"Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them"
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Smith’s marriage metaphor lands because it’s domestically accurate and faintly menacing: a tool designed for coordinated action that spends most of its visible life pulling apart. The shears can’t function unless the blades move against each other; the friction is the point. So when he says spouses “often” move in opposite directions, he’s not pathologizing conflict as failure. He’s implying the institution is built on it - complementary forces bound into one legal and social hinge.
The second clause is where the joke sharpens into social critique. “Always punishing anyone who comes between them” isn’t only about the folly of meddling relatives. It’s a warning about the way marriage polices its borders. Intrusion gets cut, not because the couple is cruel, but because the couple-as-unit has been culturally engineered to defend itself. In a world of tight reputations and tighter property arrangements, the marriage bond is less romantic dyad than small sovereign state: it has territory, rules, and enforcement.
Smith, a clergyman writing in the early 19th century, had reason to treat marriage as both moral project and social machinery. The Church sanctified it; the law stabilized it; the economy depended on it. His wit gives cover to an uncomfortable truth: marriage can be simultaneously intimate and impersonal, tender and punitive. The shears image lets him say what polite society can’t - that “togetherness” often looks like mutual resistance, and the collateral damage is usually paid by the unlucky third party who mistakes a hinge for an opening.
The second clause is where the joke sharpens into social critique. “Always punishing anyone who comes between them” isn’t only about the folly of meddling relatives. It’s a warning about the way marriage polices its borders. Intrusion gets cut, not because the couple is cruel, but because the couple-as-unit has been culturally engineered to defend itself. In a world of tight reputations and tighter property arrangements, the marriage bond is less romantic dyad than small sovereign state: it has territory, rules, and enforcement.
Smith, a clergyman writing in the early 19th century, had reason to treat marriage as both moral project and social machinery. The Church sanctified it; the law stabilized it; the economy depended on it. His wit gives cover to an uncomfortable truth: marriage can be simultaneously intimate and impersonal, tender and punitive. The shears image lets him say what polite society can’t - that “togetherness” often looks like mutual resistance, and the collateral damage is usually paid by the unlucky third party who mistakes a hinge for an opening.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marriage |
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