Marriage, a History

Marriage, a History Plot Summary

Introduction

In a small village in southern Malawi in the 1940s, colonial administrators were shocked to discover that local marriage customs bore little resemblance to what they considered proper Christian unions. Women moved freely between partners, children belonged to maternal lineages, and formal ceremonies were rare. When officials tried to impose European-style marriage laws, a local elder asked in bewilderment: "What is this thing called marriage that the government wants us to practice?" This question echoes across time and cultures, revealing a profound truth: marriage is not a universal constant but a shape-shifting institution that has continuously evolved throughout human history. From ancient political alliances that sealed peace treaties to medieval arrangements focused on property transfer, from Victorian romantic ideals to modern partnerships based on personal fulfillment, marriage has served vastly different purposes across eras and societies. This historical journey shows us that what we often consider "traditional marriage" is actually a recent innovation, and that today's marriage transformations are part of a long continuum of change rather than a radical departure from an unchanging past.

Chapter 1: Ancient Foundations: Marriage as Economic and Political Alliance

In the ancient world, marriage functioned primarily as a political and economic institution designed to forge alliances, secure property, and ensure orderly succession. The marriage bed was where diplomacy happened, where peace treaties were sealed, and where economic resources were consolidated. For ruling elites across Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, marriage was the cornerstone of political strategy. The archives of Mari, an ancient kingdom on the Euphrates River around 1800 BCE, provide fascinating evidence of marriage as diplomatic currency. When King Zimri-lim wanted to secure his kingdom, he married the daughter of a neighboring king and strategically married off eight of his own daughters to rulers of vassal cities. As one document bluntly stated, a son-in-law "is the husband of Zimri-Lim's daughter and he obeys Zimri-Lim." Royal women essentially functioned as peace-weavers, sent to foreign courts to create bonds between potentially hostile kingdoms, regardless of their personal feelings. When Liu Xijun of the royal family of Chu'u was sent to marry the ruler of Wusun in 107 BCE, she wrote poignantly: "My family has married me in this far corner of the world, sent me to a strange land... My thoughts are all of my homeland, my heart aches within." For commoners too, marriage was primarily an economic transaction. A woman needed a man to plow, while a man needed a woman to spin, weave, preserve food, and bear children who would eventually help in the fields. The Old Testament description of a virtuous woman reads like a job description: she "seeketh wool and flax," "considereth a field and buyeth it," and "looketh well to the ways of her household." Marriage was a working partnership necessary for survival in agricultural societies. The formation of marriages reflected their contractual nature. Marriages were arranged by parents and kin, with property exchanges carefully negotiated. In Rome, the word familia encompassed everyone under the patriarch's authority, including slaves and freedmen. The husband wasn't even considered part of the family – he ruled over it. This conception helps explain why for centuries, advice manuals were addressed to wives rather than husbands. Husbands didn't need to know how to behave in families; they simply needed to know how to make their families behave. This ancient understanding of marriage as primarily an economic and political institution rather than a romantic partnership would persist for millennia. The personal feelings of those involved were largely irrelevant to the success of a marriage, which was measured instead by the economic security it provided, the political alliances it cemented, and the legitimate heirs it produced. This foundation would undergo significant transformations in the medieval period, though many of its practical functions would persist long after.

Chapter 2: Medieval Transformations: Church Control and Family Strategies

As Europe emerged from the collapse of the Roman Empire, marriage underwent profound transformations under the growing influence of the Christian Church. Between the 6th and 12th centuries, the Church gradually established its authority over marriage, defining it as a sacred sacrament rather than merely a civil contract. This period saw an intense struggle for control of marriage between competing powers: the emerging Catholic Church, secular rulers, and aristocratic families. By the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, Bishop of Paris, had established the revolutionary doctrine that mutual consent alone created a valid marriage, even without witnesses or parental approval. While seemingly progressive, this doctrine created practical chaos. Secret marriages proliferated, and courts were flooded with cases where one party claimed a prior marriage had existed based solely on alleged private words of consent. The Church's definition of incest became another powerful tool in matrimonial politics. Marriage was forbidden up to the seventh degree of separation – making it illegal to marry a descendant of one's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather! These prohibitions were so broad that almost any match could be ruled invalid if politically expedient, yet dispensations could be purchased when advantageous. Among the nobility, marriage remained intensely political. The story of King Lothar II in the ninth century illustrates the high-stakes matrimonial politics of the era. When Lothar sought to divorce his barren wife Theutberga to marry his beloved Waldreda and legitimize their son, the ensuing seven-year battle involved accusations of incest, trials by ordeal, competing church factions, and ultimately papal intervention. When Lothar died in 869 while still entangled in this marital dispute, his kingdom was promptly divided between his uncles – a stark reminder that marriage was too important to be left to personal preference. For common folk, marriage was less politically charged but equally practical. Peasant marriages created working partnerships essential for survival on the land. Village communities took a keen interest in who married whom, sometimes using charivaris – noisy, humiliating public rituals – to express disapproval of inappropriate matches. A marriage that allowed for the amalgamation of adjacent plots of land was particularly advantageous in the scattered field system of medieval agriculture, while urban craftsmen sought wives who could assist with their trade or manage the household business. By the late medieval period, a distinctive Western European marriage pattern had emerged: relatively late marriage for both sexes (typically mid-twenties), the establishment of independent households upon marriage, and significant numbers of people who never married at all. This pattern, unique in the world, was shaped by the Church's insistence on consent, economic conditions that required couples to accumulate resources before marrying, and the guild system that extended apprenticeship into early adulthood. Medieval literature reveals the tensions between practical and romantic views of marriage. The story of patient Griselda, who endured terrible tests of her loyalty from her husband, was widely circulated as a model of wifely obedience. Yet courtly love literature simultaneously celebrated passionate attachments outside marriage, suggesting that true love was impossible within the constraints of matrimony. This contradiction reflected the reality that medieval marriage remained primarily an economic and social institution, even as new ideas about love and consent began to emerge that would eventually transform the institution.

Chapter 3: The Love Revolution: Sentiment Enters Marriage (1700-1850)

The eighteenth century witnessed a seismic shift in marriage ideals that would forever alter the institution. For the first time in five thousand years, marriage came to be seen as a private relationship between two individuals rather than one link in a larger system of political and economic alliances. The measure of a successful marriage was no longer how big a financial settlement was involved or how many useful in-laws were acquired, but how well a family met the emotional needs of its individual members. Two powerful forces drove this transformation. First, the spread of wage labor made young people less dependent on their parents for a start in life. A man didn't have to delay marriage until he inherited land or took over a business from his father. A woman could more readily earn her own dowry. Second, Enlightenment thinkers championed individual rights and the pursuit of happiness as legitimate goals. As historian Jeffrey Watts notes, while the sixteenth-century Reformation had "enhanced the dignity of married life by denying the superiority of celibacy," the eighteenth-century Enlightenment "exalted marriage even further by making love the most important criterion in choosing a spouse." This new ideal spread at different rates across Western societies. In England, the celebration of the love match reached a fever pitch as early as the 1760s, while the French were still commenting on the novelty of "marriage by fascination" in the mid-1800s. In America, New Englanders began to change their description of an ideal mate after the Revolution, adding companionship and cooperation to their traditional expectations of thrift and industriousness. The rising popularity of novels further spread these new ideals, with works like Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" and Jane Austen's romances celebrating marriages based on mutual affection and respect rather than purely economic considerations. The legal system began to reflect these changing values. The court records of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, reveal that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, judges had forced individuals to honor betrothals and marriage contracts even if one or both parties no longer wanted the match. In the eighteenth century, by contrast, judges routinely released people from unwanted marriage contracts, so long as the couple had no children. This shift reflected the growing belief that marriage should be based on genuine consent and affection rather than purely contractual obligations. The political revolutions of the late eighteenth century intensified these changes. The American and French Revolutions promoted ideas of equality and consent that were difficult to reconcile with arranged marriages and absolute male authority. In 1791, the French revolutionary government redefined marriage as a freely chosen civil contract, abolished the right of fathers to imprison children to compel obedience, and mandated equal inheritance for daughters and sons. While a conservative reaction soon followed, rolling back many of these radical changes, the revolutionary idea that marriage should be based on love and free choice had taken root. These changes had profound implications that many contemporaries immediately recognized. Critics argued that if love was the most important reason to marry, what would prevent young people from choosing unwisely? If people were encouraged to expect marriage to be the best and happiest experience of their lives, what would hold a marriage together if things went "for worse" rather than "for better"? These questions would continue to shape debates about marriage into the Victorian era and beyond, as the institution increasingly became defined by emotional fulfillment rather than economic necessity.

Chapter 4: Victorian Paradox: Separate Spheres and Romantic Ideals

The Victorian era presents us with a fascinating paradox in the history of marriage. On one hand, it was an age of unprecedented sentimentality about marriage, with endless poems, stories, and sermons celebrating the sanctity of the home and the moral superiority of women. On the other hand, it was a time of rigid gender segregation and sexual repression that made true intimacy between husbands and wives difficult to achieve. By the mid-nineteenth century, the ideal of the love-based, male breadwinner marriage had become firmly established among the middle classes. The husband was now seen as the family's economic motor, venturing into the competitive marketplace to earn wages, while the wife became its sentimental core, creating a sanctuary of peace and moral virtue. As one popular poem of 1863 expressed it: "Two birds within one nest; Two hearts within one breast... A world of care without, A world of strife shut out, A world of love shut in." This division of labor into separate spheres was justified by a new theory of gender difference. Men and women were said to be so completely different in their natures that they could not be compared as superior or inferior. Women were no longer seen as inferior to men but assigned a unique moral worth that had to be protected from contamination by involvement in men's mundane spheres of activity. The cult of female purity reached extraordinary heights during this period. Medical authorities like William Acton claimed that "the majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind." Women encased themselves in protective barriers of clothing—by the late nineteenth century, the average weight of a woman's fashionable outfit totaled thirty-seven pounds. Premarital pregnancy rates plummeted among the middle classes as young women internalized these ideals of restraint. Queen Victoria herself, while privately enjoying a passionate relationship with Prince Albert, publicly embodied the ideal of domestic virtue and maternal devotion. Yet beneath this placid surface of Victorian domesticity, tensions were building. The very idealization of love and intimacy that was supposed to strengthen marriage was beginning to undermine it. As romantic love intensified, couples became more disappointed when reality failed to match their dreams. Women's diaries reveal growing frustration with the constraints of domesticity, while men's letters show discomfort with the emotional demands of companionate marriage. The doctrine of separate spheres also created practical barriers to true companionship. How could two people with such different natures and experiences really understand each other? The husband, immersed in business concerns all day, returned home to a wife whose world was bounded by domestic concerns. The economic foundations of Victorian marriage were also more complex than the ideal suggested. While the male breadwinner model dominated middle-class ideology, working-class women continued to contribute substantially to family economies. In industrial areas, women worked in factories and mines, while in urban settings they took in laundry, minded children, or sold goods in markets. Even middle-class women who couldn't openly work for wages often managed household finances with considerable skill, stretching limited resources through careful budgeting and home production. By the end of the century, these contradictions were becoming more apparent. Women who had been taught that their moral influence was crucial to society began to argue that this influence should extend beyond the home. The social purity movement, initially focused on protecting female virtue, evolved into campaigns against child labor, alcohol abuse, and the sexual double standard. As women organized to protect their homes and children, they discovered their own capacity for public action and began to question the limitations placed on them. The seeds of twentieth-century feminism were thus paradoxically nurtured in the soil of Victorian domestic ideology, setting the stage for dramatic changes in marriage in the coming decades.

Chapter 5: Modern Upheaval: Gender Roles in Flux (1920-1970)

The early twentieth century witnessed dramatic challenges to Victorian marriage ideals. World War I shattered many illusions about the stability of Western civilization and accelerated social changes already underway. Women who had taken men's places in factories and offices during the war were reluctant to return to purely domestic roles, while men who had experienced the horrors of trench warfare often found Victorian sentimentality hollow. The 1920s saw an explosion of new attitudes toward sexuality and marriage. Sigmund Freud's theories about the importance of sexual fulfillment gained widespread popularity, challenging Victorian notions of female "passionlessness." Marriage manuals like those by Theodoor van de Velde emphasized sexual pleasure as essential to marital happiness. The flapper era celebrated female sexuality and independence in ways that shocked older generations. Young women bobbed their hair, shortened their skirts, smoked cigarettes, and went out unchaperoned. Dating replaced the formal courtship rituals of the Victorian era, giving young people more freedom to explore relationships before marriage. Women's increasing economic independence fundamentally altered marriage dynamics. By 1930, over 10 million American women were employed outside the home. Though most still left the workforce upon marriage, their brief taste of economic autonomy changed their expectations. As one young woman told sociologist Mirra Komarovsky: "I want marriage plus something else. I want to be a person in my own right as well as a wife." The invention of the automobile provided unprecedented privacy for young couples, further weakening parental control over courtship. A journalist in 1924 noted that while in earlier days a boy "took the girl 'buggy-riding,' the return was usually long before the stars had begun to fade... but nowadays the gay young gallant steps on the gas, and the pair are soon beyond any sort of parental or other surveillance." The Great Depression temporarily reversed some of these trends as jobs became scarce and traditional gender roles seemed to offer security in uncertain times. Government policies often explicitly favored male employment, with married women frequently barred from teaching and civil service positions. Yet economic necessity forced many wives to find whatever work they could, often in the informal economy, to keep their families afloat. These contradictory pressures created significant strain on marriages during this period. World War II brought another dramatic shift as women were actively recruited into the workforce. Though Rosie the Riveter was expected to return to the kitchen after the war, the experience permanently altered both women's self-perception and society's view of female capabilities. The postwar economic boom made the male breadwinner ideal financially viable for more families than ever before, yet paradoxically, this very prosperity helped undermine traditional marriage by enabling more women to attend college and pursue careers. The 1950s represented both the pinnacle and the beginning of the end for the traditional provider/homemaker marriage. The suburban nuclear family, with father commuting to work while mother tended home and children, became the dominant cultural ideal. Television shows like "Leave It to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet" portrayed this arrangement as the natural order of things. Yet beneath this conformist surface, discontent was brewing. Betty Friedan would later call it "the problem that has no name" – the sense of emptiness many educated women felt in their purely domestic roles. By the late 1950s, the contradictions in modern marriage were becoming impossible to ignore, setting the stage for the revolutionary changes that would follow in the 1960s and 1970s.

Chapter 6: Contemporary Challenges: Equality, Choice and New Models

Since the 1960s, marriage has undergone its most radical transformation in history. The institution that once organized property rights, established political alliances, and determined women's legal status has become primarily a vehicle for personal fulfillment. This shift represents the logical culmination of trends that began with the eighteenth-century love revolution but has accelerated at a pace that would have astonished our ancestors. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s severed the link between marriage and sexual legitimacy that had existed for millennia. Contraception became more reliable and widely available, allowing couples to separate sex from reproduction. Premarital cohabitation, once scandalous, became commonplace – by 2010, over 60% of first marriages in the United States were preceded by living together. These changes fundamentally altered the courtship process, making marriage less a beginning than a culmination of a relationship. Legal reforms eliminated many of marriage's traditional gender asymmetries. No-fault divorce, introduced in the 1970s, made marriage more voluntaristic than ever before. Laws against marital rape, credit discrimination, and other forms of gender inequality gradually dismantled the legal framework that had made wives subordinate to husbands. These changes reflected a new understanding of marriage as a partnership of equals rather than a hierarchical institution. The demographic patterns surrounding marriage changed dramatically as well. The median age at first marriage rose steadily – in the United States, from 20 for women and 23 for men in 1960 to 28 for women and 30 for men by 2020. Women's massive entry into the workforce transformed the economic foundation of marriage. By 2000, dual-earner couples had become the norm rather than the exception in most Western societies. This shift created both opportunities and strains. Couples gained economic security through diversified income sources but faced new challenges in balancing work and family responsibilities. The provider/homemaker division of labor that had structured marriage for over a century no longer fit most couples' lives. As gender roles became more flexible, couples had to negotiate their own arrangements for everything from earning income to raising children to dividing household chores. The early twenty-first century saw growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, culminating in its legalization across the United States in 2015 and in many other countries worldwide. This represents the logical extension of the love-based marriage model - if marriage is primarily about personal fulfillment and emotional connection rather than procreation or economic roles, there is no reason to limit it to heterosexual couples. The successful movement for marriage equality demonstrated both how much marriage had changed and how much it was still valued as a public commitment. These changes have provoked intense debate. Some see the deinstitutionalization of marriage as liberation from outdated constraints, allowing individuals to form relationships based on authentic connection rather than social pressure. Others worry that the emphasis on personal fulfillment has made marriage too fragile, undermining its role in providing stable environments for raising children and supporting vulnerable family members. What's clear is that marriage today is in uncharted territory. For the first time in history, it is being organized around principles of equality, choice, and emotional intimacy rather than economic necessity and gender hierarchy. This represents both the fulfillment of the romantic revolution that began centuries ago and a radical break with virtually all historical precedent.

Summary

Throughout its long history, marriage has been continuously reinvented to serve changing human needs and social conditions. What emerges most clearly from this historical journey is that marriage has never been a static institution but rather a dynamic relationship that reflects and adapts to broader social, economic, and cultural forces. The transformation from arranged marriages based on property and politics to love-based unions focused on personal fulfillment represents not a decline from tradition but the latest chapter in marriage's ongoing evolution. Similarly, the shift from rigid gender specialization to more flexible, negotiated partnerships reflects adaptation to modern economic realities and changing values around equality. This historical perspective offers important insights for navigating contemporary debates about marriage and family. First, it suggests skepticism toward claims about "traditional marriage," since what we often consider traditional was itself a recent innovation. Second, it demonstrates marriage's remarkable resilience and adaptability—the institution has survived precisely because it has changed to meet new circumstances. Finally, it reminds us that diversity in family arrangements is not new but has characterized human societies throughout time. Rather than trying to force all relationships into one model, we might better support families by recognizing their varied needs and providing resources that help people build stable, nurturing relationships in whatever form works best for them. The future of marriage likely lies not in returning to the past but in continuing to adapt creatively to new challenges while preserving the core elements that have always made intimate partnerships valuable: mutual support, shared purpose, and enduring commitment.

About Author

Loading...

Stephanie Coontz

Stephanie Coontz is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001 to 2004, and emeritus faculty of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She has written about gender, family, and history, and her writings have been translated into a dozen languages.

Read more