From Chapter Four, Eros.
But dare I mention the Pagan sacrament without turning aside to guard against any danger of confusing it with an incomparably higher mystery. As nature crowns man in that brief action, so the Christian law has crowned him in the permanent relationship of marriage, bestowing -- or should I say, inflicting? -- a certain "headship" on him. This is a very different coronation. [...] The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church -- read on -- and give his life for her (Eph. V, 25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is -- in her own mere nature, least lovable. [...]
The sternest feminist need not grudge my sex the crown offered to it either in the Pagan or in the Christian mystery. For the one is of paper and the other of thorns. The real danger is not that husbands may grasp the latter too eagerly; but that they will allow or compel their wives to usurp it.
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