Find and Share Events with Friends 🥳
x
You’ll Do: A Southern History of Marrying for Reasons other Than Love promotional image
Company Profile Image

You’ll Do: A Southern History of Marrying for Reasons other Than Love

Lecture

What’s Happening?

Today, love and marriage are considered synonymous, but that wasn’t always the case. For most of U.S. history, marrying for reasons other than love, was both expected and encouraged. In fact, valuable rights and benefits were attached to marriage specifically to encourage men and women to wed. Such blatant incentives worked. Still, whether the benefits of these marriages outweighed the potential harms, is a separate question. Throughout America’s history, couples have married for countless reasons, money, resources, status, power, parenthood, and even criminal defense. From plantation owners to the formerly enslaved, from foreign prostitutes to patrician politicians, untold numbers of Americans have relied on marriage as their best, and often only, option for overcoming social, political, and economic inequality. An examination of such marriages, particularly in 18th and 19th century southern states, reveals how marriage has long been a widespread and effective means of counteracting class, gender, and even racial inequalities. At the same time, this history also shows that by making marriage the preferred solution, it has become it harder to implement better, more widespread solutions that could benefit all Americans—not just the married.

Dr. Marcia Zug is Miles and Ann Loadholt Professor of Family Law in the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches classes on Family Law, Reproductive Rights, Immigration Law, and Federal Indian Law. She has written numerous articles on these topics that have appeared in publications including The Yale Law Journal, The UC Davis Law Review, The BYU Law Review, The American Indian Law Review, and The Virginia Law and Policy Review. Marcia’s first book, Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches, was published in 2016. Her second book, You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love, was published in January 2024.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Program Notes:

Tickets are required for in-person admission. Tickets are not needed if you would prefer to join us live on YouTube or Facebook.
Admission to this lecture is free for members.  Members, please login above to reserve your free tickets. Your free member tickets will be visible once the items are in your cart.
In-person attendees are invited to meet the speaker immediately following the lecture.
Signed copies of the book are available at ShopVirginiaHistory.org.

Today, love and marriage are considered synonymous, but that wasn’t always the case. For most of U.S. history, marrying for reasons other than love, was both expected and encouraged. In fact, valuable rights and benefits were attached to marriage specifically to encourage men and women to wed. Such blatant incentives worked. Still, whether the benefits of these marriages outweighed the potential harms, is a separate question. Throughout America’s history, couples have married for countless reasons, money, resources, status, power, parenthood, and even criminal defense. From plantation owners to the formerly enslaved, from foreign prostitutes to patrician politicians, untold numbers of Americans have relied on marriage as their best, and often only, option for overcoming social, political, and economic inequality. An examination of such marriages, particularly in 18th and 19th century southern states, reveals how marriage has long been a widespread and effective means of counteracting class, gender, and even racial inequalities. At the same time, this history also shows that by making marriage the preferred solution, it has become it harder to implement better, more widespread solutions that could benefit all Americans—not just the married.

Dr. Marcia Zug is Miles and Ann Loadholt Professor of Family Law in the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches classes on Family Law, Reproductive Rights, Immigration Law, and Federal Indian Law. She has written numerous articles on these topics that have appeared in publications including The Yale Law Journal, The UC Davis Law Review, The BYU Law Review, The American Indian Law Review, and The Virginia Law and Policy Review. Marcia’s first book, Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches, was published in 2016. Her second book, You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love, was published in January 2024.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Program Notes:

Tickets are required for in-person admission. Tickets are not needed if you would prefer to join us live on YouTube or Facebook.
Admission to this lecture is free for members.  Members, please login above to reserve your free tickets. Your free member tickets will be visible once the items are in your cart.
In-person attendees are invited to meet the speaker immediately following the lecture.
Signed copies of the book are available at ShopVirginiaHistory.org.

More about Virginia Museum of History Culture
The Virginia Museum of History & Culture was founded in 1831 as the Virginia Historical Society. The oldest museum in Virginia and one of the oldest in the United States, the VMHC has devoted nearly two centuries to collecting and preserving the artifacts of our past to share the far-reaching history of the Commonwealth of Virginia with the world. Today, this nationally respected museum and research organization cares for a renowned history collection totaling more than nine million items and engages hundreds of thousands of Virginians and other guests annually.
When & Where

More events from Virginia Museum of History Culture