Vows

Starred review from March 18, 2024
Coming skeptically to the topic in light of a recent divorce, bestseller Mendelson (Home Comforts) takes an illuminating deep dive into the meaning of wedding vows that reveals these binding phrases to still be “exactly what love... wants to say.” Though vows were an ancient form of contract law, they did not enter into wedding rites until the Middles Ages, for the simple reason that marriage contracts were between heads of families. For example, in ancient Rome, while the marriage rite itself involved the couple, the contract was made between the groom and the father of the bride. In medieval Europe, Christian ideas about free will and choice in marriage led to the adoption of ceremonial wedding vows that resembled feudal fealty oaths, but­­—in what Mendelson suggests was a radical innovation—were “identical for man and woman.” Mainly consisting of a promise to “keep” the other spouse “in sickness and health,” these vows made “a dramatic statement... of real equality between the couple.” While reactionary variations that differentiated women’s role in marriage as subservient emerged almost immediately, Mendelson tracks how vows continued to stand as a popular symbol of free choice, free love, and gender equality through subsequent centuries. The wide-ranging narrative draws on an impressive array of sources, from Ovid to the polyamorous Oneida community in 19th-century New York. It’s a hugely informative history of the very idea of what makes a marriage.

April 15, 2024
The author of Home Comforts traces the history of marriage vows in Western society and argues for their continued relevance. Making frequent references to her own two marriages--one unhappy and short-lived, the other happy and long-lasting--Mendelson analyzes the evolution of traditional marriage vows from their beginnings as a variant on the feudal vows held between lord and vassal in medieval times. The author clearly favors the traditional Anglican vows, crafted by "prose master" Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and still in wide use today, largely unchanged except for the excision of the vow by women to "obey" their husbands. "The very act of taking marriage vows in a ceremony has a powerful psychological effect," writes Mendelson, and "the traditional vows are short and dramatic," as opposed to vows crafted by the couple, which she believes evoke more chuckles than deep-felt tears. The author dives deeply into each element of her subject, from the commitment to staying together "in sickness and in health," which is "the oldest, the clearest, and, one supposes, the most likely to be fulfilled," to the vow to "forsake all others," a more recent and less universal vow. As she segues from historical analysis to broader philosophical discussions of contemporary marriage, Mendelson also shifts to optimistic blanket statements--e.g., "Western-style monogamy, with its equal genders and social freedoms, is an institution honed into workability and high satisfaction after a few millennia of trial and error and insight gathering"; "almost everyone wants unending love, which means that they want marriage, even if they don't understand that they do"; the number of marriages that end in divorce says very little about the staying power of love." Questions about the shortcomings of matrimony find no place in this chatty survey. An essentially conservative book that will fortify the opinions of fans of marriage.

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May 1, 2024
What is it about weddings that makes us cry? Novelist and philosopher Mendelson (The Good Life, 2012) contends that the poignancy of traditional wedding ceremonies reminds us of love's conquest of death and that we all want that love. In her well-researched examination, she traces wedding vows to their origins in the early Middle Ages, noting their striking similarities to vows of homage and fealty and their evolution by the sixteenth century into a twofold ceremony comprising "consents," establishing the free choice of both bride and groom, and "vows" (promises) that remain little altered today. Mendelson then uses the structure of the rites to create the framework of her analysis of marriage itself and its benefits to husbands and wives, families, and society. She demonstrates that cultures embracing monogamy experience greater economic success, peace, and stability than those based on forms of consensual nonmonogamy. Anyone who has experienced marriage, attended weddings, or contemplated the role of marriage in society will appreciate Mendelson's deep dive into the foundations of these "typically happy beginnings."

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.