Why get married? For human beings, marriage is such an unnatural state. If you want monogamy, it has been said, you should marry a swan.

In this epigrammatic provocation, Crisp—famous for his camp wit and contrarian social commentary—treats marriage not as a natural human destiny but as a culturally imposed arrangement. By calling marriage “unnatural,” he challenges the assumption that lifelong pair-bonding is an instinctive norm, implying that human desire and social life are more various than the institution allows. The swan functions as a satirical emblem of idealized monogamy: if one insists on a model of lifelong exclusivity, Crisp jokes, one should choose a creature popularly believed to mate for life. The line thus critiques moralistic expectations around fidelity and exposes how “natural” is often used to police behavior.