Change of Condition: Women's Rhetorical Strategies on Marriage, 1710-1756
Description:
This dissertation examines ways in which women constructed and criticized matrimony both before and after their own marriages. Social historians have argued for the rise of companionacy in the eighteenth century without paying attention to women's accounts of the fears and uncertainties surrounding the prospect of marriage. I argue that having more latitude to choose a husband did not diminish the enormous impact that the choice would have on the rest of a woman's life; if anything, choice mi…
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Date:
December 2005
Creator:
Wood, Laura Thomason
Partner:
UNT Libraries