I have a list of names of fourteen married couples
whose mutual friendship was begun or continued through Brook Farm life,
and I have yet to know of an unhappy marriage among them all.
The question was often debated whether such a life as was led in
Association would have a tendency to favor early marriages or not, but
like a great many other questions of importance, it was debated without
settlement. One party claimed that from the freedom of social
intercourse and facility of acquaintance, an intimacy would spring up
that would result in early marriages; and the other party maintained
that with the certainty of true friendship from woman, and pleasant
social relations, marriages would not be hurried, but delayed until the
parties' thoughts and temperaments were well harmonized and all proper
and natural arrangements of support and comfort thoroughly secured.
There was with us a variety of female characters. We had our Marthas
who were troubled with much serving, and our Marys who loved to sit at
our leader's feet and hear the glad tidings and the new doctrines; and
now and then we had an uncomfortable woman, fully out of place and
consequently unhappy. Such an one was usually the wife of some man
whose whole energies were devoted to his work and who was happy in
himself, on his half shell, and was to be pitied that his other half
lived not in his shadow, but cast a shadow on him.
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