The Meaning of Wife (part 2)

Because The Meaning of Wife deals with the mainstream cultural constructions of "wife," it is very much focused on white, middle- to upper-class, educated, straight wives. And that's a shame. Because, as the author points out, real wives (and their partners) are creating their own ways of being married that may be independent of these cultural scripts and I would think that looking at wives who have historically or currently fighting for their right to be a wife would be really interesting. What does it mean to be an African-American wife, for instance, in a culture that rarely represents African-American marriage? And when you're contending with stereotypes like "the mammy," "the bossy black bitch," and "deadbeat black father"? These wives--their factual and cultural realities--do not appear in this book. Nor do lesbian wives, whose right to marry is challenged because marriage is seen to exist only between a "husband" and a "wife." And what about pressure to marry (or to want to marry) in the gay community?

All of this is perhaps outside of Kingston's thesis (although I would argue that her chapter on single women was extraneous as well), but I am getting a little tired of folks writing about "culture" in a way that keeps us thinking only about those with the privilege to be the "default."

Oh also, I might be amending my "no-nup" agreement soon based on some of these horror stories.