Abstract

Reviewers of Bertrand Russell’s Marriage and Morals (MM) came to no consensus on the purpose of the work. Some saw it as advocating love in marriage, others as destroying marriage and still others as an attempt to justify promiscuity (Kayden, Tract on Sex and Marriage: Review of Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell. The Sewanee Review 38(1), 104–108, 1930; Pan, Review of Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell. The China Critic 3(8), 186–187, 1930). Their confusion is understandable given the tensions in the book. This chapter proposes that these were partly the result of an unsuccessful attempt to combine two incompatible value systems: aristocratic values and the new morality which Bertrand Russell and his wife at the time, Dora, promoted. The book also reveals a couple in crisis—whose ideals had proved impossible to realize in their life together.