'Better Than a Dog Anyhow': Tireless Romantic Charles Darwin on the Pros and Cons of Marriage

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Charles Darwin wrote out a list of the pros and cons of matrimony. He would later decide to marry his cousin Emma.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/better-than-a-dog-anyhow-tireless-romantic-charles-darwin-on-the-pros-and-cons-of-marriage/261197/

'Better Than a Dog Anyhow': Tireless Romantic Charles Darwin on the Pros and Cons of Marriage

By Maria Popova
August 16, 2012

[...]

Marry

Children -- (if it Please God) -- Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, -- object to be beloved & played with. -- -better than a dog anyhow. -- Home, & someone to take care of house -- Charms of music & female chit-chat. -- These things good for one's health. -- but terrible loss of time. -

My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. -- No, no won't do. -- Imagine living all one's day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. -- Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps -- Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro' St.

Not Marry

Freedom to go where one liked -- choice of Society & little of it. -- Conversation of clever men at clubs -- Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle. -- to have the expense & anxiety of children -- perhaps quarelling -- Loss of time. -- cannot read in the Evenings -- fatness & idleness -- Anxiety & responsibility -- less money for books &c -- if many children forced to gain one's bread. -- (But then it is very bad for ones health[19] to work too much)

Perhaps my wife wont like London; then the sentence is banishment & degradation into indolent, idle fool -

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