Marriage Quote by Oscar Wilde

Wilde lands the punch with a courtroom-clean definition, then swaps the labels and watches the moral scaffolding wobble. Bigamy is “one wife too many” is a familiar, smug axiom: the law and polite society nod along, confident they’ve quarantined excess. Wilde’s twist - “Monogamy is the same” - isn’t just a naughty paradox; it’s an exposure of how “too many” is a social decision masquerading as natural truth. The joke works because the first sentence invites agreement, then the second reveals that agreement as purely rhetorical habit.

The subtext is classic Wilde: Victorian respectability depends on drawing bright lines between acceptable desire and scandalous desire, while quietly relying on hypocrisy to keep the whole thing functioning. In an era where marriage was economic contract, social credential, and gendered trap (especially for women), monogamy was sold as moral refinement even as the culture accommodated male infidelity and punished female sexuality. Wilde’s inversion needles that asymmetry: if marriage is framed as possession or burden, the number becomes secondary to the premise.

Context matters because Wilde’s own life would be weaponized by the same moral vocabulary he’s mocking. The line reads like salon comedy, but it’s also defensive intelligence: a way to show that “virtue” often isn’t virtue, just enforcement. By collapsing bigamy and monogamy into the same comic arithmetic, Wilde makes the institution look less like sacred order and more like paperwork with a halo.