‘Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.” This piece of cynicism from William Congreve’s play The Old Bachelor (1693) has since become proverbial. Not least, because it’s true. Just think of one marriage you actively envy. Go on. I dare you. Got one? Thought not.
Reading about unhappy marriages is just so much more … not fun, exactly. Bracing? Comforting? Real? There’s the inevitable, ghastly thrill of schadenfreude. But also the creaturely pang of recognition. The Chosen, my novel about Thomas Hardy’s fraught marriage to his first wife, Emma, features a writing career that’s gone well, and a marriage that’s gone badly. It’s 1912. For 20 years Em and Tom, now in their 70s, have been living in virtual isolation from each other at Max Gate, the large house on the outskirts of Dorchester which he built for her. They occupy separate rooms and barely speak to each other. Once Em was intensely involved in his writing, acting as his copyist and daily support. But their marriage has long been soured by his success and self-absorption. And then quite unexpectedly, one November morning, Emma dies.
