{"id":80394,"date":"2014-12-02T19:21:21","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T00:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80394"},"modified":"2014-12-03T10:22:36","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T15:22:36","slug":"marriage-plot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/02\/marriage-plot\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Plot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hanged.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-80395\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hanged.jpg\" alt=\"Hanged\" width=\"600\" height=\"388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hanged.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/hanged-300x194.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>From <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/47445\/47445-h\/47445-h.htm#Page_112\" target=\"_blank\">Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World<\/a><em>, a 1908 book\u2014putatively nonfiction\u2014by Clifton R. Wooldridge, \u201cthe Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In his agony [Devel] confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife. [\u2026]<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI desired to be hung,\u201d said Devel, mournfully. \u201cLife is not worth the living, and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with my wife.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief grievances against married life in general, and his wife in particular:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>She was slender, and became fat and strong.<\/li>\n<li>She was beautiful, and became ugly and coarse.<\/li>\n<li>She was tender, and grew hard.<\/li>\n<li>She was loving, and grew virulent.<\/li>\n<li>She grew whiskers on her chin.<\/li>\n<li>She called him \u201cpig.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>She wore untidy clothes, and her hair was unkempt.<\/li>\n<li>She refused to give him beer.<\/li>\n<li>Her breath smelled of onions and of garlic.<\/li>\n<li>She threw hot soup upon him.<\/li>\n<li>She continually upbraided him because there were no children.<\/li>\n<li>She scolded him in the presence of neighbors.<\/li>\n<li>She refused to permit him to bring his friends home.<\/li>\n<li>She came into his store and scolded him.<\/li>\n<li>She accused him of infidelity.<\/li>\n<li>She disturbed him when he slept in the garden on Sundays.<\/li>\n<li>She made him cook his own dinners.<\/li>\n<li>She spilled his beer when he drank quietly with friends.<\/li>\n<li>She told tales about him among the neighbors, and injured his business.<\/li>\n<li>She served his sausages and his soup cold, and sometimes did not have his meals for him when he came home.<\/li>\n<li>She did not make the beds nor clean the house.<\/li>\n<li>She took cards out of his skat deck.<\/li>\n<li>She talked continually, and scolded him for everything or nothing.<\/li>\n<li>She opened the windows when he closed them, and closed them when he opened them.<\/li>\n<li>She poured water into his shoes while he slept.<\/li>\n<li>She cut off his dachshund\u2019s tail.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World, a 1908 book\u2014putatively nonfiction\u2014by Clifton R. Wooldridge, \u201cthe Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America.\u201d In his agony [Devel] confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633],"tags":[16250,16249,14972,657,8577,16248],"class_list":["post-80394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-tomfoolery","tag-16250","tag-clifton-r-wooldridge","tag-hanging","tag-marriage","tag-true-crime","tag-twenty-years-a-detective-in-the-wickedest-city-in-the-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Wife or Gallows?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An excerpt from a strange 1908 book in which a man confesses to murder in hopes of being hanged and terminating his marriage.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/02\/marriage-plot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marriage Plot by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 2, 2014 \u2013 From Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World, a 1908 book\u2014putatively nonfiction\u2014by Clifton R. 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