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22.11.2007
Marriage, a History
So I Finished this a while back and just never got around to writing up a summary. I've pre-dated my entry so that I can have a timeframe reference later, though, so don't get too confused. The following is a review of Marriage, A History by Stephanie Coontz.
What a phenomenally interesting book! As a reasonably well-eduated person, I've always been aware of the changing nature of the concept of "marriage" over the past several centuries, but never have I seen it explored in such detail with such a keen eye to trends and data analysis.
Coontz is a scholar of relationships, for lack of a better phrase; she's written a number of books on the recent history of the American Family and the potential it has for the future. In this prodigious undertaking, she goes all the way to the beginnings of man and continues forward to the present day.
It's a interesting to look at how many different types of relationships have born the title of "marriage" - initially a way of forming tribal or familial groups among early man based on the needs for survival, the idea of marriage evolved into political alliances among the upper classes and a necessary team for the division of labor in the lower classes. Although, she shows the reader that even in ancient times, there was love, intrigue, and passion in these political alliances.
As anyone with a IMSA Perspectives education can tell you, nothing in history happens in a vacuum. As people began amassing more and more resources, they became more concerned about who would get it when they were gone. Thus steps in the Church, more strictly defining what it means to be married, and beginning the tradition of church weddings that we still practice today. Despite its formalization of the relationship, the Church still considered the state of marriage a necessary evil, a runner-up behind the state of celibacy. The rise of protestantism revived the love in marriage, and a recognition of the partnership aspect of marriage.
In the Victorian era, she chronicles the rise of the single bread-winner household, an arrangement that started among the less affluent because it was often more economical to have a person at home preparing goods, watching children and running the household in what was undoubtedly an exhausting way of life. Like most things, people tend to warp a rough situation into a status symbol, and thus it became with the rise of consumerism that the man became burdened with the often overwhelming task of providing for the family and woman began to feel trapped in their own homes.
I really should stop here, or this is just going to turn into am old-fashioned book report. Suffice it to say, she's quite through in her analysis of the historical data with only a mild flavor of feminism.
I have to admit that I was a little overwhelmed by the depth of the research and data here. About a third of the text is devoted just to notes.
Nevertheless, I would highly, highly recommend this to anyone vaguely interested in the subject. It's a well-crafted work with clear and concise arguments that provide a facinating picture of how we've loved and what we think about it changes how we want to love tomorrow.
Posted by drlynn at 23:53 in "Reading List".