Connecting more Dots
Historians argue fiercely about when the transition from pragmatic to “affective” — personal – marriage, took place in Europe. It’s been placed anywhere from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.
I am not a historian but based on what I have read (for example in Stephanie Coontz’ work), I would argue that romantic marriage didn’t take off until the eighteenth century. It might’ve been around before then but it didn’t turn into the motivating factor for marriage until fairly recently.
The industrial “revolution” happened somewhere between 1760 and 1830 depending on the historian. Coincidence? I think not. Though it would be difficult to prove, these dots can be connected, the two are related. Romantic marriage comes along with the idea of nuclear family, both reduce our connections to the larger community. These connections were in the way of people moving to the industrialized centers, so utilizing the limiting idea of the nuclear family helped industrialization.
Does anybody know of someone (or multiple people) who have studied this (the interaction of the emergence of romantic marriage and industrialization)?
Research on interaction of the emergence of romantic marriage and industrialization
Here are some links to papers/articles that might be promising, though they look at the nuclear family, rather than romantic marriage but I think the two are closely linked:
- How industrialization has led to an increase in the nuclear family structure (No sources cited)
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Don’t know if you are still interested but you’d definitely want to check out A World of their Own Making: A History of Myth and Ritual in Family Life – by John R. Gillis. Particularly chapter 7 “The Perfect Couple.”
I’d also recommend the now infamous essay “Capitalism and Gay Identity” by John D’Emilio. Although it is not about the rise of the nuclear family specifically, in it he argues that with the introduction of widespread wage labor during the industrial revolution, and the development of major metropolises, people (particularly men, although later women too) suddenly had the ability to survive and thrive outside of large agrarian family units. This created greater freedom for people to live according to their chosen configurations of intimacy, and produced for the first time the possibility of a gay “lifestyle” as well as the notion of marriage based on love rather than material survival.
I am currently writing a master’s thesis on the modern day single’s movement and these are some of my sources. 🙂
Thank you so much for these references, RachelA! Sounds like an interesting project for your master’s thesis! Any chance you could share more about it?