Public VowsWe commonly think of marriage as a private matter between two people, a personal expression of love and commitment. In this pioneering history, Nancy F. Cott demonstrates that marriage is and always has been a public institution. From the founding of the United States to the present day, imperatives about the necessity of marriage and its proper form have been deeply embedded in national policy, law, and political rhetoric. Legislators and judges have envisioned and enforced their preferred model of consensual, lifelong monogamy--a model derived from Christian tenets and the English common law that posits the husband as provider and the wife as dependent. In early confrontations with Native Americans, emancipated slaves, Mormon polygamists, and immigrant spouses, through the invention of the New Deal, federal income tax, and welfare programs, the federal government consistently influenced the shape of marriages. And even the immense social and legal changes of the last third of the twentieth century have not unraveled official reliance on marriage as a "pillar of the state." By excluding some kinds of marriages and encouraging others, marital policies have helped to sculpt the nation's citizenry, as well as its moral and social standards, and have directly affected national understandings of gender roles and racial difference. Public Vows is a panoramic view of marriage's political history, revealing the national government's profound role in our most private of choices. No one who reads this book will think of marriage in the same way again. |
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Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
2 Perfecting Community Rules with State Laws | 24 |
3 Domestic Relations on the National Agenda | 56 |
4 Toward a Single Standard | 77 |
5 Monogamy as the Law of Social Life | 105 |
6 Consent the American Way | 132 |
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Common terms and phrases
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Popular passages
Page 12 - Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
Page 13 - The woman's own choice makes such a man her husband ; yet, being so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage...
Bibliographic information
| Title | Public Vows |
| Author | Nancy F. COTT |
| Edition | revised |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press, 2009 |
| ISBN | 0674029887, 9780674029880 |
| Length | 303 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / United States / General Social Science / Sociology / Marriage & Family |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |