Book Review: A Short History of Marriage (from 1913!)

What is this book about? 

This book is a survey of marriage customs from a variety of cultures and countries around the world. It does have one historical chapter on "Marriage Among the Ancients." Most of these chapters are just little snippets discussing each tradition in turn and then moving briskly on to the next one. 

Warning: Because this book was originally published in 1913, it uses some language and viewpoints that are pretty offensive to modern society. For example - the entire first chapter is titled "Primitive Marriage" and reviews customs among Native American tribes (referred to as "Red Indians"),  African cultures and various other groups that somehow fall under "primitive" for no discernible reason I can tell (Hindu people? Aborigines? Scandinavians? What?)

There are also some occasional references to people that were probably experts and very well known in 1913 but are.....less known today. I was a little confused when page 5 of the book started waxing poetic on what "Lord Avebury" thinks about the nature of early marriage. Fortunately, Lord Avebury has his own Wikipedia page so I was able to learn a little about him. He apparently invented the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic. Sidenote: Lord Avebury would be an excellent name for a cat.

Lord Avebury (John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury) and his excellent beard.

Further sidenote: If you google Lord Avebury and marriage you'll find that he's quoted in a ton of pre-1920 texts on the subject, including a six volume set on the history of marriage published in 1891. I must investigate further and write more blog posts. ALL THE AVEBURY.

Who would love this book?

A lot of people might enjoy reading this book! It does seem to concentrate on more of the less traditional and more unusual traditions from around the world, so it's really amusing if you're into that sort of thing or get a kick out of old-school books. However, because it's old, it looks like copies of this are going to be pretty expensive to find. Even reprints are running $30 +. I honestly don't think I'd pay that, but if you can find it at a library, I highly suggest it. It's really entertaining.

My Favorite Parts

There are like four whole pages dedicated to the custom of giving "a flitch of bacon [half a pig] to any pair who could come forward and state on oath, after a year of marriage, that they had never once quarrelled or regretted their marriage during the year," celebrated in Dunmow and Whichnoure in England. There's an entire account of a parade held in honor of the ceremony of the awarding of the Dunnmow flitch of bacon. It's glorious. This tradition is apparently still going on. This blog post talks about it and includes PICTURES, so you should go check it out.  

There are also several pages in the "Marriage Superstitions and Omens" chapter dedicated to the best and worst days and months to get married among various cultures. Apparently, February 11, June 2, November 2, and December 1 "are considered the most unpropitious days of the year on which to get married" (according to either English custom, ancient Roman tradition, or the Roman Catholic Church? This book doesn't cite its sources very clearly). This amuses me, as my wedding day is June 2, 2018. I must tell John that our date is unpropitious. 

Some other superstition jewels:

"A woman should not marry on the day of the week of her birth." 

"If there is a cat in the house, the bride must feed it herself on the wedding day, otherwise the day may prove rainy." 

"If you cut your nails on a Saturday your lover will call on Sunday." 

"The bride should always buy something as soon as she is married, and before the bridegroom can make a purchase. 'Then she'll be master for life!' say the old women. It is customary for brides to buy a pin from their bridesmaids in order to retain the mastery of their husbands."

"Hindoos believe that anyone who kills a frog will never be married." 

Also, apparently in certain parts of Germany, it used to be customary on the wedding eve ("polterabend") to throw out of the window every article of crockery or glass which is cracked or broken.  

Also also, if you want to say no to someone's offer of marriage in certain parts of Thuringia, a sausage is placed on the table at meal-time when the suitor arrives. 

Karen weddings in Burmah are conducted at funerals!

Basically I could include fun trivia from this book all day, but I have to return it the library at some point.

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Only very briefly in passing. For example: "Among the Ainus a married woman does not take her husband's name. She either uses her maiden name or is designated as 'the wife of So-and-so.'" (the Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan)

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Marriage-Folklore-Countries/dp/1447456130

Excerpt: "Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices"

"Although a seemingly innocuous personal choice, the issue of marriage names sparked considerable debate in America. Many conservatives and religious leaders argued that a woman who does not take her husband's name is not committed to her role as a wife and that a man who does not insist that his wife take his surname is weak. ... Women who chose to retain their maiden name, however, argued that adopting their husband's name would be tantamount to enslaving themselves and foregoing individual rights." 

Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints and Voices - "Marriage Names," By Roger Chapman, James Ciment

Unidentified woman in wedding gown, by an unidentified photographer. Public Domain. Repository: Anacostia Community Museum - Available online at www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2583389217/in/photolist-9nta3R-k2aDaP-5jRF7B-4WhxBp-4Sa8vs-9nwTdN

I...have so many issues with all of the above sentiments (which are expressed in lots of studies that I'm trying to get my hands on so I can read them in their original form and write about them for this blog). Because I'm spending so much time on this project, you may think I have strong judgmental views of women who take their husband's names. I don't. I don't care. You do you. I think the argument that a woman loses her identity by taking her husband's name is silly and literally the entire point of the name of this blog is an argument against that. However, I have equal problems with the opposite argument presented here - that women who don't take their husband's name are not committed to their relationships or their "role as wife."* I'm sorry, what? Pretty sure my relationship with my husband will not be less than another person's if I choose not to take his last name. I just want to be able to make my own decision without people judging me. (Yes, I'm aware that will never happen, but a girl can dream). 

The thing is, the vast majority of arguments on either side of this issue get super personal and offensive very quickly. Can't we all just be friends and talk about these issues reasonably with an eye to historical and cultural context without fighting? ("No," the Internet whispers.)

Also - I really want to find a copy of this book to read at some point, it looks pretty fascinating. It is for sale on Amazon but I haven't found a way to justify buying it yet (I've accumulated so many books in the course of this project already - it's a problem). 

*What does that actually mean anyway? Please explain. What does it mean to be "a wife?" Merriam Webster defines it as - "a female partner in a marriage." It's apparently derives from the Middle English/Old English "wif" and the Old High German "wib." I get a little more disturbed when the synonyms include "helpmate" and "helpmeet," which literally means "one who is a companion and helper, especially a wife," but is used in the sentences often to refer to people in more of an assistant type role.

Review: One Perfect Day - The Selling of the American Wedding, by Rebecca Mead

What is this book about?

This book takes an in-depth look at the wedding industry, traveling from Disneyworld and wedding chapels in Gatlinburg, Tennessee to wedding planner and videographer conventions to wedding dress factories in China. It really looks at the goods and services offered to brides, the "traditions" behind them, and asks how the American wedding industry came to this point.

As a former journalist, I naturally loved Mead's approach to this book. Parts of it are quite poetically written; the prose is gorgeous. It is easy to read; I read through it considerably faster than the previous academic books I've read for this project. 

Who would love this book?

People who like knowing the story behind the curtain and don't mind learning about the dark sides of things as well. Like people who enjoy VH1's Behind the Music.

My Favorite Parts

This is a wonderful book but it's not exactly a happy one; it often points out the extreme cynicism at the heart of most wedding professionals. There were several parts that made me go "ooooooooo" in the sense of a voyeur finding out something secret and scandalous. For example, one interview subject stated about bridal registries: "'It is very simple...Eighty-five percent of brides who register with your brand will remain loyal to your brand for the next fifty years.' The bride...'is a marketers' target. She is a slam dunk." (side note: I wonder how true this still is today, with the advent of online shopping changing the entire way your average person consumes goods). 

Mead herself also has a hilarious style, such as this sentence about her visit to the Chicago bridal dress market: "After a few hours I was overcome by a condition known among retailers as "white blindness," a reeling, dumbfounded state in which it becomes impossible to distinguish between an Empire-waisted gown with alencon lace appliques and a bias-cut spaghetting-strap shift with crystal detail, and in the exhausted grip of which I wanted only to lie down and be quietly smothered by the fluffy weight of it all, like Scott of the Antarctic." 

She also made this witty observation after an encounter with a New Age wedding officiant who had examined her aura. "Hours later, at home, I realized with a start that she had neglected to zip up my aura again, and I had been walking around with it open all that time." 

The book ends on a lovely and progressive note that made me wistful and happy: "What would the American wedding look like if all Americans approached their weddings with the same consciousness as that demanded of gay couples? What if getting married was not simply something the average American-having found a suitable spouse-could do when he or she pleased and in the manner he or she desired, but was a right that had been argued over and fought for? What if every wedding was a cherished victory won?"

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

No - It's really more about the wedding industry than the marriage or couples involved themselves.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/One-Perfect-Day-Selling-American/dp/0143113844

Well that's a little terrifying

Source: A World of Ways to Say "I Do," Noah Benshea & Jordan Benshea

Review: Marriage, A History, By Stephanie Coontz

Although my primary research interest is in the history and culture of surname changes at marriage around the world, I will be reading and writing about other books, articles, and other forms of media more focused on marriage culture and history generally as well. This is partly because I have yet to find any books actually focused on name changes specifically and partly because the subject is super interesting in its own right.

What is this book about? 

This book traces the history and evolution of marriage throughout the world, with a bit more of an emphasis on Western societies in Europe and America, particularly toward the later chapters. It's incredibly well researched and takes a very in-depth, mostly chronological look at the purpose, laws, cultural significance, economic place, and religious status of marriage in the environment of each time period while weaving in quotes, anecdotes, and snippets about related topics from primary sources and literature. This style of weaving in an impressive amount of facts into each page works well for me, but I could see that this might become overwhelming to someone less incredibly nerdy. 

Who would love this book?

If you're a history, trivia, or sociology lover, you will love this book. If you're someone who's engaged and wants to learn a ton about the institution into which you're entering, you may want to read this book. If you're engaged and you really don't want your starry eyed balloon dreams of marriage to be punctured by reality, don't read this. :)

Warning: this book is very academic in nature and quite dense. Though it does generally use colloquial language and you by no means need to be a college graduate to read it, we are talking 315 pages of probably size 10 font text. I really loved this book and it still took me a few weeks to get through. That being said, it really has informed my understanding of marriage thoroughly. I could write hundreds of posts using this book as a resource. I'm resisting the urge to do so (although you may get "tens" of posts instead).

My Favorite Parts

Is it possible to say that the entire book is my favorite? I've only had my copy for about a month and it's already lovingly bedraggled, filled with folded pages and highlights. Even writing this brief review has taken far longer than it should because in flipping back and forth trying to find my favorite parts, I've become reabsorbed in its pages and taken a few detours to write more blog posts on its contents and schedule them for the future. To be fair, I do have ADD and am very good at losing my train of thought and getting distracted by shiny things (thus, why I'm currently working in a Starbucks to try to get away from all the distractions at home), but this book is still insanely fascinating.

I do think the part of the book that has had the most impact on me is the emphasis on the economic nature of marriage. In the middle ages and Renaissance it wasn't seen so much as the entree into adulthood as something you entered in only after you had some economic steadiness. Some women even had to work to fund their own dowries. As a result, it was common for peasants to get married fairly late in life. Sometimes these marriages were even put off until after the female partner bore a child, so that her fertility and ability to provide future employees in the form of children was assured. Once married, the couple worked as partners together to make their household and prosper; women did tend to work out of the home (although honestly, the majority of men did too, until the industrial revolution), but the amount of work needed to run a household and perform necessary economic tasks like spinning, sewing, cooking, etc. meant that these contributions were quite valued. It was only in the Victorian ages and after that the concept of the "traditional male breadwinner" marriage really came about and women's work at home became devalued (Sidenote: SO much of what we consider "traditional" about marriage has existed for less than 200 years. SOOO MUCH. Honestly if you think it's a very old tradition, it's almost certainly not.). 

The two entirely different chapters on marriage in medieval times - among nobility and among "the other 95 percent" - really offer an interesting look at how different these groups' goals and priorities were. It's also very enjoyable to read some of the discussion of the place of same-sex marriage in America at the time of this book's publication in 2005 and realize how far we've come now that it's legal nationwide. :)

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Aside from a brief mention of Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Blackwell which doesn't even discuss her decision to keep her own name, no. 

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X

The Only Society in World History Without Marriage

"We know of only one society in world history that did not make marriage a central way of organizing social and personal life, the Na people of China. With that exception, marriage has been, in one form or another, a universal social institution throughout recorded history."  

From Marriage: A History, by Stephanie Coontz

I'm becoming incredibly obsessed with this book. It's simply fascinating. 

Medieval Naming Conventions 101

I dare you to say Clovis Clothild Chlodomer Chlothar Childebert three times fast.

Excerpted from page 92 of Stephanie Coontz's brilliant "Marriage, A History." 

Book Excerpt: Elizabeth Gilbert on the Marriage Benefit Imbalance

Photo by Elycefeliz on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons License.

At this point in my life, I still move around a bit too much for me to be comfortable building up much of a library. I regularly go through and clean out my books and donate any that don't have special meaning to me. 

I will never give away Elizabeth Gilbert's books. I've had "Eat Pray Love" for years; my copy is lovingly highlighted, dogeared, and underlined. On my recent move from Chicago to Northern Virginia, I listened to an audio book of her work "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage" and then promptly bought a hardcopy of it. I've already started highlighting it and underlining it; there's a very good chance that part of its words on the radical nature of marriage will end up in my wedding ceremony. It's fantastic and fascinating and if my blog ends up being a quarter as brilliant, insightful, and educational as that book, I will be incredibly pleased with myself.

Today's excerpt, however, is a bit more realistic and depressing: 

...[W]e have to start with the cold, ugly fact that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. I did not invent this fact, and I don't like saying it, but it's a sad truth, backed up by study after study. By contrast, marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. If you are a man, say the actuarial charts, the smartest decision you can possibly make for yourself-assuming that you would like to lead a long, happy, healthy, prosperous existence-is to get married. Married men perform dazzlingly better in life than single men. Married men live longer than single men; married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men excel at their careers above single men; married men are far less likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men; and married men suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression than do single men.

"A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1813, but he was dead wrong, or at least with regard to male human happiness. There doesn't seem to be anything, statistically speaking, that a man does not gain by getting married.

Dishearteningly, the reverse is not true. Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as a single woman (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women; and married women are more likely to die a violent death than single women--usually at the hands of a husband, which raises the grim reality that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous person in the average woman's life is her own man.

All this adds up to what puzzled sociologists call the "Marriage Benefit Imbalance"--a tidy name for an almost freakishly doleful conclusion: that women generally lose in teh exchange of marriage vows, while men win big.

Now before we all lie down under our desks and weep--which is what this conclusion makes me want to do--I must assure everyone that the situation is getting better. As the years go by and more women become autonomous, the Marriage Benefit Imbalance diminishes, and there are some factors that can narrow this inequity considerably. The more education a married woman has, the more money she earns, the later in life she marries, the fewer children she bears, and the more help her husband offers with household chores, the better her quality of life in marriage will be. If there was ever a good moment in Western history, then, for a woman to become a wife, this would probably be it. If you are advising your daughter on her future, and you want her to be a happy adult someday, then you might want to encourage her to finish her schooling, delay marriage for as long as possible, earn her own living, limit the number of children she has, and find a man who doesn't mind cleaning the bathtub. Then your daughter may have a chance at leading a life that is nearly as healthy and wealthy and happy as her future husband's life will be.