Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Marriage

June is wedding month! Why not celebrate with:

Marriage, A History: from obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered marriage by Stephanie Coontz 2005

We have been led to believe that the Leave It to Beaver marriage of the 1950s is the most natural. However, if one looks at the institution over the ages, it is but a blip--and not necessarily natural. Throughout the ages, marriage customs have been influenced primarily by politics, economics, and social conditions. Marriages were often arranged to forge alliances between kings and nobles, or to acquire a neighbour’s field. Although love and passion were factors in the affair between Antony and Cleopatra, politics also played a large role. The roles of husbands and wives changed constantly. To be sure, sometimes love entered into the equation and, if lucky, the love was between spouses.

Stephanie Coontz describes the various types of marriages that have existed and the conditions that influenced them. She discusses how they were affected by religion and law, and how marriage, in turn, influenced religious tenets and laws. She often relates anecdotes of arrangements at particular periods in history based on diaries and letters written by men and women of that time.

Ms. Coontz talks about the evolution of marriage through to recent times, when the individual became important, and love in a marriage became a necessary ingredient. She is not judgmental, but presents the advantages and disadvantages of each model. She ends on the hopeful thought that we have learned from the past and that man/woman relationships will be more satisfactory to both.