Marriage, a History From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage

by Coontz, Stephanie

• ISBN13: 9780670034079
• ISBN10: 067003407X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-19
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

Marriage today is held up as a blissful haven of love and friendship, sex and stability. We long for the gold standard, the traditional marriage but marriage turns out to have a chequered past - the 'traditional marriage' was evanescent. This real look at what people think of as 'traditional' finally explains why so many married people are so unsatisfied. Marriage has changed more in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand, and few of the old 'rules' for marriage still apply. In the courts, the op-ed pieces, and at the dinner table, battles rage over what marriage means, why people do it, and who can do it. Marriage, a History is the one book you need to understand not only the vicissitudes of modern marriage but also gay marriage, 'living together' and divorce. Stephanie Coontz shatters dozens of myths about the past and future of married life and shows us why marriage, though more fragile today, can be more rewarding than ever before.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(14)
PART ONE: IN SEARCH OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE
Chapter 1: The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love	15	(9)
Chapter 2: The Many Meanings of Marriage	24	(10)
Chapter 3: The Invention of Marriage	34	(19)
PART TWO: THE ERA OF POLITICAL MARRIAGE
Chapter 4: Soap Operas of the Ancient World	53	(17)
Chapter 5: Something Borrowed: The Marital Legacy of the Classical World and Early Christianity	70	(18)
Chapter 6: Playing the Bishop, Capturing the Queen: Aristocratic Marriages in Early Medieval Europe	88	(16)
Chapter 7: How the Other 95 Percent Wed: Marriage Among the Common Folk of the Middle Ages	104	(19)
Chapter 8: Something Old, Something New: Western European Marriage at the Dawn of the Modern Age	123	(22)
PART THREE: THE LOVE REVOLUTION
Chapter 9: From Yoke Mates to Soul Mates: Emergence of the Love Match and the Male Provider Marriage	145	(16)
Chapter 10: "Two Birds Within One Nest": Sentimental Marriage in Nineteenth-Century Europe and North America	161	(16)
Chapter 11: "A Heaving Volcano": Beneath the Surface of Victorian Marriage	177	(19)
Chapter 12: "The Time When Mountains Move Has Come": From Sentimental to Sexual Marriage	196	(20)
Chapter 13: Making Do, Then Making Babies: Marriage in the Great Depression and World War II	216	(13)
Chapter 14: The Era of Ozzie and Harriet: The Long Decade of "Traditional" Marriage	229	(18)
PART FOUR: COURTING DISASTER? THE COLLAPSE OF UNIVERSAL AND LIFELONG MARRIAGE
Chapter 15: Winds of Change: Marriage in the 1960's and 1970's	247	(16)
Chapter 16: The Perfect Storm: The Transformation of Marriage at the End of the Twentieth Century	263	(18)
Chapter 17: Uncharted Territory: How the Transformation of Marriage Is Changing Our Lives	281
CONCLUSION: BETTER OR WORSE? THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE
Conclusion	305	(10)
Notes	315	(100)
Index	415