Superstition of Divorce

The Superstition of Divorce by GK Chesterton, 150 pages

In this collection of essays Chesterton brings his legendary wit and commonsense to bear against one of the most pernicious superstitions of our highly superstitious age - the bizarre belief that the natural bonds of duty and devotion between a man and a woman, as formalized in marriage, can be dissolved by magical words pronounced by a court.  The danger of this superstition, in Chesterton's view, is the threat it poses to the family, the essential and paradigmatic form of human community and the chief bulwark against both anarchy and tyranny.  Supported by the powers of commerce and the state, wielding the abnormal as a weapon against the normal, advocates of easy divorce demand the respectability of marriage while denying the very elements that make marriage worthy of respect.  In his usual charming, rambling way Chesterton contends that the superstition of divorce depends upon the substitution of the banal servility of mere contract for the romantic, creative freedom of the vow.