Love

LOVE AND HAPPINESS--I. M. Hotep-- Knopf ($2).

SO YOU'RE GOING TO GET MARRIED!-- Bell Wiley--Lippincott ($1.50).

MARRIAGES ARE MADE AT HOME--Clarita de Forceville--Knopf ($2).

GETTING ALONG TOGETHER--Marjorie D. Kern--McBride ($2).

"Men marry," said urbane Philosopher George Santayana, "as their fortunes prove." That women play a big part in assisting fortune was established again last month by four books on the art and science of marriage. Written for women, they cover all sides of the subject, from advice on illicit love affairs to instructions on how to can tomatoes.

Love and Happiness is a good-natured book of the benevolent, family-physician, don't-worry-there's-nothing-to-it type, explaining frigidity, homosexuality, adultery, venereal diseases and a variety of semi-clinical matters with a joviality that is sometimes excessive. "Here comes a young lady," says Dr. Hotep, "who is beginning to wonder when she will become 'promiscuous'--when she has had three lovers, or when she has had ten." Other perplexed souls who poured out their problems to Dr. Hotep included two well-brought-up college girls who wondered if it was safe for them to pick up strangers on trains, a sheltered boy who was sent to him to learn the facts of life but who turned out to be fully informed, a woman of 42 on the verge of a nervous breakdown; many, many others. Their confidences, together with Dr. Hotep's observations, make up the substance of Love and Happiness. Although readers will recognize that the doctor's wide experience has given him great tolerance, they are likely to be left wondering what else it has given him.

So You're Going to Get Married! is a bustling, sensible little volume that tells brides what size sheets to buy (108 in. by 90 for a double bed), what furniture and what frame of mind are best suited for setting up housekeeping. Miss Wiley believes that one of the big troubles with marriage is the honeymoon. She draws a terrible picture of bride & groom rushing about getting ready for the wedding, buying things, getting nervous and exhausted and then having to start on a trip. "Where is the ecstasy?" she asks gloomily. "Where the bliss?" She also thinks that no bride should ever be heard saying, "I wish you'd hurry up and make more money."

Indirectly, this same advice is given by Countess de Forceville and Marjorie Kern. One of the things that worry them most about modern marriage is the tendency of husbands & wives to complain about each other in public. Countess de Forceville, whose book is aimed at more sophisticated members of the middle generation, gives several hints on what a wife can do when her husband bawls her out before friends. She can ask him to tell his best story. If that does not work, she can answer back. Or she can become completely silent, or--"this is a blow between the eyes"--she can leave the room. Marjorie Kern's Getting Along Together is directed toward people who are growing old. She preaches the advantages of calm companionship over passionate misery.

Despite their optimistic tone, the four volumes give a troubled picture of U. S. domestic life--a world in which husbands are amorous when wives are not, and vice versa; where conflicts spring up over reading in bed or rumpling the evening paper; where other women are always out after husbands who are usually erotic or ill-natured; where husbands are always fussing about untidiness and extravagance --the whole grim panorama giving the impression that Americans are an irritable, aggravated, dissatisfied people for whom marriage is an ordeal that only heroes and heroines can bear.

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