Page - 30 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

Marriage and Its Representations | 29www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 23–37 complexity of this reunion, suggesting the reconciliation without allowing, yet, a physical intimacy. The conclusion to be drawn from this conversation may be that love between protagonists cannot be reduced to a mathematical logic. It can be likened to a Kierkegaardean “leap” into faith: a movement out of the rational or a paradoxical acceptance of the weakness of one’s desires. In McCarey’s movie, as in other famous comedies of the classical Hollywood era, conflict that is initially a public, temporal, and social matter starts to affect the private sphere – as in the example of Adam’s Rib. The dichotomy between the private and public spheres in which the couple evolves completes an inher- ent discussion of equivalence and difference in love and in the ethics of mar- riage. In its paradox-filled examination of conjugal behavior, The Awful Truth of- fers a synthesis, but also a critical reevaluation, of comic representations of marriage that preceded it. In Shakespearean comedy, marriage comes as a culmination that ends the complicated games of love and the misunderstand- ings revealing the shortcomings of human desire. Theatrical farce (Vaudeville in French) parodies the marital constitution and alters the boundaries that mar- riage creates between the couple and society – the moral contract is supposed partially to cut off the married couple from the outside world, with the couple essentially asocial: hence, their exposure to all temptations. As a result, the in- trusion of the potential lover into the conjugal home, as we see in The Awful Truth, leads to an obliteration of the spatial and moral distinction between es- tablished order (marriage, bourgeoisie) and the secret or marginal (adultery, life of pleasures), and therefore social rules lose all meaning. The result is a con- fusion of states (secret and revelation), spaces (private and public), and status (husband and lover). However, more importantly, the movie shows two protagonists exercising their freedom fully and aware of all the contradictions and complications this exercise implies. Their decisions to break up and reconcile, to leave unclarified their suspicions about possible philandering, and to realize that their separation is an integral part of their conjugal process are at the core of the comic plot. The starting point of Cavell’s examination of marriage is that “a legitimate marriage requires that the pair is free to marry, that there is no impediment between them”, typical of the way, as we have noted, marriage gradually came to be conceived from the seventeenth century. However, he continues by saying that “this freedom is announced in [the comedies of remarriage] in the concept of divorce”,14 introducing a paradox to today’s understanding of what marriage is. In McCarey’s movie, marriage is a mental state that the couple cannot fully experience without a certain sense of withdrawal and the constant trials of a 14 Cavell 1981, 102–103.