Book Reviews

125

constitutes the religious law. . . . 'Islamic' serves as a codeword for 'just'

and 'fair'" among women whose ideas about marriage and gender relations "differ dramatically from those of the jurists whose intellectual labor
forms the law's doctrinal foundation" (189). The anecdotal evidence that
she cites from her own experience to round off the book is valuableand
could be compared interestingly (yet another avenue that this fine study
opens up) with medieval literary set piecesattributed to women by male
imaginations.'about women's desires for men, marriage, and sex.
J U L I A BRAY

University of Oxford

Making Marriage Work: A History ofMarriage and Divorce in the TwentiethCentury United States. By K R I S T I N C E L E L L O . Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. 230. $33.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).
Peruse any magazine stand and you are bound to find a multitude of articles
advising readers on how to have a healthy relationship. Talk shows and reality
TV also reinforce the heteronormative models of healthy coupledom. The
consensus in contemporary American culture seems to be that marriage
isand should bework. Moreover, this burden continues to fall disproportionately on women's shoulders. Twenty-first-century men might be
expected to be more emotionally invested in relationships than their fathers
and grandfathers were, but wives are still targeted as the spouse whose efforts could make or break a relationship. Not only is marriage work, then,
but it is also most definitely women's work.
Kristin Celello has written a compelling history of how the marriage-aswork trope emerged over the course of the twentieth century. Celello begins
with the development of romantic marriages at the century's open, moves
through a consideration of the effects ofWorid War II, postwar reconversion,
and women's liberation, and finishes with an examination of marital work
late in the century. Aware that much of the terrain she surveys has been well
trod by previous scholars, Celello is careful neither to mimic nor to dismiss
their prior claims. Using this literature as a solid foundation, she builds a
strong analysis of the role played by various experts in the creation of a heteronormative model of American marriage. She also uses creative sources to
give voice to the couples themselves. Moving beyond simple demographics,
Celello considers the ideals that couples brought to their relationships and
what happened when the realities failed to meet them. Celello locates the
sources of these ideals in the growing field of marriage counseling. While
professional marriage counselors became increasingly common as the century
progressed, a large body of popular counselors also offered premarital and
marital advice through magazines, television, and self-help books. Together,

126

BOOK

REVIEWS

these professional and popular counselors persuaded Americans to make their

marriages work. Celello employs a wide variety of sources, including cultural
images, publications produced for popular as well as professional audiences,
and letters exchanged between counselors and couples seeking advice. The
result is a creative account of how the American work ethic intersected with
the most intimate of American institutions in the twentieth century.
Celello opens this volume by introducing the experts who made marriage
work. Celello admittedly "uses the term 'expert' loosely," relying not on
training or certification Ijut rather on "the authoritative way in which they
present their views, particularly in the popular media" (6). While experts
varied widely in their backgrounds and venues, they shared a firm belief that
marriage was in crisis and that it was their role to remedy it. These experts
certainly had a financial stake in convincing Americans that counseling could
save their relationships, but Celello does not let this self-interest dominate
the story. Instead, she uses larger political, economic, and social trends to
understand the ideological framework that motivated them. These experts
believedand persuaded the public to acceptthat marital success was essential to national stability, that a successfiil marriage took effort, and that it
was the duty of American women to make sure their marriages did not fail.
The first chapter explores the transition from marriage as a social, civic,
or religious duty (and, for women, a means to financial stability) into a romantic relationship that couples expected to be emotionallyfiilfiUingabove
all else. Concurrendy, the increasing availability of and social acceptance
for divorce made marital success more precarious than ever. New experts
appeared that sought to deromanticize marriage, lowering expectations of
personal satisfaction in order to improve chances for success. In the first
decades of the twentieth century, they counseled young people, particularly
women, about the dangers of choosing the wrong spouse or marrying for
the wrong reasons. They hoped that by cautioning women to make rational
rather than emotional decisions about marriage, fewer mismatches would
end in divorce. In chapter 2, Celello explores the difticulties of such advice
in the emotional upheaval of wartime. As couples rushed to the altar during
Worid War II, experts worried about the long-term effects of marrying in
haste. "By the mid-1940s, experts and the public regarded any marriage
that remained intact to be a positive female achievement" (46). Experts
told women that if they did not heed the advice to use caution in selecting
a husband, then they should expect and accept disappointment in their
married lives. Chapter 3 examines how experts sought to keep Americans
married in the 1950s. Continuing to insist that "any marriage can be saved,
if not from unhappiness, then at least from divorce," experts focused on
training women before and after marriage in how to succeed in the career
of homemaking (75). The result was that marital difficulties became redefined as normal, as obstacles to be adapted to when they could not be
overcome. What happened when women rebelled against these and other

Book Reviews

127

gender mandates of the era is the subject of chapter 4. Efforts to reform

marriage along more egalitarian lines included involving men in the work of
marriage. "Communicadon" thus became the new route to madtal success.
By the 1980s and 1990s "the idea that worldng at marriage would help
reladonships stay together was taken for granted in the ad\'ice literature" and
by couples themselves (136). Chapter 5 highlights how couples expected
mardage to require mutual, if not equal, effort and turned to professional
counselors for help, thus bringing the volume full circle.
Overall, this is a solid study. Celello writes in a clear voice with an excellent command of the literature and subject. Her scholarly wit is at its best
in the cultural vignettes that open each chapter. Celello convinces that
the history of making marriage work is essendal to understanding current
discussions about marriage and divorce in the United States.
CAROLYN H E R B S T LEWIS

Louisiana State University

Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotic Empire of Beate Uhse. By E L I Z A B E T H

H E I N E M A N . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Pp. 240.
$35.00 (cloth).
Beate Uhse's name is recognizable to anyone who has strolled through a
German city. Uhse is the owner of what is arguably the world's largest erodca
firm, and her sex shops are a ubiquitous part of the landscape of modern
Germany. In her fascinadng study, Elizabeth Heineman demonstrates that,
even more than a fixture in Germany's consumer sex culture, Uhse's story is
an inextdcable part of the history of West Germany's sexual mores as well as
the Federal Republic's transformadons ftom the rubble years to an economic
miracle and uldmately democradc stability. Heineman argues convincingly that
in the new democracy's gradual process of liberalizadon, sexuality was a key
site for learning liberalism. Beate Uhse's growing empire held an important
plaee in the polideal debates over the role of the state in shaping sexuality.
The marketplaee of sex, dominated by Uhse's mail-order catalogs in the
1950s and the porn wave ftom the late 1960s into the 1970s, made sexual
consumpdon a site for millions of West Germans not only to express their
desires but also to push the state and compedng polidcal groups to pdoddze
civil liberdes and fteedom of commerce. Thus postwar West Germany was
able to overcome Weimar- and Nazi-era debates over the role of the state in
sexual life, as the new commercializadon of sex allowed individuals to claim
a space in which they could explore their desires in the ftee marketplace.
Heineman begins her study by analyzing West German sexual culture
in the 1950s, during which time, she argues, there was no consensus on
sexual morality. The lines between liberals and conservatives were not

Copyright of Journal of the History of Sexuality is the property of and its content may not be
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.