Married Love or Love in Marriage (Large Print)

The book that was to become Married Love grew from Marie Stopes's conviction that the state of modern middle-class marriage was, like her own, desperate, and that the cause of this desperation was sexual unhappiness. She knew that her book would "probably electrify the country" of England. Indeed, it remains one of the best-known sex manuals ever written. This is the only available edition of Marie Stopes's pioneering sex manual--one of the first books to discuss sex frankly and to describe how to achieve pleasure for both sexes during intercourse. The manual combines a lyrical evocation of marital love with a no-nonsense and detailed account of sexual intercourse and sexual pleasure that was a sensation when it was published in 1918. Stopes advocated equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexuality and sexual desire. She also took the controversial step of openly supporting birth control. Large 15 point font

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Excerpt:
The truly monogamic couple, where the man and the woman go chaste to the marriage-bed, and go through life in mutual love and respect, these feelings growing stronger as the years go by, finding full satisfaction in each other, without any desire for any other man or woman -- what nobler, what more appealing ideal can one conjure up? Nor is it an utterly unrealizable ideal, for in spite of the sneers of the cynics, there are such couples, even at the present time and even in our largest Babylons... We cannot prevent the cynics from sneering, but even they must admit that monogamy is here, is the dominant system, is the only socially approved and legally permitted system, and we have to deal with it.

And those radical sexologists who do not believe that monogamy is the best system of sexual relationship, who are sure that it will not survive for all eternity, that it will be replaced in the future by a higher adjustment, will agree, even if they do so reluctantly, that for a few years to come -- say five hundred to a thousand -- it will be the only feasible, the only socially admissible and legally sanctioned system.

This being the case, it becomes the sexologist's most sacred duty to do everything in his power to make the monogamic relationship as pleasant as possible, to remove as far as possible all removable causes of friction, to steer the frail matrimonial bark in safe channels, to guard it from being wrecked on the Scylla of asceticism or the Charybdis of excess; in short to help the Man and the Woman to go through life in mutual love and respect, finding full satisfaction in each other, without any desire for any other man or woman.

This is the object of Dr. Stopes' fine book. It would be too soon to expect any one work to succeed in converting every home from the hell that it often is into the paradise that it should be; but if a careful reading of it preserves the temper of some men, improves the health and cures the insomnia of some women, if it saves a few homes from disruption, it will be decidedly worth while, and its author will be called blessed -- and will deserve to be.

There is plenty of love outside of marriage; there is not enough in marriage; and they who labor to augment and intensify Love in Marriage are doing good pro-social work.