Rebecca L. Davis

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Rebecca L. Davis | "Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry": The Companionate Marriage Controversy | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

"Not Marriage at All, but Simple Harlotry": The Companionate Marriage Controversy

Only a few family members heard the Unitarian minister proclaim them husband and wife in Girard, Kansas, on November 22, 1927. But by the following evening, newspapers from New York to Los Angeles reported that Josephine Haldeman-Julius, aged eighteen, had wed Aubrey Clay Roselle, aged twenty, a student at the University of Kansas, in a secret ceremony at her parents' home, held a few days ahead of schedule in a futile bid for privacy. Readers learned that neither God's name nor even a reference to God's authority had passed the lips of the minister who officiated at the ceremony. Josephine and Aubrey had not exchanged the traditional Christian wedding vows, nor had the minister asked Aubrey to "endow the woman with his worldly goods."¹ Instead, Josephine and Aubrey swore their commitment to one another as partners in a "companionate marriage." As they described it, companionate marriage enabled them to marry (and thus have a socially sanctioned sexual relationship) while still too young to support themselves financially. In principle, if not yet by law, Josephine and Aubrey's companionate marriage permitted divorce without alimony at the two-year mark, assuming no children had been born in the interim. Josephine planned to continue living with her parents in Girard until she finished high school, after which she hoped to become a professional dancer. Aubrey would return to Lawrence, Kansas, to complete his degree. Though hardly mentioned in the press, the use of contraceptives enabled both husband and wife to pursue their educations and careers while still conforming to moral precepts and social conventions that limited sexual intercourse to marriage. "It seems almost too beautiful to be true to me," Josephine told the reporters who had descended on her parents' home.² Their companionate union epitomized what historians have described as marriage's early twentieth-century transformation from a patriarchal, procreative institution into a relationship premised on equal sexual desires and mutual emotional fulfillment. But if it reflected the norm, why did Josephine and Aubrey's wedding become a national media event? What was companionate marriage?

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