Lives of wives

>> Marilyn Yalom's A History of the Wife asks whether married women are an endangered species

by JULIET WATERS

It's been a difficult millennium so far in the history of the wife. As I write, The Surrendered Wife is a best-selling book that makes the case for a return to a more submissive role in marriage. Two of the most idealized marriages in Hollywood--Meg and Dennis, and Tom and Nicole--are in divorce mediation. Ally McBeal is still searching for Mr. Right, while Calista Flockhart is bringing her adopted baby up solo. And the world counts the days until senator Hillary Clinton becomes the First Ex-Wife.

Then again, after reading A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom, there doesn't really seem to have been a great time to be a wife. Most of Yalom's popular history traces marriage through Europe and America. But she starts in Biblical times, where the template is laid for the future treatment of wives as obedient, unpaid servants. Ancient Greek and Roman times are noteworthy, not just because marriages were almost always arranged, but because those marriages based on companionship and love were often homosexual marriages.

In Medieval times, wives had a status one step higher than livestock and celibacy was considered healthier and nobler than marriage. It wasn't until the 16th century that love began to take priority in marriages and wives began to achieve a higher status, at least in concept if not practice. While the issue of legal and property rights for wives began in the 18th century, it wasn't until the 19th century that women started to achieve these rights.

Yalom does a careful, balanced job of presenting marriages across the classes, races and even sexual orientations. The most poignant section is on slave marriages. Marrying a man without rights who could be sold along with your children is heartbreaking evidence as to how strongly women have wanted to marry. It's a testament to the wealth of interesting material that even Yalom's trite writing ("How different from our own idea of choosing a mate for oneself because one has fallen in love!") can't really ruin the subject.

In her introduction she asks if the wife might be an endangered species. But it becomes clear that she doesn't believe so. Ostensibly, "from this interface of past and present scripts, we may be able to glimpse future images of the married woman." She prophesies that the dire statistics about the failure of most marriages are "severe birth pangs" in the process of creating the new wife.

Still, too much of her argument for preserving wifedom hinges on marriage being a preferable alternative to single motherhood. "I do not envy today's young women the pain that will come from divorce, the hardships they will endure as single parents, the poverty in which many will live." Of course in the U.S., with little government support for daycare and maternity leave, marriage may seem like the only viable alternative for raising small children. It's not surprising that 90 per cent of Americans are expected to marry. In Europe and Canada, however--especially Quebec--where women have more government support, marriage statistics are significantly different.

In Ontario the marriage rate has fallen to 60 per cent, while only 40 per cent of Quebecers are expected to marry before the age of 50. And regardless of how many marriages there are in North America, with divorce statistics what they are, the nuclear family is now a statistical minority. Knowing the tremendous odds that children will have to suffer through a family breakup, will the day come when bi-nuclear living--in two households from the outset--seems like the healthier option? Probably not. It's unlikely that men and women will ever give up the ideal of lifetime passionate companionship. It's a wonderful ideal, regardless of how difficult it is to achieve.

Yalom's book does much to demystify marriage. For some readers it may offer food for thought, and for reimagining marriage. For others it may seem like good material for a eulogy.

A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom, Harper Collins, hc, 438pp, $39.95