Newlyweds on tour
Subtitle: honeymooning in nineteenth-century America
By: Barbara Penner.
Edition: 1st ed.
Series: Becoming modern : new nineteenth-century studies
Publisher: University of New Hapshire Press; New Hampshire; University of New Hampshire Press; Published by University Press of New England
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Durham, N.H
Language: eng
Number of pages: 290
ISBN-13: 9781584657736
Subjects: Honeymoons -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Marriage customs and rites -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Newlyweds -- United States -- History -- 19th century; Tourism -- United States -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Description: "Newlyweds on Tour is the first historical study to trace the origins and growth of the American honeymoon between 1820 and 1900. Rather than treating the honeymoon as a simple by-product of the privatization of the family, this work argues that it was formed at the interstices between (and helped to articulate) a variety of narratives - patriotic, conjugal, sentimental, and sexual - that were central to the modern American national identity. To track these narratives, Barbara Penner moves between primary accounts of newlywed experiences recorded in diaries and letters in addition to a wide range of textual, visual, and architectural representations, matrimonial maps, engravings from the popular press, sensational novels, and palace hotel bridal chambers.

Her wide-ranging interdisciplinary analysis demonstrates the specific ways in which newlyweds on tour prompted individual and collective feelings of attachment to the ideals of egalitarian marriage, domesticity, nation, or sentiment itself. Above all, she argues that the honeymoon was key to legitimizing the union of sentiment and commerce, a union that continues to thrive today."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Honeymooning in America; title: Touring : the northern bridal tour; title: Mapping : the land of matrimony; title: Affecting : newlyweds and the sentimental view; title: Consuming : the palace bridal chamber; title: Retreating : the natural honeymoon; title: Homecoming : a domestic initiation.