Women's Work

The Journal of Legal History, 2018

Feminism & Psychology, 2003

Why do we do it?: It was thought to be an institution in terminal decline. But marriage refuses to go away-in fact it's getting more and more fashionable. (The Guardian [Morrison, 2002]) Who needs a bit on the side?: Almost all of us, it seems. But having an affair doesn't mean you don't love your partner. (The Observer Review [Bedell, 2003]) Is love, as the song says, even lovelier the second time around? (The Independent on Sunday [Pepinster and Mendick, 2001]) Divorce: Can it feel this good? (The Observer [Hughes, 2001]) The State of Marriage in the UK These headlines-a very brief selection from articles on marriage recently published in the British press-reveal some confusion about the state of marriage. On the one hand, it is 'in terminal decline' (Morrison, 2002: 2) whereas, on the other, it remains the ultimate romantic fantasy. Statistically, we know that four out of ten marriages end in divorce and it is certainly true that there are fewer marriages now than there were in 1950 when the 'unchallenged domestic ideal' (Haste, 1992: 151) meant that there were 408,000 marriages in the United Kingdom. Although the marriage rate declined by one-third between 1980 and 1990, it is not all downhill: figures for 2000 1 show a 1.7 percent increase from the

TIJ's Research Journal of Social Science & Management - RJSSM, 2016

Feminist Literature and Marital Status Abstract This article is part of a series and it reports on the marital status aspect of an earlier research on the usefulness of feminist literature for defending women’s rights, targeting equality between the sexes, against male chauvinism. The intervention novel was applied to Year II undergraduate students of Literature. Following guidelines from established sources the research was designed as a test-retest quasi experiment and on account of the small sample sizes the data were analysed using the t-test. The category of single people showed significant change of attitude in favour of the feminist argument of the novel but the category of married people did not. Apparently, the thoughts of the married respondents were in agreement with the feminist advocacy in the novel prior to their reading it and seemed to have affirmed the feminist argument rather than change to it. That is, the selection of a piece of literature for change of attitude ...

2003

Although this book is framed in terms of Christian feminist ethics, its roots lie at least as deeply in family and social history, family economics, and family sociology. “Hitting home” is a sharply argued and deeply researched presentation of the ways that gender, race, and economic relationships have damaged the family lives of a substantial majority of the population of

Journal of Social History, 2012

2021

Suzanne Leonard’s Wife, Inc.: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century positions women’s work as performing “wifedom” within widespread conceptions of neoliberal postfeminism. While marriage is increasingly seen as declining in social relevance in the United States, the author explores “female media culture” (p. 3)—as presented through popular television, film, literature, news, magazines, and advice culture—and demonstrates how the saturation of female representation in such mediums is heavily reliant on marriage. Leonard explains, “The wife has morphed into postfeminist media culture’s most favored icon, one endlessly utilized to frame discussions of female life cycles” (p. 4).

Journal of religion and popular culture, 2002

In the early years,] the days were sunny, the nights were star-studded. Indeed, married life was strawberries for breakfast and lovin' all the time ... As the months passed, however, our lives became more complicated, and we gradually changed ... If I were to have any meaningful conversations, I decided, they would have to be with my girlfriends ... As the years wore on, things got worse ... I was helpless and unhappy. I didn't want anything to come between us, especially this nameless, intangible enemy that I could not define or fight.-Marabel Morgan, The Total Woman (1973) 1 If a woman had a problem..., she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought ... If she tried to tell her husband, he didn't understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself. But [one morning], I heard a mother...say in a tone of quiet desperation, "the problem. " And others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name.-Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1964) 2 [1] The excerpts above come from two American authors of the 1970s. Although most often viewed in terms of their ideological differences, Marabel Morgan and Betty Friedan here use similar language when describing middle-class suburban ennui. During a time when white women's "liberal feminism" collided in the national media with a burgeoning form of conservative Christianity, these authors use popular literature as a site for addressing what they see as the concerns of married women in "middle America. " 3 Both Morgan and Friedan mention women's camaraderie, particularly when it comes to interpersonal communication: Morgan bemoans the fact that her girlfriends are better conversation partners than her husband; Friedan portrays a group of women who can, in silence, indicate agreement and express sympathy. Both mention feelings of indescribable depression: Morgan says she felt "helpless and unhappy"; Friedan describes women's growing sense of "quiet desperation. " And what Marabel Morgan calls a "nameless, intangible enemy" is for Betty Friedan the "problem that has no name. " Their arguments will, of course, diverge: Where Friedan concluded women would be saved through education and employment, Morgan became convinced that the key to revitalizing her marriage lay in a purposeful recommitment to the attitudes and behaviors she had embraced during courtship. "A great marriage is not so much finding the right person, " Morgan writes, "as being the right person. " As has been true for many other women who have written on the subject of marital submission during the last several decades, Morgan's journey towards surrender-to both God and her husband-resulted from a personal sense of dissatisfaction during her early married

The Journal of Popular Culture, 2007