X marrying Y <> Y marrying X?

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:21 PM -0400 9/10/07, Baker, John wrote:
>         The point is, if it's mutual, you don't have to tell who is the
>marrier and who is the marriee.  I suppose that the Commonwealth of
>Virginia would have contrasted their statute to a hypothetical statute
>that imposed penalties upon a black person who entered into marriage
>with a white person, but not upon the white spouse.
>
>         I am reminded of Dunsany's story, "Jorkens' Revenge," in which
>the eponymous hero won a bet that the distance from Westminster Bridge
>to Blackfriars Bridge is greater than the distance from Blackfriars
>Bridge to Westminster Bridge.  The other characters somehow expected
>that the two distances would be the same.
>
"marry" has not always been taken to be reciprocal or symmetric.
Here is R. G. White (_Words and their Uses_, 1886: 139-40) on the
topic:
==================
The usual form of making the announcement is -- Married, John Smith
with Mary Jones, and in others -- John Smith and Mary Jones.  I have
no hesitation in saying all these forms are incorrect.  We know,
indeed, what is meant by any one of them; but the same is true of
hundreds and thousands of erroneous uses of language. Properly
speaking, a man is not married to a woman, or married with her; nor
are a man and woman married with each other. The woman is marrried to
the man. It is her name that is lost in his, not his in hers; she
mbecomes a member of his family, not he of hers; it is her life that
is merged, or supposed to be merged, in his, not his in hers; hse
follows his fortunes, and takes his station not he hers. And thus,
manifestly, she has been attached to him by a legal bond, not he to
her; except, indeed, as all attachment is necessarily mutual. But
nevertheless, we do not speak of tying a ship to a boat, but a boat
to a ship. And so long, as least, as man is the larger, the stronger,
the more individually important, as long as woman generally lives in
her husband's house and bears his name, -- still more should she not
bear his name, --it is the woman who is married to the man.
====================

And don't you forget it.
(Cited by Ann Bodine in her excellent "Androcentrism in prescriptive
grammar", Language in Society, 1975.  Talk about prescriptivism!)

LH

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