Until Choice Do Us Part : Marriage Reform in the Progressive Era / Clare Virginia Eby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eby, Clare Virginia, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marriage--History.

Marriage.

Progressivism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (263 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

For centuries, people have been thinking and writing-and fiercely debating-about the meaning of marriage. Just a hundred years ago, Progressive era reformers embraced marriage not as a time-honored repository for conservative values, but as a tool for social change. In Until Choice Do Us Part, Clare Virginia Eby offers a new account of marriage as it appeared in fiction, journalism, legal decisions, scholarly work, and private correspondence at the turn into the twentieth century. She begins with reformers like sexologist Havelock Ellis, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons, and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who argued that spouses should be "class equals" joined by private affection, not public sanction. Then Eby guides us through the stories of three literary couples-Upton and Meta Fuller Sinclair, Theodore and Sara White Dreiser, and Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood-who sought to reform marriage in their lives and in their writings, with mixed results. With this focus on the intimate side of married life, Eby views a historical moment that changed the nature of American marriage-and that continues to shape marital norms today.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. A Telescoped History of Marriage and the Progressive Era Debate

Chapter Two. The Architects of the Progressive Marital Ideal

Chapter Three. Sex, Lies, and Media: Upton and Meta Fuller Sinclair's Marital Experiment

Chapter Four. Theodore Dreiser on Monogamy, Varietism, and "This Matter of Marriage, Now"

Chapter Five. Organic Marriage in the Life Writings of Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226085838

022608583X

9780226085975

022608597X

OCLC:

864899215