Newspaper Article

The Marital Webb

Mundy, Liza

1998

Overview

THE PROBLEM WITH WILD-ANIMAL documentaries, a zoo keeper once told me, is that they're all about sex and death. Camera crews will sit for hours watching a lion snooze, yet once the tape is edited what audiences see is not the endless snoozing but the brief savage drama in which the lion awakes to mate or to maul a hyena. With the result that zoo-goers are disappointed to see animals lying under trees and hiding behind bushes and generally doing what animals do most of the time, which is to say very little. Or rather, our impression of animals is much like our impression of marriages. With the help, again, of TV, and of fiction in general -- a category that includes not only novels and movies and glossy magazines but also, say, almost any public event involving Bill and Hillary Clinton -- our culture encourages the notion that marriages are stage-worthy dramas, full of yearning and passion as well as betrayal and plate-throwing, a kind of Mutual of Omaha excursion into the heart. When in fact the bulk of marital conversations sound like this:

• Publisher: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
• Subject: Couples / Hubbel, Susan J / Hubbell, Webster L / Marriage / Suzanne Hubbell / Webster L. Hubbell