| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Elizabeth Freeman. The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern American Culture. (Series Q.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2002. Pp. xix, 288. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.

Separating the wedding from the marriage is the mission of literary critic Elizabeth Freeman. It is her contention that the wedding ceremony functions as performative since it is not necessary for marriage and enacts forms of belonging other than those attributed to state-sanctioned heterosexual monogamy. To divorce the study of weddings from the context of marriage, she argues, allows for a more complex examination of the varied ways weddings are used. Situating her study of weddings in literature and popular culture within Anglo-American wedding history, Freeman makes her case that the wedding is, in reality, the site for the expression of public forms of desire and attachment that are frequently dissonant within heterosexual tradition.

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