A History Of The Wife

Author: Marilyn Yalom
ISBN: 9780060193386

A woman coming of age today has good reason to wonder what marriage will mean to her. Certainly, it will no longer imply that her husband will provide for her, as an ability to earn a living is commonly expected of both men and women. Also, marriage will no longer offer a woman a unique gateway into sexual and domestic pleasures, since premarital cohabitation has long ago ceased to be a taboo. Marriage will not be a woman's indispensable passage to motherhood -- up to 40 percent of American first babies are being born out of wedlock. And, since one in two marriages will end in divorce, it will no longer guarantee a woman permanent protection in a world that has traditionally been unkind to unmarried women.In this atmosphere of high ambiguity, it is instructive to look to the past, to see what it meant to be a wife from the earliest days of civilization to the present, and to explore how the contemporary wife came into being.From the perspective of modern marriage, the distinguished cul

Publisher: HarperCollins
Publish Date: 2001-02-06

Subjects: Family & Relationships / Marriage, Social Science / Women's Studies, History / Civilization

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Women's Center (Location: History)