In nineteenth-century America, the law insisted that marriage was a
permanent relationship defined by the husband's authority and the
wife's dependence. Yet at the same time the law created the means
to escape that relationship. How was this possible? And how did
wives and husbands experience marriage within that legal regime?
These are the complexities that Hendrik Hartog plumbs in a study of
the powers of law and its limits.
Exploring a century and a half of marriage through stories of
struggle and conflict mined from case records, Hartog shatters the
myth of a golden age of stable marriage. He describes the myriad
ways the law shaped and defined marital relations and spousal
identities, and how individuals manipulated and reshaped the rules
of the American states to fit their needs. We witness a compelling
cast of characters: wives who attempted to leave abusive husbands,
women who manipulated their marital status for personal advantage,
accidental and intentional bigamists, men who killed their wives'
lovers, couples who insisted on divorce in a legal culture that
denied them that right.
As we watch and listen to these men and women, enmeshed in law
and escaping from marriages, we catch reflected images both of
ourselves and our parents, of our desires and our anxieties about
marriage. Hartog shows how our own conflicts and confusions about
marital roles and identities are rooted in the history of marriage
and the legal struggles that defined and transformed it.
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