‘Contemporary Irish Popular Fiction’ considers a genre of writing sometimes characterised as ‘chick-lit’ (a disputed term), women’s fiction (equally problematical), or popular women’s fiction, which now constitutes one of the largest and fastest-growing genres of Irish writing. Beginning with the emergence of Maeve Binchy as an internationally successful novelist in the 1990s, a succession of Irish writers – Patricia Scanlan, Cecelia Ahern, Sinéad Moriarty, Marian Keyes, Emer McLysaght, and Sarah Breen – have produced work that has not only been hugely popular with readers, but which has also addressed key issues in contemporary Irish society, including abortion, divorce, gender roles, aging, and housing. It is demonstrated that the familiar tropes and situations deployed in novels in this genre allow scope to address these issues. Ultimately, it is argued, this genre of popular fiction has been among the most successful in addressing the changing nature of Irish society.

Addressing adversity and hardships that readers were likely to encounter in ordinary life (falls into poverty or bankruptcy, loss of parents, lover, caste and home, malignant misrepresentations, sexual harassment, domestic cruelty), these fictions were described as novels. In modeling the idealized responses of characters from the mercantile and professional ranks or from the lesser gentry to suffering and misfortune, Eliza Parsons, Jane West, Elizabeth Bonhote, Mrs. Gunning, Elizabeth Helme, Anna Maria Bennett, Mary Meeke, Ann Howell, Isabella Kelly, Susannah Rowson and many anonymous authors promoted new, proto-Victorian values. Novels of Education addressed issues of parenting and upbringing up to and including courtship and centered on debates about filial obedience, especially in choice of a spouse. Marital Domestic Fiction debated issues related to adultery, divorce, widowhood, spinsterhood, and second marriages. Female Biography combined the two with elements of other genres to follow one or more characters through a “Life.”

Over successive centuries, Americans have routinely narrated war stories as love stories: melodramas in which men's dedication to soldiering is rewarded by women's devotion to soldiers. In reality, though, love and war rarely march in lockstep. This essay explores the multivalent languages of love that wartime Americans have spoken: patriotic love of country; homosocial love of comrades; sentimental love of home; and romantic love of absent partners. Although often invoked simultaneously, these attachments do not coexist easily. While love is conjured as the redeeming grace that makes suffering bearable, the experience of being at war—departure from home, separation from loved ones, and the specter of injury or death—is just as likely to corrode affective bonds as to strengthen them. Using a thematic approach, this essay proposes that the complexities of emotional life in wartime—from heteronormative expectations to homosocial bonds, and the fragility of wartime intimacy—can only be understood through a war and society approach. In short, we must be as attentive to service personnel and the armed forces as we are to civilians and the social structures within which they're embedded.

Classic studies of English fiction and social life often depict romantic marriage and marriage novels as rising in tandem, with each propelling the other all the way to the moment of Jane Austen or even to the early twentieth-century era of modernist experiment and legal divorce. Capitalizing on this collection’s attention to micro-chronologies, this chapter, however, engages with a set of domestic fictions, by William Godwin, Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and others, that for a brief interval consciously dispensed with the premise that marriage was crucial for narrative completion. Widening the collection’s geographic focus, I consider this set of English works alongside the novels of the Swiss-French Germaine de Staël, an inclusion that helps underscore how some of the challenges posed in the 1800s to the narrative grammar of the novel originated with the French Revolution and with revolutionary jurists’ liberalization of the laws regarding marriage and its dissolution.

Research concerning the variety of close relationships adults maintain, initiate, cease, and lose during middle and later adulthood has been fast growing in recent decades. Much of the theoretical and empirical work in this field has aimed to overcome views of older age as a time of loss and decline, both individually and socially. Moreover, recent trends have focused on the increasingly diverse experiences of the aging population. This includes not only extended life expectancy – and, importantly, extended healthy life expectancy – but also demographic changes, including larger proportions of racial/ethnic minorities attaining older age; new cohorts of openly LGBTQ adults entering mid and later life, many of whom represent the first generation of same-sex married couples; and the phenomenon of “gray divorce” and romantic repartnering in the years beyond age 50. This chapter will cover both the history and foundations of research on close relationships in middle and later life, as well as these recent trends in the field, finishing with an eye toward future directions as both the aging population and our perceptions of it continue to change.

This chapter looks at forms of uncertainty that occur at different stages of married life. A central question here is what does uncertainty produce? The chapter focuses partly on Malay protagonists and on two particularly fragile moments in Malay marriage: during betrothal and, counterintuitively, much later on, after several decades, when one might expect marriages to be highly stable. The former was a pattern familiar from earlier research. But some older Malay women spoke of a more recent trend – for husbands of many years to marry a younger woman polygamously. Meanwhile, other, non-Malay, couples have adopted unconventional living arrangements or have taken unusual paths to suit their particular circumstances. In considering how different kinds of marital uncertainty play out, the significance of expectations about marriage and the registers of temporality through which they are calibrated and recalibrated are illuminated. The force of unanticipated events stimulates the reflection of protagonists and their consociates – as readers may recognise from their own experiences – reformulating ideas of what is appropriate or acceptable behaviour, and precipitating new ethical stances.

Chapter 4 delves into the intricate relationship between marriage and family-owned businesses, highlighting how marital dynamics can profoundly affect business governance and ownership. In family enterprises co-owned by spouses, the intersection of marital and business relationships creates complex legal and practical challenges, especially when navigating disputes or divorce. This chapter examines how marital agreements – such as prenuptial and postnuptial contracts – can help clarify ownership rights and protect business assets from being entangled in personal disputes. Through case studies involving high-profile family business divorces, the chapter illustrates the risks of poorly drafted agreements and the importance of proactive planning. It also explores how courts balance marital and business law when ownership interests overlap, emphasizing that effective family business governance must anticipate and manage the potential disruption posed by changes in marital status.

Mœurs, the second major censorship topic, were cornerstones of how contemporaries shaped their world, especially as regimes changed. This chapter is organized thematically around the topics of love and relationships, titles (especially ‘citoyen’ or the lack thereof), brigands, justice, and false appearances, before concluding with new material on the fate of Le Mariage de Figaro – a play that touches on many of these themes. These examples, which include major comedies as well as works at the Porte Saint Martin, the Gaité, or the Ambigu-Comique, and secondary theatres in the provinces, demonstrate how the state and contemporaries used censorship around the depiction of mœurs to advance their specific view of the world. Interestingly, when it comes to mœurs, the limit of the tolerable where lateral censorship kicks in is often within the legally permissible, revealing a gap between what people wanted and the reality of a new political regime.

The bulk of this chapter is devoted to the family as part of a dynamic system that includes the child, but also the community and the larger society. In the latter part of the chapter we examine the role of formal schooling, neighborhoods, and media, especially online media, as socializing agents for children and adolescents.

Panama’s authorities identified and combatted unmarried cohabitation or "amancebamiento" as a threat to the social order. This chapter discusses marriage’s lack of popularity on the isthmus, due to non-Catholic cultural traditions as well as the convenience and potential advantages of “living in sin.” In particular, it notes a proliferation of young widows described as “single” but free from paternal and conjugal authority. Alongside legal and fiscal measures to promote marriage, cases for marital separation or annulment provide insights into gendered obligations associated with the sacrament. Such cases’ success at court depended upon family support and alleged compliance with gender obligations. Other women turned to magic to shape their marital, affective, and economic relations. Inquisitorial trails, recorded in the summaries sent from Lima or Cartagena to Madrid, detail the experiences of Afro-descendants whose amatory and divinatory techniques garnered them prominent clienteles or merged with indigenous traditions in nocturnal revelries. Finally, Portugal’s separation from the crown of Castile disrupted the slave trade more than Portuguese residents in Panama.

The Revolutionary War was simultaneously a time of increased emphasis on marriage and family, as well as individual rejection of the marital monopoly on sex. Some individuals broke common sexual mores by engaging in fornication or extramarital affairs. Others sought more freedom, such as when the enslaved ran away from their masters and reconfigured their families on their own terms, or when abused wives fought for more safety. However, race, gender, and wealth all affected the extent to which a person’s sexuality was judged and criminalized. The imperial crisis and Revolutionary War offered opportunities to those who wished to break sexual taboos and a continued sense of the importance of loyalty to marriage and family ideals to others. By the end of the war, the elaboration of new divorce laws in some states and the reduction in criminal trials for fornication created more options for sexual freedoms.

Rebecca Aviel (Denver University (Sturm) Law) draws on her deep expertise in family law to illuminate ways in which domestic relations cases are exceptional relative to other legal areas where access concerns are acute. Family law’s exceptionalism, she contends, justifies thoroughgoing changes to that system’s adversarial architecture, such as permitting a single lawyer to represent both sides in a divorce, that are well-tailored to family law even if nonstarters in other parts of the civil justice system. Aviel also suggests that some innovative family law programs might travel well, informing reforms in other civil justice contexts even where they cannot be directly replicated.

Nelly van Doorn-Harder documents how Muslim women have historically played a crucial role in shaping society. Focusing on Muslim women’s social activism in Indonesia, the chapter highlights five distinct stages leading to the current peak, where women’s activism has shaped important policy outcomes and shifts in attitudes related to the protection of women’s rights and the promotion of human rights in society.