Question Of Marriage Research Articles

Response to Martha Nussbaum's a Right to Marry

The question of same-sex marriage concerns every morally sensitive citizen. It has been the subject of debate everywhere, especially among scholars and intellectuals. That is why, no doubt, the Brennan Center for Justice invited me to comment on Professor Martha Nussbaum’s Essay entitled ―A Right To Marry?‖ 1 Our opposing views on this hotly debated question are well known. In fact, we have debated this question several times before. 2 I will begin this discussion by emphasizing a point of agreement between Professor Nussbaum and myself before getting to our points of disagreement. Indeed, indicating that point of agreement between us might lead to a clearer discussion of the points on which we disagree. In my conclusion, I will indicate another probable point of agreement between us, one that presently lies on the political horizon. It is clear that Professor Nussbaum is dissatisfied with the present state of the institution of marriage in our secular society and its polity. I join her in that dissatisfaction. Therefore, I shall not defend the status quo ante by simply invoking stare decisis against her call for change, since I am also in favor of change. Instead, we differ over what sort of change each of us wants. Professor Nussbaum draws upon precedents that seem to be already changing the legal definition of marriage from a union of a man and woman into the union of two persons, irrespective of their sex. Conversely, I want to change or undo those very precedents that have led to a situation where what might be called ―the

Not a Moral Issue: Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts is a new book of essays edited by Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., and Robin Fretwell Wilson. In this Book Review, I focus on the book’s intellectual center of gravity, Professor Wilson’s essay, Matters of Conscience: Lessons for Same-Sex Marriage from the Healthcare Context, and Professor Laycock’s Afterword. The authors purport to offer a solution that will give Gays and Lesbians access to the benefits of marriage while also recognizing religious objectors’ rights to oppose Gay marriage. The authors endorse specific statutory exemptions in emerging marriage equality legislation allowing anyone asserting individual moral opposition to Gay and Lesbian couples to opt out of the facilitation of a same-sex marriage. The authors want such explicit exemptions for everyone from state employees to individuals providing services in the general stream of commerce. I argue that Professors Wilson and Laycock’s nearly exclusive focus on individual rights analysis in their approach to the same-sex marriage question fails to consider seriously the group-based equality issues at stake. I argue that, contrary to Professors Wilson and Laycock’s assertions, one cannot easily distinguish between religious objections to interracial marriage, as well as religious justification for other forms of inequality, and religious objections to same-sex marriage. I argue that we must analyze the claims of Gays and Lesbians for civil marriage under a substantive equality paradigm, and that the group-based equality interests of Gays and Lesbians should not be subordinated to the individual desires of religious objectors through resort to the descriptive moral counterbalancing inherent in typical, liberal individual rights analysis.

Marital Quality and Global Well-Being Among Older Adult Israeli Couples in Enduring Marriages

This study examines the relationship between marital quality and global well-being among husbands and wives in enduring marriages in Israel. Fifty-one couples married for at least 40 years answered both itemized questions about the components of their marriage and global questions about their marital satisfaction. The findings indicate that, while the husbands' marital satisfaction was dependant largely on the content of the marital relationship and not related to their general well-being, the wives' marital satisfaction was affected by both the content of their marriage and their global well-being and, moreover, contributed to their well-being. These findings are consistent with Bernard's (1972) contention that marital quality is more important to wives' mental health than to husbands'. Like other findings on the relationship between marital quality and global well-being, however, these findings are cohort-specific, since the relationship depends on the context in which the marriage takes place.

The Jewish enemy. Fascism, the Vatican, and anti-Semitism on the seventieth anniversary of the 1938 race laws

Seventy years after the passage of the race laws of 1938 many historians continue to claim that the Italian people were opposed to the anti-Jewish legislation, some even arguing that this was the first tangible sign of a ‘break’ between the Italian people and the Fascist regime. Drawing on new documents recently made available in the Vatican Secret Archives this article challenges such claims and argues that the correspondence, reports, and exchanges between the bishops and the Secretary of State (and future pope) Eugenio Pacelli clearly show that the Catholic establishment was interested exclusively in only one aspect of the laws: the question of marriages between Catholics and converted Jews.

Suppliche al pontefice. Diocesi di Trento 1566–1605 (review)

Reviewed by: Suppliche al pontefice. Diocesi di Trento 1566–1605 Benedetta Albani Suppliche al pontefice. Diocesi di Trento 1566–1605. Edited by Cristina Belloni. [Fondazione Bruno Kessler. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-ger-manico in Trento, Fonti, 6.] (Bologna: Società editrice Il Mulino. 2007. Pp. 861. €55.00. ISBN 978-8-815-12143-1.) The volume presents the petitions by the Tridentine faithful to the pope in a period between the pontificates of Pius V and Clement VIII (1566–1605) and follows Suppliche al pontefice. Diocesi di Trento 1513–1565 (ed. Cristina Belloni and Cecilia Nubola, Bologna, 2006). The particular situation of the diocese of Trent, located in imperial territory entrusted to the bishop-prince of Trent, provides a privileged point of view for the study of the relations of the papacy and the empire in a moment of particular political and religious importance. The 681 petitions that constitute the text are held in the Registra Supplicationum at the Secret Vatican Archives and are presented as a collection of texts, in chronological order, along with indices and useful appendices that provide dates as well as the beneficiaries of the documents and the names of those who granted them. Aside from providing information on the number of petitions presented during the various pontificates under consideration, the introduction discusses the influence of the decrees of the Council of Trent, concluded in December 1563, in the relations between the diocese and the Holy See, in comparison with the pre-Tridentine situation studied in the previous book. The average number of petitions presented to the pontiff, which ranged from two to four in the period prior to the Council of Trent, increased to seventeen in the forty-year period under consideration. Although the state of conservation of the archival sources must be taken into account when weighing the available evidence, the innovations introduced by the Council of Trent, especially those pertaining to marriage, ecclesiastical justice, and the renewal of diocesan life, are reflected in the increased number of petitions presented in the Curia. Furthermore, the reasons behind the petitions changed profoundly. The number of requests that sought benefits declined considerably while the petitions that sought papal intervention in judicial questions increased, and the petitions regarding marital questions soon became predominant. The petitions regarding questions of marriage constitute more than 67 percent of the total number, reflecting the gradual application of Tridentine decrees on marriage that introduced important changes in society. For the most part, the requests are for dispensations from impediments based on affinity and consanguinity, but we can observe a variety of other questions regarding marriage. With respect to the pre-Tridentine period, even the petitions regarding the administration of justice considerably increased. These are requests for absolution, [End Page 352] indulgences, licenses, other kinds of dispensation, and, above all, requests that are classed in a list as “significavit” (cases of theft or inappropriate appropriation frequently initiated by diocesan tribunals). In addition, in the analysis of the petitions, important differences exist when comparing the years before and after the council. In fact, while the clergy was clearly prevalent prior to the council, laypeople—simple faithful, family groups, social entities, and representatives of the Tridentine elite—took on a larger role after the council, as they became nearly 90 percent of the petitioners. The publication of such sources is of great importance for the study of questions related to the Council of Trent, and it permits us to expand research into the relations between local churches and the Holy See and will encourage the continuation of research in the Vatican Archives and local archives as well. Benedetta Albani Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata” Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

"I Am Isabel, You Know?": The Antipodean Framing of Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady

"I Am Isabel, You Know?": The Antipodean Framing of Jane Campion’s <i>Portrait of a Lady</i>

Passive constitutions or 7 1/2 times Bartleby

This book represents an analysis of one of the most enigmatic characters in American literature. At the same time, it addresses various questions in Melville's writings, such as passivity, identity, the impersonal and neutral, sexuality and the question of marriage, drug addiction, and ethics (especially the problem of testifying and friendship). Reference is made to the whole range of Melville's writings (excluding his poetry), and each chapter situates the question it treats within a larger cultural or theoretical context, such as the legacy of American Puritanism, the appearance of the first American asylums, Melville's treatment of the institutionalization of madness, and the appearance of certain semi-sciences (mesmerism, physiognomy, palmistry, and so on). The book thus covers Melville's thinking concerning American society, his relationship to the law, his treatment of the arts (specifically Turner's paintings), and his responses to the appearance of meteorology, reading such matters as a political and philosophical statement concerning the modern world.

Website Review: On the Question of Gay Marriage

Politics & PolicyVolume 36, Issue 1 p. 180-183 Website Review: On the Question of Gay Marriage Daniel Gutiérrez, Daniel Gutiérrez Politics & Policy Website ReviewerSearch for more papers by this author Daniel Gutiérrez, Daniel Gutiérrez Politics & Policy Website ReviewerSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 January 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007.00098.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume36, Issue1February 2008Pages 180-183 RelatedInformation

&lt;span xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" style="font-style:italic;"&gt;Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva.&lt;/span&gt; Vol. 1:&lt;span xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" style="font-style:italic;"&gt; Courtshi

Reviewed by: Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva. Vol. 1: Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage Carrie F. Klaus Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin's Geneva. Vol. 1. Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage. By John Witte, Jr., and Robert M. Kingdon. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2005. Pp. 544. $32.00 (paper). With individuals and institutions across the United States—and beyond— grappling with contentious and loaded questions about the roles and definitions of marriage, this study by John Witte, Jr., and Robert M. Kingdon of some of the origins of modern notions of sex, marriage, and family in Christian-influenced societies is welcome indeed. It will appeal not only to scholars and teachers of the law and theology of early modern Europe but to anyone interested in working through the thorny debates that vex us today. A contribution to a broad series entitled Religion, Marriage, and Family that aims to identify and explore sources not only in Christianity but also in Judaism and Islam, this book is the first of a three-part set that will examine Geneva during the period in which John Calvin played a decisive role in this city, that is, from the 1540s through the 1560s. This volume considers the early stages of family formation—courtship, engagement, and marriage—and ends its field of focus with the wedding day. The second volume in the set will take up where this one leaves off, exploring what it meant to live as a Christian couple or family in Geneva and, more specifically, the nurture and education of children. The third and final volume will investigate issues that arose within the context of marriage and family, including arguments, abuse, adultery, desertion, spousal illness, death, inheritance, and remarriage. Witte and Kingdon look to John Calvin's own writings for insight on these topics. If only as a collection of primary sources, their book would be tremendously valuable; it includes a wide range of texts by Calvin, including new translations into English of many little-known documents, some of which were previously untranslated. Texts include Calvin's systemic writings (such as his 1536 Institution of the Christian Religion); his sermons, lectures, and commentaries on the Bible; his letters and consilia (formal responses to specific questions); his catechisms and other teaching materials; his polemical writings; statutes he drafted (including the 1546 Geneva Marriage Ordinance); and cases that came before the Genevan Consistory, a unique body created by Calvin in 1541 that Witte and Kingdon say acted "as a hearings court, as a compulsory counseling service, and as an educational institution" (14). The volume is much more than a collection of sources, however, for Witte and Kingdon analyze these documents clearly and persuasively, providing an authoritative and comprehensive study of Calvin's ideas on courtship, engagement, and marriage. The authors begin with a discussion of family law in Geneva prior to the Reformation and then review key differences between canon law and Calvin's Marriage Ordinance. The rest of the book is an investigation of [End Page 308] the following topics: courtship, the necessity of consent for marriage (both on the part of the couple and on the part of their parents), impediments to marriage (infancy and mental inability, polygamy and precontracts, lack of fitness for marriage, incest), the question of interreligious marriage, economic considerations, the duration of engagement, and, finally, the publication of banns and the wedding ceremony itself. Throughout the volume Witte and Kingdon point out the evolution of Calvin's thought on these matters, his willingness to adapt his views in the light of new evidence, and his gradual movement toward what they call a doctrine of covenant. A significant strength of the study is the fact that Witte and Kingdon bring to light both legal and theological perspectives on the material at hand. Calvin's own thought on sex, marriage, and family, they say, was informed by four main sources: (1) the Bible, particularly the Ten Commandments, (2) Roman or civil law, (3) the law of the Roman Catholic Church, or canon law, and (4) customary law. Calvin interpreted the relative compatibility of these disparate bodies of law, they argue, as a sign of a preexisting natural...

:Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden

Introduction 1. Hamlet, Henry, Epicoene, and Hebraica: Marriage Questions 2. Selden, Jonson, and the Rabbis on Cross-Dressing and Bisexual Gods 3. Selden and Milton on Gods and Angels 4. Samson's Sacrifice 5. Andrew Marvell, Samuel Parker, and the Rabbis on Zealots and Proselytes 6. Natural Law and Noahide Precepts: Grotius, Selden, Milton, and Barbeyrac 7. Selden's De Jure Naturali ... Juxta Disciplinam Ebraeorum and Religious Toleration 8. Selden and Stubbe on Idolatry, Blasphemy, and the Passion Narrative 9. Culverwel on Selden's Rabbinica: The Limits of a Liberal's Toleration 10. Selden's Rabbis in the Court of Common Pleas 11. Selden on Excommunication Conclusion Appendix: Selden's Letter to Jonson (Jason P. Rosenblatt and Winfried Schleiner (eds.))

“A Civil Inconvenience”? The Vexed Question of Slave Marriage in the British West Indies

This article revisits the debates on the question of slave marriage that were carried on for roughly two centuries, both back and forth across the Atlantic and on the local terrain of the British West Indian plantation colonies. These debates came into critical focus during the fifty-year showdown over “amelioration,” which ended—though only in a manner of speaking—with the British Abolition Act of 1833. For a long time the lines were starkly drawn, but, in the context of laissez-faire political imperium or “indirect rule,” seldom tested. The metropolitan authorities felt some obligation to uphold the grand moral and civilizational integrity of the as-yet imperfectly imagined British Empire, as well as of Western Christendom. They, therefore, were inclined to see the slave as a species of imperial subject, still vaguely conceived within the emerging terms of reference of their global trusteeship and presumptive legal jurisdiction. They felt that, to honor the dignity of the latter, and sustain and nurture its moral legitimacy, the slaves—their subjects, ultimately—should be encouraged to marry, and their marriages should be formally marked, if only symbolically or by summary Christian rite. The planters, for their part, were unshaken in their certitude that the slaves were a species of property,theirproperty no less, and that the idea of any kind of formal marriage among them was preposterous, a great impertinence, an attack on their authority and rights of property, a threat to public safety, and a dangerous intrusion upon the sacrosanctity of European racial exclusivity and superiority.

Dido, Queen of England

Dido, Queen of England Deanne Williams To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O lord thou pluckest me out —T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) I am no man's Elizabeth. —Cate Blanchett in Shekhar Kapur's film Elizabeth (1998) From Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Roy Strong, Queen Elizabeth I's observers have been fascinated by the topic of marriage.1 Elizabeth managed to avoid it for decades, maintaining, when pressed, that she considered herself wedded to England. Her prevarications generated a discourse of courtship, and of courtiership, that defined the terms of Elizabethan politics as well as theatricality.2 Only with hindsight do the tangle of invitations, courtships and suitors, and the hedging and equivocation that did not cease until Elizabeth was long past menopause, appear to be a coherent foreign and domestic policy. Ultimately, Elizabeth's ability to leave doors open to possible matches without shutting any of them, and to facilitate a series of propitious alliances without relinquishing her own power, resolved itself in the myth of the Virgin Queen. Dido, Queene of Carthage, written by Christopher Marlowe in collaboration with Thomas Nashe sometime between 1585 and 1588, dramatizes the symbiotic relationship between Elizabeth's virginity and her political power. Earlier in her reign, Elizabeth had been entertained by theatrical performances that urged her to choose a mate. However, as the queen entered her fifties, the selection of a husband and production of an heir were no longer likely: Elizabeth's final engagement with the Duke of Alençon had reached its inevitable stalemate, and ended with his death in 1584. Like William Gager's Dido, performed on 12 June 1583, at Christ Church, Oxford, [End Page 31] and the Siena Sieve portrait of Elizabeth, painted in the early 1580s, Marlowe's Dido, Queene of Carthage uses the figure of Dido, Aeneas's jilted paramour, to praise the queen's de facto decision to remain single. By depicting Dido as a negative example of enslavement by erotic love and the desire for marriage, Dido, Queene of Carthage offers a sophisticated theatrical compliment to the queen. For centuries, Virgil's Aeneid provided a model for Britain's self-fashioning as a "second Troy," founded by Brutus.3 However, Dido, Queene of Carthage illustrates the kinds of revisions that were necessary when centuries of Virgilian exemplarity confronted the reality of female sovereignty in Elizabeth. As the play reworks its Virgilian source, it highlights both the problem and the potential of using Dido as a counterpart to Elizabeth.4 For Dido was a highly contested figure, her salubrious pre-Virgilian reputation compromised by her self-annihilating passion in the Aeneid.To a certain extent, Dido's potent blend of avowed chastity and charged sexuality made her a perfect choice for Elizabeth. Yet her unstable reputation—is she a canny seductress or a hapless victim? African or European? Occidental or Oriental?—reinforced as much as assuaged anxieties about having a female sovereign. Paradoxically, Elizabeth was the marker for England's national identity, while her identification with Dido constructed her as the quintessential Other: exotic and eroticized, because different, and dangerous, because female. By showing Dido as, at once, colonizer and colonized, predator and victim, eastern and western, Dido, Queene of Carthage reveals the intensely labile roles that Queen Elizabeth I chose and was expected to perform. At a time when Elizabeth was beginning to focus her energies on expansion, supporting Sir Walter Raleigh's expeditions to Virginia, and the travels of John Newbery and Ralph Fitch to India, it celebrates a ruler known for her chastity and her empire. Yet the play also dramatizes the loss of sovereignty that Elizabeth (and England) avoided by resolving the question of marriage, characteristically, by refusing to resolve it at all. And after Marlowe and Nashe were finished with it, the Aeneid was never the same. As Dido, Queene of Carthage transforms Virgil, it undermines the stability of racial and geographical hierarchies and categories, demonstrating the flexibility of the interpenetrating discourses of gender and colonialism in the early modern period. [End Page 32] I. The popularity of Elizabeth's association with Dido can be explained, in part, by her name. Dido...

Same-Sex Marriage Ballot Measures and the 2004 Presidential Election

Did ballot measures banning samesex marriage swing the 2004 general election to George W. Bush? In 2004, activists and state legislators placed anti-gay marriage questions on the general election ballots of 11 states. All of the ballot measures passed easily, receiving on average roughly 70 percent support.1 Pundits argued that the marriage measures on the November ballot would be a major motivating factor in the election and would help ensure Bush’s reelection. The measures, so the logic went, would receive broad support from social conservatives who would be mobilized to go to the polls primed to vote for Bush, who was fi rmly aligned with the issue. Merging county-level religious, socioeconomic, and political data with the 2004 election results, this article examines the electoral effects of same-sex marriage ballot measures in two key neighboring presidential battleground states, Michigan and Ohio. In both states, the anti-gay marriage measures passed easily, and overall statewide turnout increased from the 2000 election. However, Bush prevailed only in Ohio. To test the impact of the anti-gay marriage measures in both states, the analysis proceeds in three stages, examining fi rst the county-level voting patterns on the gay marriage bans, then patterns of countylevel turnout in 2004, and fi nally the countylevel support for President Bush in 2004.

Retorica della diffrazione: Bembo, Aretino, Giulio Romano e Tasso. Letteratura e scena cortigiana by Fabio Finotti

864 Reviews sees it not so much as an exercise inmisogyny as an exercise in 'De tranquillitate animif. The volume ends with an appendix ('Pour une histoire de la famille et de l'amour a l'epoque de l'humanisme', pp. 28I-301, first published inRevue des etudes italiennes, 36 (I990), 89-I04) which points out that Alberti's first major work De familia does not appear in a vacuum, but belongs in that early humanist context that had produced Francesco Barbaro's De reuxoria ( 4 I5-I 6), Palmieri's Della vita civile, Bruni's Vita diDante, and Poggio'sAn seni sit uxor ducenda (allwritten in the 1430s, and all dealing with questions of marriage and the family). Despite a few misprints, the whole volume displays an analytic precision and varietas that would have pleased Alberti himself. What emerges most of all from it is the need to approach these difficult but rewarding texts and problems with a new critical awareness, and a variety of methodologies ranging from questions of sources and philological issues to analyses of literary structure and the history of reception. Furlan's critical acumen in these various fields is in clear evidence here and this bodes well for the future of Alberti studies, inwhich he plays amajor role. MAGDALENCOLLEGE, OXFORD MARTIN MCLAUGHLIN Retorica della diffrazione: Bembo, Aretino, Giulio Romano e Tasso. Letteratura e scena cortigiana. By FABIO FINOTTI. (Biblioteca di 'Lettere Italiane', Studi e testi, 63) Florence: Olschki. 2004. 466 pp.; 20 plates. E46. ISBN 88-222-53-84I. This very rich volume, which discusses aspects of courtly literature, drama, and the pastoral, with reference also to the visual arts, is the result of research partly presented at seminars and courses in Italy and the USA. The fact that much of the text had been discussed with postgraduates and colleagues has perhaps led the author to be confident that his title 'retorica della diffrazione' would pose no problems, and so he does not provide an introduction explaining his terminology and outlining his argument. Iwould have welcomed this, although, as one's reading progresses, the metaphorical use of the optical image of 'diffraction' is gradually clarified and the influences of past traditions together with their transformations in later works fall into place, thanks also to the author's ability to combine the general directions of cultural phenomena with a detailed reading of the texts under discussion. While in no sense an introductory study, and requiring in fact a sophisticated knowledge of Italian Renaissance culture and an appreciation of a wide range of critical works, both literary and artistic, this volume realistically acknowledges that some linguistic help isnecessary, so all quotations from Latin in the text are also given in Italian translation in the notes (but when Latin quotations appear in the notes they are left untranslated), and the very useful appendix with a relevant selection from Bembo's Carmina is accompanied by Finotti's own elegant Italian rendering. The study is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to 'The lyric scene: Pietro Bembo', and consists of two chapters, one treating the combination of 'elo quence/rhetoric' and 'experience' inBembo's De Aetna and Asolani and the fusion of philology and linguistics which he had inherited from Poliziano and from which he progressed in the direction of Landino, the other taking us squarely into the theme of the volume, 'Rhetoric and diffraction in the Asolani'. Here the features of De Aetna which gave rhetoric a central place and linked it to experience are confirmed, but the argument ismoved from a philosophical plane to amore literary one. The theatrical element, to be further developed in the context of drama and the pastoral, is already highlighted in the analysis of this courtly dialogue, which is considered in its various editions. MLR, I0I.3, 2oo6 865 The second section is entitled 'The comic scene: Pietro Aretino' and is devoted toAretino's play IIMarescalco and its relationship to Castiglione's Cortegiano. The argument isdeveloped particularly in relation to the structure of the two texts and their common use of the burla, which, unlike its functional exploitation inMachiavelli's Mandragola, represents a taste for 'second-degree' comedy, i.e. comedy...

God's Desire for Us Reformed Theology and the Question of Same-Sex Marriage

God's Desire for Us Reformed Theology and the Question of Same-Sex Marriage

Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (review)

Reviewed by: Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France Nicholas White Mainardi, Patricia. Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp 256. ISBN0-300-10104-X This interdisciplinary tour de force explores how the culture of Restoration society responded to the new legal context which fashioned views on marriage and the family in post-Revolutionary France. Of particular importance was the abolition of primogeniture under the Civil Code. Henceforth marital infidelity (particularly of the wifely variety), which might have followed the birth of the eldest child, would appear less of a matter for comedy (as the Ancien Régime would have it) and more as the focus of bourgeois angst. The effect of the new law was that all children (even the adulterine) could hope to inherit equal shares of the estate. Such adulterine children were deemed by law to belong to the husband, and could thus dilute the haemic coherence of the family: legitimized bastards would reduce the husband's gift to his biological progeny. Little discussed by scholars (it is worth noting as we pass) is the way in which this logic would impose a man's own illegitimate children on another man's estate and what kind of "family romance" this might imply. Mainardi's account finesses the way in which affiliations of gender were undercut by generational conflict. One of the major tensions in Mainardi's corpus turns on the satire against the unreasonable persistence of the mariage de raison in the face of the mariage d'inclination, much favoured by what we might call the filial culture of Romanticism. In the words of Raymond Jonas, "adultery could be an act in which young men instrumentalized their lovers in an intergenerational gesture of revenge," and this was represented in visual and literary culture. Chapter 3 examines an impressively reproduced range of lithographic images of young men stealing old men's wives. Chapter 4 explores the tensions on stage between the ambiguous Delavigne, the conservative Scribe and the liberal Ducange, which explode in the bataille d'Hernani where Hugo confronts the "euphoric gerontocracy" of the Restoration. Chapter 5, perhaps the least robust in this panoply, surveys some of the fiction of the comtesse de Genlis, Balzac, Stendhal and Sand. Chapter 6 decrypts painterly versions by Géricault, Delacroix, Vernet and Boulanger of Byron's poem about Mazeppa, a member of the Ukranian gentry in the service of Poland in the 17th century, who was caught in an affair with the wife of a Polish official. For his punishment, he was stripped and tied backwards (spine to spine) to a horse. In spite of the sub-title's reference to Freud (in translation) and the invoking of Lynn Hunt's work on the Revolution, Mainardi resists the Oedipal language of history as psychodrama, with theoretical positions left implicit in this study. All in all, this will prove to be a vital book for those scholars interested in debates on and representations of marriage and the family in Restoration France. Although the [End Page 166] churlish might complain that the book's title claims more than it delivers, the range of cultural objects highlighted in its six core chapters is impressive. In spite of the historical scope of its title, Mainardi's study is generous enough not to leave the intimidated reader feeling that 'tout est dit.' Instead, her local study of the Restoration will inspire researchers in the wider field to explore the terra incognita that remains. The title might also invite the reader to expect a "straight" (or at least social) history of marriage in 19th century France. Instead, what we find is a cultural history of the high and low representations which turn on the question of marriage in the wake of the Revolution and Napoleon. This has displeased the reviewer of the TLS, Graham Robb. The most influential modern-day English-language biographer of 19th century France has complained that "the book turns out to be a study of adultery (the idea rather than the practice) in Restoration France as it was reflected in the...

Thinking about Marriage: Kant’s Liberalism and the Peculiar Morality of Conjugal Union

Previous articleNext article No AccessThinking about Marriage: Kant’s Liberalism and the Peculiar Morality of Conjugal Union*Anthony J. La VopaAnthony J. La VopaNorth Carolina State University Search for more articles by this author North Carolina State UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 77, Number 1March 2005 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/429427 Views: 99Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref © 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Inder S. Marwah Liberalism, Diversity and Domination, 33 (May 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108608497Gregory Garvey “A Religious Recognition of Equality”: Liberal Spirituality and the Marriage Question in America, 1835–1850, Religions 8, no.99 (Sep 2017): 183.https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090183SUZANNE MARCHAND ENLIGHTENED CONVERSATIONS: THE CAREER AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF ANTHONY J. LA VOPA, Modern Intellectual History 13, no.33 (Oct 2015): 777–792.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244315000347DEBORAH R. COEN THE COMMON WORLD: HISTORIES OF SCIENCE AND DOMESTIC INTIMACY, Modern Intellectual History 11, no.22 (Jun 2014): 417–438.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244314000079 By Brian Vick Liberalism, Nationalism, and Gender Dichotomy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Contested Case of German Civil Law Vick, The Journal of Modern History 82, no.33 (Jul 2015): 546–584.https://doi.org/10.1086/653041William M. Reddy Historical Research on the Self and Emotions, Emotion Review 1, no.44 (Sep 2009): 302–315.https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073909338306

Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi

Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi

Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi

Margaret Fuller, the Marchese Giovanni Ossoli, and the Marriage Question: Considering the Research of Dr. Roberto Colzi

How the Symbolic Became French: Kinship and Republicanism in the PACS Debates

‘‘In ordinary societies, one stipulates for oneself, for obscure and private interests, and as the sovereign master of one’s own fortune. In marriage, one stipulates not only for oneself, but for the other; one pledges to become the providence of the new family to which one will give a being; one stipulates for the State, one stipulates for the general society of humankind. The public is thus always involved in questions of marriage [. . .]. Conjugal society does not resemble any other.’’1