COMMENTS: 5
How We Ended Up With Such Vile Ideas About Marriage
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A professor of English at the University of California at Davis, Fran Dolan's latest book, Marriage and Violence: The Early Modern Legacy explores how history has shaped modern ideas of marriage, and more specifically, the idea that in marriage, two become one. Because of course, the big problem with this view of marriage is that more often then not, it also results in the question: which one of you do you become?
Josey Vogels: How has history specifically shaped our current model of coupledom and marriage?
Fran Dolan: The very particular circumstances of 16th and 17th century (or "early modern") English culture, which is then transported to Colonial America -- and Canada -- through English books, laws, and customs created a (usually unacknowledged) legacy that still shapes how we describe what it means to be in a couple. I am particularly interested in three sources of this idea that two become one: The Biblical figuration of marriage as the fusion of two persons into one flesh; the idea under common law that husband and wife achieve "unity of person," an idea that was always a legal fiction and has been superceded in law yet survives in the common practice of a wife taking her husband's last name; and the popular question of "who wears the pants in the family," a question that is still sometimes asked but that has its roots in a long tradition of imagining that if partners are equals then they are also combatants in a "battle of the sexes" and that this battle can only be avoided or resolved if the couple comes to an agreement about who should wear the pants and have the final say.
JV: How does this idea negatively affect our relationships?
FD: I don't assume that everyone's relationship plays out as a fight to the finish between two combatants. But I do think that this "early modern legacy" limits how we can imagine and describe, and therefore experience, relationships in a range of ways. It creeps in through expressions like "hen-pecked" and "whipped" and through the assumption that one person's career is more important and the other is the "trailing spouse;" that one person's desire or pleasure is more important than the other's; that one person should make the decisions or "call the shots;" that one can't survive a break up (or bereavement) because s/he is partial or incomplete.
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COMMENTS ( 5 )
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Posted by: Smartcookie on Mar 6, 2009 1:01 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The couples that get it, find the whole war of the sexes silly, because they genuinely they have good relationship with one another.
It's a choice and part of who you are, you choose the kinds of relationships that are right for you with the right person. Whether that is tradtional marriage, open marriage, no marriage, or what have you.
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Posted by: DaBear on Mar 6, 2009 11:19 AM
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I like the idea of an equitable partnership but what I've noticed is that what it "equitable" or "equal" gets defined differently and with a gender bias regardless of the empirical reality.
Being a SAHD who never experienced the owning-class glories of the job (I'm the guy that got run away from at playgroups, yelled at in grocery stores for being a selfish man to make my wife work, chose to do it out of pure desire for the enterprise--I was underemployed, she was not, I stayed home, period--etc.), equity was a really surprising thing to try to live out. Both of us came from traditional households neither wanted to replicate in our own. We came in as equals and wanted to remain equals. Of course capitalism the early 1990's and all manner of craptasms along the way played havoc with that plan. But once I was a SAHD I learned the rules of the game are largely perception based.
I've often had to counter the accusations of "sloth" or "competence" with the issue of "how is it defined?" Clearly I was cleaning daily, the offspring was fed, clean, happy, thriving, the dog was walked and insane as always, bills got paid, the admin of the house was to the status quo so why was I getting the bidness all the time. I had to find out and while my intuition was good enough for me it wasn't for her, so I went empirical to try to find out.
For me, "Clean" means "the absence of dirt," or at least any dirt that is removable or harmful in some manner. Sometimes you just have to throw shit out and start over. But Clean didn't mean that same thing to my mate, it meant, "when I do it myself." Her social conditioning by her working class mom in a conservative household meant, woman does it, it's clean. man does it, woman must clean it. I did an experiment to test this, documenting with photos and dates and times for three months. I had her right there on the record, re-cleaning things I'd done daily. And, her memory of those three months is, 'I have to do all that extra third shift work, buddy.' The experiment documented some other things like timing and schedule adjustments, priorities, etc. Mostly I realized even when there are legitimate empirically documented changes in behaviors, perception is still largely a social construct too and as long as perception remains tied to gender, the "Other" gender will be stuck with a crapshoot.
I'm convinced equity is still the goal, but as long as our social constructs and personal repetitions exist, change will be slow indeed.
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» RE: why the change is slow
Posted by: iatsebean
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Posted by: ZPaul on Mar 7, 2009 1:25 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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Posted by: Joefist on Mar 8, 2009 9:32 PM
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Posted by: Smartcookie on Mar 6, 2009 1:01 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The couples that get it, find the whole war of the sexes silly, because they genuinely they have good relationship with one another.
It's a choice and part of who you are, you choose the kinds of relationships that are right for you with the right person. Whether that is tradtional marriage, open marriage, no marriage, or what have you.
[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]
Comments are closed-
Posted by: DaBear on Mar 6, 2009 11:19 AM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I like the idea of an equitable partnership but what I've noticed is that what it "equitable" or "equal" gets defined differently and with a gender bias regardless of the empirical reality.
Being a SAHD who never experienced the owning-class glories of the job (I'm the guy that got run away from at playgroups, yelled at in grocery stores for being a selfish man to make my wife work, chose to do it out of pure desire for the enterprise--I was underemployed, she was not, I stayed home, period--etc.), equity was a really surprising thing to try to live out. Both of us came from traditional households neither wanted to replicate in our own. We came in as equals and wanted to remain equals. Of course capitalism the early 1990's and all manner of craptasms along the way played havoc with that plan. But once I was a SAHD I learned the rules of the game are largely perception based.
I've often had to counter the accusations of "sloth" or "competence" with the issue of "how is it defined?" Clearly I was cleaning daily, the offspring was fed, clean, happy, thriving, the dog was walked and insane as always, bills got paid, the admin of the house was to the status quo so why was I getting the bidness all the time. I had to find out and while my intuition was good enough for me it wasn't for her, so I went empirical to try to find out.
For me, "Clean" means "the absence of dirt," or at least any dirt that is removable or harmful in some manner. Sometimes you just have to throw shit out and start over. But Clean didn't mean that same thing to my mate, it meant, "when I do it myself." Her social conditioning by her working class mom in a conservative household meant, woman does it, it's clean. man does it, woman must clean it. I did an experiment to test this, documenting with photos and dates and times for three months. I had her right there on the record, re-cleaning things I'd done daily. And, her memory of those three months is, 'I have to do all that extra third shift work, buddy.' The experiment documented some other things like timing and schedule adjustments, priorities, etc. Mostly I realized even when there are legitimate empirically documented changes in behaviors, perception is still largely a social construct too and as long as perception remains tied to gender, the "Other" gender will be stuck with a crapshoot.
I'm convinced equity is still the goal, but as long as our social constructs and personal repetitions exist, change will be slow indeed.
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» RE: why the change is slow
Posted by: iatsebean
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Posted by: ZPaul on Mar 7, 2009 1:25 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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Posted by: Joefist on Mar 8, 2009 9:32 PM
Current rating: Not yet rated [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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