Tag: Marriage

  • This Dreadful Nonsense is the Law: A Not-So Marvellous Marriage by Lemony Snicket

    The overwhelming feeling I have for the Baudelaire Orphans is concern. In fact, so concerned was I for their safety that when the Netflix show came out, I couldn’t watch the final episode of A Series of Unfortunate Events for months. Because what if? Snicket had been promising emotional devastation since the first page, the…

  • Playing Marriage

    “Marriage is no picnic.”  Indeed it is not. It also isn’t a play. Or is it?  A Series of Unfortunate Events (the movie) follows Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire on their quest to uncover the truth behind their parents’ deaths and the destruction of their home. On their path to truth and justice, they (have…

  • Conflict-related forced marriage in Army Of God: Joseph Kony’s War in Central Africa 

    Do you remember #BringBackOurGirls? Or the Yezidi women forced into marriage by members of ISIS? They are two of many examples of conflict-related forced marriage. Across many but not all conflicts, a similar pattern emerges. Women and girls are taken by male fighters, forced to marry them, and subjected to various forms of physical, sexual…

  • Delicious Dolls and Reluctant Brides: Forced Marriage in Nineteenth Century Art

    We can learn a lot about a culture from their art. What do the people value? What stories do they tell? When we answer those questions, we learn a lot about an era. Nineteenth-century portrait artist Auguste Toulmouche was known for his paintings of beautiful, indolent women. In fact, Émile Zola (an author and playwright…

  • Raising the Legal Age of Marriage – Alex Reflects

    “But Mum, I love him!” My sister proclaimed. She was older than me, probably just turned sixteen, and was deeply in love with her first boyfriend (who was her own age and, if memory serves, a sweetheart. He gave me my first copy of The Smashing Pumpkins, though, so I’m aware that I might be…

  • “I do – not”: An Introduction to Forced Marriage 

    Forced marriage is a global problem that does not pass by the UK. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), Walk Free and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that, worldwide, at least 22 million people lived in forced marriages in 2021. In 2022, around 300 people asked the UK’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) for advice…