In this engaging work, Leslie J. Harris considers the relationship between marriage and national identity in the United States, by examining various hot-button issues surrounding the institution in the nineteenth century. While the public nature of the allegedly private realm of marriage has been established in the academic literature for some time, Harris's contribution is the specificity of her work, particularly in her use of rhetorical analysis (blended seamlessly with archival and legal research) to explore various marital controversies and their meanings. This approach allows her to build a persuasive case for the ways in which debates about the institution were especially meaningful from a gendered perspective. According to Harris, these controversies substantially contributed to the creation of nineteenth-century American women's public identity, which she calls “symbolic womanhood.” Imagining women as “containers of the culture, values, and morals of the nation” (2), this role gave them great responsibilities, while simultaneously leading to important limitations. Preserving and controlling access to this identity, in turn, made the regulation of marriage an essential national project.

Harris develops these themes through five case studies. She opens with a consideration of domestic violence, which she argues was problematic because disciplining a wife was a masculine privilege afforded by marriage, yet crossing a line by overcorrecting was clearly unacceptable in a “civilized” nation. The strengths of Harris's use of rhetorical analysis are particularly evident in her discussion of wife murder. She deftly deconstructs newspaper reports of several high-profile murder cases in Chicago, demonstrating how journalists employed at least one of three frames that “rhetorically marked the murderers as Other” (15), thereby helping the public to make sense of these horrible deeds. Equally compelling, in the next chapter, is Harris's examination of several sensationalistic divorce trials. During their trial, each woman worked to project a certain kind of innocent wifehood, even though successfully petitioning for divorce meant that they no longer fit within prescribed gender roles. It is unsurprising, therefore, that divorce – and the “divorced citizen” – became vehicles for understanding not only the future of the American family, but also the country.

Questions about civilization and about the connections between the fate of the family and the nation coalesce in Harris's discussion of Mormonism and plural marriages, which are the subjects of her third case study and the centerpiece of the book. Harris effectively conveys the general public outrage surrounding the practice, which proclaimed it to be “licentiousness and a sign of barbarity” (58). In particular, many critics argued that polygamy made the women involved slaves, albeit ones who were easier for white Americans to identify with than those of African descent. Some of the most potent critics of this perception, however, were Mormon women themselves. Harris convincingly argues that these women overcame various rhetorical dilemmas, such as gendered prohibitions of certain kinds of public speech and accusations of false consciousness, to defend plural marriages, often using the same kind of language as their critics. They were insistent that they were true American women, as well as citizens. That both sides framed their arguments in this way is Harris's best evidence that marriage controversies were significant conduits for discussions about national identity. The final two cases studies, looking at free love and interracial marriage, echo these themes, adding conversations about “proper” sex and race to the already fraught marital landscape.

Throughout the text, there are several areas that Harris, whose academic background is in communications, could consider more deeply. From a historian's perspective, this reviewer would like to see a more persuasive discussion of how and why the nineteenth century was a particularly turbulent time for American marriage. Much of the action in the book centers on the century's latter decades, but Harris generally does not consider the shifting context and the significance of change over time. Also interesting would be even closer attention to the controversies in relation to one another, as they often unfolded simultaneously. More generally, there is a good deal of argument about the existing literature and methodologies, as well as some fascinating evidence and background information, buried in long, discursive footnotes. Including this material in the text could only have enhanced Harris's analysis.

These quibbles aside, State of the Marital Union is beautifully written and ambitious in scope and in argument. It effectively blurs the lines between public and private, as well as marriage and national identity, while reminding scholars that the rhetoric of marriage – especially when it is in crisis – is as fruitful a place of study as is lived experience.