In this letter to her sister, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu expresses what was, in the early eighteenth century, a commonplace view of wedlock. Marriage, she writes, is such an object of mockery that even women have lost interest in it, and married women like herself must “excuse” themselves for their unfashionable behavior. Obviously, Lady Mary's tone is light, but, as we saw in Chapter 1, she expresses ideas that were being argued quite seriously in a variety of circles. Many of her contemporaries agreed that marriage was becoming an object of mockery, used only as a cynical means of increasing wealth. It may seem, however, that these fears and the ideals presented in didactic literature bore little relevance to the real lives of women and men, particularly those of the elite whose behavior was targeted for criticism. After all, why would women who experienced the benefits and freedoms of fashionable society pay any attention to such works?