A History of the Wife (59 page)

1. In the case of black women, the “marriage-market” theory advanced by sociologist Henry Walker attributes their low incidence of marriage to their new earning power, which is now roughly the same as that of black men. Perhaps even more important, black women have a smaller pool of economically viable black men to choose from, as compared to white women in relation to white men, since black men are more likely
   

   to have been killed, more likely to be incarcerated, and more likely to be unemployed than white men.
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   Not surprisingly, careers loom larger than ever for women of all races, with many companies and institutions providing a kind of ersatz “family.” Many people now look to their jobs for close interpersonal relations and for a sense of meaning they have not found either in their families or in their communities. Indeed, this growing job orientation is beginning to cause concern to many societal observers, who believe the workplace is replacing the home as the center of American life.
   

   Another issue of concern is the “merging” of home life and work life that often occurs when people work out of their homes. Now that com- puters have made it possible for both men and women to earn substan- tial incomes without leaving the house, there is the danger that paid work will cannibalize the time needed for quality family life. While this may present a problem for some workaholics, it can also be a boon for parents needing flexible schedules for childcare. In some ways we may be returning to a preindustrial mode, when artisans, professionals, and shopkeepers did indeed work out of their homes, with children always in the wings or underfoot.
   

   Alternatives to marriage come in numerous forms. The number of Americans living alone (a quarter of all households) has never been higher. The number of men and women living together without mar- rying has also reached a record high, with heterosexual couples often taking years to decide whether they will or will not become husband and wife. Same-sex couples cohabitate without the legal and eco- nomic benefits that a marriage license confers, although many are taking advantage of the “domestic partnerships” offered by numerous cities, states, and institutions. In the future, Vermont-style “civil unions” will probably serve the needs not only of gay couples, but also of heterosexuals opting for an intermediary step between cohab- itation and marriage.
   

   Similarly, childlessness is no longer seen as a curse for adult females. The proportion of childless women aged forty to forty-four was 19 per- cent in 1998 (up from 10 percent in 1980), and many of these women are childless by choice, according to some demographers.
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   At the same time, single parenting is on the ascendency, without the stigma of past eras. Unmarried girls and women who become pregnant accidentally often decide to bear and raise the child, rather than have an abortion or
   

   give the baby up for adoption. Some unmarried women, especially those around forty, are now choosing to be mothers without intending to marry the baby’s father. All of these girls and women take on a for- midable challenge when they raise a child on their own: at present, their children are much more likely to be brought up in poverty than children in two-parent families.
   

   Some single mothers manage to extend the family network by living with relatives or friends. In black communities, where single mothers greatly outnumber married mothers, children often grow up in female households headed by a mother or grandmother. Private and govern- ment programs to bring fathers back into the picture may, in time, reverse this trend somewhat, but it is unlikely that the nuclear family consisting of a married couple and their children, which peaked numerically for blacks in 1950 and for whites in 1960, will return to its former hegemonic position in American society.
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   What, then, can a woman today anticipate, or at at least hope, when she becomes a wife? Surely she hopes that her marriage will be among the 50 percent that adheres to a lifelong script. Despite the well-known sta- tistics on divorce, people usually marry with the belief that
   their
   mar- riage is “for keeps”—86 percent, according to a survey conducted by the
   New York Times Magazine
   (May 7, 2000). And most women still hope to become mothers. In fact, motherhood has remained central to most women’s core conception of self and may even have “supplanted mar- riage as a source of romantic fantasy for many young single women,” in the judgment of Peggy Orenstein, the astute author of
   School Girls
   and
   Flux.
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   The new wife will not be able to count on children to keep the mar- riage intact, as in the past when people often did stay together “for the children.” In fact, children are known to bring conflict into a marriage, especially when they are very young and again in adolescence. Those spouses who make it past the stress-filled child-rearing years are likely to experience a bonus in later life. Older couples often enjoy a special bond based on their shared history—a level of intimacy paid for in past tears and joys. In the words of Mark Twain: “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
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   When one vows at the onset of a marriage to live together “for better,
   

   for worse,” one anticipates little of the “for worse” scenario. Yet heartache, tragedy, sickness, and death are invariably a part of mar- riage, especially in the later years. Then one is particularly grateful for the support and love of a lifelong partner—someone who remembers you as you once were and who continues to care for you as you are now. To be the intimate witness of another person’s life is a privilege one can fully appreciate only with time. To have weathered the storms of early and middle marriage—the turmoil of children, the unfaithful- ness of one or both spouses, the death of one’s parents, the adult strug- gles of one’s own children—can create an irreplaceable attachment to the person who has shared that history with you.
   

   What I have referred to as “unfaithfulness” can, of course, make it impossible for a couple to go on as before. Many marriages do come to an end when one of the spouses has an affair. But many don’t. Many continue to think of their marital union as the “essential” relationship, even while they engage in an extramarital affair. Since young people today have the opportunity to make love to more than one potential partner before they marry and since they tend to marry at a supposedly mature age, they
   should
   be ready to settle down to a monogamous union when they exchange vows. Yet, as we know, the “shoulds” some- times falter in the face of unexpected passion. Even when one is seri- ously committed to one’s spouse, temptations do arise, and married women as well as married men are more likely today than in the past to give in to those temptations. This does not necessarily lead to divorce, or even permanent bitterness, though it often creates turmoil and suf- fering. When a husband or wife has an affair, it is usually for a cluster of reasons, of which sex per se is only a part. The affair can act as a cata- lyst that forces the spouses to look more closely at their own relation- ship, to renegotiate the terms of their union, and to rededicate themselves to one another.
   

   The present statistics on lifelong marriages being what they are, I do not envy today’s young women the pain that will come from divorce, the hardships they will endure as single parents, the poverty in which many will live. But I do believe in their expanded possibilities, which are greater now than ever before and which contrast dramatically to the more circumscribed lives most married women accepted in the past and still experience today in many parts of the world. Above all, I wish them the courage to persevere toward that ideal of equality in marriage
   

   that has been in the making for several centuries.
   

   Wives, spouses, partners, companions, and lovers all wish to be con- firmed by their chosen mates and to share a profound, mutual connec- tion. Such a union demands commitment and recommitment. Ironically, we may come to think of marriage as a vocation requiring the kind of devotion that was once expected only of celibate monks and nuns. To be a wife today when there are few prescriptions or proscrip- tions is a truly creative endeavor. It is no longer sufficient to “think back through our mothers,” in the words of Virginia Woolf; we must project ahead into the future and ask ourselves what kind of marital legacy we want to leave for our daughters and sons.
   

   While the traditional wife who submerged her identity into that of her husband may no longer represent a viable model for most women, Americans are not giving up on wifehood. Instead, they are straining to create more perfect unions on the basis of their new status as co- earners and their husbands’ fledgling status as co-homemakers. I sus- pect that the death of the “little woman” will not be grieved by the multitude, even if society must endure severe birth pangs in producing the new wife.
   

   N O T E S
   

   ONE
   

   1. Translations from Genesis are from Robert Alter,
      Genesis: Translation and Com- mentary
      (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1996). Other biblical citations are from the King James version.
      

   2. E. Amado Levi-Valensi, “Marriage et couple: l’avènement du couple,”
      Ency- clopaedia Universalis
      (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis France, c. 1968, 1974–75 print- ing), vol. 10, p. 520.
      

   3. Pamela Norris,
      Eve: A Biography
      (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 58–61.
      

   4. Frank Alvarez-Pereyre and Florence Heymann, “The Desire for Transcendence: the Hebrew Family Model and Jewish Family Practices,”
      A History of the Family,
      ed. André Burguière et al.; trans. Sarah Hanbury Tenison, Rosemary Morris, and Andrew Wilson, (Oxford: Polity Press, 1996), vol. 1, p. 175.
      

   5. As Robert Alter points out, when the nonagenarian Sarah “laughed” at the birth of Isaac, she was rejoicing, but also wondering if others might also be laughing
      at
      her. Alter,
      Genesis,
      p. 97.
      

   6. For medieval manuscripts with illustrations of these two punishments, see the thirteenth-century “Traité de Droit” from Agen, reproduced in David Nicolle,
      The Ham- lyn History of Medieval Life
      (London: Hamlyn, 1997), p. 116; and the 1348 “Zwicke- nauer Stadtrechtbuch” from the Stadtarchiv Zwichau, reproduced in Erika Uitz,
      The Legend of Good Women: Medieval Women in Towns and Cities,
      trans. Sheila Marnie (Mount Kisco, New York: Moyer Bell Limited, 1988), p. 122.
      

   7. Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook,
      ed. Emilie Amt (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 67–68.
      

   8. See the discussion of this subject in Bernadette J. Brooten,
      Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homeroticism
      (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 62. For another interpretation, see Peter J. Gomes,
      The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart
      (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996), p. 153.
      

   9. The essential books on homosexuality in the ancient world are: John Boswell,
      Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
      (Chicago: University of Chicago
      

      Press, 1980); John Boswell,
      The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
      (London: HarperCollins, 1995); and Brooten,
      Love Between Women.
      

   10. Isaiah M. Gafni, “The Institution of Marriage in Rabbinic Times,”
       The Jewish Family,
       ed. David Kraemer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 13–30.
       

   11. Norris,
       Eve
       , pp. 75–77.
       

   12. James A. Brundage,
       Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages
       (Aldershot, Hamp- shire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1993), chapters 1 and 2.
       

   13. Homer,
       The Odyssey,
       trans. E. V. Rieu (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 345–346. In this instance, the Rieu translation works better for the purpose of citation than the version by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1996), pp. 461–466.
       

   14. Eva Cantarell,
       Pandora’s Daughters,
       trans. Maureen B. Fant (Baltimore and Lon- don: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 25.
       

   15. Ralph Sealey,
       Women and Law in Classical Greece
       (Chapel Hill and London: Uni- versity of North Carolina Press, 1990), p. 14.
       

   16. Nancy Demand,
       Birth, Death, and Motherhood in Classical Greece
       (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 2.
       

17. Ibid. pp. 14–15.

1. Homer,
   The Iliad,
   trans. Robert Fagles, 18: 573–579 (New York: Viking Pen- guin, 1990), p. 483.
   

2. Cantarell,
   Pandora’s Daughters,
   pp. 48–49.
   

3. Lysias’s speech “On the Slaying of Eratosthenes” (Oxford ed.), sections 23–26, as cited and discussed in Elizabeth Wayland Barber,
   Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years
   (New York and London: Norton, 1994), pp. 273–277. See also Sabine Melchior- Bonnet and Aude de Tocqueville,
   Histoire de l’Adultère
   (Paris: Editions de la Martinière, 1999), pp. 10–20.
   

4. Plato,
   The Symposium,
   trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 28.
   

5. Cantarell,
   Pandora’s Daughters,
   pp. 82–83.
   

6. Bruce S. Thornton,
   Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality
   (Boulder Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), p. 100.
   

7. Jane McIntosh Snyder,
   Lesbian Desire in the Lyrics of Sappho
   (New York: Colum- bia University Press, 1997), p. 8.
   

8. See D. C. Moses, “Livy’s Lucretia and the Validity of Coerced Consent in Roman Law,”
   Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies,
   ed. A. E. Laiou, (Washington, D.C., Dumbarton, Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1993), pp. 39–81.
   

9. Pliny,
   Letters and Panegyricus
   (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classics, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 43–47.
   

10. Susan Treggiari,
    Roman Marriage: “Iusti Coniuges” from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian
    (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 159–160. This is the essential work on Roman marriage, and I have drawn heavily from it.
    

11. Ovid,
    Amores,
    trans. Grant Showerman (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Har- vard University Press and William Heinemann, Ltd., 1977), p. 381.
    

12. The Latin Poets,
    ed. Francis R. B. Godolphin (New York: The Modern Library, 1949), pp. 23–31.
    

13. Thomas Wiedemann,
    Adults and Children in the Roman Empire
    (London: Rout- ledge, 1989), p. 86.
    

14. Plutarch’s Lives,
    trans. John Dryden (New York: The Modern Library, 195?), p. 1065.
    

15. Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook,
    ed. Emilie Amt (New York and London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 34–35.
    

16. Pliny,
    Letters and Panegyricus,
    vol. 1, pp. 469–471.
    

17. Plutarch, “Advice on Marriage,”
    Selected Essays and Dialogues
    (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 286.
    

18. Plutarch’s Lives,
    p. 774.
    

19. Gordon Williams, “Representations of Roman Women in Literature,”
    I Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome,
    ed. Diana Kleiner and Susan Matheson (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Art Gallery, 1996), pp. 132–133.
    

20. Marilyn Yalom,
    A History of the Breast
    (New York: Knopf, 1997), pp. 25–26.
    

21. Aline Rousselle, “The Family under the Roman Empire: Signs and Gestures,”
    A History of the Family,
    ed. Burguière, Klapisch-Zuber, Selen, and Zonabend, vol. 1, p. 275.
    

22. Mary Hamer,
    Signs of Cleopatra: History, Politics, Representation
    (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 9.
    

23. This and the following citations concerning Antony and Cleopatra are from
    

    Plutarch’s Lives,
    pp. 1137, 1148, 1152.
    

24. J. P. V. D. Balsdon,
    Roman Women: Their History and Habits
    (London: The Bodley Head, 1962), p. 68.
    

25. Klaus Fitschen, “Courtly Portraits of Women in the Era of the Adoptive Emper- ors (98–180) and Their Reception in Roman Society,”
    I Claudia,
    ed. Kleiner and Mathe- son, p. 53.
    

26. Pliny,
    Letters and Panegyricus,
    vol. 1, pp. 403, 411.
    

27. Jean-Noël Robert,
    Eros Romain: Sexe et morale dans l’ancienne Rome
    (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1998), pp. 135–37, and
    Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe,
    ed. Amt, pp. 29–31.
    

28. Treggiari,
    Roman Marriage,
    pp. 231–241.
    

29. Boswell,
    The Marriage of Likeness,
    p. 65.
    

30. Seutonius,
    The Twelve Caesars,
    trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth, Middle- sex, England: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 223.
    

31. Juvenal,
    The Satires,
    trans. Niall Rudd, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), Satire 2, lines 135–138, p. 13.
    

32. Juvenal,
    The Satires,
    Satire 6, lines 34–36, p. 38.
    

33. Brooten,
    Love between Women,
    p. 29.
    

34. Citations are from Plutarch,
    Eroticus,
    in
    Selected Essays and Dialogues
    (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 249–250, 279, and 281.
    

35. Juvenal,
    The Satires,
    p. 46.