Synopses & Reviews
This book discusses the development of marriage and household systems in Western Europe.
Review
"This is a really exciting book, taking a bold stance about the nature of gender relations in Western society, and about the role gender relations played in a larger history. It's a big picture effort, by an imaginative scholar working from one of the key findings in comparative family history. It will cause debate, stimulate further reassessment -- in general, do what an ambitious historical synthesis should do." Peter Stearns, George Mason University"Mary S. Hartman has been a pioneering historian, a founder of women's history, the author of a path-breaking book about homicide. The Making of History; A Subversive View of the Western Past is her masterwork. What, she asks, made modern Western history different? Her answer, which most historians have neglected, is marriage. Men and women married later in the West. This apparently simple demographic reality has shaped culture, society, and history itself. Hartman's "subversive view" may prove to be canonical wisdom. A superbly adventurous book." Catharine R. Stimpson, New York University"In recent decades, historical demographers have mapped out the structural characteristics of the Western family over the centuries, and pointed to its distinctive features in historical global perspective. In The Household and the Making of History, Mary S. Hartman challenges demographers and historians alike to contemplate the cultural implications of one aspect of that household pattern: late age at marriage for women. Assimilating a huge volume of material drawn from many different historical subfields, Hartman argues persuasively that the household was (and still is) the locus in which potentialities for wide-ranging historical change resided, and that womenas place in that locus was much more one of agency than historians have usually credited. This is a fluent, provocative challenge to many current models of gender and of political and social change. L.R. Poos, The Catholic University of America
Review
"Hartman provides a fascinating, highly original, and ultimately challenging interpretation of the role of the family in Western civilization. The author is abreast of the current debates in family history, judicious in her comments, and extremely talented. There is much to reflect on. Highly recommended." D.C. Baxter, Ohio University, CHOICE"This is a really exciting book, taking a bold stance about the nature of gender relations in Western society, and about the role gender relations played in a larger history. It's a big picture effort, by an imaginative scholar working from one of the key findings in comparative family history. It will cause debate, stimulate further reassessment -- in general, do what an ambitious historical synthesis should do." Peter Stearns, George Mason University"Mary S. Hartman has been a pioneering historian, a founder of women's history, the author of a path-breaking book about homicide. The Making of History; A Subversive View of the Western Past is her masterwork. What, she asks, made modern Western history different? Her answer, which most historians have neglected, is marriage. Men and women married later in the West. This apparently simple demographic reality has shaped culture, society, and history itself. Hartman's "subversive view" may prove to be canonical wisdom. A superbly adventurous book." Catharine R. Stimpson, New York University"In recent decades, historical demographers have mapped out the structural characteristics of the Western family over the centuries, and pointed to its distinctive features in historical global perspective. In The Household and the Making of History, Mary S. Hartman challenges demographers and historians alike to contemplate the cultural implications of one aspect of that household pattern: late age at marriage for women. Assimilating a huge volume of material drawn from many different historical subfields, Hartman argues persuasively that the household was (and still is) the locus in which potentialities for wide-ranging historical change resided, and that womenas place in that locus was much more one of agency than historians have usually credited. This is a fluent, provocative challenge to many current models of gender and of political and social change. L.R. Poos, The Catholic University of America"What caused northwestern Europe's extraordinary trajectory? ...Scholars of a macro historical turn have grappled with this question in various guises. Now, in this wonderfully rich and exciting book, Mary Hartman provides a satisfying answer to that riddle, and presents us with a new big picture." Anne McLaren, School of History, University of Liverpool, H-Albion (H-Net)"...comprises an important contribution to world history as well as to the history of women and gender... one of the most significant recent works on gender and should be required reading for European and world historians and scholars of gender." World History Connected"What caused northwestern Europe's extraordinary trajectory? Now, in this wonderfully rich and exciting book, Mary Hartman provides a satisfying answer to that riddle...This is a bold prospectus...." H-Net Book Review
Synopsis
Unlike most historical accounts of modern Western societies, which identify the change that truly matters as occurring in institutions beyond households, this one contends that the major changes identified with Western societies are owing to a unique marriage and household system that appeared in Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
Table of Contents
1. How Northwestern Europe was strange: marriage, household, and history; 2. Marrying early and marrying late: divergent and parallel lives; 3. The riddle of the 'Western family patterns'; 4. The women and men of Montaillou and Salem Village: patterns of gender and power; 5. Communities in crisis: heresy, witchcraft, and the sexes in Montaillou and Salem; 6. What men and women want; 7. Interpreting the Western past with the women and the households left in, 1500-1800; 8. The late marriage household, the sexes, and the modern world.