Nona Cummings
Body Language
The well-brought up ladies of Jane Austen’s novels did it. Anna Nicole, all size 42-DD of her, did it. The royal families of Europe have always done it. Larry Fortensky gave up a happy life of hauling tonnage on United States roads to do it. Scarlett O’Hara stabbed her own sister in the back to do it. Myopia and Geriatrix did it on Goscinny and Uderzo’s pages. Who knows maybe Delilah was thinking of it as she sharpened the scissors. I could go on.
What I am talking about, of course, is marrying for money: dollars, inyuku, maacha, kroon; currency, hard cash. And where the prospect of settling down in somebody’s outbuilding with a partner you love and adore is nice, retiring for life, to the sun-drenched beaches of the Bahamas, before you reach 30, is even nicer.
But for all our liberation, and talk of equal rights to do things, a woman who will walk down the aisle with cash in mind is still looked down on as one of society’s most despised creatures. Apparently, it is completely socially acceptable to marry because: a) you are pregnant; b) you are pregnant again; c) your parents like him or her; d) the Church, mosque, temple, and so on, say you should, e) if you don’t you will be a health, workplace, travel or credit risk there are countries out there who won’t issue visas to unmarried people, because they won’t go back home, or f) you have been sleeping together, and as damaged goods, nobody else will want you anyway.
But a woman who strides down the aisle unrepentant that the bank balance, not the love, is what she is after, is the lowest of the low: femme fatale, shameless, a strumpet, a hussy, a gold-digger. And we are repeatedly failing to recognise that like a tapeworm needs us to live, for every parasitic relationship, there must be a host.
I confess my conflict of interests I am pea-green with envy at the sheer guile and cheek of those dames. My own partner appeared reasonably well off when I shacked up with him, but several years, bad investments and spend-thrifty ways down the line, he doesn’t have two cents to rub together. Though we are not living in abject squalor, and I love him to bits, there are days (and they are more intense at month-end) when I sit back and wonder whatever happened to my girly ambitions of being independent, wealthy and successful all on my own, but having a rich “outie” on the side to spoil me with presents and take me dining at posh restaurants. Writing stories for a living is of course a decidedly rude and persistent scratch on that LP of dreams. But, having put this particular acquisition on my to-do list so many years ago, it is hard to let go. Of course, “the surrendered-wife dot com” tells us we can have it that way, if we would only stop telling him what to do with his money and, more importantly, hand over ours as well. Then our men will give us the life of leisure we always wanted, even if he fixes toilets for a living and you are a CEO.
It’s high time somebody wrote an ode in praise of the likes of Roxanne Pulitzer, the smiling blonde who robbed all three of her rich husbands blind by divorcing them securing millions in ali-mony to pay for her numerous homes, cars, overseas trips, and collagen facials. And let’s stop pretending that those men out there who marry pretty young things (though not all money hussies are teenagers, look at Jane Fonda) are hapless victims lured by the promises of endless blow-jobs, off to the women’s lairs.
So what’s wrong with writing a book: How to marry a rich man? And can somebody please tell me in what way is that more vulgar than the type of self-help trash we see today, like How to sleep with your man and keep him. Leave out new-age schlock; remember how our mothers used to tell us the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? That’s right, girls, you may not love him, or him you, but keep up those pot roasts and he’ll never leave. Bollocks!
Endlessly quoting other feminists shows a serious lack of individuality, but De Beauvoir was dead right marriage always involves prostituting oneself. In some cultures, a man takes on the responsibility for buying his wife’s panties and pots, in return for unrestricted access to her.
And women are equally guilty, putting on lacy nighties and suspenders on Monday, because you know you need a new pair of curtains for your incoming house-guests on Saturday. We all do things in return or anticipation of other things. As long as we operate in relationship morse-code. When it looks too obvious it’s vulgar.
The bottom line is, we are a nation of Blanche du Boises hankering for days when women were well brought up and always married for the good reasons, like in the storybooks. We say women should be free to marry and sleep with whom they please, without judgement, but we are the first to point fingers. In the real world, love and marriage don’t always go together like a horse and carriage and it’s not only the brainless bimbos out there who specifically look for a man who will throw the extra bacon her way. Some of us were led down the penniless garden path, and can only dream of those platinum rings and bursting purses, but it should not stop us from educating our daughters.
Sheer, naked materialism is here to stay, and if men can do it, why can’t women be heartless in their marriage choices? It is, after all, as Ms Austen herself noted in the preface to Pride and Prejudice, “a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”.