so good and wise, so faithful to her wedded love." She is as great in her own way as her heroic husband. In short, the happy ending of the Odyssey results from the enduring love and permanent marriage of a man and woman who honor their vows and ignore the Sirens of the world. Homer symbolizes the strength of this union with the image of Odysseus and Penelope's bed, a work of art made by Odysseus from a solid olive tree rooted firmly in the earth "with a stem as thick as a pillar."
Homer portrays the purpose of life as the planting of trees, and the fulfillment of life as the fruitfulness of the harvest. When Odysseus identifies himself to his aged, ailing father, Laertes, they recall the fond memory of planting trees together in the orchard. The old man bursts with happiness when Odysseus recalls the episode: "I was only a little boy at the time, trotting after you through the orchard...and as we wound our way through these very trees you told me all their names." The special joy of Laertes, at this moment is to see the relationship between the beginning and the end (Odysseus the boy and Odysseus the man), the sowing and the reaping not only of the trees but also of marriage and of a lifetime. The return of Odysseus to Ithaca completes the natural plan of life, for Odysseus returns not only to love his wife and son but also to care for his father in his old age. The harvest of life abounds because a family remains intact.
The profound joys that await Odysseus in his homecoming result from the culmination of a process, from co-operation with a great design that resembles the completion of a cycle. Just as the Odyssey begins and ends in Ithaca and forms a circle, the story of life involves returning to the beginning: Odysseus must care for the father who bestowed upon him the gift of life. The rhythm of life is to be born, to mature into manhood or womanhood, to marry and found families, and to repay parents in their old age for their loving care. This circle of life represents fruition, blessing, fulfillment, and continuity. The greatest sources of human happiness come from families that sow and reap the fruits of love. The completion of the circle signified by Odysseus's homecoming fills the hearts of all his family members with overwhelming joy and tears of happiness: His son "flung his arms round his father's noble neck and burst into tears. And now they both broke down and sobbed aloud without a pause...." Divorce deprives family members of this sense of completion and fulfillment.
It is this natural, universal experience of marriage as a homecoming and harvest that divorce ruins, leaving in its wake impoverished lives and financial disasters. Maggie Gallagher describes divorce as a "profound loss, an erotic catastrophe, a collapse of a love story" that brings the story of a life to grief. Divorce breaks the circle of life, the natural rhythm of sowing and reaping, giving and receiving, that form the law of nature. Divorce destroys the sense of victory and achievement that accompanies the homecoming -- the homecoming that resulted from Odysseus saying no to the temptations of beautiful goddesses and alluring Sirens, and Penelope saying no to the many offers of marriage during her husband's absence. Divorce frustrates the joy of the harvest, the miracle of small beginnings resulting in copious abundance. What is there to show for one's life? What is there as a legacy for one's children? The conclusion to divorce can never compare with the harvest of the indissoluble marriage that inspires Mrs. March to say, "Oh, my girls...I can never wish you any greater happiness than this." Divorce stifles the hunger of the heart for an enduring, permanent love and leaves a great void.
As Gallagher explains, the "collapse of love's story" that divorce causes also precipitates another profound loss -- "the one that is almost never mentioned, the loss that affects children, parents, and spouses equally: the loss of the family story." In the Odyssey this family story is preserved as all the happy reunions at the end of the story verify. The family story incorporates the unforgettable events and fond memories that have accumulated and been shared over a lifetime. It includes not only Odysseus planting trees with his father when he was a boy and building a bed for his wife out of an olive tree with his own hands, but also Penelope's touching farewell to her stalwart husband before he set sail for the Trojan War. These and more heartwarming memories rush into Odysseus's mind at his homecoming. The family story consists of such treasured moments gathered from a lifetime of shared experiences and adventures that testify to the oneness, closeness, affection, and love in a family.
When a marriage crumbles and the family story disintegrates, the continuity between the generations also falters. Gallagher explains this breach in the transmission of culture that occurs with divorce: "The divorce culture exerts a relentless downward pressure on the ability of families to transmit not only money but values, aspirations, and opportunities to the next generation." Misbehavior by children in schools, violent crime committed by the young, juvenile delinquency on the part of fatherless youth, and teenage suicides are only the most obvious examples of a younger generation denied the moral education and traditional wisdom transmitted by the older generation through the integrity of the family. If fathers and mothers do not educate and influence their children according to the perennial wisdom of the past, then youth culture, peer pressure, politically correct schools, and the entertainment industry will form the young. Children learning from their parents, admiring the virtues and character of their father and mother, emulating the love of husband and wife for each other and for their children, and perpetuating civilized norms and traditions all depend on the indissolubility of marriage.
In the Odyssey the family is the center of civilization that perpetuates culture through the legacy of fathers and mothers to their children. As sons imitate noble fathers like Odysseus or daughters follow the example of noble mothers like Penelope, the story of the family is perpetuated and the fruits of civilization abound. Indeed, one of Gallagher's major points is that marriage and divorce are not only private but public acts that affect a whole society: "marriage is a public good...and the pain and suffering scattered by its dissolution are not confined to two spouses or even to their own children but devastate the entire community...." The reunion of father and son at the end of the Odyssey and their fighting side by side against the barbarians demonstrate a father's bequeathing to his son a sense of justice and moral courage and also a son succeeding in his father's footsteps and perpetuating an ideal of manhood in defending his family. The family story remains intact.
With the collapse of a marriage and family history comes alienation. Gallagher explains that divorce stifles "the most powerful human drive: the desire not to be alone in an impersonal, imperturbable universe." Humans learn to be at home in the world by feeling at home in a family that embodies security, stability, and permanence. Divorce not only makes parents and children strangers to each other but also overwhelms the young with a sense of their unimportance. The divorced child cannot be the apple of the eye of one of his parents, the greatest priority in the parent's life. Without the integrity of the family and the permanence of marriage, the world takes on a different appearance, becoming a cold, impersonal place.
Divorced children do not partake of the fullness of love that Gallagher calls "eros," a word that she defines as "the love that desires -- that desires, above all, union with the beloved" -- which exists not only in the relations between husband and wife but also in the bonds between parent and child. The term "Generation X" in part symbolizes young people who have been deprived the legacy of their parents' love story, the patrimony of their family story, and the inheritance of a living wisdom that bequeaths to them the story of civilization. To be denied these stories complicates a young person's life and darkens his future. In the absence of these inspiring stories, the temptation to live for the moment replaces hope for the future, and the ephemeral pleasure of casual sex can easily replace the goal of lasting marriage. The void created by the absence of stories that exemplify chastity, fidelity, sacrifice, and heroism is occupied by the myths of no-fault divorce, "safe" sex, and same-sex "marriages" -- none of which lead to the glory of the homecoming or the abundance of the harvest.
Mitchell Kalpakgian is Professor of English at Simpson College in Iowa.
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