Review: Wedded Wife, by Rachael Lennon

Blurb

In this fascinating and insightful book, feminist curator Rachael Lennon provides an intimate and intersectional examination of the history of marriage around the world.
With a lively and accessible style, Lennon tells a remarkable story of how this institution has developed from the ancient customs of the stone age through to the modern form it takes today. This book also explores themes such as the pressure to marry, the politics surrounding proposals, the spectacle of marriage, the business behind it, and the politics tied to consummation as well as issues such as taking a man’s name, the nuances of marriage vows and obedience, ‘having it all’ and trying to keep up the fight to have an enduring marriage.

Having married her wife just a few years after the legalisation of same sex marriage in the United Kingdom, Lennon interweaves her own personal experiences of marriage with stories and anecdotes from throughout
history to explore how marriage has transformed over the years.

My Review

Thanks to the author and publisher for sending me a copy of this book, and to Anne Cater for organising this blog tour.

This book is a mix of the author’s memoir about her journey to marriage as a woman married to another woman, and a history of marriage customs from courting to married life. The ‘traditional’ engagement, marriage ceremony and ideas of married life are actually not that old. The big white wedding is a nineteenth century invention that didn’t really take off until the 1950s, the diamond ring is a mid-twentieth century invention too. Laws for marriage in England and Wales are different from those in Scotland because of historical differences in tradition and legal history. Which is why I’m going to a wedding on a Scottish beach in September.

I sent pictures from some of the pages to various people when I found interesting stuff in this book, or at least interesting stuff that other people might be interested in. I enjoyed the entire book, but I’m a bit of a weirdo about collecting facts, and a wedding invitation for two gay, trans friends turned up while I was reading the book so it was certainly timely. They wouldn’t have been able to get married ten years ago.

I think this is a really good book, easy to read and full of entertaining information as well as putting current traditions into their historical context.

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AUTHOR BIO

Rachael Lennon was the National Trust’s co-founder of the revisionist Challenging
Histories programme which Clare Balding claimed “will change the way history is
written and thought about from this point onwards”. Having grown up understanding that marriage was only for a man and a woman, she married her wife Claire in Northumberland in 2017 – just 3 years after the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the UK. Rachael lives in Durham with her wife and daughter.