Independence against the Family
April 29, 2006

"A happy couple: he joying in her, she joying in herself, but in herself, because she enjoyed him: both increasing their riches by giving to each other; each making one life double, because they made a double life one; where desire never wanted satisfaction, nor satisfaction ever bred satiety: he ruling, because she would obey, or rather because she would obey, she therein ruling." From Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1593).

After weary decades of feminist wandering from reality, and the usually halting and halfhearted attempts by conservatives to return to a Biblical understanding of marriage, we can learn a lot from the literature that C. S. Lewis was steeped in; and if anybody has explained the unhelpful notion of "mutual submission" more subtly and with more insight into the nature of man and woman than Philip Sidney did long ago, I'd like to see it. the rest