The Subversive Family: An Alternative History of Love and Marriage

Iconoclastic, revelatory, this study attempts to right the perceived historical record about why people married through the ages. Mount, editor of the Times Literary Supplement in London, accuses Christianity of forcing individuals to place God above family; we have been deceived, he charges, by religions, governments, historians, Marx and Engels and misguided feminists, who deny the essentially romantic nature of the nuptial bond. Armed with bawdy tales, urn inscriptions, diary entries, letters and court papers, he makes a convincing case that marriages have traditionally been contracted because of romance. History, Mount concludes, was revised to suit the ideological needs of church or state. Many will not like the way Plato, Jesus, Lenin, Mao and Hitler are lumped together here as orthodox thinkers who have beclouded the facts about marriage. Nevertheless there's considerable scholarship and entertainment in the historic sources proffered. (Dec.)