Conjugal Rites: Marriage and Marriage-like Relationships before the Law

266 Pages·2007·0.98 MB·English

by  Heather Brook

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Conjugal Rites
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Conjugal Rites
Marriage and Marriage-like
Relationships before the Law
Heather Brook
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CONJUGALRITES
Copyright © Heather Brook.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom
and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4039-7656-7
ISBN-10: 1-4039-7656-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brook, Heather.
Conjugal rites : marriage and marriage-like relationships before the law /
Heather Brook.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-4039-7656-2
1. Domestic relations—History. 2. Marriage law-History. 3. Unmarried
couples—Legal status, laws, etc.—History. 4. Cohabitation agreements—
History. 5. Same-sex marriage—Law and legislation—History. I. Title.
K670.B76 2007
346.01’609-dc22 2007023136
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: December 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
Parts of Chapters 2 and 6 were published as “Just Married? Adversarial
Divorce and the Conjugal Body Politic,” Feminism & Psychology. Special Issue
on Marriage (II), Volume 14 (1): 81–99, 2004; and “Stalemate: Rethinking
the Politics of Marriage,” Feminist Theory3 (1): 45–56, 2002. Parts of
Chapter 5 were originally published as “The Troubled Courtship of Gladys &
Mick,” Australian Journal of Political Science32 (3): 419–36, 1997.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: Proposals and Propositions 1
2 Theorizing Conjugality 13
3 Making Marriage: Validity and Nullity 41
4 Union: Adultery and Other
Sexual Performatives 69
5 Marriage “Beyond the Pale”: “Mixed”
Marriage, “Miscegenation,” and Assimilation 95
6 S/he Done Me Wrong:
Adversarial Versus “No-fault” Divorce 121
7 The “Limping” Marriage:
Regulating Cohabitation 153
8 Queer Propositions: Sex and Sexualities 177
9 Conclusion: Sex, Marriage, and Conjugality 199
List of Cases 207
References 209
Notes 235
Index 249
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Since I have been thinking about the issues and ideas explored in this
book for many years now, and since thinking is never as solitary as we
might like to imagine, there are a number of people whose part in
the process I wish to acknowledge.
Without patient support from Ella Georgiades, Joanna Mericle at
Palgrave, and others, this project would have been more difficult and
less satisfying. I am thankful, too, for the friendly guidance offered
by Rosemi Mederos at Scribe.
Closer to home, I thank my colleagues and friends in Women’s
Studies and the Faculty of Social Sciences at Flinders University for
providing research assistance and a collegial working environment.
Thanks especially to Barbara Triffett, whose help over many years
has been invaluable. I am also indebted to the faculty, graduate stu-
dents, and visiting researchers of the Political Science Program at the
Australian National University’s Research School of Social Sciences
between 1996 and 1999, and to Barry Hindess in particular.
For their crucial partnership in the complex dance of learning,
teaching, and friendship, I extend hearty thanks to Kylie Wilson,
Emma Wilkinson, Deb Whitelock, Veronika von Bujdoss, Barbara
Sullivan, Hayley Smart-Welgus, Siti Aisyah, Irabinna Rigney, Tracy
Riddiford, Sandie Price, Dee Michell, Deb King, Carol Johnson,
Tania Innocenti, Belinda Hounslow, Mary Holmes, Barry Hindess,
Mary Heath, Ali Elder, Shannon Dowling, Lisa Crago, and Chris
Beasley.
For institutional support of a different kind, my gratitude goes to
the strong, loving, inspired, and inspiring women in my family:
Barbara Brook, Wendy Miller, Brooke Miller, and Tricia McLuckie.
For being there for all of us, I thank Des Hollamby. The sisters I
choose—Kate Sugars, Meredith Walsh, and Rebecca Stringer—are a
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viii Acknowledgements
source of enormous pride and joy for me, and I thank each of you for
your good ears, love, wisdom, and wit. For their different orders of
knowledge and lessons in courage, I thank Lindsay Brook and
Martin Brook, both of whom I revive in memory every day. To the
constellation of families sustaining me throughout—the Millers,
McLuckies, Sugars, and Butlins—my warmest thanks.
For being gentle on my mind, for having broad shoulders and a
strong stomach, and for seeing the best in me even at my worst,
thanks beyond measure to Rod Butlin.
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4
C h a p t e r 1
Introduction:
Proposals and Propositions
A
s a little girl, I received for my sixth or seventh birthday a bride
doll. It was a beautiful thing—about a foot high, with blue eyes
(which opened and shut), decked from head to toe in voluminous
white nylon. Staging the “Wedding of the Year” at the foot of my
bed, my bride doll swept down the aisle to meet Ted at the altar,
while imaginary guests wept at the gorgeousness of it all. But after
the ceremony, as I prepared the bride for what I precociously knew
to be “her special night,” my pleasure turned to frustration: there
were no zips or clasps for removing the doll’s outfit. She had been
sewn into her wedding gown. This seemed to me to be a horror of
the magnitude of magical dancing shoes stuck permanently to one’s
feet. The doll had but one role—one line—and her principal moti-
vation was to avoid getting dirty. There could never be anything
beyond the wedding for her—no honeymoon, no affairs, no
divorce—just “Here Comes the Bride” rendered over and over on
my trusty school recorder. All I could do with her was flip her veil in
relentless iterations of the moment of her wedding.
With the repertoire of play limited by her costume, my new bride
doll soon became boring. Once she’d married all the other toys, I
subjected her to hairdressing with nail scissors and the application of
felt-tipped make-up. Before long my beautiful bride doll was dirty
and disheveled, and I stopped playing with her. She sat abandoned