For the first week's assigned reading, we're looking at two different perspectives on marriage to ground ourselves in the different ways historians approach the topic.
Women's historian Nancy Cott's book Public Vows examines the social and religious bases of marriage, but she also wants to see how political discourse and marriage collide in American history. Her book is also a synthesis history, bringing together a lot of historical work rather than rooting through primary sources. The first two chapters look at marriage in the colonial and revolutionary eras, and on the many different marital regimes during the early republic.
Hendrik Hertog, on the other hand, comes to marriage as a legal historian, and he is interested in how legal cultures, the informal rules of communities, and individuals negotiated the terms of marriage. His book relies much more on a close reading of particular court cases, usually addressing separations and divorces. His first chapter introduces his approach to legal history and marriage, and locates his own take on marriage in the historiography. His second chapter does a close reading of a divorce case in New England in the late 1700s.
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Here are some questions to get you started for our first reading.
You can respond or you can take the conversation in a new direction and ask your own questions. If you want to start a new post, email it to me, and I'll put it up.
(Try to write up your comments by Wed. morning to give your classmates a chance to read them all.)
1) Hartog contends with Cott's argument that marriage has been defined in the past with an eye to political theory. First, explain how both are approaching marriage. Who do you find more persuasive? What kinds of evidence are the two using, and how do their different interpretations get them to their arguments?
2) In spite of their differences, both Hartog and Cott frame their discussion of marriage in a similar way: a flexibility between the law and community norms. How do they explain these different conceptions of marriage? While we all understand what "the law" is, what do they mean by community norms? Give some examples of when community norms have been more important than the law in the past.
3) What are some ways of interpreting the fact that the federal government has only legislated marriage when it comes to Native Americans? What does this say about Indians? About marriage? How can this singular case shed light on marriage in the US more broadly?
According to the readings, marriage has almost always been defined by its community norms. For example, common law marriages. Both authors contend that only when a couple wanted to end its union does the state become involved. If we extrapolate on this idea, we can find that the underlying reasoning is based on the maintnance of contracts. The nineteenth century America saw a rise in free persons entering into contracts, a sign that a man was free and had the right to enter into a contract. Marriages were just another form of a legal contract.
This does raise the question about the government being able to both create and dissolve contracts, since there seemed like long stretches of time that the government didn't really add much into creating a union. The case of restrictions places an intersting twist on all of it. It would appear that as long as the community norms didn't stray from the "national" norm everything was left up to them, and only when this did occur would the government take action.
I feel as though the general American public sees the term ‘marriage’ in its most superficial sense. The average American sees the economic benefits and tax reductions as well as real estate benefits of being married, yet fails to realize the ‘husbandly superiority’ that accompanied the philosophy behind marriage. I found Cott reading very interesting, as I had never before thought about the total control men had on wives in the early days of marriage. The total subordination of women expressed through ‘coverture’, as discussed by Cotts, was a new topic for me. Learning more about the history of such a legal philosophy would really interest me.
When reading the chapter in Hartog's book about Abigail Bailey and her divorce, I was reminded of some readings I've had to do for previous classes about the notion of "separate spheres" for men and women; specifically, the idea that men should go out into the world of commerce and trade and work to bring home resources for the family and that women should stay at home and willfully keep up the housework and, while doing so, maintain the moral atmosphere of the family. The article we read, by Sarah Stickney Ellis, was brought to my mind through all of the moral dialogue which was used throughout Abigail's legal battles with her husband. It argued that through the devotion of the wife to the family, the social unit of the family would become more moral, and through all of the women acting similarly, the entire community would become more moral because all of the men, as they went to work, would remember the moral teachings of their wives.
With this in mind, and understanding that the notion of separate spheres would have been one of the aspects of social community norms at the time, it is understandable to me that she should have waited so long to take action in such an abusive relationship; once the immorality began to turn inwards, towards her daughter, Phoebe, it became part of her jurisdiction - her sphere of influence - and she could act without feeling like she was overstepping her moral and religious duties because she was following what she felt to be morally correct. When I thought of this, I was able to sympathize a little better with her point, because I don't know if there would be any point in time in which I could remain in an abusive relationship which included multiple instances of infidelity like she did.
Although I was certainly aware of the gender injustices contained within marraige I was still surprised by the sheer magnitude of their influence. As Hartog explains, a woman's domicile was seen as wherever her husband resided as though she was not a distinct being but an attached entity of her husband. What really caught my attention about this idea was that women could not be counted as residents of their state of residence while their husbands were fighting as soldiers abroad. This idea seems so absurd to me when i think about it, yet when placed in the context of women's complete coverture under men it makes sense. It also seems to bring into perspective just how far-reaching these marriage ideals, endorsed by the state, were.
Yet as Cott points out it was seen as a fair trade. Women provided submission to their husband. They traded their freedom and ability to own their own assets and property and in turn they expected their husbands to provide for them and to take responsibility for their well-being. It was through this idea that the husband/wife to government/governed parallel. Women chose their husbands to "rule over them" just as the people chose a ruler. If the woman was treated unfairly it was in part a result of her on bad judgment, yet it was still assumed by many she had the right to rebel against the tyrannical and unfair husband.
Perhaps though, what i found most interesting and true to modern society is the idea that men need bonds with women in order to ground and guide the woman and men needed women to soften and lend them compassion. These stereotypes certainly exist today and in altered and hidden forms are still given as reasoning for the necessity of bachelors and bachelorettes everywhere to put down roots and marry. I found the chapters to be not only enlightening but also applicable. They cast marriage in a new way that many people never knew existed in America and i look forward to understanding even more of the institution's early idiosyncrasies.
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