Making Marriage Modern: Women's Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II (Studies in the History of Sexuality)

319 Pages·2009·2.45 MB·English

by  Christina Simmons

Making Marriage Modern
STUDIESINTHEHISTORYOFSEXUALITY
Guido Ruggiero, General Editor
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Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy
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The Evolution of Women’s Asylums since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes
to Shelters for Battered Women
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Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France
Robert A. Nye
Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (1500–1730)
James R. Farr
The Mysterious Death of Mary Rogers: Sex and Culture in
Nineteenth-Century New York
Amy Gilman Srebnick
Sexuality in the Confessional: A Sacrament Profaned
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Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England
Ruth Mazo Karras
The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity
George L. Mosse
Homosexuality in Modern France
Edited by Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr.
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence
Michael Rocke
Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England
Ian Frederick Moulton
Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice
Joanne M. Ferraro
Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive
Era to World War II
Christina Simmons
Further volumes are in preparation.
(cid:1)
Making Marriage Modern
Women’s Sexuality
from the Progressive Era
to World War II
christina simmons
1
2009
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simmons, Christina.
Making marriage modern : women’s sexuality from the Progressive Era
to World War II / Christina Simmons.
p. cm.—(Studies in the history of sexuality)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN978-0-19-506411-7
1. Sex in marriage—United States—History—20th century.
2. Marriage—United States—History—20th century.
3. Sex customs—United States—History—20th century.
I. Title.
HQ18.U5S5542009
646.7'80973—dc22 2008033823
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Bruce, Matt, and Daniel
and
in memory of Susan Porter Benson
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
Mari Jo Buhle’s lecture on the “New Morality” in her women’s history course
at Brown University fi rst drew me to the study of women’s sexuality and
marriage. She taught us about women’s rejection of Victorian mores, their
claiming of sexual rights in the 1910s and 1920s, and the proposals for com-
panionate marriage that followed. Yet these changes seemed limited because
in our time women were still denied sexual initiative and hemmed in by the
double standard. But courses like Mari Jo’s and the wider women’s liberation
movement radically opened and recast many women’s visions of the world
and challenged the reigning sexual images of women. These new perspectives
enabled us to understand the past in new ways as well.
Therefore, my fi rst acknowledgment is to the brave feminists of this larg-
est of all the great social movements of the late twentieth century, and in
particular to pioneer scholars like Mari Jo Buhle and Louise Lamphere, my
dissertation advisers, and Nancy Cott and Estelle Freedman. Their work has
been formative for my own, and their comments on my earlier work furthered
the development of my thinking. I have a great debt to my own cohort as
well: sisterhood inspired the wonderful model of committed scholarship of
my graduate school dissertation group friends, Judith E. Smith and Barbara
Melosh, and of the Providence women’s history group, including Mari Jo, Judy,
Barbara, the late Susan Porter Benson, Kate Dunnigan, Sonya Michel, Gail
Sansbury, Sharon Hartman Strom, and Valerie Yow. Overlapping these groups
was The House, 659–661 Hope St., where raucous discussions of movies and
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
politics, outstanding meals, and the camaraderie of feminist cooperative living
engaged, over my time there, Ruth Milkman, Peter Evans, Louise Lamphere,
Barbara Melosh, Bruce Tucker, Susan Porter Benson, Ed Benson, Ophelia
Benson, Kate Dunnigan, Frank Costigliola, and Judith Sealander. Although
this book is my project, like all intellectual work, it was made possible by this
wider political and intellectual world and by these and other feminist col-
leagues and friends.
Subsequently, over the long gestation of this book, other friends and col-
leagues also helped by discussing aspects of the work or reading and comment-
ing on papers, chapters, or article manuscripts. These include Barry Adam,
Susan Porter Benson, Elsa Barkley Brown, Anne Forrest, Estelle Freedman,
Nancy Hewitt, Molly Ladd-Taylor, Barbara Melosh, Patricia Palmieri, Kathy
Peiss, Leila Rupp, Charlene Senn, Judy Smith, and Bruce Tucker. Joanne
Meyerowitz and Mari Jo Buhle commented in depth and with great insight on
the entire manuscript. Thomas LeBien of Oxford University Press gave useful
feedback on early chapters, and most recently Susan Ferber’s acute and sen-
sible editing greatly improved the manuscript. My deepest thanks to all these
people for their comments, suggestions, and support.
I would like to acknowledge the aid of a University of Cincinnati Sum-
mer Faculty Research Fellowship and an American Council of Learned Soci-
eties Grant-in-Aid that enabled me to fi nd more African American sources.
A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship gave me the space to
conceptualize the entire project for the fi rst time as well as to further the
research after a period of childbearing and heavy teaching. A semester of sup-
port from the University of Windsor’s Humanities Research Group provided
space and time to draft the second chapter and further develop the material on
companionate marriage. I am most grateful for the help of all these agencies.
I wish also to thank librarians at places I have lived and worked over the
time of the research, including Brown University, Dalhousie University, the
University of Cincinnati, and the University of Windsor. Archivists Richard
Wolfe of the Harvard Countway Library, Deborah Edel, Joan Nestle, and
Judith Schwarz of the Lesbian Herstory Archive, and Shawn Wilson of the
Kinsey Institute Library were of great assistance. My gratitude goes as well to
research assistants Carmen Poole and Andrew Anastasovski of the University
of Windsor for their excellent research and bibliographic work. Thanks also to
Irene Moore, Frank Tucker, and John Thale for help with illustrations.
I walked a very long road completing this book, and I often felt dis-
couraged. I have been sustained by love, advice, and generosity from family
and friends. Long ago my parents, Katherine Blocker Simmons and James
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
E. Simmons, stood behind me in the education that underpinned this work.
I am sorry they did not live to see its conclusion. I am happy that my support-
ive baby boom siblings, Jay, Anne, Katherine, Martha, Sarah, John, and step-
brother Dan, are here to see it. Encouragement and ongoing friendship from
Susan Porter Benson, Marian Geyer Williams, Anita Kerbeshian McPherson,
Barbara Melosh, Joanne Meyerowitz, Judy Smith, and Sharon Strom especially
revived me in the diffi cult moments. Fun and incisive feminist discussions
with my Windsor feminist “reading/dinner” group, including Janice Drakich,
Anne Forrest, Rena Isenberg, Ramona Lumpkin, Pam Milne, Veronika
M ogyorody, Lynne Phillips, Charlene Senn, and Meredith Smye, have kept
me going. Paula Merideth provided vital support during my long struggle
with chronic fatigue syndrome. And “my guys”—my partner, Bruce Tucker,
and our sons, Matthew and Daniel Tucker-Simmons—have borne with me
and even been enthusiastic about this project. Bruce is the world’s best l istener.
He has offered his wonderful, careful, and insightful refl ections on the ques-
tions in this study, on history generally, and on the writing process. He has also
shared the demands and the joys of household, parenting, and p rofessional
work as we moved from Providence to Halifax to Cincinnati to Windsor and
has often done more than his half. Matt and Daniel have diverted me with
their growing up, with Scouts, soccer, hockey, and their excellent cooking.
I am more grateful than I can say to this marvelous circle of friends and
f amily who upheld me over many years and believed in the importance of
this work. (cid:1)
Portions of pp. 21–25 and 49–54 were originally published as “African Ameri-
cans and Sexual Victorianism in the Social Hygiene Movement, 1910–1940,”
by Christina Simmons, Journal of the History of Sexuality4 (1):51–75. Copy-
right © 1993 by the University of Texas Press. All rights reserved.
Portions of pp. 58–104 were originally published as “Women’s Power in
Sex Radical Challenges to Marriage in the Early-Twentieth-Century United
States,” by Christina Simmons, Feminist Studies29,1 (Spring 2003):169–98.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Feminist Studies, Inc.
Portions of pp. 150–77 were originally published as “ ‘Modern Marriage’
for African Americans, 1920–1940,” by Christina Simmons, Canadian Review
of American Studies 30 (3): 273–300. Reprinted by permission of Canadian
Association for American Studies, www.utpjournals.com.
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