Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered MarriageJust 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. |
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Enjoyed reading this fascinating and wonderfully researched book. If you want to delve into the basics of today's breaking marriages, you must refer to history; and this book is so great in that. We have gone so far from the point where women were subservient to men to the concept of romantic love discussed in this book as a substitute for marriage. Hats off to the writer who dissects it so well.
Contents
The Invention of Marriage | |
Soap Operas of the Ancient World | |
The Marital Legacy of the Classical World | |
Aristocratic Marriages | |
Marriage Among the Common | |
Western European Marriage | |
Beneath the Surface of Victorian | |
From | |
Marriage in the Great | |
The Long Decade of Traditional | |
Part Four Courting Disaster? The Collapse of Universal | |
The Transformation of Marriage at the | |
How the Transformation of Marriage | |
Conclusion | |
Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage |
| Author | Stephanie Coontz |
| Publisher | Penguin, 2006 |
| ISBN | 1101118253, 9781101118252 |
| Length | 448 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Social History Social Science / Sociology / Marriage & Family Social Science / Women's Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |