Recent books
A History of the Wife
Marilyn Yalom; With Books Publishing; 648 pp., 28,000 won
How has the institution of marriage affected women through the ages?
U.S. cultural historian Marilyn Yalom charts the evolution of marriage in this book, first published in the United States in 2001, and published in Korean this month. The author is a scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Women and Gender.
“A History of the Wife” is a study of the laws, religious practices, social customs, economic patterns, and political consciousness that have affected generations of wives.
Marriage is not a woman’s indispensable passage to motherhood — up to 40 percent of American first children are being born out of wedlock. And, since one in two marriages will end in divorce, it no longer guarantees a woman permanent protection in a world that has traditionally been unkind to unmarried women.
Yalom explores some interesting questions. For example, how did marriage, considered a religious duty in medieval Europe, become a platform for personal fulfillment in contemporary America? How did th
May 18, 2012By Do Je-hae