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    A History Of The Wife
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    A History Of The Wife
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    A History Of The Wife
    Ebook631 pages10 hours

    A History Of The Wife

    By Marilyn Yalom

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    How did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become a venue for personal fulfillment in contemporary America? How did the notion of romantic love, a novelty in the Middle Ages, become a prerequisite for marriage today? And, if the original purpose of marriage was procreation, what exactly is the purpose of marriage for women now?

    Combining "a scholar's rigor and a storyteller's craft"(San Jose Mercury News), distinguished cultural historian Marilyn Yalom charts the evolution of marriage in the Judeo Christian world through the centuries and shows how radically our ideas about marriage have changed.

    For any woman who is, has been, or ever will be married, this intellectually vigorous and gripping historical analysis of marriage sheds new light on an institution most people take for granted, and that may, in fact, be experiencing its most convulsive upheaval since the Reformation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 19, 2009
    ISBN9780061913655
    Unavailable
    A History Of The Wife
    Author

    Marilyn Yalom

    Marilyn Yalom was a former professor of French and a senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She was the author of widely acclaimed books such as A History of the Breast, A History of the Wife, Birth of the Chess Queen, and, most recently, How the French Invented Love. She lived in Palo Alto, California, with her husband, psychiatrist and author Irvin D. Yalom.

    Read more from Marilyn Yalom

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    Reviews for A History Of The Wife

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    • 5/5
      I like historical books such as this. It's my favorite.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book for it's historical content and contrasts to present day roles of being a wife. I admire the research that the Author did, but I felt there was a lost opportunity towards the end to expand on how the religious, cultural and society roles influenced the modern ways. She touches lightly on some, but not at the depth of what she did in the earlier chapters. The pace changed a bit towards it's conclusion.I really appreciated the light she shined on many of the issues that are often not spoken about. She provided a voice for many relationships and wives who did not and do not have the opportunity to do so. For that I'm grateful to her.I learned alot, was surprised and overall would recommend if you love history.
    • 4/5
      A well-researched, well-organized and fascinating study of what it has meant to be a "wife."
    • 3/5
      In many ways, this book illustrates why I rarely read non-fiction books, preferring instead to get my facts from magazines, journal articles, and news outlets. The prose is unexceptional and inconsistent, veering in tone between academic and chatty. The content is almost random, providing a lot of anecdotes but failing to provide what the title promises: a history of wife-hood.

      A better name for this book would be: “A Background for American Wives of European Ancestry.” Admittedly (as was pointed out to me when I started complaining about it) the back of the book does note the Western focus of the book. So it’s not precisely fair to fault the book for not being what I wanted it to be: a clear view of the different legal and social obligations that have accompanied the concept of marriage in different time periods and cultures.

      Instead, this book tells a quite familiar tale. No one with a passing acquaintance with Western History is going to learn anything new or shocking here. In keeping with the old idea that American culture is based on Greco-Roman society, Yalom starts off with ancient Greek and Roman marriages, proceeds to medieval and Renaissance Europe, spends quite a bit of time on Frontier wives in America, goes on to the Victorians, the effect of the early feminist movement, the development of contraception, the effect of WWII, and modern times (in the United States).

      Even within the scope of the book, so many opportunities are lost. There is no discussion of how different cultures’ bringing their own marriage traditions and expectations to America is a factor in society, no mention of gay marriage or alternative family arrangements – nothing more challenging than a mild feminist perspective is included.

      Rather than making a historical argument, or even really talking that much about the book’s topic, Yalom really has just collected a bunch of anecdotes about women throughout history who happened to be married. Luckily, many of them are really fascinating, interesting anecdotes. I love history, and I love reading things like old diary and letter excerpts to gain insight into others’ lives and perspectives. I didn’t mind keeping this book around for a bit, working my way through it by picking it up every so often to read the next segment…
    • 4/5
      Look at the title! How could a once-married career divorcée resist? Yalom has carefully documented marriage customs over the centuries, with an emphasis on how women have variously been enslaved, freed, honored, dishonored, exploited and protected by their roles in marriage. Her emphasis is on Western traditions. She predicts that "it is unlikely that the nuclear family consisting of a married couple and their children, which peaked numerically for blacks in 1950 and for whites in 1960, will return to its former hegemonic position in American society" (p. 397). Not only has the meaning of being a wife changed radically since 1950, Yalom concludes, but so has the meaning of family. Society is now in the early stages of recreating a model that has been in use for thousands of years. This is a carefully researched and competently written academic work that is presented in a reader-friendly, informative manner. (October 2007)

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book got me interested in women's history like no other book has. Yalom writes so eloquently and clearly on the subject of marriage, gender, and masculine and feminine roles that the book feels neither too dense and boring nor too chatty and amateurish. A History of the Wife is the perfect non-fiction book: balanced, engrossing, and erudite.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      This is somewhat a "Women’s Studies" book, but far more interesting and less dogmatic than it might have been. The emphasis is on history.
    • 4/5
      Marilyn Yalom's narrative voice is perfectly suited to her chosen subject material. Yalom is no dry historian; she is obviously emotionally invested in what she has to say, and is not shy about presenting her message. I had hoped for a more global perspective on the role of the wife, but I realize that such a project would be fairly cumbersome for a popular publication. Yalom's focus is the direct history that leads to the contemporary American wife,and she builds a history towards that end. I occasionally found it hard to remain objective in the face of biased prose, but overall I found A History of the Wife to be very interesting.
    • 5/5
      What has the word "wife" meant in time and what does it mean now? How have divorces, dowries, and betrothals changed-and has it changed for the better? Is Wife a partner, a helpmate, an angel in the house, or a best friend? And does a woman have to be married to a man to be a wife? All of these questions are considered and presented as history should be-the facts are presented and there is ample room for discussion and consideration into how history effects and shapes the present.
    • 4/5
      It was an interesting well-written book about women and history.