The Idea That Marriage Should Be Based on Love

The Idea That Marriage Should Be Based on Love is Bea’s belief that a marriage proposal should be made out of love, not used to solve a practical problem or advance some other purpose. When she learns that Víctor knew she was about to lose her job and admits that this influenced his proposal, the dispute becomes larger than a question of whether he loves her: Bea objects to being kept in the dark and to having a life-changing decision made for her. Their argument sets her ideal of marriage against Víctor’s account of the varied, often practical reasons adults marry.

The Proposal and Its Hidden Motive

Bea begins the confrontation by asking Víctor why he proposed. He answers that he loves her and wants to marry her, but she presses him about another circumstance: whether he knew that her employer was going to dismiss her, and whether that knowledge informed his proposal. Víctor admits that it did. For Bea, the admission confirms that her job loss was not incidental to the timing of the engagement. She tells him that he proposed because of it, even as he insists that love was also a reason.

The distinction matters to Bea. She is not simply asking whether Víctor feels affection; she wants the proposal itself to be grounded in love, rather than in an economic or employment-related calculation. When Víctor treats the precise reason as unimportant because they would probably have married sooner or later, she rejects that flexibility. The meaning of the act depends on why he chose to make it then, and on whether he shared that reasoning with her.

Víctor explains that he intended to tell Bea about the job situation after giving her the ring, but her excitement about the wedding made him reluctant to spoil the moment. His account supplies a reason for his silence, not an answer that resolves Bea’s concern. She had wanted the truth before accepting the proposal, and she wanted the two of them to plan together as a couple. His private decision to try to save her from unemployment instead makes her feel that he acted on her behalf without treating her as an equal participant.

Love, Trust, and Shared Decisions

The disagreement is sharpened by Bea’s recent doubts about Víctor’s honesty. She connects the proposal to his kiss with the television news presenter and to his unexplained presence at the presenter’s home. Those events make his explanations difficult for her to trust: she can see that his account may sound logical, yet feels that his actions point in another direction. The proposal therefore becomes part of a wider rupture in her confidence in him, not a self-contained disagreement about wedding customs.

Bea’s account of marriage includes a demand for partnership in decision-making. She asks why Víctor did not tell her his real motive or at least discuss the plan with her, as a team and as a couple. His intention to protect her from unemployment may be caring, but the way he carries it out deprives her of the chance to decide what she wants. The episode thus distinguishes loving concern from mutual trust: a beneficial intention does not, for Bea, make concealment or unilateral action acceptable.

Her insistence also persists despite her awareness that she may be reacting more intensely than usual. She recognizes the possible influence of the remaining effects of ron miel, the week she spent hiding at Chavela’s, and her own exaggerated response to Víctor’s kiss. Yet she continues to return to the central question of why he proposed. This self-awareness complicates the argument: Bea can acknowledge circumstances that may have heightened her anger without withdrawing her objection to the undisclosed motive.

Two Accounts of Why People Marry

Víctor challenges Bea’s assumption that ordinary people marry for love. He argues that affection may be present while other motives also shape a marriage: social pressure, following friends’ example, spite toward an ex who married first, pleasing a partner, help with buying a home, fulfilling a dying relative’s wish, receiving a honeymoon as a gift, advancing at work, projecting a particular image, starting a family, trying to repair a troubled relationship, or treating marriage as the logical next step. In his account, romantic love is only one possible element in decisions that are often made for mixed reasons.

His list is pointed because it turns Bea’s personal grievance into a broader disagreement about adult life. He presents practical motives not as exceptional corruption but as ordinary circumstances that people accept without catastrophe. Bea hears this as condescension when he describes her outlook as naïve and childish. Rather than accept his general explanation, she applies it back to their engagement and asks which motive he chose. Her suggestions that he proposed to advance his career, cultivate an image, or flee from problems in their relationship are accusations, not admissions by Víctor; the exchange does not establish that any of those were his reasons.

The Meaning of the Conflict

The passage leaves the question of motive unsettled. Víctor has acknowledged that Bea’s impending dismissal influenced his proposal, while maintaining that he loves her; he has also explained why he delayed telling her. Bea does not treat those facts as sufficient reassurance. What has broken down is her ability to trust his account and, with it, her confidence that the engagement arose from a decision they made together.

The Idea That Marriage Should Be Based on Love therefore concerns more than a contrast between romance and practicality. Bea’s position gives love a particular ethical meaning: a proposal should be sincere, disclosed, and made within a relationship where both partners can choose together. Víctor’s argument recognizes that marriage may carry several motives at once, but his reliance on that general truth does not settle the specific question of whether Bea was told enough to consent to the decision as he understood it. The exchange gives no final resolution; it ends with Bea turning his catalogue of marriage motives into a pointed challenge to the story he has told about their own engagement.