A Shared Experience: Men, Women, and the History of Gender

History, a plain recitation of facts and biography? Not in this book, an anthology of papers on the navigation of gender in the United States. It may sound of limited interest to anyone who's not a scholar in gender studies or history, but that's where you'd be missing out on a fuller picture of our early stateside ancestors. Of particular note is Lisa Wilson's "A Marriage 'Well-Ordered'," an intimate and at times touching analysis of a colonial marriage; Anya Jabour's "The Language of Love," a look at a love affair between husband and wife in the antebellum period; and Donald Yacovone's "Surpassing the Love of Women," about the love of fraternal brotherhood during the Victorian era. Few authors are able to skillfully present such a varied and complete picture of interpersonal relationships and intimacy, and editors McCall and Yacovone seem to have collected them all here. Certainly it should demolish the stereotypes we maintain of repressed Victorians and cold, distant Puritan marriages; if we're ever going to be able to make a go of intimacy in the present day, it might help to know where American love really comes from.