Wedded Wife: A Feminist History of Marriage

This is an intimate but wide-ranging feminist intersectional history of marriage, tracing the improvement in women’s lot over 500 years.

Feminist historian Rachael Lennon examines marriage traditionsand rituals of cultures around the world interspersed with her own romantic aspirations and experience of planning a same-sex wedding.

Which one of you is the bride? asks a rather flustered florist. Who gets the engagement ring? Who’s given away? In shaking off patriarchal expectations, Rachael examines marriage’s troubling past and celebrates a more joyful present.

The book is structured in four parts:

• Proposals - Popping the question
• Weddings - The big day
• Married life - What came next?
• The end - Till death us do part?

Each section will include the brutal realities of past women’s experiences - from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Tudor queens, from the lives of enslaved Africans to East India Company children - whilst also recognising centuries of activists who have transformed the institution of marriage.

In the myriad of decision-making for our own weddings, we can build on the past to redefine this most personal of public institutions for the future.