Analysis Of The Radical Idea Of Marrying For Love By Stephanie Coontz

History of Marriage and Love

Introduction

In the article, “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love” author Stephanie Coontz argues that love is not a good enough reason to get married. People shouldn’t marry just because they love one another, Coontz suggests that perhaps marriage should be based on how well a couple gets along and whether or not if the significant other is accepted by the family. One will notice in the article that Coontz makes it very clear that she is against marrying because of love. In the article is a bit of a history lesson of marriage and love within different cultures from all over the world. Coontz then states her thesis in the very end of the article which is that the European and American ways of marriage is the

But Coontz doesn’t use good organizational skills whatsoever. Some of these cultures she mentions are scattered in different parts of the article. Coontz talks about the Chinese in one paragraph and how love was seen as a threat to the family and then again in the article talks about how Chinese women would bring their sisters to their husbands as backup wives. This article Coontz wrote was very lengthy, if she would have condensed these cultures like the Chinese example into one paragraph, the article most likely wouldn’t be ten pages long. Coontz does not give much evidence or background on these cultures. It seems that she did not do much research to be able to back up what she says. Yes, Coontz gave us facts on the history of the marriage and love in these cultures but she never talks about modern marriage and how these cultures have evolved throughout time besides marriage in modern America. Coontz mentions Modern American marriage but never talks about the history of it whatsoever. This creates a little bit of frustration because she is trying to compare other cultures to the Modern American ways of marriage and love without any