About this title: EWe 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 ...
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Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Harvard Univ. Press
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780345417398ISBN:0345417399
Description: Hardcover; NEW; Fine / Near Fine DustJacket; 348 pages. ISBN 0345417399. Price Intact on DJ; Clean tight unmarked Unread copy. NOT Ex-Library. NEW. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780674008755ISBN:0674008758
Description: New. We 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... read more
Description: Good. 0674008758 Good condition. May have some markings & or shelfwear. All pages intact. Used items may not include extras such as infotrac, CD or other web access codes. read more
"Interesting. It had just the information I was looking for regarding bi-racial marriages in the US at the turn of the century. I now understand why gay marriage is a difficult subject."
"In Public Vows, Nancy Cott examines the legal structure, local practice, and discourse surrounding marriage in the U.S. history, highlighting links between public and private life. Her historical analysis follows conventional tropes of U.S. historiography in which American independence, western expansion, the Civil War, immigration, New Deal legislation, World War II, and cultural changes ascribed to the 1960s and 1970s figure largely in the major changes to her subject of study. Rooted in Christianity and English common law, marriage among colonists in what would become the United States emphasized the contractual nature of the relationship and the unity of the spouses (coveture). This arrangement mirrored the kind of political organization imagined by those that would found the nation, and colonial leaders, such as John Winthrop, made explicit connections between marriage and political government. Leading up to the establishment of the new nation, analogies between the two institutions emphasized reciprocity between the parties engaging in the contract. To stress national cohesion after the Revolution however, these analogies emphasized the binding nature of the contract. At this juncture, beliefs about the differing talents of men and women supported beliefs that marital unions where the best context for the production of the virtuous democratic subjects necessary to the great American experiment.
In the early 19th century, marriage practices were governed largely by the local community. Although it was clear that the federal government and the state believed that they had an interest in promoting a particular form of marriage, they lacked a centralized apparatus of surveillance and enforcement. Local communities accepted a wider variety of practices than those enforced by the state, especially self-marriage and self-divorce. This tolerance, however, did not apply to non-whites. Marital relations among slaves were not respected and family arrangements among Indians were considered to be in a state of nature. As wives of husbands living in western lands were finding themselves abandoned, divorce laws were refined, clarifying what exactly the marriage script was and was not. Laws governing marital property and earnings were also revised in the 19th century, limiting the doctrine coveture.
Ideas about marriage were also deeply caught up in issues of race, especially around slavery and immigration, throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. "As the diverging ideological visions of north and south confronted each other, marriage as a public institution figured centrally. On the one side, abolitionists lambasted slavery's warping of marriages both black and white. On the other, southern spokesman advocated slavery's likeness to marriage as the system's strongest justification" (63). Following the Civil War, the Freedmen's Bureau emphasized the role of marriage in assimilating former slaved into American citizens. Mormons, as believers in and practitioners of polygamy, were class metaphorically as non-white and faced unyielding negative attention by the federal government. Due to acceptance of arranged and proxy marriages, which were deemed antithetical to the value American's placed on free choice in entering the marriage contract, the Chinese and Japanese were targeted with exclusionary immigration acts.
New Deal legislation strengthened the relationship between citizenship and marriage by organizing benefits around it and reinforcing the husband's role as provider, but other changes were to come in the last half of the 20th century. As World War II loomed, the rhetoric of pluralism served to distinguish the United States from the Nazi regime. Furthermore the American family was positioned as the very thing American soldiers were defending. After the war, the private realm was increasingly emphasized as the locus of the American way of life, "linking capitalism and representative democracy to personal choices" (197). An increased array of choices in personal life characterized the rest of the century, and those increased choices arrived though increased legislation governing the private realm. While some may see these changes as constituting a kind of disestablishment with respect to marriage, Cott sees neoliberal welfare reform and the Defense of Marriage Act as indicators that disestablishment has not taken place."
"Cott was called as an expert witness to the US Congress on the history of marriage in America. This book is the reason she went there. She asserts that marriage in America is a public institution, and she details the changes and challenges to marriage from the early days of settlement right up to the present. It is really interesting and provides a lot of insight on the current situation."
"a fascinating study of the history of marriage in the us, with a special emphasis on the ways marriage has been socially and politically constructed as a means for gender and racial oppression."
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