On the Appropriate Division of a Platypus; Or, A Wedding Toast

The bride and groom having now divided amongst them the platypus, it is my amiable task to discuss the reasoning behind this act.

The whale and sturgeon, when taken off the coast of England, belonged to the King, because "of [their] superior excellence". Judged to be the royalty of their respective classes, they were the natural prey of that highest class of man. And so the platypus, which may well be judged the king and acme of monotremes.

Today the bride and groom are become the queen and king of a new household. They are royalty, in the truest sense of the word, just as Adam and Eve were true monarchs. Thus, their right to the platypus itself. But how to divide it?

One may see that the platypus is now in two unequal pieces, the groom receiving the anterior, and the bride the posterior, slice. So it was with the whale and sturgeon, with the king receiving the head, and the queen the tail. As Melville in Moby Dick points out, this division is on the surface nonsensical. The whalebone for ladies' accoutrements is from the head, not the tail. But, as he says, "an allegorical meaning may lurk here".

Let us consider the Apostle Paul's words on marriage, in his letter to the Ephesians.

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one." This is a great mystery, and I take it to mean Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

The husband, then, is the head of the household, and appropriately receives the head of the beast, just as the woman receives the tail. However poor haberdashery this division may be, it is decent theology. When we learn that the head is where the whale's oil is found, and consider the use of oil in consecration, we contemplate the man's role as head of his wife, just "as Christ is the head of the church".

But the head has another use. It is the portion of its self that the whale uses against its enemies, smashing them to flinders, and potentially thus sacrificing itself. The husband is called on to be like Christ. He must not, then, hesitate to sacrifice himself for his wife; he must be prepared to break his body for her, that she may live, just as Christ sacrificed himself for all mankind.

Then, too, we must consider the wife, and the tail. The whale's strength is in its tail, and almost the whole of its motive force. This tail is a mighty helpmeet indeed! "The more I consider the tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it." It is, Melville tells us, indomitable, sensitive, and graceful.

And so this head-and-tail division, which was nonsensical at first, serves to remind us of the true form of marriage. And the platypus is fertile ground for such analysis: one need only recall the venomous spurs of the rear legs, and draw the obvious conclusion.

But one must also remember that marriage is a uniting of man and woman. They are no longer separate, but must work together, and love one another without fail. Without this love, they are like a divided platypus: incapable of meaningful activity. While they have disparate roles, they are one flesh.

And so the bride and groom, the queen and king of their household, the church and her Christ, are become one body, head and tail, in the union of matrimony. Many years!