The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love by Stephanie Coontz Article Analysis

In “The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love” by Stephanie Coontz, Coontz expresses how marrying for love has diverged radically over time from marrying for survival reasons to watered-down emotional and personal reasons by arguing how different cultures, societal ideology, and eras have a place in morally-guiding individuals on their perspectives of marriage and love over time. Coontz exemplifies several marital ideas from ancient and modern times with various examples of how marriage has changed to have more personal and emotional matters today between partners. 

Coontz explains how many different cultural interpretations of marriage have a strong impact on how love and marriage relate to each other. Coontz states “In Botswana, women add an interesting wrinkle to the old European saying ‘A woman’s work is never done.’ There they say: ‘Without co-wives, a woman's work is never done”(Coontz 17). This suggests that with various cultures around the world, the way love and marriage are perceived and looked at has much to do with the varying cultures in the world. In many cultures, it is mentioned that marriage and love are not compatible and that marriage should be made strictly for money and political reasoning, not for sexual and personal reasons. 

Coontz also mentions how society impacts much of the changing views on marriage and love. She explains how Western society views marriage as a loving matter first and then whether a partner is fit to give financial support. The article explains how society has changed and has adopted Western ideals, yet still follows a similar moral ideal from how the culture of marriage is expected in certain cultures. Over time society has changed in its ideas and different eras in time have much to do with how society views love and marriage.

This leads to how different periods and eras have impacted how marriage and love have changed with how times have changed over time. Coontz highlights how in different eras of time, many beliefs have changed in terms of marriage and love, and the impacts that the era had on marriage as a whole on many societies. Coontz uses these examples and compares them to modern views on marriage in Western society where spouses take a vow to remain with each other for life based on sexual and personal reasons today.

Coontz employs that love being the driving force in matrimony is a modern concept that was frowned upon or looked at as insanity or a threat to oneself and image. “For most of history, it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates based on something as fragile and irrational as love and then focus all their sexual, intimate, and altruistic desires on the resulting marriage" (Coontz 16). Her description of how other Marriage and love is perceived shows that marrying for love is a new idea in society. Though she does state in her article that marrying for love is not a new or Western idea, it is the main concept that people in ancient times married for political and monetary reasons rather than for love and affection. Most of the shift in marriage can be seen as a Westernized shift in how marriage is viewed in the media. Coontz explains She includes examples of other cultural concepts such as how public displays of affection were a crime in Roman times, or how even today, more Eastern ideas of marriage have much more to do with how parents and men feel about the wife based on if she can bear a son and offer domestic household duties. 

Coontz offers a wide range of ideas surrounding love and marriage throughout time and how the concept of marrying for love has become normalized rather than accepted today. She uses traditional ideas of the patriarchy within marriage and how it should benefit men with multiple wives and sons. Through the article Coontz explains the varying ideas of marriage based on previously captured ideas, which bring us to the conclusion that marriage is a widely changing idea, mainly over time and how society decides to accept and interpret it.