Book Description

Book Description
Alice Freeman was the first female college president and the first president of Wellesley College, starting at the age of twenty-seven.In 1887 she married George Herbert Palmer, a professor of philosophy at Harvard who, among other things, tried to make Harvard become coeducational in the 1890s.Five years later she became one of the founding deans of the University of Chicago.

The Palmers were one of the first couples who consciously chose to pursue two professional careers.An ideal marriage, they told their students and contemporaries, allows both partners to have satisfying work in the larger world.Many people now imagine that women drove changes in marriage and gender relations, but George was just as involved as Alice in imagining the new possibilities opened up by what they called "a marriage of comradeship."

Reinventing Marriage is an intimate biography of the Palmers' relationship.It explores their courtship and marriage, their attempts (both successful and unsuccessful) to turn their ideals into reality, and their thoughts and feelings about love and work, sexuality and religion and poetry, higher education and professionalism.It also, more broadly, sketches how and why Americans' expectations and hopes for marriage changed over the last two hundred years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Intelligent, literate, and thought-provoking
Beautifully written and thought-provoking, _Reinventing Marriage_ tackles the large and complex issues of gender equality, the history of American attitudes towards love, romance, marriage, and work, the complicated interplay of idealism and reality, and the peculiar burdens of a privileged life lived in the public eye; and does so all through the examination of one particular late nineteenth century marriage of two intelligent, appealing, and literate partners. Their letters to one another are a joy to read, and Kenschaft's thoughtful commentary consistently frames the relevant issues in ways that make them always accessible -- and never oversimplified. I have thoroughly enjoyed this book, and wish for others to have the same pleasure. ... Read more