Getting Married · Chapter
The Right to Motherhood explained
Shaw argues that the existing marriage system fails to address women's revolt against compulsory barrenness, asserting that women have an absolute right to sexual experience and motherhood, which cannot be satisfied by adoption.
What happens
Shaw argues that the existing marriage system fails to address women's revolt against compulsory barrenness, asserting that women have an absolute right to sexual experience and motherhood, which cannot be satisfied by adoption. He proposes that reconciling this right with marriage may require legalizing polygyny, given the demographic imbalance of more adult women than men.
Free preview opens on this chapter — companions, themes, and character notes appear beside the text.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book — this chapter sits in Exposition.
- Setup
- Escalation
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
- Closing
This excerpt marks the dramatic climax because it delivers the story’s emotional and psychological peak by exp…
Full beat labels and climax notes unlock in the reader.
Follow the arc while readingThemes in this chapter
- Critique of Marriage as an Institution
Shaw critiques the marriage system for saddling the right to a child with the obligation to become a man's servant.
- Economic Dependence of Women
The chapter implies women's dependence on men for motherhood, linking to broader economic subordination.
Key passages
“the one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child with the obligation to become the servant of a man.”
Women universally resent that the law ties the right to have a child to the requirement of becoming a man's servant.
Highlights the core feminist critique of marriage as a form of servitude.
“No political constitution will ever succeed or deserve to succeed unless it includes the recognition of an absolute right to sexual experience, and is untainted by the Pauline or romantic view of such experience as sinful in itself.”
A successful political system must acknowledge an unconditional right to sexual experience, free from the idea that it is inherently sinful.
Shaw argues for the decoupling of sexuality from moral condemnation.
