How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"You better watch that girl. […] To see she don't get you to marry her," Call said. "You're just enough of an old food to do it. I won't have that girl around." (2.75, 2.77)
Some men in Lonesome Dove look at marriage as if it's a sort of trap. Call is one of those men, maybe because he views love itself, or any human connection, as less like a bond and more like a ball and chain.
Quote #2
Little marriages were what they wanted—just something that would last until they started up the trail. Some girls did it that way—hitched up with one cowboy for a month or six weeks and got presents and played at being respectable. (3.45)
With such a high divorce rate today, it's easy to think of modern-day marriages as "little marriages." But Lonesome Dove shows us that marriage has always been a temporary situation to some people. 'Til death do us part? Not so much.
Quote #3
The principal aspect he worried over most was that marriage required men and women to live together. He had tried many times to envision how it would be to be alone at night under the same roof with a woman—or to have one there at breakfast and supper. What kind of talk would a woman expect? And what kind of behavior? (12.63)
Living on the range is a lonesome existence—that's a recurring theme throughout the novel—and cohabitation after a long time alone can be scary. No wonder so many marriages between cowboys and women fail. They don't know how to act with one another.