Imposed marriage can be so traumatic a girl kills herself over it

Evidence

When Stekel meets her, she is suffering from vomiting, takes morphine every night, has fits of temper, refuses to wash, eats in bed, refuses to leave her room. She is engaged to be married and affirms that she loves her fiancé. She admits to Stekel that she gave herself to him. Later she says that she derived no pleasure from it: the memory of his kisses was even repugnant to her, and they are the cause of her vomiting. It is discovered that, in fact, she succumbed to him to punish her mother, who she felt never loved her enough; as a child, she spied on her parents at night because she was afraid they might give her a brother or sister; she adored her mother. “And now she had to get married, leave [her parents’] home, abandon her parents’ bedroom? It was impossible.” She lets herself grow fat, scratches and hurts her hands, deteriorates, falls ill, tries to offend her fiancé in all ways. The doctor heals her, but she pleads with her mother to give up this idea of marriage: “She wanted to stay home, to remain a child forever.” Her mother insists that she marry. A week before the wedding day, she is found in her bed, dead; she shot herself with a revolver. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1130

Categorization

• BMF: The girl’s regressive, self-destructive refusal to leave her parents’ bedroom and become adult strongly evokes the veiled Bertha-vs-Jane dynamic and the attic/childhood-regression motif in Jane Eyre, where marriage is likewise experienced as death by the madwoman in the house.
• XREF: connects to: Long-conditioned marriage feels like self-poisoning one can no longer renounce. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1350; Young women pursue marriage primarily to escape the humiliation of being unsought — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1123; Marriage anxieties trigger neuroses far more often in girls than men

Broader Connections

• Long-conditioned marriage feels like self-poisoning one can no longer renounce. #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1350
• Young women pursue marriage primarily to escape the humiliation of being unsought #contradicts (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1123
• Marriage anxieties trigger neuroses far more often in girls than men #expands (0.75)