Unfaithful : love, adultery, and marriage reform in nineteenth-century America

Author / Creator

Faulkner, Carol author

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Online

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Summary

"Between 1830 and 1880, an array of activists viewed the legal, social, and cultural institution of marriage as an obstacle to a more equitable society. Early feminists identified the question of m...

"Between 1830 and 1880, an array of activists viewed the legal, social, and cultural institution of marriage as an obstacle to a more equitable society. Early feminists identified the question of marital rights as equally important to political rights. Other reformers deemed the marriage question more fundamental to the transformation of women's status. The most radical activists, known as free lovers, demanded an end to the constraints of legal marriage. They argued that individuals had a right to choose when and whom they loved, advocating a form of serial monogamy. More moderate marriage reformers, including women's rights activists and spiritualists, believed that love, choice, and happiness were essential to marriage. When marriages failed, they advocated liberal access to divorce. These activists differed in their attitudes toward legal marriage, insofar as the moderates still had faith in the institution, but they shared the fundamental insight that marriage should be a voluntary, loving relationship, and used variations on the idea of adultery to convey wrongs and harms within the legal bond of a marriage"--

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