For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the PresentDid you know that...The "contemporary" fashion of living together before marriage is far from new, and was frequently practiced in earlier days...Self-divorce, although never legal, was once a commonplace occurrence...Marriage is more popular today than in the Victorian era...Marriage in church was not compulsory in England and Wales until the mid-18th century. These are just a few of the fascinating, and often surprising, revelations in For Better, For Worse, the most comprehensive treatment to date of the history of marriage in a major Western society. Using fresh evidence from popular courtship and wedding rituals over four centuries, Gillis challenges the widely held belief that marriage has evolved from a cold, impersonal arrangement to a more affectionate, egalitarian form of companionship. The truth, argues Gillis, lies somewhere in between: conjugal love was never wholly absent in preindustrial times, while today's marriages are less companionate than is commonly believed. Gillis also illustrates, in rich detail, the perpetual tension between marital ideals and actual practices. This social history of the behavior and emotions of ordinary men and women radically revises our perspective on love and marriage in the past--and the present. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Courtship and Marriage in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries | 9 |
Conflict and Change in the Age of Agrarian and Industrial Revolution 17501850 | 107 |
The Era of Mandatory Marriage 18501960 | 229 |
Conjugal Myths and Marital Realities 1960 to the Present | 305 |
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Common terms and phrases
Angus McLaren artisan banns became besom betrothal big wedding Blakeborough boys bride Ceiriog Ceiriog Valley ceremony child church courts clandestine marriage clergy common-law common-law marriage conjugal consent couple custom daughter divorce economic eighteenth century England English Essex Experience Archive father female Flora Thompson Folklore Foundling Hospital petition Francis Place friends girls groom heterosexuality History homosocial household husband Ibid illegitimacy John Jones labor Lancashire late living London lovers male married Mary matrimony mother normally Notes and Queries nuclear family numbers parents parish persons Peter Laslett Peter Willmott plebeian poor popular population practice pregnancy puritan relationship riage rites ritual Roberts Collection Roger Lowe rough music rural Series servants seventeenth centuries sexual sixteenth social Society symbolic Thompson took traditional Transcript Victorian village vows wages Wales Welsh white wedding wife William wives woman women working-class Wrightson York Yorkshire young