Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die (American Ideals and Institutions) Book

Nearly everywhere and at all times, marriage has enjoyed a privileged status as the primary social unitthe essential bond that created alliances between families and a bridge between the sexes. In joining a man and woman, marriage attempted to hold men to collective social standards, including responsibility for the women they impregnated and the children they fathered, while also stringently hedging in womens sexuality. In short, marriage has always demanded that both men and women sacrifice a considerable measure of individual freedom. Both political and religious authorities typically have taken great care to present marriage as an institution to which individual interests must be subordinated. At the time of her death in January 2007, historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was worried that these attitudes were in the process of being reversed. In Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die she argues that marriage is disintegrating under the rising demands that it serve not the good of the whole but the desires of the individual. A union that at one point was used to limit individual rights is now claimed as one right among many. The sexual liberation movements of the last forty years have seriously undermined marriage. Even so, she writes, Marriage for lovethe promise of an enduring and engulfing bond between a man and a womanis a dream that refuses to die. . . . It still promises that we will finally be loved as we long to be loved. Author: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Format: 225 pages, hardcover Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute ISBN: 9781933859620Read More