Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage [Paperback]

Stephanie Coontz (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 28, 2006

Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Politics, economics, greed, sex, cars—without them, matrimony wouldn’t have caused the historical revolution ensuing today, concludes social historian Stephanie Coontz, in Marriage, a History. Modern marriage is in crisis; but don’t pine for a return to "the good old days," when men earned money and women kept house. Don’t even assume the crisis is all bad. For as Coontz reveals in this ambitious, multi-century trek through wedlock, marriage has morphed into the highest expression of commitment in Western Europe and North America; and though assumptions no longer exist regarding which partner may say "I do" to work, childcare, or other shared responsibilities, a clear set of rules about saying "I don’t" (to infidelity and irresponsibility) rings loud as church bells.

"This is not the book I thought I was going to write," Coontz admits. She intended to show that marriage was not in crisis; merely changing in expected ways. But her exhaustive research suggested the opposite was true. Tracing matrimony’s path from ancient times (when some cultures lacked a word for "love" and the majority of pairings were attempts to seize land or family names) through present day, she closely examines the many external forces at play in shaping modern marriage. Coontz details how society’s attempts to toughen this institution, have actually made it more fragile. Her rich talent for analyzing events, statistics, and theories from a myriad of sources—and enabling the reader to put them all in perspective—make this provocative history book an essential resource.--Liane Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. When considered in the light of history, "traditional marriage"—the purportedly time-honored institution some argue is in crisis thanks to rising rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, not to mention gay marriage—is not so traditional at all. Indeed, Coontz (The Way We Never Were) argues, marriage has always been in flux, and "almost every marital and sexual arrangement we have seen in recent years, however startling it may appear, has been tried somewhere before." Based on extensive research (hers and others'), Coontz's fascinating study places current concepts of marriage in broad historical context, revealing that there is much more to "I do" than meets the eye. In ancient Rome, no distinction was made between cohabitation and marriage; during the Middle Ages, marriage was regarded less as a bond of love than as a " 'career' decision"; in the Victorian era, the increasingly important idea of true love "undermined the gender hierarchy of the home" (in the past, men—rulers of the household—were encouraged to punish insufficiently obedient wives). Coontz explains marriage as a way of ensuring a domestic labor force, as a political tool and as a flexible reflection of changing social standards and desires. She presents her arguments clearly, offering an excellent balance between the scholarly and the readable in this timely, important book. Agent, Susan Rabiner. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (February 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014303667X
• ISBN-13: 978-0143036678
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 1 x 8.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #45,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #84 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Marriage & Family

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

127 of 135 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A perpetually relevant, crucial study of how marriages have been formed throughout history April 24, 2006

By Robert Moore HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Stephanie Coontz has devoted her career to waging war on ahistorical understandings of the family. She first came to national notice with her now classic book THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NOSTALGIA TRAP, which attacked naive attempts to make what she termed the Ozzie and Harriett marriage as somehow normative, a family in which the father worked, the mother stayed at home, both stayed married for a lifetime, and their two lovely children completed an ideal, caring unit. Though massive sifting of historical and statistical materials she was able to show that this picture of the family--a picture that determines even today a vast amount of political debate about "family values"--was even in the fifties largely a myth. Nostalgia, a phenomenon that has long driven right-wing movements, is by its very nature ahistorical, referring to a past that never existed and would be undesirable today even if possible.

In MARRIAGE, A HISTORY: FROM OBEDIENCE TO INTIMACY OR HOW LOVE CONQUERED MARRIAGE Coontz fights nostalgia further by a fascinating and far-ranging study of the history of marriage in Western civilization. What is shocking is learning that so far from being a static, traditional relationship with a fundamental shape and form, marriage is instead a constantly evolving institution that has altered numerous times in the past thousand or so years in response to various social needs or pressures. Changing societal values, alterations in the material conditions at a particular point in time, or even changing ideas about romance have all exerted enormous influence on the understanding and practice of marriage at any particular time. Her discussion essentially renders virtually all right wing rhetoric about the need to protect "family values" or "marriage" utter nonsense. One almost needs to ask, "Of what decade?" The changes wrought in our understanding of marriage over the course of the past two hundred years alone are simply stunning. And the Ozzie and Harriett or male breadwinner marriage alluded to above really only thrived during the economic boom following WW II until its demise in the 1960s. Unless one is willing to ignore completely the lessons of history, any rational, sane individual is going to have to concede that any narrow understanding of what form marriage "must" take is inevitably going to be mistaken.

An enumeration of the interesting bits and pieces found in this book could fill several reviews the length of this one. The book always radiates a mastery of a vast range of facts but never ceases to be thoroughly insightful and even entertaining. This book isn't merely informative: it is fun.

The book also raises some disturbing questions. The book largely refutes the passion for nostalgia and a misguided frenzy to defend "traditional" marriage, but neither does the book revel in the alternatives. In fact, frequently Coontz notes features of modern marriage that makes one wonder if we aren't putting pressure on the institution that it should never have been asked to support. As she points out, while people in recent centuries married for reasons other than love, a marriage was a practical arrangement that met certain very specific needs for people. One discerns a certain reasonableness in their expectations. One sought a coworker, a person to help make a household successful economically, a companion, and a sexual partner for producing children. But today a marriage partner is expected to meet virtually impossible expectations. A wife or husband is supposed to be gorgeous, a best friend, a superb financial contributor to the relationship, sexy, and a marvelous parent. The marriage partnership is viewed as the single most important relationship a modern individual can experience. At no other point in history, as Coontz points out, has a marriage been expected to meet such extraordinary expectations. In the end, one is left wondering if the intense pressures of modern marriage might not lead to some new variant more realistic than the Disney version currently in place.

I'd place this in a short list of the "must read" books of 2005. Because marriage is at the heart of almost every human institution, this book is relevant to virtually every subject. And though it should prove relevant in future decades as well, it is especially important reading in the present, where all kind of cant is being spewed about what marriage "really means." No one should attempt to say what marriage really is or has been without reading this exceptional book.

48 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Well researched and provocative June 26, 2007

By Anne Rice

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is an extremely well researched investigation of the institution of marriage from earliest times to the present. It may prove shocking to some readers to discover how recent our concept of "traditional marriage" may be. But information such as this book provides is essential for those concerned about marital values. History provides us with immensely important lessons regarding the attitudes and feelings of human beings over the centuries; and we must not shrink from the observations made here as we seek to understand the social and economic and even religious crises of our times. The scope of the book is incredibly ambitious yet it is clearly and at times entertainingly written, and always inviting. It can point the way for further research in many areas. On all counts, a fine and important book.

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating! November 5, 2006

By Leda Locke

Format:Paperback

I can't add much more to the customer review above, except to note that one should keep an open mind while reading...I made the mistake of reading aloud a few passages on the early Christian views of marriage to a Christian friend, and she was very, very insulted and angry, snapping that the author was clearly wrong, as THIS is the way that passage in the Bible should be interpreted, and how dare she write something so blasphemous. I didn't press the matter.

I, however, being rather agnostic, enjoyed it immensely, and learned QUITE a lot! The various views on family structure and what defined a marriage over the centuries was illuminating, and I found myself quoting it to anyone in reach (hence my problem above). It's tilted toward Western culture in the last part of the book, being focused on the American history of marriage, but it's still an excellent read for anyone wanting to see how marriage was looked at in the past.