Of Marriage and Single Life Summary | Francis Bacon

English Hons 3rd Year
October 30, 2022
MD SADDAM HOSSAIN

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) is an English author of the Renaissance period. He wrote ”Of Marriage and Single Life” and in this following content, you are going to get of marriage and single life summary. So, Let’s enjoy the content.

People think that Francis Bacon who wrote in English was the best at writing prose. Every one of Bacon’s essays has real-world moral and useful knowledge. All of his essays make people want to read them. ”Of Marriage and Single Life” is one of his most influential essays of him where he talks about the pros and cons of both married and single life.

The Summary of “Of Marriage and Single Life”

The first part of marriage and single life summary

In this essay, Bacon talks about how a married man is different from a single man. He also talks about the pros and cons of being married or single. A man with a wife and children can’t put his money at risk for good reasons.

They make it hard to do anything, good or bad. Men who have never been married have often done the best work for the public. These are the men who have “married” the public, or given their whole lives to a cause that benefits everyone.

Men who have children care a lot about the future and make important promises about it. But there are also single men who only think about themselves and plan for their own futures. Some people see their wives and children as things they have to pay for. Some stupid and greedy men are proud that they don’t have children.

They think that they will stay richer if they don’t have kids because they may have heard people say that so-and-so is a great, rich man, but he has a lot of kids, which suggests that kids are a burden that keeps fortunes from growing. But most men choose to stay single because being single gives them more freedom. People like these see marriage as a prison.

The second part of marriage and single life by Bacon summary

Bacon makes a list of the good and bad things about a single man. Men who are not married are best friends, masters, and servants. But they don’t make the best citizens because they feel so free that they run away from their responsibilities. A clergyman is better off as a single person because he can help more people because he doesn’t have any needs to meet.

For judges and magistrates, the situation doesn’t matter because being corrupt turns them into servants, which is worse than being a wife. Before going into battle, soldiers often find it comforting to think about their wives and children. Because of this, Bacon says that the Turks’ dislike of marriage makes their soldiers even ruder.

Single men often give more because they don’t have as many bills to pay. But at the same time, they tend to be mean and cruel because they don’t have a wife or kids to bring out their soft side of them.

The last part of the summary

A man who is serious and has traditional beliefs is usually a good husband. Women are often proud of their chastity, and a wife will always stay chaste and obedient if she thinks her husband is wise and not jealous. A young man views his wife as his mistress. For a middle-aged man, she is a friend. For an old man, she is a nurse.

So, it makes sense for a man to choose when he wants to marry. Bacon quotes a philosopher and mathematician who said, “A young man not yet, an old man not at all,” in response to the question of when a man should get married.

However, Bacon noticed that many bad husbands have good wives. He says that this could be because the wife is proud of how patient she is with her husband or because it makes the husband’s kindness more valuable. Bacon, on the other hand, says that if these bad husbands had the chance, they would make sure to fix their mistakes. This is the end of marriage and single life summary.