The Comedy of Errors Marriage Quotes Page 1

Luciana isn’t annoyed by men’s actions in marriage, but she just sees obedience and subjugation as the reality of marriage. What Adriana’s struggling through now – a seemingly cheating husband – would be too much for Luciana to bear patiently. Since she has decided a wife must bear everything patiently, she’ll wait to be married. This is all reminiscent of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, which has the following to say on the subject of marriage, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands" (5:22), "For the husband is the wife’s head" (5:23). The sisters seem to be on either side of St. Paul’s assessment; one wishes to submit, and isn’t yet ready to (Luciana), while the other doesn’t accept that she should submit at all (Adriana).

Luciana says if her husband were to wander from home (to another woman), she’d just have to bear it patiently until her husband came home again. Adriana immediately declares that Luciana’s idealized view of marriage results from her complete inexperience. While Adriana doesn’t disagree with Luciana in the abstract, the practical realities of marriage have left Adriana thinking very differently.

This is a fascinating chain of logic on marriage. Earlier, Luciana presented the simplistic argument that married women should patiently bear their husbands’ offenses because women are subordinate to men. In this quote, Adriana invokes St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians masterfully: she doesn’t deny that women are subordinate to men, but instead suggests that because a man and woman become one in marriage, when a man harms his wife, he does harm against himself. Indeed, St. Paul writes, "So ought men to love their own wives, as their own bodies, he that loveth his wife, loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherisheth it" (5:28-9). Based on this logic, though Adriana seems shrewish, she just wants her husband to do right by her such that he is in turn honoring himself. But, we can’t tell if this is Adriana’s real motivation or just tricky rationalization to justify her anger at her husband.