The Household and the Making of History: A Subversive View of the Western Past

ISBN-13: 9780521829724 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 310 str.

Mary S. Hartman

Opis

Contrary to previously-held views, this book argues that a unique late marriage pattern explains the continuing puzzle of why Western Europe was the site of changes that gave birth to the modern world. It contends that the roots of modern developments are located in history more than a millennium earlier, when the peasants in northwestern Europe began to marry their daughters almost as late as their sons. This phenomenon affords a more understandable account of items long considered as peculiar Western achievements, including the industrial revolution and mass democratic political movements.

Recenzje

'… a brilliant if sometimes, at least in later chapters, contentious study …'. BBC History Magazine

Spis treści

1. How Northwestern Europe was strange: marriage, household, and history; 2. Marrying early and marrying late: divergent and parallel lives; 3. The riddle of the 'Western family patterns'; 4. The women and men of Montaillou and Salem Village: patterns of gender and power; 5. Communities in crisis: heresy, witchcraft, and the sexes in Montaillou and Salem; 6. What men and women want; 7. Interpreting the Western past with the women and the households left in, 1500–1800; 8. The late marriage household, the sexes, and the modern world.