Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings And The Marriage Mystique
- Book Review,
by Jaclyn Geller
From Publishers Weekly
Tempt a woman with a truckload of wedding gifts and social approbation, says Geller, and she's more than happy to forget that matrimony is the last institution she should want to join, given its patriarchal history. A single woman in her 30s working on her Ph.D. in English at New York University, Geller examines modern marriage in a lively, accessible book that's one part academic analysis and three parts rant. Fleeing a stultifying upper-class suburb, she found college so stimulating that she refused to swap cerebral pursuits for a conventional married life. As friend after friend rushed down the aisle, however, she began to examine why marriage is so revered that it automatically trumps a close, platonic friendship; the excitement of multiple sexual relationships; or a solitary, contemplative existence. Determined to find the answer, Geller pores over husband-hunting manuals and wedding guidebooks, and even poses as a bride at Bloomingdale's bridal registry, where the crystal pitchers, silver fondue dishes and Limoges soup tureens, she confesses, have tremendous allure. Women opt for house and husband, she suggests, because they've been subjected to a centuries-long, pro-marriage marketing campaign. Other lifestyles generate no comparable media blitz "no images of a woman burrowing at home with a book and a glass of wine, or sitting up with a friend talking." While Geller's argument is refreshing and timely in an age of wedding hype, some readers may wish that she spent more time exploring the pleasures and benefits of uncommon lifestyles and less telling readers why marriage is to be avoided at all costs. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In contrast to Marcia Seligson's lighthearted The Eternal Bliss Machine: America's Way of Wedding (1973), this work by Geller (English, New York Univ.) is a lengthy critique of both weddings and the institution of marriage. Using histories of women, histories of marriage, and popular culture sources, she builds her case that marriage institutionalizes gender inequality and that the "big white wedding," with all its customs and extravagance, is a public demonstration of that inequality and the popular notion that marriage is a woman's destiny. Geller proposes, but does not extensively elaborate on, a coming-of-age rite that would celebrate the individuality and independence of each woman, whether or not she had a male partner. Geller's somewhat dour book makes good points but does not completely persuade. Appropriate for public libraries and women's studies collections. Patricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey, Ewing Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Phyllis Chesler
"...refreshingly intelligent, uncompromising, careful, principled, methodical, brave--and feminist too."
Time Out New York
"[Geller] makes a case that marriage is an institution profoundly hostile toward women, an empty and unrealistic dream...."
Book Description
In Here Comes the Bride, Jaclyn Geller exposes the social forces that shape how people feel about weddings, calling into question some of the deepest-held beliefs about this tradition. Divided into three sections, the book begins with how-to-get-your-man manuals and ends with the newlywed year. First there’s “Courtship and the Marriage Quest.” Geller looks at the absurd nature of proposals, the inane practice of engagement and gift-giving, and the bizarre rules governing the wedding dress. In part two, “The Big Day,” she deals with the specifics of the wedding itself. There are place cards and table settings, rigid photo ops, vows, toasts, garter belts, and daddy dances. What do these highly scripted procedures say about this most treasured ritual? Finally, the author explores some of marriage’s deeper implications in “Living in the Plural”: the strangely isolating honeymoon and the establishment of marital identity that begins with a simple thank-you note.
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