Meaning & Analysis
Having a wife and children makes a person vulnerable to the whims of fate (fortune), as their well-being is a constant source of potential worry and risk, effectively holding the person's happiness captive.
Insights
Constraint on Ambition
The responsibilities and emotional ties of family life can limit an individual's ability to pursue ambitious, risky, or all-consuming goals, acting as a check on personal or professional ambition.
Emotional Vulnerability
A family represents a significant emotional vulnerability. One's happiness becomes inextricably linked to the safety and prosperity of others, creating multiple avenues through which misfortune can strike.
The Cost of Love
The proverb underscores that the profound joys and connections of family life are inherently tied to the immense responsibility and fear of loss. It is the price one pays for deep emotional bonds.
Sacrifice of Autonomy
By starting a family, one willingly cedes a degree of personal freedom and control over one's own destiny, accepting that the needs and fates of others will heavily influence one's own path.
Baconian Philosophy
Originating from Francis Bacon's essay 'Of Marriage and Single Life', the proverb reflects a Renaissance worldview where personal ambition and 'great enterprises' were often seen as being in conflict with domestic responsibilities. It frames family life as a potential impediment to worldly achievement.
Psychology of Attachment
The proverb powerfully articulates the psychological tension between love and anxiety. By loving deeply, one becomes profoundly vulnerable to loss and misfortune, making the well-being of loved ones a constant source of concern and a potential point of leverage for fate.
Personification of Fate
The personification of 'Fortune' as a captor reflects a classical and early modern understanding of fate as a powerful, unpredictable, and often cruel external force that dictates human affairs, against which personal agency is limited.
Modern Reinterpretation
While originally a caution against the constraints of family, the proverb now resonates as a poignant commentary on the profound nature of love and commitment. It highlights that the deepest human connections inherently come with the highest emotional stakes.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The core of the proverb is the powerful metaphor comparing family members to 'hostages', which vividly conveys a sense of powerlessness, high stakes, and constant peril at the hands of an external force.
Personification
'Fortune' is personified as a sentient, powerful entity capable of taking and holding hostages, transforming abstract fate into a tangible antagonist.
Elevated Diction
The proverb's formal, almost philosophical tone, using abstract concepts like 'fortune' and general roles like 'wife and children', gives it a timeless and universal quality.
Transcription
Quotations
He that hath wife and children hath giuen hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises.
For what secures the Ciuil life But Pawns of Children, and a Wife? That lie, like Hostages, at Stake, To pay for all Men undertake.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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