Marriage nowadays just isn’t what it used to be. Throughout history, marriage has always been first and foremost an economic arrangement, with a couple entering into a lifelong relationship for the purpose of raising children and maintaining family property.
All the better if the young couple just happened to be in love, but even if the new bride and groom barely knew each other, there was always the hope that a kind of love would grow between them over time.
By the nineteenth century, the dilemma of marriage for love or money was a common theme in literature. And by the twentieth century, most people would have agreed that a young couple considering marriage should love each other.
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