[...] In comedies of remarriage the fact of virginity is evidently not what is at stake. Yet all the more, it seems to me, is the concept of virginity still at stake, or what the fact meant is at stake something about the possession of chasteness or innocence, whatever one's physically determinable condition, whatever one's physically determinable condition, andabout whether one's valuable intactness, one's individual exclusiveness, has been well lost, that is, given over for something imaginably better, for the exclusiveness of a union. The overarching question of the comedies of remarriage is precisely the question of what constitutes a union, what makes these two into one, what binds, you may say what sanctifies in marriage. When is marriage an honorable estate? In raising this question these films imply not only that the church has lost its power over this authentication but that society as a whole cannot be granted it. In thus questioning the legitimacy of marriage, the question of the legitimacy of society is simultaneously raised, even allegorized.